A Visitor in The Night

“Chi!”

The voice pulled Chi back from the edge of sleep, her heart leapt into her throat for a moment as she made out the bleary shape of a person standing beside her bed.

The fear turned to confusion as she suddenly focused on the figure enough to make out its face.

“Sasha?” She said, not really believing what she was seeing as she stared at the face from her past.

Sasha was a figure from her past or rather she was, the, figure from her past. The reason she had fled home and found herself here. They had met when Chi began working at her first job after school. Sasha had seemed so cool, with her short and brightly coloured hair, a new colour every week. The tattoos that ran up her arms and vanished under the worn t-shirts for bands Chi had never heard of.

Chi had never had many friends, her parents had a reputation as religious nuts that meant none of the other parents wanted to let their kids play with her. She had grown up with only her mother and father as friends and when her father vanished one day had just been her father.

Then Sasha had come into her life, someone who not only didn’t care about her family but seems to like her all the more for it. They had talked so much at work that they had been threatened with firing more than once and after work they would walk home as slowly as they could.

Chi could still remember the night Sasha had kissed her.

They had been walking home after a hard night at work, leaning on each other for support. Chi’s heart was hammering in her chest at being so physically close to someone else yet Sasha had seemed not to care at all. As they passed through a pool of dark shadow Sasha simply lifted her head up and kissed her. So quickly that she almost doubted it had happened.

A lot happened after that moment. Chi’s parents had never talked to her about sex, what she had known about it had only come from overhearing other kids talking about it and catching glimpses of things on tv. The two months after that had been a revelation for Chi.

Then there had been the night her mother found the phone she had bought in secret, along with the pictures and texts between her and Sasha.

Even now, with a decade of distance the memories still stung, her own mother casting her out. Screaming that she was dead to her as she drove her from her home.

She had gotten on a bus that night and never looked back, blinded by pain. When she had finally recovered enough to think about what she had done she was already living with the Nuns here and the thought of going back had been too much to bear.

Yet here was Sasha, standing over her in her bedroom after a decade.