the awakening | #WattpadWitchingHour

01 - the grave

We all stand huddled together in front of the grave, we all stand shivering with glass tears falling from our wrinkled cheeks in front of the grave. 

Our legs are shaking, arms covered with goosebumps and mountains of fear as our eyes stayed glued to the headstone. No signs of decay and resist touch it, no signs of weather beating down on the empty soul that lay in bones below. No sign of time. Only a sign of something new, only an indication of a new death that glooms in our heads. Only a painful reminder that murder and the slaying of a soul happens daily, happens hourly with only an agonizing plead for help to settle them into the soil. Shoes soaked with blood, clothing drenched in the liquid that so many cry to, that so many survive with. The tip of one's sneakers dripping with the red, traveling all the way to the cracked lips with a dire memory. 

Blood is something that we must live with, something that every single person must depend on every minute out of every day.  My own brain was wrapped around the scare and tedious thoughts of Kara Wilson's death, of Kara Wilson's killing that had taken her young life, that had ripped her away from her family and her group of friends. The friends that had betrayed her, the companions that had deceived her countless times over. Whether it had been whispers, whether it had been loud conversations that had traveled through the lonesome hallway, the voices bouncing off the checkerboard tiles for the whole population of the school to hear. I had remembered greatly what they had all said, what they had all been gossiping and giggling to each other as they applied more contentious lipgloss that had always seemed to be permanently smeared on their lying lips. 

I hear a sob from my right, but don't even have to turn my head to know who's it is. By the sound of the feminine intake of breath, everyone on the planet would know that it was Kara's best friend, Samantha Pierce. The two seemed to have a rather rocky relationship, mostly considering due to the fact that Samantha seemed to be the one who was less interested about her good acquaintance's death when the news had first been announced. Maybe it was because of shock, or maybe it was because of pure uneasiness of the situation. It could have really been because of anything, or anyone that could have been on her mind while her heart was screaming at her and tearing her apart for nor grieving over her colleague's passing. 

Death wasn't kind, death wasn't sympathetic or cordial, and the seven of us, broken and bruised teenagers, had known that now. It grabbed anywhere it could, it snatched onto any innocent human it could. Death didn't pretend to care, death didn't put on a mask of shame and sadness as it stood in front of its victim's body, it didn't try to be remorseful. The hooded veil of the end had hung over our heads for many years, it had hung tightly around the world for many years, and I knew for more years to come. It had touched me personally what had felt like a thousand times.  The notion seemed oddly familiar, a feeling that I had just wished would disappear into the gusting winds of the salty bay to my right. Death had ripped away a chunk of my corpse, a chunk of my mind. It was and wasn't a loved part of me, it was more a lost part of me, a wandering part of me. I think I had seen it in all of us, I think it had taken a piece of all of us, in its very own way. 

A cold hand had been placed on my shoulder. The hand was large and muscular. It wasn't placed there for reassurance, it wasn't placed there to give me the comfort, it was there as a warning, as a strong indication that there is going to be more to come. There was going to be more to accomplish and murder, there was always going to be more.  

A few tears of terror escaped my eyes, and make their way down onto my shivering chin. For they were not for Kara, for they were not for the girl that he had killed, that I had stabbed to death with him inside of my mind. The tears were for me, the tears were for the selfish actions that I had let him complete, for the afraid feeling I would get in the pit of my stomach if I did not do what he had said. 

The other weeping students all turned to look at the scene, and whispered to each other like Kara had never died, and that they weren't just putting flowers and notes in front of her grave. Their glossy eyes were wide, and cold air came out from every word they had spoken. 

A whisper in my ear sent a panic flooding through my clothes. 

"You know what has to be done" he had laughed, and I could feel his smile. 

It was a saying I had heard one too many times, a statement that had ponded its way into my most haunting nightmares, my most eerie and unforgettable dreams. Somehow, he always knows, he always sees.