Dark Beauty

The Nightmare

It's always the same nightmare. Falling. Into the deep darkness. Falling.

I can see nothing but the pitch black when I lift my hand in front of me, I cannot see it, no matter how close to my eyes I hold them. Then I start to wonder what I am doing here. How did I begin this decline to what must be my certain death? I then feel the blood slowly dripping from my hand, I can feel the heat from the cut in which it is oozing out of. I imagine the red-hot liquid pouring out of my wound. It burns but not enough for me to shout or cry out in pain. It's a familiar sensation an almost comforting one. Proof that I still live and can feel. That's when I begin to notice, this is no nightmare. This is real.

Well, where should I start? How about the beginning, yeah, that seems like a good place to start. Okay. Well here goes. I am 16 years-old. My name is Ciara Rose Hastings, although most everyone calls me Rose since no one can pronounce my first name right. It's Irish and is pronounced Kee-yar-a, so people either say See-air-a or just call me Rose. I prefer Ciara since it means dark.

I've always been a bit of an outsider, so I'm not surprised that no one noticed that I disappeared. Well, almost no one. On the outside, it would've looked like I didn't care about what anyone thought, or said about me, but on the inside, I kind of did. Just not a whole lot. Like any other teenager, I wanted to fit in, but I gave up in middle school. I learned that it's okay to be on the outside, I liked it better because I didn't have any fake friends. If someone was real enough to be my friend they would, but they normally didn't last long. My longest, real, friendship was with Adrian.

Adrian Mathers was an outsider like me. He has short, jet black hair and blue eyes. The shade could be dark or be bright and lit up when near light. He always wore a black sweatshirt over anything. If it was a hot day he was sure to be wearing a black t-shirt. He wore black everyday, but so did I. He loved to draw. Sometimes it was just random pictures and sketches, other times it would be of nature, or a scene he thought of. He also sketched people, and faces, I remember a couple times he would sketch me, whether or not I knew it. I'd be reading a book and he would be drawing like usual then when I happen to look up I would see that he had been drawing me. Ha. Anyway, even though he looked very shy and different, he was a really outgoing person. He hung around some normal kids, or even the 'cool' kids, like jocks and cheerleaders. Anyone who bothered to really get to know him, even if that had just one conversation with him, would notice that he was. Some were taken aback and never talked to him again, since he was different, but others thought he was cool and would hang around with him some times. Adrian loved to move around, he never would stay with a group of people for more than a few days. The longest he stayed with one group was a week, it was the outsiders. That was when I met Adrian, but we didn't become friends until much later.

My friends at school were always changing, always outsiders but not always the same type. Sometimes they were the 'gothic' or 'emo' type, sometimes the 'geeks' or 'nerds' and sometimes the music people, in band or choir or other music group. Each group welcomed me whenever I was around, but no one ever directly just hung out with me. I was accepted as an outsider and since I had interests in each group, but no one bothered to really get to know me, except Adrian.