Never-Never Land

Chapter One

August 28, 2020
*(there is no pandemic in this universe)*

That day walking home in the cold grips of the wind, she knew she was going to be late walking home. She hoped that her mother would be asleep on the couch like she always is around this time of the day, especially since today was a friday and she no longer had to keep up appearances for her coworkers. So she drinks and drinks and drinks until she can no longer grip the bottle hard enough to bring it to her lips. Shaking her head, she tries to speed up her pace to get there before she wakes up. Her teacher had kept her back to ask about a bruise on her arm that was peeking through her sweater. She had to make up another dumb excuse about bumping into her doorway this morning because she was almost late for school. When in reality, she was trying to clean up after her mother's mess of bottles all over the living room floor. Her mother gripped her arm before she could throw away a barely empty bottle that had enough just for a sip.

During the altercation, in the background played the news on their tv. They were talking about a known serial killer in the area. They called him a deranged Peter Pan. They say he escaped from a mental facility while awaiting his trial to sentence him to life in prison for what he had done to children. They say he went after children that were being abused at home and kept them for a while. A few days after being taken, the kids were found dead in new clothes, a haircut, and their arms crossed with a note on top of them. With what is written on the note is being held by the police, the public is calling him an angel of death, or Peter Pan. After letting her mother have the last sip of the bottle she threw the rest out on her way to the school and the rest of the day went by in a flash.

"Because taking kids and killing them is exactly what Peter Pan did." She mumbles as she thinks back to the news of the serial killer. At least she had nothing to worry about since he went after children at least 10-years-old and younger.

When she finally gets home, she sees her mother's arm and legs hanging off the side of the couch and decides to quickly go upstairs to shower. With her hair wrapped in a towel and herself already dressed for bed, she gets comfortable on her bed and starts on her homework from the beginning of the week. Her AP english teacher gave the class a book to discuss and dissect. As they were covering English authors, the teacher had chosen Mary Shelly, as October was just around the corner and decided to give us Frankenstein, as a challenge. She told us for the whole month of October, that she will be giving us gothic literature to dissect and challenge beyond our limits. Not everybody in the class did not like the class as much as I did. Because I liked learning about the book and the reason it was written and the background behind the author in general. It's like it gives the book a different perspective.
Just as this thought passes through her mind, she finishes writing it down in the answer bank about the importance of learning about the author as much as the book for her teacher. She takes the towel out of her hair and gives it a good pass over and makes sure it's dry enough that she won't soak her pillowcase and lies down in her bed. After a while of scrolling through social media, she checks the time and it's about 1:30 am, she sighs and sets her phone's alarm for tomorrow morning and places it next to her lamp on the bedside table. Hopefully I can get enough sleep. She faces the ceiling with closed eyes and thinks about what was going through Mary Shelley's mind when she thought up the idea of Frankenstein's monster.

~*~*~*~

pitter, patter, pitter, patter

Her eyes reluctantly open a peek, her ears twitching at the sound of the rain hitting her window. She checks the time on her phone, 3:42 am. She groans and looks out to her window and looks away. But quickly focuses on the window again. There weren't any water marks nor are there any sounds of rain drops hitting the glass anymore. But what she could see unsettled her even more. There outside the window was a silhouette of a man. One of his hands cupped as if he was holding water, the other leaning against the glass. Although he was crouched, he seemed tall. He looked as if he was wearing a dark-colored hoodie and some dark-colored pants, maybe some kind of sweatpants? In a matter of seconds, the place that gave her the most comfort in the house was taken and changed into something sinister. The window had reminded her a lot of when her mother wasn't drinking and beating her, but of when she cared for her and read her stories. It had a bench right under it and it had windows that had knobs like those of doors, twist and push. Did I even check if those were locked tonight?

Suddenly, he grins. His teeth glinting in the light of the old lamp post outside of her house. That sudden movement of his, propels her to jump off her bed and reach the window. While she kneels on the bench, he repositions himself outside so that he's facing her through the plane of glass, as a tuft of dark blonde hair falls from inside his hood. She reaches for the knobs and twists the lock. But it continues to twist as if the latch doesn't latch. She looks up for the safety pin to find it missing, the dark shadow surrounding the light area of paint where the safety lock should be is missing. She looks back down and faces the man, while still holding onto the knobs. In the few moments of her panic, he has yet to move even an inch from the position he was in. His head level with hers, he smiles wide and for some reason her mind flashed an image of the cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland.

"Hello, my sweet Margaret."

~*~*~*~
Hello.
Um, hopefully this doesn't make people think im out of my mind, lol.
But I honestly wanted to write this because, the first time I wrote this "story" was for my friend that needed a playwright script for an english  assignment and since im better at writing random shit than her i did.
I dont even know how i came up with this idea, maybe i had watched way too many criminal minds and dexter, but at least this was the product.
But i also wanted to start writing this as a form of stress relief.
Even if no one reads this im still gonna continue writing it as journal, you know like how people do yoga.