“There
are days when I wish I could be with you, Sis,” the boy stared down
at the grave with saddened eyes.
“It’s
been two years since you died,” he continued, “I miss you Suzie.”
A
gust of whistling wind carried a trio of orange leaves from one end
of the cemetery to the other. This same wind rustled the boys black
bangs. His brown eyes moved away from the grave of his sister. He
raised a face with skin so pale it could camouflage him in snow and
stared at the black entrance gate of the cemetery.
Something
caught his eye as he walked beside the stones and he stopped to
examine it. It was an oddly shaped grave with a red line painted
across the center. Where you would usually find the name of whoever
was buried beneath the stone there were only words.
Leave
a photograph of your enemy before my grave, and I shall eliminate
them for you. However, in exchange-
The
rest of the inscription was too weathered away for the boy to make
out. He assumed this little more then a joke and continued on his way
to the cemetery exit. He would return tomorrow with fresh flowers to
place before his sister.
“Alan,
do you know why I wanted to see you after class today?” asked Mr.
Carter as he plopped himself into the office chair behind his
cluttered desk.
“Probably
because of the big red ‘F’ in the top right corner of my test
paper,” Alan replied in monotone.
Mr.
Carter stared at the pale skinned boy for a moment as if he didn’t
believe a student would dare to use such a tone with him. But his
expression quickly returned to one of a calm and collected
individual. Mr. Carter was a middle-aged man but he always did his
best to treat his students as equals.
“Alan,
you’re a good student.”
Alan
remained silently. His expression unchanged.
“Alan
is something going on at home I should know about?”
Alan
did not answer. In fact, he didn’t give any notion that he had
heard Mr. Carter’s words at all.
“Alan
are you listening to me?”
“Yes,
Mr. Carter.”
“Like
I said, I don’t know what’s going on. But whatever it is, it’s
affecting your grades. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“No,
Mr. Carter.”
“Fine,”
Mr. Carter said after a moment, “You can go.”
Mr.
Carter watched his student walk out of the room and slam the door.
The teacher rubbed his chin with his fingers as he thought about what
a good student Alan had been the years before.
His
face was covered in the blood that gushed from his nose. His bangs
clung to it in great clumps. The taste of iron filled his mouth. But
he had become used to this. This had become Alan’s daily routine.
It was just the way things were; nothing could change it. He had
stopped resisting long ago.
“Well
Snow White? How does that feel? Do you like it?” demanded one of
Alan’s attackers.
Alan
said nothing. Response encouraged them. It would only feed the flames
of torment. So instead Alan stared at the tiled floor. He could see
no alternative other then this. Nothing to do except wait until they
grew bored.
The
leader of the bunch, a large boy named Lars, made his fist one with
Alan’s gut. Alan coughed and bent forward in reactive pain. Another
fist forced his head back. Lars smiled with glee and admired his
work. He was quite pleased with himself, to say the least.
“Look
at him! He doesn’t even fight back!” laughed another dumb looking
boy.
“Pathetic
waste of life,” sneered another.
Lars
twisted the front of Alan’s shirt and pulled him to eye level. For
a brief moment Alan lost himself. His fists clenched and his eyes
narrowed into a glare. Then he relaxed. But he knew it was too late
already. Lars had seen this reaction, and he hadn’t liked it. He
slammed Alan up against a row of lockers.
“Listen
Jorgans, I don’t like that look in your eye,” Lars said as he
delivered another punch to Alan’s gut, “I don’t like it one
bit. The next time I see you, you should have a better attitude.”
Lars
let go of Alan’s shirt and let the frail boy slide to the hallway
floor.
----------------------------------------
That
afternoon Alan returned to the cemetery. Gray clouds hung overhead.
The wind sliced through the cemetery. It stung Alan’s wounds. In
his left hand he clutched a pair of yellow flowers. He wasn’t sure
what kind of flower they were; he had picked them off the bush
outside his house.
