Reborn In a Murderer’s Embrace

I stumbled backward as Zoe lunged at me with a force I hadn’t anticipated. She pushed me so hard that I lost my footing and toppled over.

My head struck the edge of Zoe’s footstool, and darkness crept into the edges of my vision.

“It’s all your fault, you killed them! You stole Colin away from Carter, and then you just threw him away. You’re so horrible.” Zoe wailed, her voice a haunting echo in my dazed state.

Memories, long buried under layers of dust in my mind, began to resurface.

“Hi, I’m Phoebe Caldwell. What’s your name?”

“Are you hurt?”

In the grassy field behind the orphanage, a frail, biracial boy with bruises all over cowered in a

corner.

A little girl in a red dress spotted him and reached into her tiny purse to pull out a band–aid. “Does it hurt?” she asked.

The boy shook his head, looking lost.

“Half–breed, blue eyes! Never cries, never laughs, never feels pain!”

A gaggle of orphans laughed and jeered, pelting Colin with stones. They taunted him for being a half– breed because of his strikingly beautiful eyes that shone like stars.

“Who you calling half–breed?” the girl in the red dress stood defiantly in front of the boy. scooping up stones from the ground. “If you bullies don’t stop, I’ll hit you!”

“Who are you? Are you new here? Don’t you know the rules of the orphanage?”

“Look at her dress; it’s so pretty.”

“It’s new!”

“If we take off her dress, it becomes ours.” Ccontent © exclusive by Nô/vel(D)ra/ma.Org.

The other girls coveted the red dress, commanding the few boys they had to rip it from the little girl.

The girl stood rooted to the spot, crying.

Watching her tears, something in the boy snapped. He grabbed a stone and pounced on one of the attackers, slamming it down on the bully’s head again and again.

Terrified, the girl in the red dress screamed for her father.

A shadowy figure approached from the distance, and the faces in my memory grew clear.

The girl in the red dress was me as a child. The boy fighting was Colin.

And the figure running towards us was my dad, along with the head of the orphanage.

“What’s going on here?” Colin was thrown into solitary confinement, ordered by the head to reflect on his actions.

The girls who had bullied us said they liked my dress, so my dad promised to bring each of them one the next time he visited.

I was cradled in my father’s arms as we left, and as we walked away, I caught sight of a boy peeking from behind a window.

It was Colin, with those eyes I could never forget.

I had known Colin long before I thought I did. But I had forgotten that memory.

“Colin, I like you but I need to focus on my college entrance exams. After graduation, we can be together, okay?”

“Colin, can you wait for me?”

Colin.

Colin…

“Phoebe!”

The door burst open, and familiar voices rushed in – Stella and Robin, and… Dexter?

Wasn’t he supposed to be in detention? How did he get out?

“What did you do to her?” Stella shouted at Zoe, urging Robin to call 911.

“Phoebe Caldwell, she’s Phoebe. She’s definitely Phoebe,” Zoe muttered from her corner, pointing at me with a tilted head. “I know I’m right. She’s Phoebe.”

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Zoe asked Robin and Dexter, her voice tinged with madness.

“Her spirit lingers… she’s come back to haunt Carter, to steal Colin.”

Dexter, pale as a ghost himself, held me in his arms. “I’m taking her to the hospital!“. “Phoebe, you’re going to be okay. I won’t let anything happen to you.” My consciousness was drifting, and I heard Dexter’s voice as if through a veil, the sound of tears unmistakable.

“I won’t let anything happen to you again, I swear… I’m sorry, Phoebe… I’m so sorry. I like

you…”

I murmured, unsure of what I was saying. Dexter tensed, desperate to hear more, to hear the answer he longed for.

“Colin…”

But it was Colin’s name I called out.