Twisted romance

Lacey's beginning

Black Cliff, a small town that sat in the middle of a forest that most called the Dark Forest. The Dark Forest was a mysterious place where many have feared to go in and those who did, either went crazy or never returned. There was said to have lived monsters inside, monsters that looked like us, walked like us, talked like us. But unlike us, they couldn't walk out in the daylight. And most say that they didn't need food to survive because they feasted on humans. No one knows where they came from or even if they actually do exist. Many who believed the monsters of Black Cliff left in fear after people would disappear. Others stayed. Which is the population was so small. The town barely had travelers and if they did, it was from people who were brave enough to go into the forest, but even they too would end up like the others who went into the haunted place.

I have lived here in Black Cliff my whole life. It's just my mom, my big brother Jaden and me. My mom was the one always cautious and made sure we never had the urge to go into that forest. I listened, my brother on the other hand, was rebellious. And because of it, it destroyed his life.

One day, I when he was 16, he went to school and he didn't return. My mom and the sheriff of the town, ran frantically around town in search for him. And he never came home. Days passed. Weeks passed. Almost a month had passed before someone found my brother on the side of the street, clothes ripped and shredded, blood all over them. He was in a coma due to lose of blood for a whole year before he woke up.

After that, he was never the same. From the lose of blood in his system the night they found him, his immune system was weak and he spent most days in bed sick. He couldn't keep food down so they had to inject the nutrients into his blood. He couldn't heal very well, so most of his injury's either got worse or never went away. His nervous system was weak so he couldn't stand on his own. His own body failed to work. His mental state was the worst. He couldn't speak to anyone. He avoided eye contact at any cost. He would get spooked at the smallest noises and if someone so much as touched him he would shriek as if someone was going to kill him. And every night he woke up screaming from nightmares. The screams sometimes lasted for a few minutes and sometimes for an hour and on rare occasion more than that.

No one ever knew what had happened to him in that forest, but me being 8 at the time, scared me enough to never go in that forest. I grew up everyday walking the farthest away from the forest as I possibly could and I imagined the day when I would move from this town and never return, and that day couldn't be any farther away from me.