Hunted

Chapter One

AN: Okay, heads up. This is going to be realistic. This isn't exactly a lighthearted situation, but I'm giving you a warning ahead of time. Nothing terrible will happen in the story (no gun fights, sexual assaults, mindless killing sprees, ect.) but stuff does take a darker turn at points to show the reality of the situation. Case in point, this chapter. (We will have fluff and love eventually, promise!) But if this throws you off, I'm sorry and sincerely apologize.
Anyway! Thank you all for reading and supporting me! 💕

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Humans have a sixth sense they say.

An innate ability to tell when something was wrong. Maybe it was the way the stranger watched you a bit too keenly, or knowing you should drive home a different way, or maybe it was simply knowing that the answer you selected was wrong. Whatever it was, everyone had it. Be it used or not, it existed.

Like right now. I felt the ball of dread boiling in my stomach, sinking like heavy rusted lead. The clatter of the school bus surrounded me, but everything was focused on the feeling of what if? I wasn't sure what was wrong, but it was suffocating me in a veil of white noise.

I'd learned to trust these feelings. I knew they were true.

Every archaic punishment, every shouted threat, every stinging flash of flesh; they were all foretold with the same moment of apprehension. The slow passage of time and the growing unease spiking with every thought. I knew fear and it existed in moments like this.

The packed bus pulled into my neighborhood, temporarily jolting me out of my mind. With a rumble of an overworked engine, the bus pulled up next to its stopping point. Bodies stood and migrated down the tacky coated floor and yet I stilled. My body didn't want to move.

A last-ditch effort at protection from an entity remaining unknown.

Two bodies left the opened door, my green eyes tracing their figures blankly. A tinge of remembrance wound itself around my heart at the lack of one familiar face. Despite the permanent scowl etched in my memory, Marie would always be my sister. She'd always be my family. But now, now she'd be free.

Lacking my own cowardice, Marie ran.

A shotgun wedding they'd say. Two teenagers drunk on love, eloping and running to the courthouse for the closest chance at happiness. A suburban city girl who found love despite her suffocating family; the stuff romantic comedies are made of... but I knew.

My sister never loved him, or if she did, it was because of what he offered her. Her boyfriend tasted like freedom and like myself, Marie was ravenous for it. We'd been submerged in sacrilege for so long that she'd finally had enough, and when the offer came, she'd leeched onto it. Her claws sharpened and her prey fell with easy acquiescence.

I didn't know where the two moved off too. There were no goodbyes, no moments of love, nothing to hold onto but tainted memories.

Just like my father.

Another jolt jerked against my frozen veins, reminding me of the current predicament. When I flashed into reality, a flush bloomed over my cheeks and into my chest. All eyes were on me and the driver, an elderly man named Gibson, watched me with a scowl. Obviously, I'd been lost in my delusions for too long.

Four years of the same pattern encouraged me to stand up and make my way toward the prison known as home. Four years of the same faces watching me with disinterest, four years of the same menial schoolwork, four years of the high school known as Ashley Waters, and four years of surviving only to return to my slice of purgatory.