Cursed Wanderers Series

Book 1: The Family Curse

Chapter 1

The Genesis of Delirium

I NEVER UNDERSTOOD how people could fall asleep in buses. I do get that when you are traveling hundreds of miles at a steady pace, the bus sort of lulls you to sleep, but I’d never be able to fall asleep beside a stranger, leaning my head against them, like the old lady beside me is doing, practically drooling on the only sweater I own. Especially considering the fact that I’m skinny as a stick and my shoulder is definitely not a soft and comforting place to lean on.

            But then again I do have a rather untrusting attitude towards anything that is human or that walks or crawls or breathes, hell I’d even mistrust a tree if I felt like it was staring at me for too long—okay I totally ran away from a tree for that very reason but whatever.

            Anyway, my schizophrenic tendencies aside, the point of this is, I’m in a damn bus, with an old drooling lady that smells like stalled Indian food and dead cat—the dead cat smell came when she slipped her feet out of her shoes—I’m hot as hell but I can’t take my sweater off because I have an old lady leaning against me, I’m still far from destination—or at least I think I am—I haven’t eaten in god knows how long—well that’s not true I did pick an untouched quesadilla still in its box on top of a garbage can, beggars can’t be choosers, yesterday—and if I had a gun in my bag I would be going on a rampage, no doubts.

            I sighed in defeat and almost pressed my forehead against the window beside me but automatically backed up when I realized how dirty it was—few squashed bugs with trails of their gooey insides, countless greasy finger stains, some unidentifiable clear greenish substance that might actually be snot to be honest—serves me right to pick the cheapest bus ride.

            Shoot me in the end with a nail gun and don’t clean the mess afterwards.

            Good thing there’s actually a purpose to this torture because otherwise screw the gun, I’d make do with my nails, a fucking plastic spoon, hell, the old ladies shoes would probably work miracles...

            The reason is, I just want to know why. It’s what every kids that have been abandoned by their parents wonder; why? And how? How could they abandon me, why did they abandon me? The countless hours I spent in therapy all concluded that in order to move on with my life I had to find a resolution to this fatal question. By saying that they meant I had to deal with my own shit, but seeing as I don’t do meditating and finding my inner peace in solitude bullshit I decided to instead track down my family, grab them by the collar, shake them a little and demand an answer.

            It took me three years to raise the money by questionable means to be able to afford someone not brain damaged to do the research. They were hard to find. For some reason it feels like they didn’t want to be found—ain’t that too fucking bad for them? Those fuckers ain’t gonna get away with abandoning me and not having to deal with it. If they couldn’t deal with a kid they shouldn’t have had sex to begin with!

            Deep breathe, count to ten. One… two… three… four… five… six… seven… eight… nine… ten…

            Fuck this, I’m still angry!

            Anger management, another useless therapy and a waste of the public funds if you asked me.

            It would be ridiculous to deny I have serious issues… Maybe I could’ve had a better attitude towards all of this, maybe I could have found my inner peace on my own if I hadn’t been thrown in the hellholes I have.

            My parents hadn't even had the decency to put me up for adoption, to try to find people that wanted a child. No, forty days after I was born, my parents had dropped me at a church’s doorsteps and just left. They had scribbled on a piece of paper my date of birth and my name and left a ring held by a silver chain that I was often tempted to pawn, and that was it. No birth certificate, and as far as my not-brain-damaged detective goes, he thinks I wasn’t even born in an hospital—how more back-woods white trash can you get?

            So I ended up in the first family that wanted a baby who didn’t take long to realize that they didn’t want a baby. Who in their right mind would want a miniature portable poop and puke manufacture? Okay when you say it like that it kind of sounds cool, but when the said poop and puke manufacture starts crying and doesn’t stops, it doesn’t.

            And afterwards it was foster homes after foster homes. Not a happy childhood, not one I liked to think about too much. As a matter of fact, when a day is passed, I rather never think about it again. It has helped me live and go through my life so far.

