Gores of Grimoire (Editing)

Erica Frost

   Erica Clockwork awakened with a fright.

   She kept seeing the same images over and over again, guilt weighing down in her stomach.

  Should I tell? She asked herself many times after she'd wake up from that memory taunting her whilst she was supposed to be having dreams.

   Erica was a level five witch at the "other school," also known as Eclipse Night Academy.

   She did not have a roommate ( for she wasn't that popular a person) and she was also a witness to a terrible crime, the one that haunted her night after night.

   She sighed and rolled out of her bed looking at the clock. Her classes didn't start for five-and-a-half hours.

   Great. She thought.

   Her room had hardwood flooring that was ash gray, and her bed had a gray, black and white design on the comforter set. She had Christmas lights lining her bookshelf and posters here and there around her room. She left incense and sage burning throughout the night to ward off bad spirits, therefore giving her room an aesthetic fade.

   On her desk were school necessities; a knife, a wand, a hairbrush, electronics, and her little black Bluetooth speakers. She kept her sticker-covered laptop closed with her phone on the charger beside it.

    Upon first entering Erica's dorm room, the bed was on the left, nestled against the wall in the corner. At the foot of the bed was her white, paint-chipped antique chest. A few feet away from the bed, alongside the wall, was her bookshelf, full of spell tomes and teen fiction.

   Her desk was in front of the window, on the wall opposite the door, and in the corner a few feet away was her wardrobe. The spare wall was used for her posters, pictures, as well as where she leaned her yoga mats.

   She crept across the cold floor and over to the wardrobe (which was made of dark gray wood and dark, shaped metal). It let out a small groan as she opened it.

   However, when she did, she remembered that she had no class that day, it was Saturday. Her free day.

    She reached out her abundantly scarred arm and closed the wardrobe door. Erica never revealed her scars to anyone, except the Headmaster, whom of which found her and took her in.

"You will never again be treated such a way," he told her, "I promise, Miss Peterson." However, for the sake of her safety, should something happen to reveal her, she was allowed to change her last name.

  "Robert Frost is my favorite poet," she explained when he asked her why she chose the name she did, "I want to be able to remind myself that there was a time in my life. A time before magik."

.....

   Erica used to have an older brother named Jacob. Everyone called him Jake though.

   Ever since she was little, and first discovered she had magik, she hated him. He used to cut off parts of her hair with rusty kitchen scissors, as well as occasionally cut up her clothing.

   Sometimes he would burn her with used matches and lighters, other times he would give her black eyes she would be forced to hide.

   One day, when she made him mad enough at school, he started chasing her home with a blind fury. She was sure that this time he would have killed her. Erica had sprinted across the street to the sidewalk, and when he tried to do the same, he was hit by a fast-moving vehicle, more specifically, a truck.

   He suffered immensely when he died, and all Erica could do was watch. It hadn't traumatized her at all, in fact, she was glad her torment was, at last, over.