Read Online Protagonist Bound by Geanna Culbertson - Free Book Online

was a time of exhausting burdens.
    Every night I went to bed wondering what fresh torment the night would bring. And in the mornings, I found myself feeling slightly jealous of Mauvrey’s mother. What I wouldn’t give to sleep like a rock for a hundred years. For maybe in the depths of a Sleeping Beauty-like slumber, I could finally find some peace, a break from the otherworldly visions that haunted me on this night like they did on so many others . . .

    The air was cold and dry, and the wind was blowing hard without repentance. Such weather made it feel like I was standing in a barren desert in the throes of wintertime. However, in taking in the surroundings, it soon became obvious that the atmosphere did not correlate with the setting. Despite its deteriorated state, it was evident that the place housing these environmental conditions was not some sand-covered wasteland, but a sort of cynicism-laden metropolis.
    Cement sidewalks everywhere were riddled with plastic wrappers and lined with dirt and sewage. Streets were packed with metal, horseless carriages that honked angrily at one another. And the only sign of nature was a limp tree planted by a gray building. This tree was skinny, dusty, and enclosed by a fence feebly trying to protect it from the outer world. The poor thing was so badly withered that I didn’t know what kind of tree it was supposed to be. I wondered if maybe it didn’t remember anymore either.
    On the stairwell adjacent the tree, sat a girl. Her hair was a curly, maple-colored mess, put up in a haphazard bun. She wore black pants and a white collared shirt that needed washing. Her shoes arguably had more scuffs on them than the aged strip of sidewalk between us.
    The girl sat motionless at first—her brown eyes lost in some distant nothingness. There were two slips of paper in her hand. One was pink and official-looking, and the other was a piece of notebook paper. After a few moments she shoved the pink one into her pocket and re-opened the white one, which read:
    “Natalie, let this be a lesson to you. Get in my way again and a job won’t be the only thing you lose. —Ever Yours, Tara Gold.”
    The disheveled girl wiped a stray tear from her eye with the back of her hand. Then she grabbed a tan backpack sitting next to her, got up, and went inside the building she’d been crouching in front of.
    The worn yellow hallway she walked into was cast in looming shadows. Sounds of babies crying and the aroma of burnt pasta filled the space, but they faded away as she made her way deeper through the corridor. Eventually she came to a door marked “3C” and entered by means of a rusty key pulled from her pants pocket.
    Wordlessly, she entered an apartment in such a horrid state that it would have made grown men cry had it been forced to be their home. The carpet was worn green shag, which may have been elegant once but now looked like the fungus between a giant’s toes. Shelves of books and faded paintings in cracked wooden frames lined the walls, collecting time in the form of filth.
    There was no natural light, except for a few streaks that came in from behind a boarded-up window in the back. But even those rays offered nothing but dreariness, as they simply allowed you to more vividly recognize the lint dancing in the humid airspace.
    The girl, whose backpack had the name “ Natalie Poole” sewn into it, stopped when she arrived at a ragged bedroom at the rear of the apartment.
    The thick maroon curtains of this room were drawn shut and there was dust collecting on the few knickknacks decorating the shelves—among which was a picture frame made entirely from popsicle sticks. The frame held a worn photo of the girl, a man in his early forties, and the woman lying on the bed in front of her. This woman looked old and tattered like the apartment around her, but she had the same vibrant shade of hair as Natalie did, give or take a few gray streaks.
    Natalie sat on the edge of the bed, but the