            In all honestly, I know it’s stupid for me to want to meet them because I already know how it’s going to go down. I have a god damn Russian name. I just know my mother is going to be some kind of Russian prostitute who came in a container, a very Human Trafficking scenario will ensue which in graphic terms… well the song face down ass up that’s the way we like to fuck comes to mind, again, that movie was interesting…

            But I have to do this, I need to do this. Soon I’m going to be eighteen and the system is not going to give a crap about me even more than it doesn’t now. I’m not a cute little puppy anymore. I got old. No one’s going to bring me home. If I want to be able to function I need this, I need answers. Hell, even just looking at them could do me some good. Anything would be better than the way I am right now.

            And right now does not just imply having an old lady using me as her cushion. Speaking of her, she was getting way too comfortable, almost snuggling against me.

            What if I pushed her away? Would that be wrong? I didn’t think it would and even if it was, who gave a shit? But I didn’t want to touch her.

            I looked at the old lady, and cringed at the sight.

            Drool on my shirt, DROOL ON MY SHIRT!

            Yeah, no, drooling is inacceptable, however old you are, especially on my shirt!

            With the strap of my duffel bag that I had kept carefully tucked against my lap, I tried to wrap it around the top of the old lady’s face to pull her away from me but of course, it had to be at that moment that she started to stir, waking up. She did that “I’m close to awakening” snort, and the drool slipped up back in her mouth and let’s just say the whole noise and sight was gross and probably frozen in my memory forever. I had a little chill of disgust running up my back that shook my entire body.

            The old drooling lady smiled at me, showing me two very nice holes where her missing front teeth should have been. She would have fitted perfectly in Tombstone, Arizona. I read once somewhere that apparently there was a law there that stated that anyone over the age of 18 couldn’t have less than one missing tooth when smiling. 

            Freaky law aside, the whole lady was scaring the crap out of me.

            Luckily, it was at that moment that I saw the sign outside that announced “Welcome to Hebron.” According to my detective extraordinaire my father lived here.

            Time to break into a happy dance? Or get into cut-a-bitch mode because if the driver decides to kick you out, it doesn’t matter since you’re already getting out?

            I was about to get up on my feet, my ass halfway up my seat when the old lady’s hand snapped and snatched my arm, gripping it with her goddamn claws. While I hissed at her in protest, she pulled me back in my seat and leaned towards me, whispering. “You don’t want to go there, Child.”

            Alright, not creepy at all. I seriously should have sat somewhere else.

            I pulled my arm out of her grip. Obviously I hated being gripped, or even touched by strangers. She could hold on tight for an old lady. “Hmm yes, because I’m sure you know exactly what I want,” I huffed.

            She stared at me with what could only be described as a seriously disturbing gaze. “You will only find misery and damnation if you step on that soil.”

            Wow, okay that was definitely not disturbing. Not. Oh, double negation. Scores!

            Uncanny feeling coming from a smelly lady, yes, that was exactly what I needed at the moment. “I’m sorry, but aside from the obvious old chick from Legion vibe you got working for you,” I made a circling motion towards her, “that makes me believe you’re probably on your way to an asylum, or about to tell me that all the babies are gonna burn, nothing about your opinion interests me.”

            “Such a shame, you seemed like a nice little girl…” she trailed, her gaze suddenly switching to something close to disgust. Bi-polar too? Wow.

            “Don’t get fool by my pretty face old lady, it’s just a decoy,” I huffed, got up and stepped away from the crazy person. In any other circumstances I would have bumped her in the face with my bag as I walked away, but for clear reasons—as in she was a senior citizen and I didn’t want her to imprint her bad smell on my stuff—I didn’t. Curry. Yuck. 

            The driver looked me up and down when I stop to stand beside him, waiting for him to stop and open the door. “Ya sure ya wanna get down here girly?”

            Okay what was wrong with everyone today? Seriously! “No, I want to stay on the Magic School Bus with you all!” I exclaimed. “Do tell, where is Liz, the class pet lizard?”

            Maybe I shouldn’t be raising my voice, but I was fuelling on nerves, bad judgement and years of abandonment here. I was bound to be keyed up and jumpy and bitchy.

