Chapter 1

It only happened at night time, if at all. On average about once a month, possibly twice, three if you’re pushing it. Why it happened and where it started from was a mystery to Scarlet, its origin as ambiguous as its point. It hurt; her whole legs and body shaking with the effort, the pain escalating until it was suddenly. How much it hurt just depended on how tired she was, something as simple as that, but even she could not explain to her parents why she was lately retiring to her bedroom as early as eight o’clock.
She would wait until the end of each month, until it happened, then she would spend time with her friends, something they took for granted with ease. However, recently things had been getting a little intense. It had happened four times in the last month, and she still had one week to go. Last month and the one before had been that way too, Scarlet traced it back to her birthday in May. She had turned seventeen. The age when things really started – of course, she was learning to drive and would take her driving test in three weeks time. It had said on the insurance form ‘Any medical conditions list here’. Of course she had written ‘None’. What was she meant to write? It didn’t have a name, it wasn’t on any internet website or any book.
Scarlet lifted her head off the dark, cruel wood of her desk and thumped it loudly. She listened to the silence that ensued; it was beautiful, like the calm after a storm. Then suddenly she heard a clanging downstairs in the kitchen, water ricocheting off the sink onto the draining board, her mother shouting something inaudible. Scarlet looked down at her hands. Long fingers, short bitten nails, what a revolting sight. “A brick wall, a brick wall certainly,” she mumbled to herself, looking down at her clothed breasts, or lack thereof, she thought. She dragged herself out her swivelling desk chair to stand before her mirror, sighing heavily. “Plain, plain, plain, mother always knew who the plain baby was in her nursery,” she sang, pulling at her hair and face. Silence glimmered in her eyes like a dying torch, and she glanced at the window heavily as the world spun a little. It was getting darker. Her mother was making the dinner later and later, she would have to run downstairs and rudely wolf it down, before anything out of the ordinary happened. Indigestion was a common visitor in her gut these days, she had grown to deal with it. “Brown hair, brown eyes, pale languid face. I’m like the unordinary in the ordinary, like the Noface of the modern world,” Scarlet said to herself, peering at herself. Unfortunately for Scarlet the case was that she was the extraordinary. Long, beautiful brown hair, large chocolate eyes and skin as white as porcelain, banished of any teenage spot or sun brought freckle. She was beautiful, and the rare smile that escaped her lips would spread over her face like a fire in a forest, rushing over her cheeks and into the minds of everyone around her.  A light pink would tinge her cheeks whenever she ran, or whenever a boy with a deep soft voice and rough hands would brush past her in the corridor.
“Not that he sees me, when does anyone ever see me?” she asked herself, frisking her hands quickly over her body in a futile attempt to check that nothing had grown or changed in the past ten minutes. “Why am I so damn tiny? Surely the treatment I endure is deserving of some kind of womanhood?” she declared, throwing her arms in the air as she glared accusingly at the portrait hung above her mirror. It was him, the silent one, the man that brought this upon her and left it bagged against her. Despite this the mystery that filled his eyes drew Scarlet in, and she found herself dreaming about him most nights, not knowing his name, or his personality, or his face. All that hung above her mirror now was a blank face, empty except for a pair of eyes that seemed to continue through the paper into the wall behind, bottomless on the flat paper. She leaned forward and flicked where his nose would be. “Damn you, you better come back one day and take this bloody crap curse off me before I tear through the town, my naked form aglow for all to see,” she whispered, her voice laced with amusement. “You could kiss me as well, if you don’t mind,” she breathed, her voice quiet and serious as her face leaned unwittingly closer to the picture.
“Scarlet! It’s dinner time! Stop mooning over whatsisname and get a move on!” her mother called up the stairs, the smell of chicken wafting into Scarlet’s bedroom. I’m not mooning over anyone she though decisively, lifting the picture subconsciously to check beneath it as she walked out the room.
“Look at the state of you Scarlet, what have you been doing up there, planning an invasion?” her mother asked, dishing out carrots onto her plate. Scarlet ignored her, not quite sure to respond. Her mother continued. “I mean look, your hair is tousled everywhere, your eyes have bags under them bigger than Santa Clause's’ sack and that dreadful eyeliner you insist on wearing is smudged all over your face. You’re like the female reincarnation of the Grim Reaper.”
Scarlet again ignored this, and as she walked along the hall with her tray full of her mother’s cooking she took a moment to glance in the mirror. She thought the tousled hair and smudged make-up gave her a sort of ‘recently sexed’ look. It would be beautiful if I didn’t have such an awful face. “Stop gawking at yourself and get a move on, our food isn’t going to stay piping hot forever you know,” her younger sister complained. It was a Friday, and due to the fact that she was fifteen, young and beautiful, Ebony would almost certainly be going out later on, with her friends. Friends, Scarlet thought, how wonderful they are, will they visit me I wonder? She pondered this thought for a minute and decided, unsually, she didn’t want to see her friends right now anyway. Not a change even if I thought the opposite, they know I don’t go out in the evening’s and they’ve stopped being polite enough to ask.  
Dinner was over, and sure enough, Scarlet disappeared upstairs as quickly as Ebony disappeared out the front door. Scarlet watched her from her bedroom window, her face peeping through a crack in the curtains. She felt her eyebrows raise in mild surprise as Ebony was greeted next to the hedges in their front garden by a slightly older boy with dark hair and a tall frame. Scarlet did not see his face, but thought in spite of herself how beautiful he would be.
She had a boyfriend, vaguely, their relationship about as stable and temperamental as Scarlet herself. As she glanced over the various marine pictures that were transforming her wall into an aquarium, Scarlet thought about him. He had blonde hair with a dramatic fringe, a moody looking face, and deep dark blue eyes that swallowed her whenever she looked in them. He was one of the few people who accepted her for who she was. He didn’t understand her, nobody did, but he was a comfort in the fact that she could say odd things around him and instead of laughing awkwardly he would wrap his arms around her shoulders from behind until his head was buried into her neck. He had this wonderful way of knowing exactly what mood she was in, and would act accordingly. However, he also had this irritating way of knowing that something was up with the way she would leave him when the evening drew in, and he had prodded and probed for answers ever since their relationship started. He made her days brighter, happier, but she couldn’t trust him with the truth. She had no idea how he would handle it, and she loved him too much to thrust such a weight on him.