Iris of Violet

Chapter 8

It's been about a month now that I've been at the Inn. Sabrina decided to let me stay here due to my "unconventional circumstances". So I help out around the place to pay for my room. I take out the garbages, sweep the floors, wash the dishes, make the beds. There's only about 20 people in the town, so the jobs I do aren't actually that time consuming. Apparently most of the people who stay at the Inn are regular townfolk who just want to pretend they're going somewhere different without actually going outside of town.
It didn't take me long to become accustomed to this sort of life, probably because there's not much to get accustomed to. I wake up, I do my chores, I walk around or read, I do more chores, I go to bed. Not much to it.
I don't have friends. Matt and Sabrina are not friends. Sabrina is aloof and seems to have a natural distaste for me and Matt doesn't really speak to me. I wouldn't call myself lonely because I've never experienced a life where I have friends, not to my recollection at least, therefore I cannot miss them.
It's mid November, around two in the afternoon and I just finished a shift at the Inn. My boots make a crunching sound as they step on the snow. I've found that I really like snow. Sometimes I'll lay on my stomach and look at all the individual pieces of ice that together create this beautiful landscape. On the rare I occasion that another person is outside, I never look up when they pass, but I can almost feel the distaste and confusion an the weird expression they make when they see me do this.
I never go in the forest. Whenever I look at it I feel this sense of absolute dread and fear. It feels as is the forest is staring back at me with a sinister gaze, like something is watching me from within. It makes me feel as if this state of limbo-like living is going to end very very soon.
The only sound I hear is the distant rustle of the wind through the trees and the sound of my footsteps traipsing the outskirts of town. I don't like to walk through town, whenever I do every curtain is down but I can sense that behind them there are suspicious eyes staring me down. I am an object of fear to these people, and I don't know why.
I am completely lost in thought when t he stillness of the afternoon is disrupted by a single gunshot.
BANG!
I freeze. Fear wraps around my throat and I jump to the worst possible solution. I close my eyes and try and figure out where the gunshot came from.
BANG!
Before I know it a shooting pain is coming from my ear, I reach up to touch it, and when I look at my hand there's blood all over it. I gasp and start running as fast as I can. A few yards in front of me is an old shed, beaten up by the weather and almost ready to collapse, I take cover on the inside.

Oh God they're here, they've found me.