Possessed

Chapter 10: The Edge of Oblivion

The candles in the middle of the circle flickered for the longest of a second and then went out. The wind outside seemed to pick up speed and its howling was clearly audible even through the tightly latched window. Nothing else happened.

I looked over to my friends to see them staring at each other expectantly. I was about to get up from my place when I felt a pounding begin in the right side of my head and then, slowly spread along to the other side. The throbbing was incessant. My vision unfocused to an indiscernible blur so that I could only barely make out the fearful expressions on my friends’ faces before I collapsed.

****

I awoke with a start. I was in the same position where I had fainted earlier. The last thing I remembered….Odette reading the words from the book. I looked around the room frantically, seeking my friends’ presences. I found both of them perched on wooden stools at the corner of the room, staring at me worriedly.

“What happened?” I slowly sat up, rubbing my forehead.

Elaine bit her lip. “You won’t believe it even if we told you.”

They both exchanged enigmatic glances before Odette spoke.

“Aries, you fainted. We didn’t know what to do, but we didn’t have to wait long. You woke up minutes later, only you were so strange, like a totally different person. You didn’t ask questions.”

Elaine added in a slightly accusatory tone, “You even snatched my Aunt’s book and tore the pages. We tried to stop you, but you clawed at us. It was like you were insane.” She held up her arm. There was a pink slash across her forearm.

“It was frightening, I’ll admit. You had this wild, crazy look in your eyes,” Odette closed her eyes briefly and shuddered at the memory.

Good grief! Had I been THAT scary? And to think I wasn’t even myself when these events had occurred. Truth be told, I was terrified. A LOT. I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out what was happening here. Who was I turning into? So many questions. No one to answer them.

“Look, I think you should tell your parents,” Elaine voiced as she kept on wringing her hands on her lap anxiously. I looked at her with wide eyes.

“Are you mental?” I asked, astonished, shaking my head. “I can’t tell them that after I fainted in the bathtub the last time. They’ll simply chuck me into an ‘asylum’,” I made quotation marks in the air, “or drag me to a psychologist, neither of which sounds too welcoming to me.”

“In the bathtub?” Odette quizzed, a frown forming on her pretty heart-shaped face.

Oops. Guess it’d slipped my mind to tell them. I gestured to the two of them to lean in closer and they shifted their stools, the legs of it scraping on the floor as they moved nearer. Then, I proceeded to fill them in with details about my latest encounters.

“Aries, you’ve got to tell our parents about what’s happening to you!” Elaine whispered fiercely over Mr. Hudson’s voice as he droned on and on about some poets who’d brought about important changes in the history of literature.

“What’s happening to me?” I decided to play innocent while picking at my nails.

Elaine narrowed her eyes at me dangerously, “You and I both know-“

“Ms. Avelda and Ms. Rose, do you wish to leave my class to prevent further disruption in the classroom?” Mr. Hudson demanded sternly, his voice booming throughout the class. Everyone had turned in their seats to stare at us fixatedly. I squirmed in discomfort.

“No, sir,” Elaine and I answered cohesively. I smiled to myself smugly, happy that she hadn’t got to complete the sentence she’d been nagging me with since the day I’d told her and Odette about the ‘incidents’. Honestly, Odette had taken it better than her. She didn’t bother me with questions like Elaine did.

Beep. My phone vibrated in my pocket, indicating a new incoming message. I fished it out of my book bag and read the short text sent from Aaron. It read:

Meet you by your locker at the end of the lesson. Be there, beautiful.

Love, Aaron.

My cheeks reddened a little and when I glanced up, I saw Ellie from across the aisle staring at me inquisitively.

‘Aaron’, I mouthed at her and she nodded her head in understanding and returned her attention to the whiteboard in front of the class, where Mr. Hudson was now writing down our homework for the day. Not even five minutes later, the bell rang. I waited for the students to disperse before me so that I wouldn’t get caught in the crowd, and then started down the hallway towards my locker where I spotted Aaron standing against it.

“Hey,” Aaron smiled at me brightly and wrapped his strong arms around my slender waist. 

Yes, it’d been about two weeks since we’d started dating. Though we haven’t even had our first date yet, we plan to in the coming future.

Leaning down his head, as I was inches shorter than him, he planted his amazingly soft lips on mine for a quick kiss that rendered me breathless.

“Get a room, both of you!” Odette hollered, making gagging noises.

I raised my head to see her walking towards us, some books in hand, a genuinely good-natured smile playing on her lips.

“Where are you coming from?” I inquired.

“Just the library,” she said airily, matching her locker combination and placing the books inside.

“For what?”

“To search up about supernatural occurrences.”

My head snapped up at that. Out of the corner of my eyes, I felt Aaron watching us curiously.

“What? Really?” I demanded.

There was a dark unsettling look in her eyes before she replied. It was just there one moment and the next, gone without a trace, leaving me puzzled.

“No of course not, silly!” she laughed, “I was just messing around with you.”

I didn’t know whether to believer her or not.

“See you during lunch!” she sang as she strode down the hallway.