Short Stories

||1||

||1|| (Replacing girl with guy)

Turns out, I couldn't
have been more wrong.

There was a curse.
There was a guy.
And in the end, there
was a grave.

I never saw it
coming.

I thought my life was complicated enough with just my studies alone, boy was I wrong. My parents had it all planned out from the start. I'd be the perfect child, straight A's and perfect in every sport. I'd be social, I'd be happy. And after high school, I'd go on to college to become a doctor. My life was already filled with various activities; math club, English club, science club, along with a sport for every season. Fall I did volleyball, winter I did basketball, and spring I managed to do Track & Field along with softball. In every aspect to someone looking in on my life, I was a perfect child. Never once had I had a detention. My parents were the strictest. And at some point I just had to get away.
But as it turned out for me, I wasn't the one who was gonna leave. Fridays were always date night for my parents and study-hard nights for me. On one peculiar Friday evening my parents both died in a car crash. I went to go live with my grandma. And although my parents had died, an odd sort of weight seemingly was lifted off of my shoulders.
Until I started to notice a few things. Like the way Grandma talked to me, like she was afraid I was going to explode on her. Or the way she jumped when she heard a surprise noise; a bird chirping, me slamming the door closed, a car honking their horn. Maybe that's just how she was, just a little jumpy, but then I made the mistake of asking what happened to Grandpa.
She looked at me like I had just let lose some secret, that the world was never supposed to hear. She shushed me to quiet down, stood up from the dinner table, grabbed my wrist and pulled me into the mud room. "Shhhhshhh." She whispered to me as she held her index finger to her lips, "They're coming."
"Who's coming?" I whispered. Fear starting to crawl up my spine, sending my hairs standing up on end. She wasn't acting like the person I knew anymore.
And then there was a loud bang. Although I couldn't see it I knew that it was the front door. It was opened so hard it swung back and hit the wall, coming loose off of it's hinges. She turned me to the back the door, so her body was in between the door to the kitchen and me.
"Listen to me girl, you've got to keep, yourself safe. You hear me?"
I nodded without consent, my head seeming like it was being controlled by any unknown force. A chain that I hadn't noticed before now hung on my Grandmother's neck. She pulled it off of her head and held it out to me. Weighing down at the bottom was a locket. She put it over my head, and once her fingers left the coolness of the metal chain I suddenly felt a heavy weight on me, but the weight was comforting and made me feel safe. "Don't let no one touch this honey, it's yours now, and it won't leave you till it wants to." At the time her words were just a ringing in my ear, the real sound being the loud thumps of footsteps wandering destructively throughout the house.
She turned me around so I was facing the door that led to the backyard, beyond was woodland that seemed to go on forever. Old worn hands on my shoulders, she whispered in my right ear, "When I tell you to go, you go."
I placed a sweaty hand on the brass knob and turned it, letting a beam of moon light came in. The footsteps stopped. Then there was a bang and a crash, and an axe blade through the door, my scream muffled by fear and adrenaline coursing through my veins. My grandmother screamed go! And I swung the door open and ran.
Years of doing sports had payed off, I was quick on feet and ran. I ran straight through the door and out into the woods. I ran. And I ran. And I didn't stop. When I looked back I noticed something. I was in the middle of woods, no sign of the house at all, and instead of it being night it was early morning. But that was impossible, it would have taken me hours to run all the way through the night. An early morning breeze shifted through the trees, and a chill ran up through me. The locket still was weighing down on me, not physically, but mentally. Like I was holding all the answers to the world in my hand. I ran more, although my legs began to grow tired, but when I looked behind me I saw the faint figure of a burly man running with a bloodied axe. So ran.
My lungs burning, my legs aching, until an arm shot out from a tree and my body collided with it. The arm pushed me to the tree, my back pressed against rough bark, my lungs screaming, finally getting a breath. The arm was connected to a boy, blue eyes and blond hair.
"My name's Jace. Are you the girl with the locket?"
To scared to respond and to caught up in all that had seemingly just answer I nodded my head yes, not trusting my words. "Good. Just stay with me and you'll be safe." He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me to the ground. We were both face up, my head resting against his chest.  His arms wrapped in a protective manner around me I pulled my own over myself, my hands holding onto his forearms.

What the hell was going on?