Ugly is Beautiful By: Audrey B. Holley

Chapter 3

"Why are you doing this?" I ask, my voice barely louder than a whisper.

"Because I hate you." He says, grabbing a handful of my long light blue hair, and trying to yank a giant chunk of it from my head. Another scream builds up inside of me, but before it can slip through my lips, Ethen jerks his mask over my head to shield my face, and prevent me from seeing. The eye holes are in the wrong spot so all my imperfect vision can see is the color of blackness. My yell comes out fuzzy as the mask smothers my mouth and blocks out oxygen. I reach out to grab him, but feel nothing. Then the touch of the hard floor vanishes from under my feet.

Moments later, I hear the sound of a door clicking shut, and running water filling up a bathtub, my bathtub. Within a heartbeat, I know what's happening.

"Ethen! Don't do this! Stop!" I make an effort to yell, but my words come out indistinct. Before I am able to breathe in another breath, ice cold water rushes up my nose and clogs my throat. I can feel his hands pressing harder and harder into my chest to keep me under. I dig my nails into the sleeves of his rolled up black sweater, and try to focus on kneeing him where it hurts. Freezing water sucks itself inside of me like a vacuum again and again until I'm all filled up and overflowing. I feel around until I touch his neck, and travel up more to claw at his face. He removes his hands from my chest. I come up, and consume a gust of air while coughing up water that had successfully made it inside of me. I realize that the mask had come off and is now sunk at the bottom of the bathtub. Ethen grabs my right hand to keep it from scratching at his face.

"I hate you! I hate you so much! I want you gone! I want you ended!" He screams, shaking me back and forth.

"I don't understand what I did wrong!" I scream back.

He socks me in the cheek and shouts, "You ruined everything! She doesn't love me anymore! Mindy hates me as much as I hate you!" He pushes me into the bathroom door. I slide down to the floor and stare up at him.

"She won't even look at me or talk to me and it's ALL your fault!" Tears build up in his grey eyes and  roll down his cheeks. "I cheated and you told! I broke her heart and she doesn't want me anymore!" He stops screaming and glares. "It's all your fault.'' He mumbles.

Pounding on the door startles me and makes me jump up and stumble into Ethen. Before he can grab me, I swing open the door and find myself in someone else's arms. When I glance up into the face of this person, I see bright yellow and indigo colored eyes staring back at mine.

"Gaven." I breathe in a sigh of relief and shock. As if he saw everything that had happened just by staring into my eyes, he crowds my body closer to his, afraid that I'll slip through his arms and disappear forever.

"I hate you!" Ethen yells, and reaches for me.

Gaven moves me out of the way, and punches him in the cheek the way Ethen did to me moments ago. I watch as the boys struggle to beat each other. Fearing that the worst will unfold, I leap to the phone, and just as my fingers are curling around the body of the cordless phone, someone grabs the back of my head, and slams my face into the kitchen counter. My body slips into limpness and crashes to the floor. I can feel my heart pounding in my head, and dizziness seeping into my vision. All around me objects go double. The sound of a scream echoes loudly in my ears, but then I realize it is my voice screaming with pain, or help. Maybe both.

Then silence. My voice fades out as well as everything else.

* * * * *

The feeling of my eyes fluttering open and seeing nothing but the color of blackness, springs up an abrupt emotion of panic that punches my heart. It pumps wildly with fear. From a distance, a pair of glowing red eyes watch me. They glimmer luminously in the darkness that smothers the air around me. Each moment, they draw themselves nearer. Without warning, something tugs angrily at my ankles. I fall to a hard invisible floor, and feel strong fingers yanking me into an unseen hole. I sense enmity swarming everywhere. A great force of some kind presses itself into my forehead and numbness surrounds my brain and falls into my body. The enmity blocks airflow in my throat, and several intakes of breath can't be inhaled. I struggle without the oxygen that is needed. My body now lays motionless. I listen as my heart gradually stops beating into the silence of nothing.