Original Stories Fan Fiction / Other Fan Fiction / Realism Fan Fiction ❯ Darkness Eternal ❯ Chapter 1 ( Chapter 2 )

Chapter OneDream

“They're coming for you,” an ugly creature cackled from above her.

She couldn't tear her eyes from the orange oozing liquid bubbling up from beneath its green skin, from its mangled facial features, and twisted, lanky limbs. “Where am I? What do you mean?” she asked despite her revulsion.

A strange wind blew and rustled the leaves of the trees around her and filled her nostrils with the putrid scent of rotting meat. It cackled and leered evilly as it leapt down to a lower branch, bringing with it a stronger smell of decaying meat. “They're coming for you,” it repeated. “You'd best avoid the blood.”

“What blood?” she demanded, her voice rising in annoyance.

“Beware the dragon, lest he lead you down the wrong path. He cannot fulfill the promises he will make. Beware. Beware. Beware,” it cackled, chanting the last word over and over again with that insane, evil grin.

“You're beginning to irritate me,” she snapped.

“Oooo, girlie has a temper,” it crowed.

Her eyes flashed dangerously as she bent and scooped up a handful of rocks from the forest floor, only to let the stones slip from her grasp. “What do you want?” she snapped, her voice becoming edgier the more time passed.

It frowned down at her, the orange liquid dripping to the branches below. “You're no fun. The dragon will surely lead you to your doom and yet you have no interest in my warnings about your future.” It grinned out of nowhere. “So perhaps you would like to take a look into your past.”

Colors swirled around them and the forest faded away to be replaced by a painfully familiar living room. She turned, feeling the dread building in her stomach, to face the scene she had long since repressed.

Her father sat on the worn, brown couch reading the newspaper as she rested on the maroon carpet and watched TV. The TV was crammed into the corner under the window nearest the couch, making it nearly impossible for her to lie down without her bare feet brushing the edge of the soft, velvet like texture of the brown material. Rustling filled the air for a moment as her father turned the page of his paper.

The quiet tick tacking of quiet everyday life filled the air as the moments slid by. Nothing seemed out of place. No one seemed on edge. Everything was as it should be.

While she continued to watch the show a quiet rushing sound like death on invisible wings filled the air. There was a sickening thunk and something warm and sticky splattered against her skin, clothes, and the surrounding carpet. Then a salty, iron scent filled her nostrils. She looked down at her arm to see the crimson color of blood. With a revolted sense of detachment she realized that the liquid trickling down her skin was indeed blood.

Turning slowly, her eyes were met with the sight of her mother standing over her father. Her breath hitched in her throat as she caught sight of the cleaver lodged in his half severed neck.

The knife was jerked free and his body crumpled to the side as her mother brought the blade to her lips to taste the still warm liquid. “Won't you join me, darling?” her mother asked with a depraved smile.

* * *

Soren screamed and sat bolt upright in her bed, drenched in cold sweat. She threw the covers to the side and made to stand, but collapsed to her hands and knees as tremors stole the strength from her legs. Pressing her clammy forehead against the rough carpet she drew in shaky breaths as she regained control of her small, fragile body. A burning sensation smoldered behind her frozen silver eyes, threatening to spill over onto the floor.

“Damn. Damn,” she whispered, clenching her fists in her long, crimson hair as she ruthlessly shoved her tears away. “It was just a dream. It can't affect me anymore. What's done is done and there's no changing the past.” Even as she said the words an unbidden tear escaped her and fell to mingle with the carpet fibers.

She ignored the pain that twisted in her stomach and pushed herself into a kneeling position, she stared out the window over her desk. The moonlight washed over her, giving her light skin an ashen color, as she continued to inhale deeply. Closing her eyes, she emptied her mind and buried the dream as far from her consciousness as possible. The pain eased as the seconds ticked by and when she next opened her eyes to stare at the crescent moon her breathing had returned to normal.

Once she was sure of her control over her body she rose to her feet and turned to the shelves where she kept her schoolbooks. As she stepped toward them her foot got caught on her school bag, yanking her feet out from under her, and sending her crashing face first into the wall with a gratifying krunk and knocking her senseless. Stars burst in front of her eyes as they watered and pain throbbed through her head and shot down through the rest of her body.

Before she could regain her feet there was a crack and her books fell on her in a shower of paper and splintered wood. A yelp echoed through her room and into the hallway outside as her heavy history book hit her in the head and the corner of her math book caught her in the left shoulder. Sitting up in the pile, fuming and angry, she let loose a string of curses that would have made anyone blush as she seized the nearest book and chucked it at the far wall, only to have it fall five feet short.

