Chapter Text
The Black Rose Pirate
by debbie/dempv31
Chapter: Prologue
An angry siren pierced the cold January air as it raced through the crowded high school parking lot. A police car picked its way through the curious bystanders towards the auditorium. All over the grounds of the school, police officers tried to stay warm in their thick parkas as they searched for evidence of what had gone on inside. They were questioning witnesses, collecting samples of clothing, tire tracks, and other things to piece together the events that had brought them to this once peaceful place.
From the back of an ambulance in the back parking lot of the auditorium, an officer stood guard. The tall, dark-haired young man that he was assigned to watch over was having his arm treated and bandaged by a paramedic. The boy was on edge, letting his temper keep him warm, as he became more and more impatient to be free of the medic and the officer. Out of the corner of his
eye, the officer noticed his superior officer coming toward the ambulance. He came to attention as Lt. Peterson passed by with several other officers who were escorting another young man who was handcuffed to a stretcher and being taken to the waiting ambulance. Before Officer Cameron could stop him, his charge pulled away from the medic and lunged for Lt. Peterson's prisoner. The boy shouted words of hate while trying to kick, punch or anything at the other boy to hurt him. Officer Cameron and one of the other officer's escorting the prisoner pulled the dark-haired boy away from the back of the ambulance. They held him by a nearby squad car while Lt.Peterson waved the rest of the officers and their prisoner on. Masking his own pain, Lt. Peterson made the boy look at him and said, "You've got to leave him alone, Jason! It's Over! I promise, It's all over!" To the other officers, he said, "Get him out of here." indicating with his pointed finger the boy tied down to a cot in the ambulance that the dark-haired boy had just vacated.
Near the backstage doors, a second ambulance waited. Megan Franklin watched the commotion by the first ambulance. She closed her eyes in anguish, remembering every moment of what had happened. She belonged to a middle class neighborhood. They were supposed to be safe. No one except those that lived through it would ever believe what she and her friends had experienced. It wasn't supposed to happen in their town. It shouldn't have happened in their school. She wondered if things would ever be the same. Breathing away her frustrations, Megan decided that she had better try to help Lt. Peterson calm Jason down.
Pulling the blanket that the paramedic had given her from the ambulance more closely around her, Megan left the warmth and safety of the box and approached the still arguing Jason and Lt. Peterson. The argument ended when the ambulance carrying the prisoner disappeared down the ice-covered driveway around the school. Jason saw Megan coming and the enormity of the situation coloring her face and eyes. They were eyes that locked with his own and mirrored the puzzle they'd been caught up in for too long. The ‘why's" and "how's" or where they had gone wrong in fitting the puzzle pieces together would have to wait for a saner time. The only thing that was important now would be coming out of the auditorium soon.
And just when their patience couldn't take anymore, the stage door creaked open and drew their attention towards two paramedics rolling out a long white stretcher. Jason brushed past the police officers and Lt.Peterson and stood by with Megan as the stretcher got closer. A young woman laid
battered and bruised on the stretcher, plastic I.V. tubes and bags connected to her cut and blood stained arm. Her skin was gray against the thermal blanket keeping her warm. Her face, wrists, and abdomen were taped up with sterile dressings. The blanket barely kept the wind off her tattered clothes. Her hair was sticky with her own blood and sweat. Every now and then a small whimper of pain poured out of her swollen, dry, and cut mouth.
The young woman saw her friends holding on to each other, their worry for her plain. She wanted . . .needed to talk to them, to reassure them. Her mind was just so foggy, her body so alive with pain. Ignoring the pain, she struggled to sit up and tried to focus on her friends. But her vision faltered, waves of nausea rolled from her stomach, and she was feeling faint again. She knew couldn't fight becoming unconscious much longer. Reaching out a bandaged hand to Jason, she whispered laboriously, "I'm sorry!" When the last of her strength was spent and she felt Jason's hand wrap around hers, she gave in to the creepy black void. It engulfed her mind and body, locking out her pain, her injuries, and casting her back into the Pirate's Nightmare. Where her world had begun to be turned upside down.
end prologue