Tempestuous

Chapter 2 - The diabolic doll

It was the beginning of summer but one would never know by the unpredictable weather. The sun was attempting to shine, but it was dulled by the minor storm. The wind whistled, the swelled clouds were ready to burst and the smell of the upcoming rain dominated the air. It seemed as if the summer was still stuck in spring. There were no early summer beach days, no family picnics in the park, no big barbecue bashes in the backyard. It was proving to be a disastrous and unpredictable summer at best, but the weather would be the least of their worries. In the end it would be the very season that would change the lives of every member of the Stone family forever.

***

The small framed eleven year old girl stood in the middle of the large garden, looking up at the window on the right side of the massive mansion. The wind lifted her mass of deep chestnut curls and the cute little pink dress that her god mother had just bought her whipped against her tiny tan legs. the sun made her eyes glow like a burning orange from the outside, but it was her temper that made them glow from within, showing her irrational rage and unwarranted frustration.

Dante was up there in that room, ignoring her, just as he did every time he came home to visit from college. She had done everything in her power to get him to pay attention to her, but he refused to even acknowledge her. As if to spite her, he hadn't left his room once since she had arrived at the Stone family home. She felt it was time for drastic measures. She held the can of red enamel paint in her tiny hand as she stepped towards the house with a diabolical grin.

The girl hell bent on anarchy was Tempest Darleen Rush, a defiant little devil disguised as an angelic faced, baby doll. She was unusually small for her age, but her size belied her mighty ego. She was ruthless, calculated and driven. She was that light breeze that you'd never expect to rip a door from its hinges; she was a hurricane at its most lethal stage, wreaking havoc and disassembling anyone who got in her way. She was raw energy; with an overly, congested mind and a body too restless to even get a good night's sleep

Tempest had been born with an empowered sense of self that only a tornado could shake. She was also gifted with a remarkably high intelligence that heightened her arrogance, yet hindered her when it came to mental stimulation. She was to quickly discover that she was too clever for the trivial games of children her age and realized it would take a lot to satisfy any curiosity she had. She was prone to obsessive-compulsive behaviors; cramming her brain with all available information until she mastered the topic she was interested in. She was filled with curiosities and a desperate need for knowledge that ran as rampant as her imagination.

She was brilliant and charismatic; she could have easily been the perfect child had she not also been born with a temper that matched her intellect. She was a spiteful little thing, a pint sized, caramel toned, diabolical doll that was ruled by vengeance, pranks, schemes and feelings of entitlement.

Tempest was the only child of Antoinette and Ezekiel Rush, a couple who had been forced to wait so long for a baby that they thoroughly appreciated the gift bestowed upon them. They unabashedly spoiled her, doting on her every whim, granting her every wish no matter how big. They hated to see her cry and felt like their world was off kilter whenever she was upset. She was their blessing, their miracle child, the baby that every doctor in town had told them they would never be able to have; so as predicted, they spoiled her rotten.

To further instigate the willful nature and feelings of entitlement within the spoiled child was her godmother, Darleen Stone. To the delight of Dorian Stone, his wife Darleen bore him three sons, but to Darleen's own dismal dismay, she was unable to have any more children and she desperately wanted a daughter. This made playing god mommy to her best friend's only child a gift she cherished deeply.

Darleen herself was the worst culprit of them all, managing to spoil the girl even more than her own parents did. To Darleen, Tempest shone like the brightest star in the sky, she was the perfect little pixie who could do no wrong. She doted on her beautiful little name-sake, treating her like a pampered princess. Since the stone family was the epitome of wealth, Darleen was able to take her mission to spoil her only goddaughter to an obscene level.

Tempest had her own wing at the Stone mansion, an enormous bedroom with a big canopy bed covered in a pale pink satin bed spread, and heaping with a dozen frothy and frilly, pink pillows. She had every doll ever made, a doll house that could quite possibly house a small family, a playhouse in the garden that could house a large family, and a tea set that the queen of England herself would envy. Darleen had mastered the art of spoiling Tempest so well, she was actually able to predict what the girl wanted before she even asked for it.

Darleen was well aware that she went over board but she honestly could not help it- she adored the child, she absolutely loved her. What she was unaware of, was the fact that the apple of her eye was growing more and more rotten by the year, and she was unable to see Tempest for the monster she was becoming.

It was an odd situation to say the least, even though Tempest was very close to the Stone family, she was not close to Dante, Darleen's eldest son, in any way, shape or form. They had never bonded and had never considered themselves family. Dante was rarely around, having left home for college at 17, and only returning home to visit on important holidays and the occasional summer. When he was home, he spent most of his time working with his father, and the rest of his time avoiding Tempest like the plague. He just seemed to genuinely dislike her and she never really understood why.

Tempest preferred to believe it was the age difference that made him not care for her so much or the fact that he was never around and he just didn't know her very well, but Davis always argued that Dante hadn't liked her since the day of her baptism when she had peed on his lap. She never knew if that was the real reason that he had come to dislike her, but it was plausible, considering Dante was the type who decided if he liked someone within the first fifteen minutes of meeting them, and he also held a grudge like a functioning heart holds a beat.

Tempest acted like she didn't care but it really bothered her. Even though his demeanor was cold to everyone and he avoided his own brothers, she still took it personally. As was typical for Tempest, this meant she would do something particularly nasty to him to make him mad and force him to pay attention to her. That was to be the only form of communication Tempest could rely on from Dante- his anger. She knew in her heart if she was not irritating him enough to despise her, then she would be invisible and nonexistent to him. She would never allow that, not in a million years; she would do whatever she had to do to prevent that from happening.

That was how it began, one little nuisance after the other. Somewhere along the way it had escalated from accidents to deliberate, albeit semi-harmless pranks- then eventually, it had turned into all-out war. With Tempest being so intelligent, her pranks seemed way too complicated for a girl so young and usually managed to catch Dante off guard. However, one could expect no less from an obsessive child who rarely slept and spent most of her nights devising blue prints for pranks.