Endless songs ran through my brain as I hobbled to the bus stop. My hood was up, and I wasn’t going to talk to anyone. This was my time. A good few minutes later, I arrived at the bus stop alone. I checked the time; the bus wasn’t coming for another seven minutes.
Foo Fighters faded as Ben Howard crept on. The Wolves immediately relaxed me and I felt almost normal as I waited for the bus.
It came over the road so I pulled out one of my earphones and held out my hand. Something flashed in the corner of my eye. I stared across the road, where a figure was standing – a girl. She had flaring red, curly hair and piercing black eyes and she continued to stare at me. She lifted a hand and eerily pointed at me, and then she hissed, showing two fangs at either side of her front four teeth. Taken aback, I scrambled into the bus stop just as the bus pulled up, so I sprinted onto the bus. I showed my card so I was admitted freely, and I ran to the back of the bus, pressing myself against the window. She was gone. All that was left was the rustling leaves and the remaining traffic.
*
“It’s just a sprain,” the doctor announced as he came back to me with my x-rays. I winced as he prodded my foot, explaining where the worst of the injuries were.
Why did doctors always do that? They knew where your injury was – they had only just inspected it – yet they insisted on poking and pinching where they knew it hurt most, just to show you the injury you knew you had in the first place!
“Now, son, do you want to explain how you did it?” he asked, again.
“I’ve told you. I fell down the stairs,” I spat.
He raised an eyebrow. “Come on, Mr Adams. I think we both know that didn’t happen.” He hesitated, and then said, “Are you sure you aren’t under…pressure at home?”
I frowned for a moment and then realised what he’d implied. Outraged, I spat, “No! No way. I don’t get on with my mother, but she’d never…”
“Sorry, Mr Adams,” the doctor said awkwardly, “I just had to check.”
“I fell down the stairs,” I repeated.
“Hmmm,” he mumbled, not believing my blatant lie, but who cared?
“So my ankle is only sprained?” I asked, hoping he’d just dismiss me. I sat on what seemed like a flimsy metal table in a light room with a buzzing light.
“What about your father?” he asked suddenly.
I stiffened. I immediately stiffened. We sat there in silence for a few minutes until I realized he required an answer from me. I clenched my fists and gritted my teeth. He just looked at me with a perfectly shaped eye-brow raised and a weird look on his face.
“My father’s dead.”
“Oh,” he replied, and then realization dawned on his face as he put two and two together; my father’s last name and mine. “Yes, it’s only a sprained ankle. All your other injuries seem to look worse than they actually are. It must have been a very lethal stair case.”
*
I hadn’t thought of Red Head until later that night when I was lying in bed listening to All Time Low. My mind was registering things but my brain wasn’t taking it in. I was staring into space. I was tired, yet I didn’t want to fall asleep. I wanted to lay awake and miss school again. There’s no point in going to school, anyway.
If I go to school, I’m either bullied or ignored. If I stay home, I’m all on my own, but I’m fine like that. If I do well in school, I’m a nerd, and they hit me. If I’m dull in school, they say I’m not doing good enough, and they hit me.
I stare at the ceiling, seeing my light swinging because the wind is blowing through the windows. It’s screeching like a dying cat. The window is open because I need air. I need air to fill my lungs because I’m so depressed at the moment.
Yesterday. It was yesterday that I was going to kill myself. End my life.
I closed my eyes, but opened them immediately. Perched on my windowsill was a figure dressed in black. She hunched on the sill and stared at me with blood red eyes. That was all I could see.
I cursed, and scrambled out of bed. I picked up the nearest thing on the floor and threw it at her. It hit her shoulder but she didn’t flinch. Instead, she rolled her eyes and lifted her palm so that it was facing mine. It had a weird black marking – sort of like a swirl – and it seemed to… move.
“Get out!” I screamed, throwing something else at the creature. She licked her lips and cackled, but dropped from the window sill nonetheless. I flew to the window and watched her take off. Her cloak fell and I saw her wild red hair whip off into the darkness, but not before a gust of wind threw me back against the wall by my bed.
My bookshelf, once again, like I’m sure it did last night, plummeted from the wall and hit the mattress. One of the books landed on my foot, making me scream out. I gasped and sprinted into the bathroom and splashed my face with water.
That did not just happen.
Yet I could hear more commotion going on in my room, but I seemed to be the only one to notice. My mother was downstairs. Could she hear nothing?
I hesitantly tip-toed back to my room and peered in. The bed was spinning around the room in the air, twisting at an odd angle. The books from my shelf were scraping across the walls of my room leaving greyish black marks behind them, and making an excruciatingly high pitched noise as they went along. I nearly choked on my own breath.
“Mom!” I screamed, running down the stairs, not giving a damn about the pain my ankle was giving me. “Mooooooooooooooooom!”
“What?” she snapped as I came to a halt in the TV room.
“There’s something freaky going on in my room. Someone was just in my room and now everything is moving around by itself!” I shouted, getting more out of breath by the second.
Her face dropped and she grabbed the rolling pin from under the settee – where she kept it in case some of her little “friends” went a bit too far – and bolted up the stairs. I followed suit, coming to a halt when she rounded on me.
“I don’t know what kind of sick joke you are trying to play, young man, but this certainly isn’t funny!” she shrieked. “You know how much I hate liars and you seem to be turning into one!”
I was taken aback. “But haven’t you seen my-“
She cut me off. “Your room is fine. You can go straight to bed. That fight you got into must have really messed your head.” She snapped.
I dumbfoundedly looked at her. She stared at me with a fierce blaze.
“But…”
“Go. To. Bed.” She said, gritting her teeth in a way to show her word was the final word. I blinked, and then limped into my room.
I stopped dead and gasped. Everything was back in its normal place. Everything. The bookshelf was even on the wall. The iPod was even where I put it before I got into bed. I blinked. What?
I heard my mother muttering again as she stopped downstairs with her rolling pin. I went to hit the light switch off, but before I pressed the button, it turned itself off.
“Screw this,” I moaned and flopped down onto my bed, just ready for a new day.
Chapter Two - More Weirdness. Definitely More Weirdness.
Start from the beginning
