"I never wanted any of this… I never asked for it. Why does someone else have to choose my fate and the life I have to live?, why do I have to perish for someone else's choice? ..I'm cursed to keep on holding even when my knuckles are broken. I just want to be set free …please set me free…"
CHAPTER ONE
KAELEN'S POV
I wiped the sweat from my forehead with my damp sleeve, leaving a long streak of grey greasy dirt across my brows. I checked the clock on the kitchen wall, and my chest felt heavy when I saw it was already 4:15 AM.
For the past five hours, I had been down on my knees scrubbing the thick grease-traps under the stoves of a high-end restaurant downtown. My hands were completely raw and burning from the cheap, harsh soap and my lower back throbbed with a dull constant ache that made it hard to stand up straight.
This was my third job of the day, and my body was starting to feel like it was made of noodles. Yesterday morning, I had walked miles across the city delivering heavy packages on foot until the cold rainwater soaked straight through the soles of my shoes.
In the afternoon, I had hauled heavy wooden crates of car parts at a loud warehouse by the docks. Now, I was right back on a cold tile floor, begging my muscles to keep moving.
"Hey, kid! Faster with that mop," the kitchen manager shouted at me from across the room … not even bothering to look up from his metal clipboard.
"The morning shift opens at five o'clock sharp. If the morning crew finds a single spot of grease on these stainless-steel counters, I am cutting your pay for the week."
"Yes, sir. I'm almost done with the back corner," I said, my voice sounding incredibly raspy and dry because I hadn't slept in over twenty-four hours.
I did not complain to him and I did not talk back. The truth was, I could not afford to lose this job. Every single dollar I earned through this grueling labor was already spent before the money even hit my bank account. My grandmother, the only person who had ever cared for me or loved me, was dying a little more every day.
The doctors at the big public hospital had no idea what was actually wrong with her body, calling it some kind of rare unclassified degenerative disease that they couldn't cure.
But a shady doctor who worked out of a hidden alley clinic had given me a real option…. a black-market medical suppressant that kept her weak heart pumping.
It was the only thing keeping her alive in this world, and it cost a small fortune every single month.
By the time I finished cleaning, my eyes were bloodshot and my legs were shaking from pure exhaustion. I walked into the manager's office to log my hours, hoping to ask for an extra shift tonight.
Instead, the manager looked at me with a cold uncaring expression and tossed a small white envelope onto the desk. "You were twenty minutes late opening the back doors yesterday, Kaelen. And look at you today, you look like a zombie and you literally smell like one kid…This restaurant has an image to maintain so I've decided that we are letting you go."
My heart stopped, and a cold sweat broke out across my neck. "No…Sir, please," I begged, stepping forward and gripping the edge of his desk.
"M-m-my grandmother is incredibly sick. I..I can't lose this job. I will work double shifts, triple if you pleas …I'll clean the bathrooms, anything. Just please don't fire me."
"It's already done, pick up your final check at the front," he said, turning his back to me and looking at his phone like he didn't hear a single thing I said.
I stood there for a moment feeling completely numb, before walking out into the freezing morning air and the sudden chill made me shiver violently.
What was I going to do now… No one was going to hire me in less than 24hrs and to make matters worse I was uneducated but still smart.
As I walked, my phone buzzed inside my pocket, and I pulled it out with shaking fingers already dreading what the screen would show. It was an automated text message from the pharmacy, telling me her $1,200 prescription was ready. I opened my banking app with a tapping thumb and after buying food earlier in the week, I had exactly forty-five dollars left to my name.
"No…," I said to myself trying to sound hopeful. "I will find a way," I muttered clenching my raw hands into tight fists until my knuckles turned white. "I just need to ask the warehouse manager for more night shifts… or sell something…anything I can do this."
I forced my legs to move faster, walking briskly through the gray morning light toward the tiny, rundown apartment we shared on the very edge of the city's worst slums. The building always smelled like old rusty pipes and boiled cabbage and when I reached the front door of our apartment on the third floor, my breath caught in my throat.
Taped squarely over the lock was a bright white piece of paper with bold black letters at the top read: NOTICE OF EVICTION.
My eyes scanned the page quickly, because I had used all my rent money over the last three months to pay for my grandmother's black-market medicine, we were officially three months behind on rent.
The notice stated we had less than forty-eight hours to clear out our belongings before the landlord called the police to remove us.
Fired. Evicted. Penniless. The entire world was closing in on me, crushing me under a mountain of bad luck.
I tore the paper off the door, crumpled it in my fist, and unlocked the stiff door as quietly as I could, trying to swallow the panic rising in my throat. I slipped inside, desperately trying to figure out how I was going to tell my grandmother that we were about to be homeless.
The air inside the apartment was absolutely freezing. The old radiator had broken down weeks ago, and now I knew the landlord would never fix it.
"Grandma?" I whispered softly, walking down the narrow hallway toward her small bedroom.
The room was completely silent, usually, the apartment was filled with the sound of her heavy, raspy breathing… a sound that always let me know she was still fighting. But today, there was nothing. a sudden, sharp spike shot through my chest.
I pushed the bedroom door open and I found my grandmother was lying perfectly still beneath our little thin faded green blanket. Her face was incredibly pale, almost blue under the dim morning light coming through the window. I rushed to the side of the bed, my knees crashing hard against the floorboards as I reached out and grabbed her hand and it felt as cold as ice.
"Grandma! Grandma, please wake up!" I cried out, my voice cracking as I shook her shoulder gently, trying to get her to look at me.
Her eyelids fluttered open very slowly, but her eyes were glassy and completely unfocused. She was fighting with everything she had left just to draw a single breath into her lungs. She looked up at my face with a very small and sad smile. Looking into her eyes, I realized the horrible truth…. she was going to die right here in this freezing, miserable room.
With an agonizing effort, she raised her trembling left hand toward me and wrapped tightly inside her frail fingers was an old and heavy silver looking necklace. It did not look like normal jewelry the metal was strangely dark almost like iron, and it was carved with deep, swirling patterns that I had never seen before in my life.
She pressed it directly into my open palm, her fingers digging into my skin.
"Kaelen..." she whispered, her voice so i faint that I had to lean down right next to her lips to hear what she was about to say.
"You must keep it... safe. Never... never let anyone see it or take it from you and, wear it but hide it from the world my dear."
"Grandma, please don't talk like that…youll be fine and you will live okay ill make sure if it i promise…don't waste your strength. I'm calling an ambulance right now," I said, the tears finally spilling over my eyelids and blurring my vision until I could barely see her. I reached blindly into my pocket for my phone.
"No," she breathed out, and for a single split second, her grip became surprisingly tight around my wrist, stopping me. "There is no time for that, my boy. Remember who you are, Kae. You are... so much more than this world..."
Then, her hand suddenly went completely limp… tiny spark of light in her eyes went out, and her chest dropped one last time, never rising again.
"Grandma?" I whispered into the quiet room, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. "Grandma, please,no… open your eyes. Don't leave me here alone…please…"
A heavy suffocating silence filled our small
room and it suddenly felt massive and completely empty. I had no job, no home, and now, the only woman who had ever loved me was gone… forever.
I buried my face in the edge of her old mattress and let out a loud broken sob that tore out of my my throat. I squeezed my right hand shut and inside my fist, the strange silver necklace suddenly seemed to grow slightly warm against my skin pulsing with a very slow hidden heartbeat….and I was left all alone.