Strange. The darkness unravels the nerves of a timid, fifteen year old girl. Her unruly honey hair is stuck to the side of her face and the heat of thirst itches and burns her throat like shoving a hot, white branding iron down it.
Emersyn quietly slips out of the bed that isn't hers in the white room that isn't hers in the shelter that isn't hers. She is without a thing to her name but the gray, ratty sweatpants and old band t-shirt that is on her back. She tiptoes silently down the narrow, inadequate hallway that smells like cleaner and antiseptic and the white walls make you feel as if you’re staying in a hospital. She enters into a kitchen with a replacative aura of the bland, perfect walkway she had just passed through. She grabs a glass of the counter, the counter that is sticky and covered in day old crumbs, and fills it with water. Water. Sweet and delicious. Suddenly, a noise catches her attention- the quietest creak of the floorboards.
Emersyn looks up and finds the woman known as the "Crazy Lady". Deep green eyes like the foliage of the rainforest trees and fiery red hair that is matted to the sides of her head. The Crazy Lady smiles bewitchingly and her gaze falls onto the butterfly inked into Emersyn's wrist, her eyes obtaining a knowing, mysterious glint.
"Butterflies are so pretty in the spring," she says, her voice husky and soft, but somehow confident. The tone of her voice and the angular tilt of her head intrigues Emersyn and she finds herself agreeing and words of how butterflies are her symbol tumble out of Emersyn's youthful, moist lips. As the Crazy Lady's figure turns away down the white washed hallways, her head mechanically turns back to Emersyn's, her forest green eyes now dappled with flaming gold flecks.
Emersyn's body tenses up, rigid muscles against rigid muscles, eyes glued opened--- locked into orbs of forest fire. Words flow from the Crazy Lady's cherry red lips in a voice much different from the one used moments before, like honey oozing slowly, seductively, through catacombs of a beehive.
"Butterflies symbolize change."
Emersyn blinks suddenly, regaining control of the body that is hers, but the Crazy Lady is nowhere to be seen. All that is left with Emersyn are words that simply aren't hers.