A Harrowing Night

I run frantically through the woods my chest heaving breaths of the crisp fall air causing my lungs to protest sharply. I dare not stop though not with them chasing me. They scream and yip and howl like animals as they chase me gayly through the trees. I trip over a root and sprawl out onto the hard cold dirt. I have no time to rest or make sure I’m ok I must keep running, three days ago I would have never believed that this would be my life. Tortured, whipped, broken, and now chased like a hare by a hound.

I had the perfect life, perfect friends, and a perfect family. I had everything that I could ever want, I was spoiled rotten I’ll admit that, but I was never this cruel to anyone. How could they even justify treating someone like this? I wonder as I ignore the sharp pain in my knee as I keep running terrified of stopping. I don’t even want to consider what they will do to me if they catch me again.

I duck under a low tree branch and don’t stop when it scratches my face. I feel warm hot blood run down from my cheek. I hurriedly wipe it away and keep running. I can hear them getting louder and closer as they crash through the forest behind me cackling like mad men. I scramble over a fallen tree and run fast towards a climbing tree. The tree is old and sturdy I climb almost all the way up to the tippy top. Once I’m sure they can’t reach me I stop climbing.

If I ever get out of this, I’m going to thank Charlie for all the tree climbing dares he gave me as children. Charlie: I hope to the goddess that I’ll get to see Charlie again. He’s my twin brother and my best friend. I sobbed like a baby when my parents told me that Charlie couldn’t go to school with me because it was an all-girls school. I didn’t understand Charlie and I had always done everything together why not school as well. My mother hugged me and told me that I would make a hundred new friends and that I would love school.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. I very quickly became the target of the pretty girls in the school. They have turned making my life miserable into a sport. At first it wasn’t that bad just a few dirty looks and sniggers as I passed in the halls. By the third night they’d escalated to stupid schoolgirl jokes. Putting my hands in water while I sleep, shaving cream and a feather gag, and putting green hair dye in my shampoo bottle.

By the end of the month, they were getting truly cruel, they cut my hair while I slept, pushed me down the stairs causing me to break my arm. They sawed off the legs to my bed causing me to sleep on the floor on my mattress because they told the headmistress that I had done it on purpose.

By the end of the semester, they were getting almost impossible to avoid. Their torture was constant. They would hit me, push me, they could get away with anything and do no wrong as far as the school staff was concerned. These girls though they were crazy. They manipulated everything about my life. The clothes I wore, the friends I had, the way the teachers thought of me. They were cruel and abusive on so many levels.

But I’m finally free I broke out of the school and once they give up and go back, I will make my way home to my family and tell them all that has happened to me. I listen and hear nothing but the wind. I slowly and quietly creep down the tree and onto the ground. I start walking in a strait line hoping ill run into a road of some kind eventually.

I don’t run into a road though, I run into them. Amy, Anna, And Alyssa. All three sisters and all three nightmares. They close in around me like dogs circling their pray. I try and make a run for it but Alyssa grabs me by the wrist and yanks me to the ground hard knocking the air out of my lungs.

They yank me up and frog march me through the woods. All the time whispering in my ear.

“Maybe we should beat her for running.” Alyssa says to Anna.

“No that makes it too short, lets save that for later.” Anna says to Amy.

Amy says nothing just pushes me forward.

Amy is their leader, she’s the oldest of the three girls. Alyssa and Anna worship her and do absolutely anything she says.

The trees are starting to thin as Alyssa and Anna bicker on what to do to me first. When we finally clear the trees, we arrive at the cliff edge of a massive lake. The water laps silently below at our feet. I remember seeing this when my parents first drove me to that cursed school. I remember thinking that it was so pretty. Now I’m thinking I may never leave this place.

Amy walks me right to the edge and I whimper. Terrified that she’s going to push me over, but she doesn’t she lets me go and backs away from me. I take a few steps back from the edge and turn around. The girls are facing me in a three-point position arms crossed like a cheesy teen movie, it’s so obvious it almost makes me want to roll my eyes.

“Jump.” Amy says.

Alyssa and Anna start to look at each other nervous.

“Amy you can’t possible want her to jump she’d never survive that fall.” Alyssa says.

“Shut up Alyssa! If she wants to run away from us, she can, she can run right over the edge.” Amy’s voice is flat and without emotion.

Anna looks like a frightened little girl. Her eyes pleading with Alyssa to talk her sister down.

“Amy please don’t do this again.” Alyssa pleads with her older sister.

Amy takes each of her sisters’ hands tightly and they try to pull away weakly. She starts speaking in a language that I don’t understand. Before I can blink, she’s wrapped in some sort of purple light. I take a step back out of instinct and remember the cliff edge. Amy drops her sisters’ hands, and they collapse on the ground next to her. Unfazed she holds her hands out in front of her and the purple light moves towards them and forms a glowing ball. Amy’s hair is mad flying all around her eyes have no emotion in them at all. Once I realize that she’s going to have me go over this cliff one way or another. I decide, no way in Hell am I going to give her the satisfaction of killing me.

I walk towards her and turn then run just as she throws the ball at me jumping just as I singes my back. I hit the solid water and feel every bone in my body break. My death was quick like a blink of the eye. I watch as my body starts to sink. I’m finally at peace I thought.

Until I wake up in a strange house. My hair is blonde my eyes eerily blue, dark blue almost navy. I look like the sisters’ Then I look over and see Amy, Anna, and Alyssa. They aren’t the only ones though. There’s at least twenty women all with blonde hair and navy eyes like ours. The eldest steps forward.

“Welcome Home sister, we’ve been waiting for you.”