Chapter 1: Sweet Yet Sickening
“Alice where are you?”, someone yelled from a distance. The voice sounded familiar…. It was Chris. Chris Power, my best friend and the moron who had gotten me in this mess. I could faintly hear his voice, but he was nowhere to be found. I knew taking a shortcut to school through the woods was a horrible idea, but Chris somehow had managed to persuade me. “Where are you, you noob? This better not be one of your pranks,” I yelled back. There was no reply. It was hopeless trying to find a way through here. I was surrounded by humongous trees, and bushes that rustled every time a breeze passed. Even in summer this place felt dark and cold. “If I ever find a way out of here I am going to kill you” I yelled, hoping Chris would reply. But again there was no reply. For a forest full of wild life, this place was dead silent. There were no birds chirping, or small woodland creatures hoping about. There was absolute silence. However there was a swarm of ants hurdling through the ground, as if they had won a lottery. I decided to follow them hoping that the ants and I had the same destination; anywhere out of here! The ants marched on behind an enormous pine tree, and more and more started coming by the seconds. I couldn’t see what was so intriguing behind the tree, but it couldn’t have been something good. The place had a horrid stench. I couldn’t breathe. It was nothing like I had smelt before. I put my sleeves over my nose to block the smell. It was sweetish and sickening at the same time. Curiously I walked towards the tree to see what was behind it.
I screamed at the top of my lungs, as tears towered down my cheeks. There was blood everywhere! The person seemed to have been shot right in the head. The man’s face was unrecognizable. Blood was gushing out of the hole in his head. This man had been murdered. My stomach began to churn, I wanted to puke. I turned around and ran the other way as fast as my legs could take me. Soon my legs began to hurt and I was running out of breath. I didn’t want to stop, I just wanted to get out of there and forget I ever saw anything, but my legs gave in and I couldn’t run anymore. I stopped and collapsed to the cold, muddy ground. I just layed there, eyes closed, as I tried to catch my breath, when I heard something. It sounded like snapping of a twig. I got up quickly in fear and began looking around. “Who is there? I am not scared of you” I yelled as loud as I possibly could. My head was spinning and I felt quizzy. I closed my eyes to try to relax when I felt a hand rest on my shoulder. I irrepressible shrieked. As I turned around a 5foot 7 young man with golden brown hair, and emerald green eyes was bending down, resting his hand on my shoulder; panting as he tried to get words out of his mouth. “Chris!” I yelled in relief and leaped on him for a hug. “Where have you been? There is a dead body over there” I exclaimed, pointing towards the direction I just ran from. Chris took out a bottle of water from his bag and gestured it towards me. I quickly grabbed the bottle from his hands and began scorching it down frantically. “I got lost All,” he replied. “What dead body? You’re imagining things! I just want to get out of here Al. My phone has no bars, and I am going to get in so much shit! Mrs. Lee is going to give us detention for a week and then I will get kicked off the football team….We are so screwed-.” I could see Chris was very frustrated as he kept rambling on and on. “Calm down”, I yelled back! I saw the dead body! It is real! Follow me, I will show you. I grabbed Chris’s arm and dragged him with me. ALICE, Chris whined!
After an hour or so of searching for the same pine tree, we finally found it. I knew this had to be the one because there was a pool of blood right under the tree. But there was no body. “Chris the body was right here! I know it. Look, there is blood everywhere. You have to believe me”, I pleaded. Chris didn’t seem to believe me, he seemed to have his own theory. “It could be from an animal Alice, people might hunt here” he explained. This whole time, I hadn’t heard or seen an animal, I knew it was the dead man’s blood, but I didn’t seem to be convincing Chris at all. “Before you went all crazy about seeing a dead body, I was going to tell you I found the way out of here. We are leaving Alice. Let’s go.” Chris asserted. “Fine,” I replied angrily! As Chris began to walk, I looked once again at the spill of blood before following him. That’s when I saw it, a tiny piece of paper floating on the puddle of blood. As I bent down to grab it my hands dipped into the blood. It felt sticky yet slimmey. I need a shower I thought to myself. The paper was drench in blood as well, but I could somewhat read it. It looked to be an ID, and I instantly recognized the name on it. It was Sebastian Power.
