Parallel

Chapter 3: When the Darkness Comes

Emily's POV:

It was my last day of living. I couldn't take it anymore...I was the second oldest in my family. My dad ran away when I was eight...leaving my mom, older brother, me, and two younger sisters. My older brother was killed in a freak car accident when I was ten and to fill in the seams: I was bullied since I first went to a school.

"Aw come on! No new sketches today?" One of the boys asked me with a smirk on his face. I was pinned against my locker with nowhere to run. I had just been trying to get one of my erasable pens before class...now I was probably over fifteen minutes late.

I kept my head hung down. These boys were always tormenting me. They called me "the little artist" and made fun of my sketches. I guess maybe they were silly...I would always draw myself little friends. 

I had no friends. I had a few sisters at home but they were too young for me to really talk to. My thoughts were dragged back to the present when the boy slammed me into the locker for the third time that day.

"Hey I'm talking to you!" He yelled.

"S...sorry I left my sketchbook at home. But why do you want them anyway? All you do is..."

"Aw shut up!" One of the others smirked. "We don't have to tell you anything."

The first boy grabbed me by the shoulders and whirled me around so my back was to him. He ripped my backpack off my shoulders and tore at the zipper. Then pulled out all my notebooks and looked through them all. "Who says you only draw in your sketchbook?" He laughed and took one of my notebooks. The rest of them followed him back through the hall.

My homework had been in that notebook. Along with a few sketches of course. I already expected that they would all have scribbled glasses and mustaches on them. Probably even some nose or ear hair too.

I was too tired to fight back, not that I ever did, but I had been up all night because of the noises. Last night it was the creaking footsteps in the hall. Sometimes there was a metallic tapping at my window...not like a finger but like wolverine was tapping it or something. The worst was when I heard breathing.

The first few nights I would quiet myself by saying it was my younger sister who sleeps on the top bunk...but one night she slept with my mom and the breathing was still there.

"Emily Bateman!" My teacher cried as I walked into the classroom. He was tapping his foot and looking angrily down at me. "Really, I warned you I would not tolerate you being late another time. And I suppose you forgot your homework again?"

I looked down at my shoes and nodded. I had tried telling on the boys once, but then they had gotten physical for a while. I still had a bruise on my upper arm carefully hidden by my sleeves.

"Report to the principle immediately. My teacher sighed and ran his hand through his hair. "You out of all people I thought would be easy to manage."

I could feel every eye in the classroom on me as I left.

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I couldn't get to sleep that night. I knew that if I tried I would just wake up at three anyway. I had taken my mom's phone while she was sleeping and went onto a private window so I could watch some anime. If I could just stay awake until 3:01 I would be okay and then I could get some sleep.

But of course a spider decided it would be fun to crawl onto my hand. I jumped out of my bed and waved my hand to get it off.

My clock turned to three. Immediately I heard the footsteps in the hallway. At least it wasn't the breathing. I hated the breathing the most because it was always IN the room with me then...but the tapping and footsteps were outside.

I stood in the center of my room, my eyes on the door. The boards squeaked loudly on the other side. I knew it wasn't my mom...this was the hallway that we never used. When we first moved here my mom turned it into a library but the only time I have ever used it was to sneak downstairs because those stairs don't creak. It wasn't our dog either, I could hear him lapping up his water downstairs. That comforted me a little...if he didn't hear it maybe it was my imagination after all.

Then the door handle rattled. That had never happened before.

I shrieked and turned to run to my parent's room...but I tripped on air and smashed my head against a shelf. 

Everything went black. I was falling deeper and deeper into the darkness with the strangest sensation tingling through my head. All of a sudden I couldn't breath. I felt like I was being ripped apart atom by atom. It was more painful than anything those boys could ever have done to me.

And then I felt nothing. I was lost in a sea of strings with everything torn apart.

All there was...was silence. Cold dead silence.

I felt like I didn't exist anymore.

A/N: You look at these anime ppl and are probably like: Aw they is kinda cute. And then you read their chapters and your probably like: WHAT THE HEEEEEECK!?"

STOP EATING MY COMPUTER PUPPY!

Anyway hope you guys will enjoy this story!

-A.R.G