Acrid Tastes of Fear

Chapter 2

I was still. My hands clammy and my heart racing like it was competing against the speed of my breath. I panted fast and a rush of turbulence ran from the back of my spine all the way to the back of my neck. The news was shocking, leaving me speechless, and the most common thing occurred when I listened to something as eerie and as terrifying as this; goose bumps. A news reporter said, “A local girl, Olivia Penson, was found dead early hours in the morning. Her death was inconclusive but any students or general citizens who usually take a short cut across the bridge and into the woods are advised not to go there as the killer is still on the loose and could strike at any time” The news reporter carried on explaining how passers near by didn’t suspect anything unusual or suspicious happening when they happened to see Olivia late last night. I blocked out the news. I didn’t want to hear anymore. It was just too much. I lifted my head upwards after staring at my desk and looked at Olivia’s empty desk and chair in front of me. Half of my class didn’t express any emotion and even though I hardly knew her, tears started to roll down my face. I remembered how I only talked to her a couple of times and from what I had gathered she was the most benevolent girl you could ever meet. She was bubbly and very friendly and even though she wasn’t one of these popular girls that only cared about their ego, everyone seemed to know who she was. Her distinctive necklace she wore every single day to school glued itself to my brain. The blue, red and white anchor and a horse shoe that was left dangling at the bottom of a silver chain. It was pulchritudinous, quite mesmerising. But my attention on flicking through my bank of memories was interrupted as Jodie threw a paper ball at my head. Good shot if you ask me considering the distance between us was quite far.

I stared at it for a few moments and then I opened it. I couldn’t hardly read the writing because it was written with pencil and the crinkles and tiny splits in the paper made it harder for me to read. I wiped the tears from my eyes and concentrated on the loopy, italic handwriting. It said: ‘Are you alright? Don’t tell me you’re not because I can practically see tears rolling down your cheeks’. At the end of the message there was a smiley face and loads of kisses which put a tiny smile on my face. Somehow even when I’m really down and feel like an emotionally unstable teenager, she always knows how to put a smile on my face. I looked over at Jodie and moved my lips to create a sentence. I mimed to her: ‘Don’t worry, I’m fine’ and tilted my head at an angle, giving her a cheeky smile. I pulled out a mirror from my pocket and my main objective at this present moment was getting the mascara (which may I add was put onto my eye lashes this morning with incredibly deep concentration) off my face. I turned the mirror to the side and bobbed my tongue out to Jodie who was slyly watching me. The mirror pointed out to the window and as I turned my head to look out I spotted something peculiar. It was a man in a long, black, leather coat with a dark brown cowboy hat staring up into our classroom but even worse; at me. The hat covered nearly all of his face and all that was left showing was his mouth which I could barely make out. He had a sardonic smile on his face but from the news I had just took in, I thought I was either hallucinating or losing it. I blinked hard but when I turned back to the window, he had disappeared.

Was this real or just my imagination playing tricks on me?