He
shuffled through fallen leaves and pine needles. He stopped before
his sister’s grave and dropped the flowers to the ground
carelessly. His eyes widened in disbelief. His mouth became dry and
his palms began to sweat. The wind reversed directions and shuffled
his bangs before his eyes.
Panted
across the center of his sister’s grave was a red line. The paint
appeared to have been there for sometime as it was peeling from the
stone. The line was not a neatly drawn line. It seemed to have been
hastily slashed across the stone.
“What,”
Alan quietly whispered to himself, “What is this? Is this a joke?”
He
looked around to see if anybody was hiding nearby. He saw nobody. He
turned back to face the grave of his sister, and the line was gone.
“Just
imagining things.” Alan told himself.
But
when he decided to leave the cemetery he couldn’t help but to stop
before the odd grave he had seen the day before. The grave with the
incantation.
Leave
a photograph of your enemy before my grave, and I shall eliminate
them for you. However, in exchange-
------------------------------
“Alan,
what happened to you?” Mr. Carter asked as he saw the purple ring
that wrapped itself around the eye of his student.
“It’s
nothing,” Alan replied plainly.
“Alan,
what the hell is going on?” Mr. Carter demanded, “Is it Lars and
his goons? It is, isn’t it?”
Mr.
Carter had had problems with Lars in the past. Several of his
students had been severely beaten by the boy and his group of
not-so-loyal followers. If Lars was behind the black eye, Mr. Carter
would be sure he was expelled.
“It’s
nothing I can’t handle.”
“Damn
it Alan! Stop this stupid kids stuff! This isn’t some game!” Mr.
Carter stopped and took a breath to recollect himself.
“Mr.
Carter,” Alan began as he stood from his seat, “I can handle it.
Don’t worry about me. I can fix this.”
“I
sure hope so, Alan,” Mr. Carter said, “And for God’s sake,
don’t do anything stupid.”
“Well
Snow White? Got a smile for us today?” Lars asked as he looked down
at his victim.
Alan
had already been struck several blows. They were far more brutal
today. He had been forced to the floor. Blood and bruises concealed
most of his skin. His arms were wrapped around his head defensively.
“Huh?
You got an answer?”
Alan
didn’t respond. He could feel the mixture of blood and saliva drip
from his open mouth. Tears had forced their way to his eyes. He was
consumed by pain and nausea. The floor had begun to grow hot and
sticky. He knew he was lying in a puddle of his own blood.
“Alright
guys, now he’s ignoring us,” Lars scoffed, “I don’t think
that’s an improvement over yesterdays attitude.”
For
the following ten minutes all that Alan knew was the feeling of being
kicked and stomped. The feeling of bruising ribs and skipped heart
beats. And after that he knew the feeling of hate. The corruptively
powerful drug that is hate.
Alan
visited the cemetery again that afternoon. Bruises and footprints
marked him from head to toe, though he had washed the blood from
himself. He remained in the cemetery for a much shorter time then
usual, and when he left there were no flowers before Suzie Jorgans’
grave. The only object that was now there was a photograph that sat
at the base of the grave with the incantation.
--------------------------------
Lars
sat on his bed with a can of beer in hand. He smiled with glee as he
remembered how lovely the sight of Alan Jorgans lying on the ground
in excruciating pain had been. How intoxicating the feeling of
beating on another human being was. He took a sip of his beer and
flipped the page of his latest porno magazine.
The
picture on the next page startled him. It was not a large breasted
woman, rather a twelve-year-old girl with jet-black hair that hung
below her waist. Her head was tilted at an angle where her bangs
concealed her eyes. Her skin was white like snow. Behind her was a
clock with words instead of numbers. In the center of the clock were
the words “the time is.” The clock had only one hand, an hour
hand, which pointed at where eleven should be, instead it read
“Then.”
