OK so I wrote this chapter already but had a bunch of improvements to make so I've reposted it!
THIS IS IMPORTANT- I'm going to write this whole story again when I finish and I've figured out all the details, twists and turns. It will be novel-length when I do that. Writing it this way first helps me to get the main parts of the story, the characters and all the twists sorted out so that I have a plan for the full thing AND to get loads of advice from all of you awesome little readers! So ALL ADVICE is very helpful and WILL be used when I re-write!
Tell me what you think and any advice, as mentioned above, is extremely useful to me for when I re-write :)
PS,, I absolutely ALWAYS keep my end of read for reads so dont worry, I will read yours if you came via my discussion and leave a comment!
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I didn't care. My parents were never happy together, I knew that just as well as they did. Hell, even my teacher knew since the day they came to parents evening together. They had fought over something stupid and made a scene as they always did.
I don't care if people are looking, Cass. What the hell do I care what some dumb-ass kids think of me?
Mom didn't care about me. She didn't care that I had to spend almost every day with those dumb-ass kids and I had to live with that impression she made on them. Cassi Jones and her crazy bitch of a mother. Dad acted like he cared.
You're embarrasing Cassi, Jane. Just fucking drop it.
It was just a weapon, a way to get mom to shut up. It worked, though, and I was grateful for that. At the time, I actually felt like he cared. I let myself care if he did. School was the one place I had been happy. I wasn't exactly popular but I had friends and people didn't really notice me which, to me, meant that noone would pick on me. My fairly plain appearence helped me to blend in, I suppose. I had long wavy brown hair which I left down and a little messy, not in the fashionable way that girls sometimes do it but in the 'I don't actually care whether or not you think my hair looks pretty' way. I didn't wear make-up and I normally wore jeans, a top and a cardigan which made me look sort of frumpy. My efforts to remain unnoticed, however, failed after my parent's 'show' at parents evening and soon I couldn't even use school as my happy place.
My teacher at the time, Miss Chamberland, never got over it. She had good intentions, I know, but it's a pain in the ass when you just want to pretend that life at home doesn't exist and all there is is school and friends and prom-talk, but you have this annoying little woman constantly reminding you that it's all pretend. All there is is shouting and wishing that they would just end it already.
So I guess I was a little bit relieved when they sat me down on the sofa and old me, as sugar coated as they could possibly make it, that they were filing for divorce because they weren't happy anymore.
I stayed at dad's house most weekends at first but I never really felt welcome there. He had a new habit of bringing home twenty-something-year-old girls at the weekend who always either assumed happily that I was there for a threesome (gross) or giggled drunkenly and asked me my age and, to my answer of seventeen, normally replied something along the lines of,
'Go to bed, kid. Daddy's busy'
I stopped going and dad never called. He never called because he didn't care and I told myself that I didn't care either. I still try to convince myself of this because it's all that I can do. My mom and dad arent together anymore because they don't love each other and that's all fine and dandy, but why aren't me and my dad still together? Same reason, I suppose.
When mom found herself a new boyfriend and, through giggles and the admiring eyes of a teenage girl looking at some charming boy with a guitar and a winning smile, introduced him as 'Chuck', I was happy for her. I had to be happy for her because I loved her and if she was happy then that could only be good. But I didn't love him. I hated his guts from the moment I set eyes on him.
I never had any brothers or sisters so it had always just been me and my parents. They were embarrasing and sometimes I thought that I hated them but, truth is, I loved them both and when I saw my mother with a new boyfriend, odds were that I wouldn't like him. But this seemed different, somehow.
There was something about Chuck that made my toes curl and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I think it was his eyes. His staring eyes with their cold, grey iris' and black pupils that I swore I'd seen flashes of red in. He had crazy eyes, that's the only way to describe them. It was all I could do not to plunge a knife through his heart right then and there. That's how bad it was.
One night, as I lay in my bed watching television through heavy eyes and drifting off to sleep, I heard footsteps coming down the hall. I knew right away that it was Chuck. His heavy footsteps could never be mistaken for my mom's dainty size fours. My bedroom door opened slowly and I sat in cold fury.
'What do you want?' I asked, half furious-half scared
He said nothing. Chuck entered my room slowly and silently, closing the door as he came in. I looked reluctantly at his eyes and almost screamed. It was dark in my room which made the redness in his mad-man's eyes look brighter but I'm positive that this redness was stronger than it had ever been, even if the light had been on. His expression was blank as he made his way to where I sat on my bed. He grabbed me by the neck and shoved me back onto the bed, climbing on top of me. I wasn't sure whether he was going to strangle me to death or rape me and I couldn't seem to decide which I would prefer. I felt my lungs beg for oxygen and it felt as though there was a rope wrapped around my heart being tugged and tugged as though someone was playing some fucked up game of tug-a-war.
I couldn't breathe and as I felt myself plunging into unconsciousness I looked up into his eyes. They were so red. I had seen flashes of red in his eyes before, I was sure of it, but they were completely red as he crushed my neck with his hands. I suddenly remembered my lamp. My lamp that weighed more than I did that was sitting in reach on my bedside table.
No. No, that would kill him
But I had to do it. There was something wrong here, I knew when I looked into his eyes and saw only redness and pure evil. I barely felt myself do it. I reached for the lamp on my bedside table, grabbed it and hit him hard across the head with it.
I sighed with relief as Chuck fell to the floor and I could breathe again. The oxygen pouring into my lungs was like a drug and I lay back, drunkenly, in my bed.
I was quickly brought back to Earth, however, by the sound of the lifeless body suddenly shaking violently. I jumped up and then ran to the end of my room, watching in horror as the dead body shook violently and the eyes flashed red. It flew up into the air and thrashed from side to side until, finally, it stopped and crashed lifelessly to the floor. The red left it's eyes and there was a cold chill in the air as I realised my situation, I had just killed a man.
That wasn't a man
I stepped over the body and staggered to my mother's room to tell her all that had happened, despite hardly believing the situation myself. My shaking hand turned the door-knob and I timidly walked in.
'Mom!'
There was so much blood. I had never seen so much blood in my life and it was all coming from my mom. The bastard had stabbed her to death before coming to me. I cried out for help that I knew wouldn't come and wouldn't be much use to me.
I was shaking all over and tears were flooding from my eyes as I lay over my mother's dead body and wandered how anyone could possibly commit such a horrible act of evil
It wasn't him it was the thing. It was the redness, the evil thing in his eyes.
