Glamour [Book 1] (Completed)

Glamour Re-Write Sneak Peak

This is a Sneak Peak, and is never-before seen. The story has, indeed, been altered to make it better than the first draft, and will even include a change in the title. However, for now, this is the remastered Glamour sneak peak....

(Chapter Two)

As lunchtime came around, everything exploded into a void of eternal chaos.

The tables were decorated nicely with tablecloths and bundles of flowers with crystal vases, setting the mood for the older students who were asking each other to homecoming with posters and boxes of chocolate. Marco and I were sitting at our usual table, in the middle of the cafeteria. Lilia, a petite girl Marco kept trying to get me to go out with, was talking with Mel when everything happened. I'd noticed in the past couple days how Mel was beginning to look progressively worse. Her hair was thinner and fell flat across her shoulders, her eyes had sunk in, and her body seemed to be eating itself thin to the bone.

I'd been nibbling on the stale butt-end of the school's cafeteria-bread, not bothering to dip it into the tomato-paste soup the lunch ladies believed to be edible. Mel made eye contact with me, something was filling her with pain, and she bent over her stomach screaming in agony before dropping to her knees as if she were to pray. I didn't move, and neither did anyone else. It was as if I were watching a horror movie in slow motion. Mel's face went slack before she hit the stone floors, her body quivering and flopping around like a fish out of water. Then, before anyone could react, she lay still and shuttered one last jolt of life.

Snapping back to reality, I stood to move toward Mel. She was still talking to Lilia, but I had just seen something, a vision, a prophecy, a horror movie, that I wanted to make sure would never happen. Mel was going to die, I'd seen it, whether it was in my mind or I had traveled back in time to stop it from happening, there was a place I had been where Mel was dying.

Marco was forgotten, still sitting at the table I was just at, where I had the vision of terror, when I forced my way to the front of the cafeteria. Lilia had been overly exaggerating her hand movements, talking excitedly about something unimportant when I reached them. Mel made eye-contact with me when I was next to the girls, her face was even worse up close. Her cheeks were sunken in, highlighting her cheekbones like a living skull, it seemed like she'd aged several years within the span of several days. Lilia quieted momentarily, having sensed my presence beside her, but when I didn't say anything she scratched her head.

"Um, everything alright, Ethan? Can... can we help you with something?"

I glanced at Lilia, and realized that nothing had happened. Mel wasn't dying. And I had rudely butted into their conversation.

"Sorry, I... excuse me." I pushed past the girls, gently pressing a soft hand to Mel's shoulder before passing them and making my way to our school hallway. It was colder, and the walls started to close in. My breath was hitching in my throat, as if a frog had taken a nap in the walls of my esophagus. Air seemed to get progressively thinner, and the more I sucked in, the less my brain would receive. My socks were made of chainmail, and my shoes were blocks of cement. I trudged down the sun-lit halls was if quicksand were rising against my waist and pulling me further to the floor. I attempted to scream, the frustration of not being able to escape my prison of motion, but what came out was more of a wheeze.

"Ethan!" My name was shouted at me, but it seemed distant, and all I wanted to do was find a place to hide away.

Something in that cafeteria had been making me lose my mind, I thought perhaps leaving would make me feel better: but I was wrong. Whatever it was that had a hold on me, was starting to make me mentally sick. I wondered briefly if it was my lack of sleep or my obsession with horror flicks. But, the former seemed to be the more promising of circumstances.

"Ethan!" Someone was still calling out for me.

I didn't react, I didn't have time to stop, and kept trying to press for the front of the school. This would be my only chance for fresh air. For bittersweet relief.

I'd only managed to get a couple heavy steps forward when something stepped in front of my path. I was expecting a teacher, or perhaps my principle, by the towering height of it. The sun's glare through the glass doors in the distance shadowed the person in front of me, I didn't care who they were, and I was only striving to escape my internal prison. The floor below shook, an earthquake of mass destruction, a deadly Californian nightmare come to life, and the lockers shuttered as Mel's body had in my vision. My stomach was entangling itself with my lungs, and my heart was too preoccupied with itself to pay attention to my stiff ribcage being abused by her relentless pounding. The figure that had crossed into my path said nothing, did nothing, but stare and huddle inside of its black draping cloak.

"Where are you going?!" The question came from behind me, probably from the person who had been calling out for me earlier.

The towering figure stepped aside as I made my way passed them, as if they were repulsed by my presence. I was glad for it.

The person, whoever it was, stopped calling out for me but before I reached the half-way point to the front doors a hand slammed onto my shoulder and spun my frightened-drunk mind onto them. It was Mel, her face fierce with determination. She opened her mouth to say something, but I couldn't hear her any longer, as I slumped to the floor screaming in agony. A seizure overtook my body and pulled my brain into a slumber of quiet relief. It was as if I'd seen Mel's death and ingested into myself; to die as I had seen her die in the vision.

Funny, how that was the reality I would soon learn to accept... if only I'd known, how much the future had in store for me. This was just child's play in comparison.

end of sneak peak

stay tuned for more!