It was a relatively warm night, not exactly warm, but much warmer than it had been for the past few weeks. Zi held out her hand, and looked up at the heavily clouded sky, sighing. What even started this series of intense cold and rain? She pulled her jacket tighter and traveled farther into the woods. She was tired of this, all the fights with her parents, the yelling, the slamming of doors, and eventually, one of the two leaving. She’s only 16, old enough to move and or drop out, not that she hadn’t thought of that. She grumbled, pushing the bitter thoughts of her guardians out of her head. She pulled out her phone to call Clay, her short, quirky friend.
“Hey, listen, i know it's like, 3 am, but it is summer, and you're clearly up since you answered, sorry if i woke you up, But wanna meet up at the old well? I need some, pent up emotions to vent to you about.”
A high pitched sigh could be heard from the other end, followed by equally high pitched answer, blurred by the girls hand covering the phones speaker. She hung up the short call and made her way to the said “old well”. After silently waiting, looking into the forest, she heard the familiar crunches of leaves and soft footsteps. She turned around to see her friend, and another figure.
“Whos this?” she asked, slightly nodding towards the tall figure behind her short companion.
“Oh, this is Bobbi, my new friend, i thought you could meet him. You DO need more friends after all.” Clay laughed and gently nudged Zi, while looking at Bobbi. Bobbi shrugged and lifted themselves onto the covered well, and looked at the two joking around. They looked down at the well and tapped it, wondering what’s under it.
“Hey, do you guys know what’s under this covering?” They said, interrupting the two in the middle of dumping crunchy fall leaves on eachother. Clay shrugged. “I dunno, never really been curious about it and frankly i’m still not interested.” Zi rolled her eyes and Bobbi climbed off the top of the covered well, and let began to push off the top of the well. The other two began to help them remove the top, and pushed it off. All three looked down the well and shrugged, an air of uneasiness seemed to drift from the well. The well itself seemed to eat any light there was, it was pitch black and even with the growing darkness around them, it seemed too dark.
“Great, now we opened a portal to hell, now we’re all gonna die.” Zi joked, trying to lighten the mood that the well had given off. Clay and Bobbi both laughed nervously, trying to brush their uneasiness off. Until they heard a soft breathing coming from deep inside the well. They all looked at eachother and immediately knew what they were all thinking: it’s time to go. Backing up from the well, all three of the teens began their hasty trip back out of the forest, not looking behind them.
The next day no one spoke about what happened the previous night, they seemed to refuse to talk about it, and it seemed fine to all of them that they didn’t talk about it. Oddly, over the intercom they heard a report of a child going missing, asking anyone that if they had any information to go to the office or contact the police. That seemed to get kids talking in the class, and Zi looked uncomfortable. The teacher walked in with a seemingly new student.
“Quiet down class, we have a new student. This is Oliver, He just transferred here from sweden, isn’t that cool? So oliver, what brings you down to france?” The teacher said quickly, in a over-cheerful voice. No one seemed to be paying attention to the teacher and the new student, so the teacher sighed and assigned them a seat. Right next to Zi. Normally this wouldn’t bother her, but this student seemed off. He didn't speak, he didn't move, it didn't even look like he was breathing, he just sat down and seemed to stare at the table.
“Uh, Hi, i’m Zi, nice to meet you Oliver..” She said, feeling slightly uncomfortable. Oliver looked up and stared at her, his eyes seemed to flash a unnatural pale white before they returned to the normal brown colour they had before. “...Hi..” they said quietly and lay their head on the table. The teacher called for the class to quiet down. The rest of the class seemed like a blur, nothing really making sense. By the time Lunch came around everything seemed to be so plain, almost monochrome. As soon as she saw Clay talking to Bobbi the colour seemed to return. She looked around and saw Oliver, who seemed to also be staring back at her, his eyes a unnatural white again. His clothes seemed monochrome, his striped shirt that was originally tan and white seemed to be black and white.
