Half-Sister // Trollhunters

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"Miss Lake!" The sound of Miss Janeth's voice grabbed my attention and I quickly looked up from my notebook. The teacher was standing over my desk, glaring at me. "I would appreciate it if you would pay attention in this class instead of drawing... whatever that is."

I felt slightly embarrassed as I closed my notebook, which now contained a gory drawing of Argh. I had been drawing him a lot recently. He was just easy to draw for some reason, and he looked great as a zombie-troll. "Sorry, Miss. It won't happen again."

She huffed before turning back to the board and continuing with the lesson. I found myself getting lost in my thoughts, unable to focus. It's been like that for a while now, ever since I found out about the existence of Trolls I just find it more difficult to focus. I keep thinking about how different everything is. So much has changed in such little time. It makes my head spin.

And now, to top it all off, I have a secret I'm keeping from Jim and the others. I know I should tell them about Argh but I also feel like it should be his decision to tell them. I don't want to risk telling them and ruining my friendship with him. He's been so nice to me and I feel as if we've become good friends over the past few days. Sometimes I'd even go over to Toby's to talk to Argh or I'd just sit there and draw while they played video games.

My train of thought crashed when the bell rang. I gathered my things and made my way to my locker to get my textbooks for my next class. I was about to grab my books but stopped when my ear tingled. I shook my head at the strange feeling and then suddenly the lights went off. I froze when I remembered that I was outside. So how did it get dark so suddenly?

I slowly closed my locker and turned around. The first thing I noticed was the sky. It was nighttime, but it couldn't be, it had been daylight just a moment ago. The next thing I noticed made my heart pound faster. In the grass was a body. Laying in a pool of red.

I stumbled back into the lockers, my breath catching in my throat when I noticed that there was more than one corpse. They were everywhere. Some I quickly recognized as my classmates, others were students I didn't know very well. But then my eyes landed on a familiar figure.

"J-Jim?" My voice came out quiet and my body started to shake as I slowly stepped closer to his unconscious form. He was laying facedown in his Trollhunter armor. Red stains covering the armor and even his hair. I reached my hand out to do something, maybe to try and wake him, but I stopped when I realized that would be pointless. Nothing in this field was alive. I was the only one left.

"You couldn't save them." A deep voice spoke up from behind me. I quickly turned but to my surprise, there was no one there. I frantically looked around, trying desperately to find the source of the voice but there was nobody. Then the voice spoke again, seeming to come out of thin air. "You can't do anything for them."

"I'm not... I'm not useless." I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn't stand looking at the bodies anymore. This had to be a nightmare. I just needed to wake up from this lucid dream, that's all.

"Who said you were useless?" A new voice spoke, one that I immediately recognized as my father. I opened my eyes to find him standing in front of me with a smile. It was the same smile he'd used to wear before everything went downhill and he abandoned me. Back when we were a happy family.

"Dad..." Tears began to fall from my eyes, relieved to see another living person. But my joy vanished when he began to grin. The grin didn't look right on his face. It didn't look like his smile at all. It looked more like the grin mother wore when she threw me out of the house and told me to never come back.

"Who told you that you're useless?" He asked again, this time his voice sounded harsher. "Because they're right, you know. You are just a useless waste of space."

I shook my head as more tears fell down my cheeks. "I... I can be useful. I can... I can..." I tried to think of something else to say but nothing came to mind. What could I do to be more useful to my friends? To my family? Why couldn't I think of something? Anything?

Then Claire stepped out of the shadows and stood beside my father. "You don't contribute anything to the team. You're getting in the way." She spat angrily. I flinched in surprise. She has never gotten angry at me before, so it felt strange to see such rage in her eyes.

Then Toby stepped forward, on the other side of my father. "Why are you even here? We don't need you." He didn't look angry as he said those hurtful words. He just looked blank. That was the only word I could describe him at that moment. Just blank.

Then, I heard someone groan behind me. I slowly turned around, only to witness as my deceased brother stood and faced me. His eyes looked lifeless and yet his mouth moved as he spoke. "You're going to get us killed, sister."

I gasped as my brother suddenly lept forward, tackling me to the ground. I began screaming and trying to kick him off but he was stronger than me, even for a dead guy. "You need to snap out of it!" He suddenly shouted in my face and I froze. Not because of his words, but because, for some odd reason, his voice sounded like Toby's. He then began to shake me while shouting. "Come on, Anna! Snap out of it already!"

My head hit the ground and in the blink of an eye, my surroundings changed. The night turned to day and the corpse of my brother turned into a very frantic Toby. Then Toby was pulled off of me by Claire. "You didn't need to shake her so hard! You hit her head on the ground, she could get a concussion from that!" Claire glared at him and he quickly apologized to both of us.

I was still in a daze, wondering what the hell just happened. Claire then held out her hand and helped me up off the ground. My cheeks were wet with tears. I quickly wiped my eyes as best I could. "What... what's going on?" My voice sounded so weak.

"No time to explain!" Toby suddenly shouted. "We need to go help Jimbo!" Then he ran back inside, Claire quickly following after him. But I couldn't bring myself to move. Not even an inch. Instead, I stood there as I tried to erase the memories of that nightmare.