Slated

Slated Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: Slated Read Online Free PDF
Author: Teri Terry
Tags: to-read
don’t care. The pages lie across my knees, kept flat by a piece of wood underneath. The pencil flies across the paper, a dance of magic that is mine alone. Creating an imaginary place so far from this one, in distance and in time: a place I long to be.
So absorbed, that at first, I don’t hear the footsteps, coming down the stairs over my head. I turn off the torch and hold my breath.
They stop at the bottom; pause. Then they start again, coming closer and closer to my secret place. I should do something, hide my drawings, anything, but I am fixed like stone.
A light switches on in my face. Blinding me.
‘There you are.’
I say nothing. He can see it all; the drawings, the pencil. The hand that holds it.
‘Get up!’ he snaps.
I scramble out, the light still dazzling my eyes.
‘You know the reasons; you know how important this is. Yet still you disobey.’
‘I’m sorry. I won’t do it again, I won’t. I promise!’
‘Enough of your promises. You can’t be trusted.’
His voice is full of regret; sadness, even.
‘Give me your left hand,’ he says, and when I don’t, he grabs it.
‘You have to learn. I’m sorry.’
And I almost believe he means it, as he smashes my fingers, one by one, with a brick.

CHAPTER EIGHT
     
----
     
Agony stabs my eyes, twisting like the blade of a knife.
There is a metallic, bitter taste under my tongue. I cough.
‘She’s coming around.’
A male voice. Who?
I try to open my eyes, but they burn as if the sun has fallen from the sky. I groan.
‘Kyla?’ A hand touches mine. Amy.
‘Turn out the lights,’ she says. The light drops, and I squint between my lids.
‘There you are,’ she says, and smiles.
I’m on the floor. I try to sit up.
‘Don’t move yet,’ the male voice says again, and I turn my eyes to the source. A paramedic? And another. Mum, white-faced, stands in the doorway.
They lift me back into bed while Amy holds up an IV bag. One of them fixes it up, the other injects something into it and warmth slides into my veins, starts to take the pain away. My eyes close.
Voices mix and fade.
A nightmare did that ? Disbelief.
She could have died…
Keep in bed for a day or two…
Pain management…
If Amy hadn’t woken when she hit the floor, she would have died…
Last Chance.

CHAPTER NINE
     
----
     
‘Can I at least have a book?’
‘No. You’re supposed to be resting,’ Mum says, and crosses her arms.
‘I can rest, and read.’
‘No.’
‘They would let me in hospital,’ I lie.
‘You’re not in hospital, you’re on my watch, and you are resting. Go to sleep,’ she says, and leaves again, shooing Sebastian out and shutting the door.
I can convince myself she means well. But it is hard to rest with someone sneaking up on you every two minutes to make sure you are resting.
I close my eyes. My head still feels like it is being crushed in a vice, though it is better than this morning, when even the sound of Sebastian purring vibrated through my skull like drums, and I’d asked for him to be kept out. But I’m afraid to sleep. Afraid that dream will find me again. Now the injection has worn off, anything could happen.
My nightmares in hospital were terrifying, but vague. Most of the time I couldn’t remember much of what happened; I just woke up screaming. Often running from something, without knowing what it was.
But this one was different. I remember it as vividly in my mind as if it is happening on replay before my eyes, right now, over and over again. I can feel the pain, see my broken, bloody fingers. It is so real.
Real like a memory etched within, stark and clear; the kind so horrible you can never forget, no matter how hard you try. But memories are one thing I am not supposed to have. Nothing from before being Slated. It is almost like drawing with my left hand yesterday brought it back, from some hidden place, up to the surface.
Who is he? Is he real, or just some nightmare creature that inhabits my mind? In the dream I never see his face. First
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