            Finally, the bus came to a stop at a gas station, and swigging my duffel bag that held all my belongings, I stepped out leaving the weird people behind. It wasn’t like it was my first rodeo with weird people. Just in the last apartment block I had been staying with my last foster family, there was a woman—Marietta Maner, though we called her the Marietta Mangler—the kind you couldn’t even put an age to, and she was always trying to grab us and tell us that the darkness was on its way, and setting big rat traps on every floors. I swear to god that lady was eating rats.

            Crazy people aside, I needed to get moving.

            At first glance, I really did wonder why the old lady had seemed so adamantly opposed to this town because it didn’t look scary at all. Maybe she was balls-out against capitalism and nice houses—her smell could have foreshadowed it—because the place looked nice. Very nice.

            The streets were almost uncannily clean, at least compared to the ones I was used to back in Detroit. The Victorian styled houses, more often white than anything, belonged in those decorating magazines, with the lawn perfectly cut and surrounded by white picket fences with American flags on them. I could almost imagine the husband lying on the lawn, butt in the air, with scissors and a magnifying glass grooming the grass to make it look this perfect. They undoubtedly used fertilizer and other toxic things to make it so green.

            With my duffel bag swung over my shoulder I made my way through the quiet town. Before leaving, I had spent a few hours at the computers at the library, trying to get more familiar with the streets, in order not to get lost and get to my father’s house quickly. Thank you Google map. Though, it didn’t show all the name of the streets for some reason—maybe because they were just a bunch of dirt roads. Anyway, for the moment I was on Main Street and I knew I had to keep on walking on this street and then turn left on Burrows Hill Road and continued on Jones Street until I reached a big ass pound. A good five miles of walking. It was a good thing I didn’t have a lot of stuff in that duffel bag.

            Anyway, walking five miles really wasn’t that bad, especially in this weather, when I was wearing shoes and socks. I really had no reason to complain. And the walk would be a good way to get my head straight and figure out exactly what I wanted to say to my parents. I had put so much thought into the planning and actually getting here, that I hadn’t put too much thought on that what to do once I did get here. Would my parents be together? The super efficient dude that found my father hadn’t said anything about a mother. He had shown me a picture of my father though, so I could actually recognized him, but aside from that and his name and that he was my father and his address in Hebron Connecticut, I hadn’t gotten a lot about him, or about anyone really.  But all those things aside, would he know I existed? My patronym and last name were sort of a  dead give away for me, but was he even aware someone walked around with his name? Maybe he didn’t? Maybe my momma was a crack addict and he got her pregnant by accident—slip and dip can happen to anyone—and then crack momma left and she gave birth to a crack baby and gave it up to go back to her crack addict ways…

            Obviously, mental rambling was never a good thing because I was so worked up with my thoughts that I didn’t watch where I was walking and bumped straight into a hard chest. Strong arms steadied me before I fell down on my butt.

            I backed up automatically, wriggling out of the man’s hold. It might have looked a little rude, like I thought he had a disease and didn’t want him to touch me—again, reflex action—so I looked up to thank the person but my words choked in my throat. Usually, in chick flicks, the guy you bump into is this super-über hot guy and the girl ends up with him, so this is almighty proof that my life is definitely not a chick flick.

            Fuck, fuck, fuck. What do I do? WHAT DO I DO? I am so not prepared! Fuck, fuck, fuckidy, fuck.

            The man narrowed his blue eyes at me, frowning a little, probably wondering why my mouth was hanging wide open.

            Come on Oksana, grow some damn balls.

            I cleared my throat quickly, and stepped back. “Mr. Faustin? Matvei Faustin?”

            “…yes…” the way the man looked at me, frowning even more, it’s almost like he thought I actually killed all those people in the bus with my nails, plastic spoon and smelly shoes, or that I was about to do it to him—in short terms he looked at me like I was some kind of deranged psychotic serial killer.

            Nice. We’re totally building up on a great start.

            “Hi, my name is Oksana Matveyevna Faustina and I’m your daughter.” I put on my best fakely-amused smile, did something close to jazz hands and announced enthusiastically, “Surprise!”