Short Stories (reconstructed)

I know what this is

The strange man in rugged clothes and dust-marked skin runs after me as he chants my name. We run on and on in circles around my ancestral home, which, by telling, is a more than hundred years old. I wear my orange varsity shorts and red shirt as he catches up to me slowly but surely, reaching out to pull my top.

The sky gets dimmer and dimmer as the chase becomes more unforgiving, the never-ending circle getting bigger. I can't catch a breath, because if I do, I get caught. I don't know how things will turn out if that happens. I just know it won't be good. None of this has been good. I feel my body lighten as my eyes shut by themselves. I feel myself fall, and his nails pierce the surface of my skin.

I open my eyes and realize I'm now in a forest of leafless trees. They move as if they're people, never leaving where their roots are planted. They reach for me as I walk the path, their branches getting longer as they do. I run as fast as I can towards the ending, which moves farther and farther like the circle I was in with the man.

I still remember the feeling of his nails. Cold and hard, sharp like the tip of a knife. I keep moving despite my legs' constant begging to stop, already pulsing and unstable. The branches extend faster and faster, until one of them strikes me through the chest, my blood trickling from the edges. I stop breathing.

I feel as if I'm falling. The wind brushes against my back, and I open my eyes to see the floor in which I'd land, getting close and closer. The branch and the nails still linger in my head. I don't move or make a sound as I fall, I just stare at the floor.

I wake once more just before I hit the ground, returning to my ancestral house. I'm inside, the man nowhere to be found. I'm alone. The clear, sunny skies thunder as if to foretell a storm. I take a seat in the dining room, with an empty plate and dusty cutlery laid in front of me. I stare at the seat in front of me as a faceless figure appears.

It starts beating on the table as the rest of its fellows appear to fill the rest of the seats. They chant the words that've been spoken to me my whole life. Worthless, useless, replaceable, failure, disappointment, curse. I beat with them as my heart sinks. I get locked onto the chair with chains springing from the floor.

I get shot in the head.