Saved

Chapter 26

I woke up with Damion laying, still asleep, next to me. I ripped his dark teal beanie off of his head and threw it at him to wake him up. "Wake up, idiot." I said. He sat up, clearly still tired. I unzipped the tent and we both got out. I looked around for Mika, but she wasn't out. "Damn, usually she's up hours before me." I muttered. "Yeah, well, not today I guess." Damion replied. I walked over to Mika's tent. "Hey, Mika, you up?" I asked, quickly noticing the tent door was unzipped. "What the hell?" I wondered out loud. Mika was always adamant about keeping her tent door zipped up all the way. "Mika?" I looked in the tent, and Mika was nowhere in sight. Damion saw the exact same thing. "What the fuck? This isn't cool, man. Where the hell is she?" He said, his voice loud and shaking. My blood ran cold and my face went pale. "Oh, god. I-I don't know. T-This is definitely not good." I stuttered. "I really don't like this." Damion said, taking a few steps back in fear. He looked all around for any sign of Mika and I did the same. "Dude, look at that over there." He said suddenly, pointing to a black button-up shirt laying in the dirt. He adjusted his beanie on his head nervously. "That's the freaking shirt she was wearing yesterday." Damion said, covering his mouth with his hands, his thin body noticeably shaking. Looking right past the black shirt, I saw hundreds upon hundreds of trees. "You've got to be kidding me." I said, my voice brittle and shaking a bit. "Oh, god, no, no, no, no." Damion muttered, starting to panic. "Damion, do you have your pocketknife?" I asked, trying to pull myself together. "Uh, y-yeah." He stuttered in reply. His eyes widened. "We have to go in there d-don't we?" He muttered. I nodded. "Yeah, we do." He began fidgeting nervously as we walked down towards the trees where the shirt was. We walked into the forest, looking around for any sign of where Mika could be. Suddenly we heard a bone-chilling laughter. "Oh my god, some psycho's going to fucking kill us." Damion whispered, his eyes wide in fear. I let out a shaking sigh. "And that psycho probably has Mika." I shuddered at the thought. "Akio, what if s-she's. . ." He paused. "Shut up." I snapped at him. We continued walking through the forest in silence, when we suddenly heard another bone-chilling laugh, but this time seemingly from up in the trees. Me and Damion both instinctively looked up, searching for sight of someone. I caught a glimpse of dark black hair. I heard Damion unintentionally let out a small yelp. "Oh, my god." He repeated. "You saw that, too?" I asked, my legs beginning to shake. He nodded and met my gaze, terrified. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his pocketknife, but not opening it. We didn't dare continue walking. We were too afraid. Upon hearing more creepy laughter, this time louder, Damion flipped open his pocketknife defensively. We looked up and saw piercing dark blue eyes staring at us, and dark, jet black hair waving slightly in the breeze. It was Hiroki. I inhaled sharply and my eyes widened and I was completely stunned. I heard a quiet whimper from Damion next to me. The height of the tree would be too hard to get to or climb to for most people. "W-Where the hell is she, you psycho?" Damion yelled, trying not to shake as much. I caught glimpse of long pale purple hair from behind a tree in the distance, and nudged Damion subtly, motioning towards the flowing purple hair. He nodded slightly, so only I would notice. Hiroki began swinging his legs over the edge of the branch, laughing maniacally. "You really thought she killed herself, didn't you?" He said in a soft, demeaning voice. He leaned his head on his hand, thoughtfully. I felt a creeping sensation. "What the hell are you talking about?" I yelled. He continued laughing, now both hands holding his face. "I never meant for it to look that way. All I did was slit her throat. And the blood. . . Oh, the blood was a delightful shade of deep red. So beautiful, and delicious." I felt chills go up my spine, the hairs on the back of my neck standing straight up, not wanting to believe what he was saying, not wanting my suspicions of what he was talking about to be true. Until it was all confirmed by what he said next. "Poor little Alina. So fragile. She wasn't even able to defend herself or put up much of a fight. My knife went straight into her soft flesh, and the blade slid so easily across her throat." I fought back the urge to throw up, as I saw Damion struggling even more to do the same. "The police, those bastards just ruled it as suicide because of that fake letter I wrote. You must admit, my imitation of her handwriting was extremely accurate, and her fingerprints on the knife were the final touch. Gloves sure do come in handy, don't they?" He continued on. I knew exactly what he was talking about. The knife that was found was a knife from our kitchen, and Alina had always loved cooking and baking, so she used the kitchen knives often. Hiroki continued to elaborate, the gruesome description and the adoring way he talked about it admiringly was absolutely sickening. "All that was left to do was burn the gloves and bloody clothes." He finished, smiling and laughing for what seemed like an eternity. I heard retching noises and looked over to see that Damion had been unable to stomach Hiroki's gruesome story. "And you both felt so guilty that you tried to kill yourselves." He continued laughing. "So much bloodshed. What a beautiful result of my little experiment." I looked up to see he was now waving around a knife in the air. He placed the heel of the knife to his lower lip, dragging the knife downwards, the blade cutting a deep gash in the middle of his lip. The scarlet blood ran down his chin before dripping down to the grass below. I looked over and saw Damion wiping the bile from his lips. "Oh, god. Oh, god." He muttered repeatedly. Hiroki jumped down from the tree, landing unharmed, shockingly. He threw the knife to the side. "Sorry about that." He said, smiling eerily. "I'll be using a better weapon."