Soul of Roses

Track One

I found out I was special when I was four. No, not that kind of special. I'm not some poor soul with dyslexia and I'm not deaf or anything. I can see things and I never told anyone. My parents don't know. They must think I'm insane...

They're probably right.

My first experience was, like I said, when I was four and I've been having them ever since...

A tiny bit after my bedtime, I felt something shaking my bed. Thinking it was my dad playing a joke, I sat up. It was definitely not my dad. There was a boy shaking my bed. He looked about ten. His clothes were soaked with blood. I just stared at him, not knowing what to make of the situation.

"You have got to help me..." he said.

"H-How?" I managed to say.

The boy looked out my window and said, "He is coming... I have to go." Then, he just disappeared.

I never told anyone.

Things like that started happening more and more frequently until I was six. (When I saw frequently, I mean about once a month.) Random people would come up to me and ask for help. I never knew what they wanted. I tried to ask what they needed help with, but all of them just kept insisting that they needed help. They would disappear shortly after that.

When I seven, I had a dangerous experience. It was the boy from my first experience. He ran up to me in the middle of recess while I was swinging by myself.

"He is coming!" the boy shouted. "Run! Run far away! He is coming!"

I got off the swing and looked all around. I didn't see anyone who wasn't supposed to be on the playground, except the boy.

"Who's coming?" I asked.

The boy was staring at a fixed point in the distance. "It is too late..." he said. "He knows you are here."

"Who?" I asked.

The boy didn't answer, he only pointed off into the distance.

I squinted and looked off into the direction he was pointing. Coming from the forest that my elementary school neighbored was a cloaked figure coming towards the playground without delay. The figure was completely black. He was wearing a hood that covered his face in black shadows. The man's eyes were a shining blue color.

"Who is that?" I asked the boy.

The boy turned his face towards me. His eyes were full of dread and fear. "An evil being," he said.

I turned back to look at the man speeding his way over. To my surprise he was about four steps away from stepping onto the woodchips of the playground.

I looked to my teacher who was surveying the playground like a hawk. Surely, she would stop the man before he could come any closer. She actually looked directly at the man and didn't seem to notice him.

That's when everything felt very cold. I could actually see my breath in the beginning of September! I felt extremely scared as I looked up and saw the man directly in front of me. The boy had disappeared and my teacher didn't seem to think anything of the man.

"Hello...?" I asked.

Even from down below his eyes were the only thing I could see. He towered over me.

The man didn't say anything. He only lifted his hand from behind his cloak and clenched it into a fist for the longest time. I was frozen in fear. When the man loosened his hand, I began to feel more at ease.

But I was wrong.

Before I knew what was happening, I was thrown backward. Before I got a chance to figure out what was happening, I couldn't breathe. The man had his hand around my throat and held me up. I tried to pry his hands off my throat, but he was inhumanly strong.