DARK AND TWISTED

CHAPTER 61

I gripped the glass in my grasp tighter but I didn't care it almost slice my palm in half. I used it as my weapon that night. With some quick thinking, I stabbed the guy's neck a few times until he let my ankle go. I threw the glass away as I got up. I limped away, not knowing where was I.

Suddenly, I tripped on something and fell. I couldn't move much because I scraped my knees. With the sounds of those guys getting closer, I shut my eyes. Then, someone grabbed me from behind and I yelped, thinking it was one of them.

"Hey, relax. I'm not here to hurt you," A girl around my age said.

I sobbed, "Please don't get me back to them. I want to go home."

The lighting struck, revealing the girl's face. She smiled and her expression softened. Her gray eyes stared at my knees.

"There's a road ahead. Just go straight and don't look back."

I narrowed my eyes and saw the road. I limped straight into it. With the rain and thunder, it didn't help me at all. My arm, ankle, and head throbbed so much. I thought I was going to die for sure; I didn't mind it anyway. But a car stopped and a woman got out of there.

She took me into her car and placed me in the passenger seat. She tore her own shirt and wrapped it around my head and arm.

"Do you know where you live?" she asked as she wiped my face with her hands. I didn't say anything. "I'm taking you to the police station."

But I grabbed her arm and cried while shaking my head. Before I said anything else, I got dizzy and my vision went dark. The next thing I realized, I was on the couch in my home, still wet from the rain. I just remembered I wore a bracelet with my address on it. That woman must have noticed it when I grabbed her arm. Maya made that in case I forgot the address.

Suddenly, Maya ran inside when she saw the door wasn't locked and she gasped when she looked at me.

"What happened?" she yelled.

The woman tried to calm her down but she misunderstood her. She did say that she didn't trust a stranger so she told her to get out of there.

"Maya..." my voice was inaudible but somehow she heard it.

With tears in her eyes, she grabbed my hands, "Did she hurt you? You need to get to the hospital." She pulled the torn pieces of the woman's shirt from my arm and I winced in pain. The fibers stuck to the wound a bit. She was sorry that she left me alone that night.

She didn't know about the true story because I didn't talk for a few months after that incident. I stopped sleeping on my bed, I only slept on a couch and built a barricade with my books and other stuff.

My teachers caught me hiding under the table sometimes because my seat was close to the door. Also, I saw that man in black all the time for 5 years. Sometimes, I thought I had an overactive imagination. But the more he appeared, the more I believed he was real. He came back to haunt me until now.

When I was 15, my school counselor asked me to see a physiatrist. She brought me and the physiatrist told me I developed paranoid schizophrenia and prescribed me medications. I hid it from Maya because I knew she was going to be worried. I also worked in secret to pay for my medications.

I rarely talked to people, constantly distancing myself from others, and sometimes my sleep patterns changed. Things got worse when people targeted me as their bully victim. After a while, I stopped taking medicines when I felt I got better but one day everything got bad again at school. I fumbled with my medicine in my bag and those bullied saw me. They threw my medicines away into the toilet while cackling as I crawled to get them back. I bought that with my own money.

That year, Renee got transferred into my school and she was the one who protected me over the years. She didn't mind if she got bullied because she said it was important for me to get some support. Now that she was dead, I didn't know how to survive.

The masked man in front of me pulled out an ice cream, a strawberry ice cream then he threw it away. My eyes were filled with tears and rolled down my cheeks. It was just like the boy.

"How dare you tricked me that night? You took advantage of me," tears ran down my face.

He took off the mask, "We meet again, Hope."

I gritted my teeth, "Dan."