Using the wall as a support she slid up it to stand unsteadily on her feet. “Fucking kids,” she muttered as she shifted part of the remnants of a shelf with her foot and saw that the wood was halfway sawed through and half broken. “Damn them and their pranks to hell.”

Pushing away from the wall and clearing a path for herself she snatched up the books she would need for the day and stuffed them into her bag. Once she had everything she tossed them onto her bed and changed into a loose fitting t-shirt with some sort of logo printed on it and plain blue jeans.

As she was tucking her shirt into her jeans someone began pounding on her door. “Soren, are you all right in there?” one of the teachers bellowed through the wood.

“Just fine,” she replied in a clipped tone, “Aside from the fact that someone tampered with my book shelf and made my books fall on my head.”

Silence…

Then, “You must be mistaken, Soren, there's no way anyone in this school stupid enough pull such a dangerous prank on you.”

“Then what about the time someone put slugs in my bed or stole my entire wardrobe and set it on fire in the courtyard or strung horse droppings around my room or tried to get lightning to strike me or how about the time that I was nearly killed when that group of students mobbed me and nearly stabbed me, I was damn lucky that that wind blew through the trees when it did,” she snarled at the still closed door. “Would you like me to go on listing all the pranks, stunts, and tricks that they have pulled on me in the three years that I've lived at Ivy fricken Lane?”

“No,” came the rough reply, “but you should get out here so I can have a look at you and your supposed injury.”

Oh, the new teacher, what's-his-butt from history. He isn't acquainted with the animosity between Shandra, her `gang,' and me.

She heaved a heavy sigh as she buried her resentment of the older girl. As she closed the distance between her and the door she snatched up her bag from by the pile of the remnants of the shelves before she yanked the door open to face down the new teacher. “Scram, I can take care of myself and my mess,” she said brusquely, “and don't send anyone into my room.”

She studied his broad shoulders, angled face, near-black skin, black hair, and brown eyes for moment, committing the sound of his voice and his face to memory for future reference, before shrugging under his continued gaze. “If a shelf did indeed fall on your head, where is the blood and remnants of the of the shelf, unless,” his dark eyes flicked to her hair, “the blood is staining your hair.”

She flushed at the insinuation he was making and would have punched him if he had not been a teacher. Instead, she contented herself with saying, “There is no blood, because it takes more than the cheap ass wood this school provides us with to crack my head open. As to the shelf,” she released the doorknob and allowed it to swig open to give him a full view of her room and the mess within, “there are its remnants and the books. Satisfied that it really did fall on me?”

Not waiting for an answer she seized the doorknob and slammed it shut once more, making a mental note to install a lock after classes. Then she brushed past him and strode down the hall, successfully ignoring the sleepy faces that peered out at her from the rooms that lined the whitewashed walls in a uniformed manner.

The brown wood of the doors and gold plated numbers of each room gleamed in the near darkness of the hall and added to the bleakness of the appearance that it presented to anyone that walked through it. The few plants that were scattered along the floor were wilted and long since dead, just as the occasional mouse could be found along the old, maroon carpeting. Underfoot the carpet was stained and soiled from years of neglect and left an unpleasant smell in the air.

Soren was just as glad to leave the hall and people in it behind as they were for her to disappear for the remainder of the night. She slowed her brisk pace as she took a right off the residence wing and entered the much cleaner, tiled hallway where the classrooms began and continued on her way down. Passing through the corridor with relative ease she turned onto the staircase that led from the second story to the first story. Then she walked through the lifeless hallway, passing by windows that showed the still starry sky, and classrooms until she came to an old metal door with the neon green lit word of Exit above it.

Pulling the door open she walked though the frame and out into the schoolyard. Cool, crisp, and clear, the night air washed over her face as she surveyed her surroundings. The schoolyard was made up of a smattering of pines and cheery trees that were planted in a seemingly random pattern, with a single willow standing nearest the door. Gray benches and tables dotted the cement here and there, bathed in the light of the occasional street lamp tucked among the trees and benches. Enclosed on three side, the yard's cement squares spread out over a hundred square yards until it met the sidewalk beyond the school where no fence enclosed the school grounds, giving easy access to the bustling city beyond where the students could find just about anything they wanted.

None of these facts registered within Soren's mind as she made a beeline straight for a table farthest from the door where she sat down and pulled everything out of her bag. Spreading the books and papers out before her she prepared to spend the remaining peaceful hours completing the homework that she had neglected over the weekend.

