The A-Game (new version)

Chapter 1.

God said "Let there be light" and it preceded the creation of our world. I guess the downfall of life and creation began with a phrase too. Of course, there are a great number of differences in comparison. First of all, these words aren't written anywhere in the bible. Instead, they're written in my head. They've become so common in my thoughts that I've built a home for them in the back of my head, where I can feel it weighing on me in the space between my ears and on the edge of my tongue. I first heard these words as I slept. I was at that point where my thoughts were slipping in and out of reality, when a foreign voice yanked at an icy chord in my throat and tugged my heart into the horrifying oblivion that I've known since.

"There is no God anymore." I lay panting in my bed with a strange silence falling like a blanket over my senses. It took me awhile, as I crossed the bridge into wakefulness, to realize that the voice had been my own. I bit my tongue, and couldn't think of any reason in the world that I would've said such a thing. Horror sunk it's teeth into my skin, and I wanted to scream;. The silence was suffocating, and it was then that I noticed what had happened. I was searching for that sense of clarity that we all grasp for after a nightmare. It didn't come, and I couldn't shake away the gnawing worry that something was wrong. The wrongness settled into me like a fact, and I could almost hear my heart clatter to the floor. Now it was only a matter of what. Every inch of my skin belonged to fear as I opened my door and relinquished the safety of my room to the drafty hallway. Fear bit down harder.

"There is no God anymore," the voice said.

"No, there is a God," I silently refuted. Something in me disagreed. I hated myself for it.

My legs carried me down the hallway, as my fingers groped along the wall. When at last my hands found a light switch, fingers of light blinded me for a second before I was faced withs omething worse than darkness. Did I recognize the palid figure, that kneeled before my father? Was that really the mass of chestnut curls that I had so long been accustomed to surrounding the face of my mother? Her face was chalk white, and her teeth picked at a hunk of milky skin surrounding my father's wrist. It was a miracle that the tiny piece of skin was still white when everything else surrounding my father was dark with his blood.

I felt warmth corrode m flesh in a stripe down my leg, making a second skin of my wet pajamas as my bladder loosened over the carpet. My mother paused in the act of gouging another wedge of skin from bone as her eyelids flickered up to mine.

"There is no God anymore," the voice inside of me said.

"No," I refuted. There was one split second when I thought she wouldn't attack me, but then I was on my back and the wind was knocked out of me. Her hair that I had once thought was so beautiful dangled like black strands of thread ready to strangle me. I struggled beneath her as she held me down, still trying to gather my breath as the carpet slid over my flesh and conceived burns. A scream tore itself from mouth. Such a scream that it beat rap[idly in my skull. I wasn't anything other than fight as I thrashed and kicked. Her hands held my wrists with a painful grip. Like a tornado, I was a mad fury of tears and snot as screams gargled up my throat. In one last ditch effort, I bashed my skull against hers. The force sent jets of paint into my skull and teeth as she reared back and loosened her grip just enough where I could tuck my knee up to my chest and push with my foot against her chest. Crests of yellow foam and blood arced from her throat as she fell back with an unearthly snarl.

"MOM!" I screamed. "MOMMY!"

Her eyes were empty of the love and affection I had once known. She missed me by inches on her next lunge. My body started moving mechanically. The wet space between my legs rubbed together with a squelch as I pressed one heel against the ground after another. At some point, I found the opportunity to get up. I lost inches with this and found myself running, fumbling for the door knob. It swung open and I dashed down the first step onto the porch just as her hand gripped my ankle. Agony tore into my arm and shoulder blade, but I kicjed with all my might and somersaulted sideways, rather ungracefully, onto my good arm. My right arm flapped uselessly at my side as I ran towards my salvation: the steps. I ran down the steps and stumbled on the second to last stair. Tendrils of pain shot up from my ankle and up my foot and I collapsed, bashing my knee on the concrete as I went.

"HELP!" I screamed, a mad hurricane of tears. "HELP ME!"

My vision was funneled by the stucco of warm tears to the size of a pinhole, and I dragged my left leg behind me, feeling her presence as she continued to pursue me. The pain became unbearable, and I wanted to collapsed into a helpless heap, as I felt impending doom wash over me. I got as far as the end of the driveway. Once I reached the end, that's exactly what I did. I collapsed into a bundled mass of despair as my pursuer approached me. Tiny pebbles fillet open my skin and ground into the raw skin beneath. As my attacker came near me, I went into autopilot, and hoisting my strength in my legs and arms, I made one last attempt to escape her. As she lunged, I rolled. It propelled me off from level ground and down about a foot into our yard's ditch, where my good foot landed with a thump into the ankle-high grass. I was running, running as my heart pained my lungs and chest with each beat. U don't know how I managed to ignore the searing pain in my shoulder, ankle, back and knee, but I ran until lactic acid made my breaths jagged. Fatigue pressed heat all around me into my eyelids. It worked its way into every pore of my body as I leaked sweat and blood and tears. It wasn't until I looked behind me that I realized I was no longer being chased. As soon as I stopped, exhaustion yanked me to my knees. The pain in my arm and knee came again, but I ignored it as hot bile ripped its way up my throat and splattered like a burning plague onto the asphalt. It felt like hours passed as I threw up until I was only dry heaving. Sighing, I drew myself up and felt weariness settle in. All the same, I pushed onward until morning, when sunlight exposed the only safety I could hope to find: The Brendens. Galileo Brenden (Or Leo) had been my best friend for a little over two years. I loved him in many ways, but in most ways it was as my dearest friend. He was my shoulder to cry on, my comfort. As I stumbled up their driveway, half delirious with fatigue, I wasn't sure if I was going to see that he was alright or if I was going because I couldn't think of any safer place to be. I barely found the strength to knock. I felt warm and stuffy and scrambled on the inside and cold and shivery on the outside. The difference off-set me, and I was dizzy with exhaustion. I was too exhausted to even feel relieved when the door swung open to reveal Leo in his pajamas. At fifteen years old he wore a matching set of long sleeve, Star Wars pajamas. Even with the state I was in, I couldn't help thinking of the countless times I'd made jokes about those pajamas. It was one of those thoughts, that even beaten, bruised, bloodied, fatigued, and traumatized, I couldn't help but think of a such an innocent thing. I might've even mumbled something like "Nice pajamas" as I stumbled, disorientated, into their entryway, uninvited. It wasn't until then that it ever crossed my mind that there must be some sort of unspoken rule amongst people, that inviting oneself in is to be disregarded in life or death situations.

"Misty?" Leo asked. "What happened?"