The Ticking

One Tick

I still remember that day. The sound of the radio, the rain pattering on the glass of the window, the screaming. It shrouds my memories I don't remember anything before it, I don't remember anything about my mother or my father. Tick.........Tick..... though I do remember that after the incident I've had the ticking sound in my brain. My father says I didn't have it before the incident but I felt like I've had it forever. 

I hear soft knocks on my door and then a few seconds pass by and my father walks in.

"Hey trooper." He says smiling at me. I smile back, my father babies me for fear that he might loose me, like my mother. My mother died during the incident. I'm not allowed to drive or go out alone when it's raining.

"Hi daddy." I say. Slowly sitting up. My father looks at me with pity. That's the face he gives me every time he sees me. 

"I made breakfast, how about you get ready now." I nod. Father says we used to be super close but every time he looks at me I know he sees the big scar that runs across my face from my temple to the side of my face in a diagonal line. It's the first thing people see about me. 

My father leaves as I get out of bed. I look at the door for a quick second then look away. I take off my pajama shirt and look at my body in the mirror, everywhere I look there are just scars. But now they're more mentally painful than physically. I put on a black turtleneck. I slip off my pajama pants and put on some pretty worn out jeans. I put on my socks and go into the bathroom. I grab my toothbrush and rinse it, as I rinse it I grab my toothbrush. After I'm done brushing my teeth I go to clean my face. Then I brush out my red hair, my father says it's one of the traits I got from my mother. I put on some chapstick and spray myself with very light perfume. 

On my way out I grab my mother's necklace, it had a real sapphire in the middle with real gold chains. Tick.......Tick.... I shake my head as I remember the constant ticking in my head, sometimes it's easy to tune it out and sometimes I can't get it out of my head. I hook the necklace as I walk out the door. I walk down the stairs to the kitchen. I see there's toast and scrambled eggs. I start to eat the toast and eggs slowly.

Once I was done with my food I grabbed my backpack from one of the chairs at the dining table and started to head out the door.

"I'm going to school!" I yell across the house as I walk out the door. I close the door behind me and start walking to school. I see something in the corner of my view, like a silhouette of some sort but when I tried to get a better look it was gone. Tick...Tick... the ticking started to quicken. It's like my body sensed when I was in danger, but soon the ticking went back to normal. The ticking made me anxious. I look around and everything seemed fine. I sigh and continue to walk.

Once I made it to school I start looking around for my best friend, Lynda Crutch or as I like to call her Lyn. 

"Macy!" I hear a familiar voice say, I turn around and there she is, my best friend. I smile so wide and ran to her and hugged her. Once we break she rolls her eyes. "You just saw me yesterday." 

"I know but I thought you might not be coming." I say embarrassed.

"And leave you all alone with these crazy people? Even if I was sick I would come to school for you, you socially awkward potato." Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. She looked at her watch. "We should probably go to class." I nod and we start walking down the hallway. Lyn has blonde hair and freckles all over her face, she also has very thick rimmed glasses. She had very pale blue eyes that basically would burn your eyes out if you looked at them for too long.

We make it to class and sit down next to each other and start talking. 

"Lynda?" She turns around and I look over her shoulder and see a boy who looks to be in his Sophomore year. She smiles sweetly at him.

"Yes?" The boy started to blush like crazy. 

"I just wanted to say how pretty you looked today and..." he mumbled something really fast. Lyn and I looked at him confused.

"Could you repeat that sweety I couldn't quite get that?" Lyn said and I could see the smile she was trying to hide as the boy blushed even harder.

"And... would you like to be my girlfriend?" Lyn smiled even more sweetly at him.

"No not really." I held my hand over my face and tried to cover up my laugh with a cough. The boy's face twisted up and then he ran away embarrassed.

"Harsh." I say to her. Tick......Tick.... 

"Yeah he's been stalking me forever he had it coming to him."  I smirked at her and stuck my tongue out. I hear the bell ring meaning that class has started. The teacher got a worksheet out and started passing it out. He started telling us a lecture about being quiet. I grabbed the worksheet and immediately started working on it. 

"I'm going to pass out last week's test! Im very ashamed of most of you." Mr. Clace said. 

"Fuck." I hear Lyn curse under her breath. I wrote on a piece of paper "Language!"  I gave the paper to her, she looked at it and glared at me.

I get my test passed to me and I look at it. 100% as always. Lyn get's her test and she groans. She looks at me and shows me her paper. 63%, ten percent more than before at least. I smile at her and show her my paper. Lyn rolls her eyes and goes back to the worksheet aka her phone, which was right under her text book. 

Once I'm done I turn it in. "Ms. Cater?" Mr. Clace says. I turn around and give him my attention. "I was wondering if you would be interested in tutoring Mr. Lee." I internally cringe but I put on a sweet smile and say.

"Sorry, I'm not into that sort of thing." He sighs.

"You're my best student."

"Thank you, but I won't be any good. Goodbye sir." I sit back on my chair at my desk. The bell rings and I got to my next class. Tick.......Tick........

I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn around and Lyn was looking at me suggestively. "Was Mr. Clace hitting on you?" I roll my eyes.

"He wanted me to tutor Edward." She gave me a face.

"But you're terrible at teaching people let alone Edward, the bad boy." I nod. "But..."

"But?"

"It could end up being a beautiful love story we're the good girl falls in love with the bad boy." She starts rambling on about our "love story."

"You've been reading to many books." I say rolling my eyes.

"Whatever, if you do the tutoring I guarantee you it will happen, anyway I've been reading this story on wa-" she started to have cough attack and then she ran into a wall. "Sorry."

"Anyway what were you saying?" All she did was held up four fingers. "Okay?" 

"Welp this is my stop." 

"Why can't we be in the same classes?" 

"Because the universe hates us." She laughs. "Anyway, see you later?"

"Of course!" We hug and she walks into her classroom. I sigh and walk towards my classroom. 

***

Finally the school day ended and I walked out of the school and stretched. I went to the road about to cross.

"Bye Macy!" I turn around and see Lyn smiling out to me.

"Bye Lyn!" I say walking backwards and waving. Tick....Tick....Tick...Tick... Lyn's smile slowly turns into a scared expression.

"Macy! Watch out!" Tick..Tick.. Everything starts to slow down. I look behind me and I see a huge truck coming straight for me, my eyes widen. Tick.Tick.TickTickTickTick the truck stops and so does the ticking, and I take a deep breath and smile. I look back at Lyn and she's frozen too I look to the right of her and those people are frozen too. Tick.Tick.Tick the ticking starts to slow down so I move out of the way of the truck. Tick....Tick..... 

"Oh my god! Macy are you okay!?"

"Yeah I'm fine." I see the truck drive past. And I see the same silhouette I saw earlier that day. And then it disappears.

Woah weird things are happening!