Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ No Moon ❯ Chapter One: Painful Memories ( Chapter 1 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Author's Note: This story is still a work in progress, but it will not have a happy ending. None of these characters are based on real-life or real-fiction people.

My name doesn't matter. You can just call me Cat. I'm twenty-five years old, but I feel ancient. So many things have happened in these past eleven years. Bad things. Horrible things. Terrifying things. I've done a lot of stuff that I'm not proud of, not at all. I used to be such a good kid. Quiet, and a little wierd I guess, but considering what I became...Quiet and wierd were nothing.

Now, day after day, all I can do is sit here in my tiny room and stare out my window, a window that's barred so that there can be no escaping. There's noise at all times of the day here, and by contrast at night there's a suffocating silence. It's pitch black as well except for a tiny bit of light through the tiny window from the sky. When there's no moon, the blackness presses down on you, chokes you, and brings back all the memories and the nightmares. That's when I think of her.

There's no moon tonight.

You know, if someone had told me what was going to happen to us, I would of told them to lay off of the drugs or to go back to the loony bin. Not that there was anything that could of been done to prevent it. Not really. I don't think, given the circumstances, that we would of done anything differently. That's really sad, I know it is. It's pathetic, and weak-willed as well. But that still doesn't make any difference.

For me, I guess it started years ago, when my foster parents and I moved to a new town. I lived with them because my parents had abandoned me when I was just a little child. For that, I was shy, and very quiet. I didn't make friends very easily, because of my long history with different foster families, I didn't trust easily, and I knew the pain of being separated from people you finally come to love. At my new high school I was teased a lot, because I was different than everyone else. And I was new. I'd always dress in dark colors, and they called me a "goth" and a "freak" for it. I suppose I did always like dark and "morbid" things, but I don't like to think that that alone made me a freak.

Either way, I was an outcast. The students at my new high school were very mean. Well, those students that weren't mean just sort of went along with the mean ones, or stayed far away from them and kept to themselves. I tried that. But they singled me out...There were five girls there that were what I thought of as the Head Bitches. They were on the varsity cheerleading squad, and were upperclassmen. There was also a small group of three jocks that were on the football team that were real assholes. Those two groups, those eight people, were the worst. They seemed to command control over the entire school. I wish I knew what had drawn them to me over hundreds of other kids. Maybe I should feel special. Maybe I should feel cursed.

Things started simply enough, after they'd targeted me. The girls would just call me names or laugh when I came into the room. They'd just sit in their group, whisper something to each other, and laugh while looking pointedly at me. Whenever anyone else tried to talk to me or sit with me, they'd chase them away. I actually got a couple of notes in the beginning that said "Hang in there" and "Try to ignore it" and "It'll be okay". Those were always anonnymous.

I was actually able to ignore it for a while. I didn't care about having friends, instead I focused all of my energies on my school work, so my grades wouldn't suffer. It wasn't like I could explain to my foster parents that my grades were going down because of teasing. I was a freshman in high school.They'd never understand. They were good people, but they placed a lot of importance on school, and going to school, and on getting good grades. But it only got progressively worse.

They started breaking into my locker. Things would go missing, and show up somewhere out in the open, broken or mutilated. Then they stopped showing up. I started carrying all of my stuff with me, even though all of my books and things were very heavy to carry together. But that didn't deter them. I'd set something down and turn away from it for a second, only to turn back and find it missing. There were always so many students sneering at me, all together in a group so that I couldn't safely stand up to them. I didn't trust the teachers to do anything about it, because they all adored the Head Bitches and the jocks for the awards and trophies they brought in to the school.

Then I stopped letting my things out of my sight, and carried them with me, in front of me, all the time. I never took my eyes or my hands off of them. They stopped for a while, and I began to relax a bit. But it wasn't over. I guess they'd gotten bored, because they decided to step it up. It was the third term of the year, and I had gym class. Unfortunately, because they were on the teams, they never really attended their actual classes, they'd just retreat to the gym when the late bell rang and they'd hang out there, because the coaches were there. It was always chaos in the gym, different classes in different groups doing different things.

Maybe I was an easy target. I never told anyone, and never stood up for myself. I had started to feel helpless, like there was nothing that could be done to stop them. The things that happened in that gym class did nothing but solidify that feeling. They tried to trip me whenever I passed by them. They would "accidentally" hit me with basketballs, and softballs, and vollyballs. Once one of the jocks hit me in the side with a basketball, catching me off guard and knocking me off balance. I fell over sideways and my head hit the floor, hard. I must of laid there forever, in a daze, and the splitting headache that followed because of it was almost unbearable. They laughed. I had a huge purple and black bruise there, afterwards, and I was sure that one or more of my ribs were fractured, because it hurt a lot. I was just thankful that they hadn't split my head open. At the same time, though, I wished that they had. Especially after what was to happen later.

The coach had picked me one day to clean up after class. You know, to put all of the equipment and things away in the gym's storage room. I did as I was told, and was thankful that there was no sign of the Head Bitches or the jocks, and that I could do the work without being harassed. I got up to the locker room, thinking I could probably change and get to class with no incidents this time. I was very wrong. When I got there, everyone else had already changed and gone on to their other classes. Except the Head Bitches. They had already seen me when I'd entered the room, and it was very clear that they'd been waiting for me. My locker was wide open and my clothes were strewn everywhere. I couldn't just turn around and leave; where would I go?

So instead of following my instincts and getting the hell out of there, I ignored them and began hunting down my clothes. Oddly enough, they weren't saying anything, they were just standing there, smirking. It occured to me that something was very wrong just before I looked up while hunting my bra down and saw it in the hands of one of the three jocks, all of which were standing there. I was really scared then, but I tried not to show it as I snatched it out of his hands and turned the other way to head to one of the bathroom stalls to change. Standing in my way, however, were the head bitches, with very strange looks of triumph on their faces. My heart was beating so fast and I tried to get through them, but I was caught and held from behind by a pair of very strong arms.

In all that has happened these past eleven years, the memory of that day will always be one of the most terrifying nightmares that will haunt me until the day I die. I won't go into great detail here. Even now, it's still too painful. They forced me to undress in front of them. I always had a pretty curvy body. One of the jocks held me down. They took turns. The Head Bitches stood by the entire time, taking pictures and jeering at me. I had thought they were cruel before, but I never thought that they could be so inhuman. Before that incident, I had never so much as been touched by a man, let alone been with one. After that day, I had been with three. I went straight home and locked myself in my room with the lights off and refused to come out. I spent two weeks at home, out of school, locked away in my room. I wouldn't eat, I couldn't, and I could hardly drink anything. I couldn't sleep, because whenever I tried I had horrible nightmares.

My foster parents couldn't figure out what was wrong, and they were worried, but they were more worried that I wasn't in school. Eventually, they said, no matter what had happened, I had to go back. And after two weeks, that's exactly what they made me do, despite how I was obviously terrified at the thought. After what had been done, there was no telling what they might do now, and I didn't want to have to face them. But while I was gone, something had changed at school. Nothing particularly big. But there was a new student. That was when I met her.