Lars
was about to flip the page when something happened that made him
stop. The hour hand began to move. Slowly but surely the hour hand
was creeping towards the twelve o’clock position. Lars’ eyes
widened as he watched the hour hand slowly creep towards the word
“Now.” And after a moment that tiny, black hand reached it’s
destination. And the instant it did a church bell rang. The bell
seemed to have bee right beside Lars and he grabbed at his ears in
surprise and pain.
He
looked back at the magazine page as the bell chimed for a second
time. The girl with the jet-black hair jerked her head suddenly and
stared at Lars with terrifyingly red eyes. Eyes of blood. Eyes of
fire. Eyes of rage. Lars felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin
to stand on end and he reached out to push the book away.
But
as his hand made contact with the magazine a snow white hand reached
off the page and grabbed him by the wrist. The hand was cold as ice.
It tightened its grip and suddenly another hand had reached out of
the page and grabbed Lars by the arm. She began to tug on his arm. He
screamed as the girl pulled him towards her, pulled him closer to the
book.
He
tried to resist. He pulled back and tried to break free from her
grasp but he couldn’t. She was too powerful. His entire arm had
been pulled into the magazine page now and his face was inched away
from the terrifying red eyes of that girl with jet-black hair. Lars
gave one last pull. He broke free and fell backwards. His eyes shut
tight as he landed on his back and he took several large breaths.
He
had escaped. He had broken free from the grasp of… whatever that
had been. He was safe now. The girl was in the magazine and that had
been knocked to the floor when he broke free of her grasp. He was on
the bed, safely on the bed. After a few moments he opened his eyes.
What
he saw was the blank stare of those red eyes. The girls face was mere
inches away from his own. Her red eyes stared down into his blue
ones. The cold feeling of death seemed to drip from her very being
and fall to Lars. Her pale lips parted slightly as if she were going
to speak.
Suddenly
Lars was falling through an empty space. There was no girl. There was
no magazine. There was no room. There was only him, falling through
an eternal darkness and screaming for help. He was falling and
falling. Then he stopped. He didn’t smash into anything, he just
stopped. As if he were floating in the middle of space.
Lars
was too terrified to blink. His eyes were peeled so far open he
thought they were going to bleed. In the distance he could see the
girl. She was a shining white against the eternal darkness. He
swallowed hard and struggled to move, but he couldn’t. He was
paralyzed. Sweat poured down his back. The girl stepped forward. She
was getting closer. Soon she would reach him.
Suddenly
there was a great pain in his gut. It felt as though something had
punched him. Something much larger then himself. Pain exploded in the
back of his head as well, and he found himself forced down until he
was lying down. When he was down the kicking started. An invisible
team of tormentors had gathered to kick him and stomp on him. Bruises
and welts began to form up and down his arms and his nose began to
bleed. His vision became obscured with the tears that had formed in
his eyes.
He
looked up to see if he could glimpse his attackers. He saw nobody but
that girl with the red eyes and jet-black hair staring down at him.
“Help
me,” Lars pleaded.
“Do
you like the feeling of death?” the girl asked.
The
last thing Lars saw was her eyes. Her blood colored eyes.
--------------------------
Alan
sat in his room with the lights off. He sat on a chair at a desk in
the corner. He was thinking about what a great life he would live
without Lars to beat him down. He was thinking about how great it
would be to get Mr. Carter off his back. He sat in a chair, a smile
sat on his face.
His
smile faded when he saw her. A girl with jet-black hair and red eyes
stood in the doorway to his room. Alan’s eyes widened, he could not
believe what it was he saw. Her skin was so pale she could have
blended perfectly with the snow. Her eyes were red like blood and her
hair was the darkest black imaginable.
“Suzie!”
Alan exclaimed and he stood from his seat, “Suzie is it you?”
“Your
enemy has been eliminated,” the girl stated monotonously.
“What?”
Alan’s voice quivered as he asked.
“Your
enemy has been eliminated,” she stated again, “I am here to
collect your debt.”
