Raven

Ava and Lenore Grade 10

Allen cracked her eyes open, squinting against the bright LED ceiling light. She groaned and sat up, feeling her bones creak with every movement. She was in a small room with white walls and a hospital smell. She could see a grey door but not in a lot of detail. Her vision was blurry, she reached up her hand and touched her face to check if she was wearing her glasses. She wasn’t. 

Her hand felt sticky on her face. With furrowed eyebrows she brought her hand as close to her face as possible, it looked red and there was definitely a tell-tale metallic smell coming from it. 

“Blood?” Allen said softly to herself, flexing her fingers. The blood on her hands was also staining her bird-watching club polo, the red standing out starkly against the beige fabric. 

A loud CLANG echoed through the sterile room, making her flinch, wincing as she did. There was definitely something wrong with her ribs.

 
“Ms Lee, we’d like to ask you a couple of questions,” said a man in an immaculately fitted suit, as men in police uniforms rushed past him and manhandled Allen onto her feet. They twisted her wrists behind her back and she felt cool metal bind them together. 

“Wh-where am I?” Allen fought to get the words out of her mouth, working against the lump in her throat that had started to build from panic.

“Just come with me miss,” the man in the suit said. The two officers holding Allen by her arms dragged her out of the white room. Her vision was still hazy and she couldn’t make out any features of the building she was in, although the soundproofed room with one wall made of a massive mirror, along with a metal table with chairs on opposite sides gave her a clear idea. She was put into a chair, the suited man sitting across from her. Her handcuffs were undone, only for her wrists to be placed in those attached to the table. 

The man pressed a button on a tape recorder before turning to look Allen in the eye,

“Can you state your name for the tape please?” He said. 

“What’s happening?” Allen asked, voice shaking. 

“Just state your name please.” The man reiterated.

“My name is Allen Lee. Why am I here?” The man didn’t answer her question, instead, he clapped back with his own,

“Why did you kill your brother, Arthur Lee, yesterday?” 

———– 

She was still trembling when the officers locked her up in that sterile room, that cell, again. She stared at her shaking hands, her brother’s blood, as the detective had made abundantly clear. As she looked at her hands, her vision began turning hazy and vignetted, worse than it already was, she felt her hands stop trembling and her ribs stop hurting. She swore she recognised a raven caw just before she blacked out.

———–

When Allen came to, she was in the front seat of a car, bloodied hands gripping the steering wheel. She kept driving, what else could she do? The sky was grey, rain poured down the windshields. Momentarily her interest was taken by the black birds fighting their way through the rainstorm, there seemed something poetic about it. What it was, Allen couldn’t be bothered to think about right then.

 
Her knuckles were white under the layer of blood that covered them. The layer of fresh blood. When she’d been led back into the cell the blood on her hands had dried, but the blood on her hands now was warm and sticky. Police sirens were gradually becoming louder, as was the beating of Allen’s heart.

 
She finally took a moment to take her eyes off the road and get her bearings; she recognised the street and the houses. In fact, just two or three minutes from here was where her – coming to a decision, Allen swerved and drove in a new direction, making the turns that were so familiar to her. She illegally parked the car on the sidewalk – she was getting falsely put down for murder anyway – and ran up the cracked pathway to the blue-painted door. 

She banged and banged, ignoring the red stains her hands left on the baby blue paint. Eventually, the lock clicked and Allen flung herself into her mother’s arms, tears pouring out of her eyes. 

She breathed in the comforting scent of lemongrass, not even caring that it was mixed with the metallic tang of blood wafting off Allen.

“Mum I’m scared, I think the police are after me, and Arthur’s dead.”

 
The words poured out of her, stopping only when more sobs wracked her body, her mom pulled out of Allen’s embrace and closed the blue door.

 
“Come on baby, let’s get you a cup of tea,” her mom guided her to the kitchen. Had Allen not been so caught up in her panic she would’ve noticed the black spots dancing a pas de deux in the edges of her vision. Allen would’ve noticed the raven sitting on the window sill. 

———–

Her name was Edgar. She belonged here. She belonged in this body. Not that girl who didn’t even know what she could do with it. How it felt to hear the boy’s neck snapping. Or how it felt leaving so many police officers on the ground behind her. The girl didn’t understand. She never would. This was Edgar’s home, and she was going to fight for it. She turned to the blue door where the men in blue uniforms were coming through. In the corner of her eye, she saw the raven fly away.