* * *

“Look at her. Her hair is such an odd color. Its crimson as blood.”

“Her eyes are even weirder. Whoever heard of someone being born with silver eyes?”

“Could she be a bad omen?”

Soren's frozen eyes flashed to the three in the courtyard corner and the girls gasped and ducked behind the large willow tree. She looked back to her paper and continued working, ignoring the renewed conversations that broke out around her from the students that had trickled into the schoolyard in the later morning hours.

“…her friend wound up dead. The school called it a suicide, but everyone knows that they were just trying to save face.”

“I heard her mother killed her father,” a slim girl with a high voice said with a hint of smugness. “Something to do with…”

“I can hear you, Shandra,” Soren said sharply as she stood and stuffed her assignment and books into her bag. “I didn't sleep very well last night and my morning has been down right crappy, so why don't I leave you to your bullshit.” She hefted the bag over her shoulder and began to walk away.

Shandra trilled her annoyingly high laugh. “But then it wouldn't be as much fun,” she shot back. “I mean, no one else has been here as long as you have or has as many interesting stories about her home life. Who else would have a story about how her mother killed her father over something that she-”

“Shut up,” Soren snarled, spinning on her heel mid-step to face Shandra. “You don't know anything, you conceited self-centered bitch.” Her silver were eyes hard and dangerous as the air around her rippled and bent in response to her anger.

The younger girl trilled again as she said, “Oh, but I know everything there is to know about you. Your mother killed him because he was having an affair with you, isn't that right, Heather?”

The other girls swiftly backed away from Shandra as Soren's features contorted with rage and dropped her bag before advancing on the slim girl. Shandra, on the other hand, rested her hands on the edge of the bench behind her and reclined back, a picture of ease coupled with a cocky grin as she watched Soren coming ever closer.

“Take it back,” she snarled.

“Make me,” Shandra said, a teasing lilt to her high voice.Soren stopped two steps short of the other girl and stared down at her, her face a mask of fury. “You know what you remind me of, Shandra?” she asked, her voice suddenly dangerous.

The color drained a little from her face as she gazed up into Soren's livid expression. Her throat constricted as she said, “What?”

“The whore that called herself my mother,” she replied softly. “And do you know what I'm going to do the next time I see her?”

Shandra shook her head, unable to force the words past her lips. This was the passive girl that they had pranked over the last five years, the same infuriated teen that stood before her? She could almost feel the dank hate rolling off the younger girl in waves. If she had known that Soren was capable of such…venom, she would have never tangled with her in the first place.

Unaware of the other girl's thoughts she said, “I'm going to stab her with a cleaver and then watch her bleed to death.” Within her silver eyes swirled something unidentifiable, something that stained them a near black. “If you continue to piss me off and tamper with my shit, I'll-”

She never got to finish her threat as the air between them exploded, shoving the two girls apart. She stumbled back from the force of it and tumbled back onto the concrete, successfully bruising her tailbone and making her eyes water in pain. Shandra, on the other hand, toppled backwards off her bench and scraped her elbows as she broke her fall.

Enough, came a cold, clear voice from within her mind. Then, it was gone and, with it, her anger, leaving only a sense of cool detachment as she glared over at the other girl. The silence was nearly tangible as every eye shifted between Shandra and Soren, every student as equally enthralled as they were frightened of what would happen next.

Soren slowly rose to her feet and with a final scathing glower at the downed form of Shandra she rose to her feet and turned sharply towards the door and strode towards it with purpose, pausing only to snatch up her bag. The students that stood between her and her exit quickly parted and scrambled to get as far from her as possible.

Slamming the cold metal door open she stormed through and entered the school and quickly made her way through the deserted corridors. Ignoring the warm sun that spilled through the line of windows of the hall to her right, she continued past the classrooms on the left through to the schools front door where she threw it open and left the building.

The wind rifled through her hair as she stepped onto the pavement of the sidewalk. She paused to look to the side and watched as several pairs of students disappeared across the street and into the busy city. Flipping her shoulder-length hair out of her face she continued on her way to the forest that bordered the school grounds and stretched over thirty miles.

She crossed the dying lawns and strode into the parched forest, following the winding path past the old oaks, tall evergreens, and budding cherry trees until she found the one tree she was looking for. The massive willow stooped under the weight of its own branches and swayed when a soft wind would rifle through its leaves, giving it the impression that it was alive and greeting her.