One of Them...

PROLOGUE

"Wait! Mom!" I pleaded, collapsing in the grass as tears streamed down my cold face. "Please don't leave me! Where are you going?" She backed away, sobbing, with her arms still out like she was trying to hug me.

I wanted, with all my heart to leap back up to her and be warmed by her soft flowery smell, be wrapped in her loving arms, feel her light breath touch my cheek. But my feet were already frozen to the ground.

And that time was gone now. All I had to do was stay, and watch her leave with an aching fire in my chest.

She hopped in her car and turned back on the engine. "Wait!" I pleaded. "Please...don't leave me..." now my voice was hardly more than a rasp of sorrow.

I stood, staring, into the cold yellow lights of the monster that was upon me. She was leaving, really leaving. And I all I could do...was watch. 

She leaned out the window, yelling my name.

"Alexis!" she calls, her face soaked with tears from grief. "Just know I will always love you! Please, baby! I am your mother, I lo--" I let out a sharp gasp as my body was pulled away, out of sight.

Branches snagged at my hair, grass stained my clothes. It felt as if I was being torn apart, piece by tiny piece. And the worst part of all, I could feel my heart cracking in two the most. More than anything I wanted to fight back at the mysterious force that was taking me, dragging me deeper, farther into the shadowy woods. But I had no heart left, and therefore I had nothing left to do but accept my fate.

And...this...was my fate.

I had no other choice.

And just look where I am now...