Ravana

        The move that ended my life. My family and I moved from a city apartment into an addition out in the country. My parents wanted to move out of the packed city into an area less crowded, and it turned out not to be such a bad of a move, in the beginning at least. I still went to the same school with the same people. A good thing that came along with the move was that I moved into the same addition as my middle school track buddy, Brian. My names Joey, and I'm a junior in Rockwood High. Being an only child I get all the perks of getting what I want but with the consequence of being alone in the house if my parents are gone.

        "Hey, Joe. Helloooooooo." Brian's voice pulls me back to Earth. "Dude, it's our stop." My eyes widen as I grab my backpack and rush out of the bus and watch it pull away. My eyes trail up to my new two story red bricked house. New, is actually a lie, although it's new to me, it's a pretty old house. I say my goodbyes to Brian and go into my house, throwing my bag onto my bed as I get up to my room. I toss my shirt off in preparation of going to the bathroom to shower when my mirror catches my eye. There are three different spots of three different scratches marked onto my body, my side, chest and stomach. Sighing, I trace over the dark red gashes in my skin. Ever since we moved into the house, I've felt stinging on my body while I sleep, and wake up to finding similar scratches. I've told my parents of these scratches and they simply pushed it away and said I scratched myself in my sleep. I huff and roll my eyes at the memory, as if my fingernails were long enough to gouge my skin like this? Right.

        I turn my attention to my window and Brian's house sparks up a conversation I had with him earlier today and my eyes widen. I had completely forgotten that I was supposed to go over to his house. So I head over to the dark brown house across the street.

        Brian's room is straight across the street from mine, so we can both see into each other's rooms if we really wanted to. We were having a decent conversation until something out of the corner of my eye catches my attention. I look over into my bedroom window and stare in surprise as two, redish-orange eyes stare back at me in the darkness of my abandoned room. My surprise turns into pure fear as the eyes begin to lift, as if the figure is standing up. Then a large, purely white grin filled with rows of sharp teeth smirks at me. The silhouette of the figure stands to become six foot ten inches, with pitch black skin that shows a large contrast between its eyes and teeth. I stare in horror as a hand lifts to the window, long claws extending from its fingers.

        I finally find my voice and glance over at Brian, whose staring at me in confusion, "d-do you see that?"

Brian looks at my bedroom window, "see what?"

"There's a, thing, in my bedroom!" I stutter out.

"I don't see anything Joe."

        My eyes widen as the figure's claws tap against the window and begin to scratch down the glass. However, the glass reacts strangely as it cracks and starts... bleeding... as if the creature was gutting it like a human body. That second, I feel a sharp, stinging pain in my side. I wince and clench the cotton t-shirt's cloth around the wound and pull my shirt up. Brian's frightened voice echoes in my head, "dude, you're... you're bleeding! There are claw marks on you!" I reluctantly look down and see that it is true. Blood is trailing down my side like it was on the window the creature is still at. My eyes shoot back to the window across the street to see that nothing is there. But I know for sure, that something was there, whether Brian saw it or not, I knew something was in my room.

        After begging and pleading my parents to let me stay at Brian's for the night, they finally agree to let me go back over. There is no way in hell I am ever staying in that room, with that thing, ever again. The evening went by so quickly and before I knew it, it was eleven. Brian and I decided to call it a night, so I lay on the makeshift bed we created with the use of blankets and pillows and fall fast asleep. My sleep was broken at the sound of tapping and clicking on the window a few feet above my head. Groggily, I rub at my hazy eyes and look at the clock next to Brian's sleeping body, 3:15 a.m., then back up again to see the window frame lifting. My eyes widen, all sleepiness left me at that point as a black hand reaches through the window and rests on the frame, its long claws falling with clicks one after the other onto the frame until all four fingers are down. I try to struggle, to get up, to do anything, but something was holding me down. Maybe it was the fear. My mouth opens as I try to call out to Brian, try to wake him up but there is only silence.

        I begin to sweat as the other hand follows the first and makes the same cascading motion as the other. Then a head enters the window, only a few feet above my own. I then come face to face with the flame colored eyes. The mouth of the creature beings to open and turn into the grin I saw before, showing the two rows of sharp teeth as the creature crawls in and rests its feet upon the ground next to my body. The body of the beast looks like a regular man's but having a dark grey tone to the skin, however in the shadows it appeared black. I stare in horror and distress as the creature kneels onto one knee next to my paralyzed body and trails a clawed hand up my body to my chest.

        The eyes blink for the first time and stare into my own as it grins wider. It picks up its hand and closes its fingers together, all the flaws coming together at a point like a drill, barely touching the cloth of my shirt. A raspy, deep voice emits from the creature's still smiling face, "your soul, is mine." I gasp in pain and surprise as the creature beings to pull its arm back and I gaze down at its hand to see what was happening. The clawed fingers move back and following it, trapped between the give tips, was a strand of gaseous looking fog coming out of my chest. The creature lifts its arm with a hard yank and the strand is ripped out of me, connected to a million other strands squirming around its fingers.

        My body beings to feel heavy and weak as I struggle to keep my eyes open to look at the orb in front of me. I think back on what the creature said, my soul is his, that must be my soul. The last thing I see is the creature lifting my soul to its face, opening its mouth and my soul getting sucked into its mouth with an extreme force.

        It has been nearly ten years since I died from that beast. I have been watching through its skin, for my soul was not destroyed, nearly placed in its body as a power source in a way. This creature has been doing this "soul eating" for years and I have been forced to watch. After watching in imprisonment for so many years I decided to give my captor and murderer a name. Ravana.