GLASS CHILDREN [Completed]

O, WILLOW WALY

The song above is actually a little tune from a long-ago-filmed movie called The Innocents. I'm very fond of the song myself.

There were rows and rows of trees that were all in a tangled blur as Nikolas ran as fast as he could through them, tripping over vines and large twigs to the point of where it seemed more like he was climbing through the wooded area than running. He could feel the scratches of the thorns and sharp sticks as he fell to the ground over and over again, but when he looked at the wounds he could feel, they were not there at all.

In shock from the repetitive chanting that was coming from the mouths of Lily and her brother and the amount of stress that was on his heart and lungs, Nikolas collapsed onto the dirt-ridden ground, his body jumping and burning on the inside—like a house would from an electrical fire—with every raspy breath that he took.

"Niiiiiiikolasssss..." a faint, high-pitched voice rang out, bouncing through his ears. Laughter followed, just like the previous voices. "Come out, come out, wherever you are..."

Nikolas didn't move, but it was impossible for him not to breathe. Stay still, he thought. Stay still and they won't find you.

"We know you're here," Lily said in her normal, dull tone. "If you come out now and keep going like we said, we won't scare you anymore...we know you're scared, by the way...Sammy has a thing—well, I guess you can call it more of a talent—for smelling the fear that comes off of people."

"Please, please, please go away..." he whispered, praying in his head. "Just leave me alone, I want to go back home and jump in bed like I'm supposed to."

"But you're dead," a boy's voice said; it was closer than Lily's voice was, almost as if it were inches away. "You're dead, Nikolas...you can't go back. You're one of us."

"GO AWAY!" Nikolas screamed out, hopping to his feet and spinning around in the darkness, covered in dirt and dry leaves. His voice no longer came out in gasps, and his breathing had returned to normal. "LEAVE ME—"

Giggling. That same, annoying and headache-causing giggling from the trees around him began again; not only was it behind or in front of him, but it was everywhere. It was above him and around his feet. Hell, it seemed as if something was weighing him down and whispering horrible nothings into his ear as the children's laughter sucked him into a shroud of despair and fright.

His eyes were filled with the sudden visions of three small children, all dressed in white, dancing around him while they held their tiny, gray hands in a circle. They were all no older than three, all bearing dirty blonde hair with gasmasks over their faces. "Play with us, Nikolas!" one would say. "Come on, it'll be fun!" another would say and giggle.

"Yeaaah, play with us!—"

Nikolas watched, frozen and horrified to the point of shaking underneath his skin, as the third little boy stopped prancing in a circle and looked up at him. Noticing that the gasmask was a bit too big for his head, he reached down to the little boy as his short, huffs of air continued to hardly fill his lungs.

Hesitantly pulling back the little boy's mask that was covering his tiny and pale, lonesome face, Nikolas held the object there in his hand before glancing to the child who stood before him, still and expressionless.

"Don't you want to play?" the child asked, laughing. That damn laughter was going to drive him mad.

With his own blue eyes shifting to meet the nameless child's, Nikolas found that...the little boy didn't have any at all. But where his eyes should be placed, black, endless holes remained and they seemed to be seeping with various liquids as chunks of blood poured from the inside of his eye sockets.

Attempting to back away, Nikolas's face became stiff with an expression of terror as all color drained from his skin, leaving him in a dizzy-like state of confusion. He couldn't even speak anymore.

"Aren't you going to play with us?" the children asked in unison once again. "We love to sing...will you sing with us?" the boy with the missing eyes and bloody face got closer as he began to reach his hands out as well, grasping his palms as if he were trying to get his long-since-seen mother's attention, desperately.

Soon after the odd little boy spoke, other children who were dressed in white or various versions of tattered clothing unlike Lilly and her brother, emerged from the limp branches of trees or the bushes below and began singing the same tune over and over again:

We lay my love and I, beneath the weeping willow.

But now alone I lie and weep beside the tree,

Singing "Oh, Willow Waly" by the tree that weeps with me.

Singing "Oh, Willow Waly" till my lover return to me.

We lay my love and I beneath the weeping willow.

A broken heart have I.

Oh, willow, I die. Oh, willow, I die.