✘ M I S T A K E S ✘

[di-stri]

✘ Ｍ Ｉ Ｓ Ｔ Ａ Ｋ Ｅ Ｓ ✘
ｙｏｕ ｃａｎ'ｔ ｒｕｎ ｆｒｏｍ ｓｏｍｅｔｈｉｎｇ ｔｈａｔ'ｓ ａｌｒｅａｄｙ ｆｏｕｎｄ ｙｏｕ

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{ｉｎｔｒｏｄｕｃｔｉｏｎ.}

I ᴡᴏɴᴅᴇʀ ɪғ, had I not been wandering the dark streets of that West Australian city, it would have somehow still happened, another day, at another time, maybe under some kind of other circumstances. I wonder if my life would have somehow become this complicated anyway, had I just stayed at home. I wonder if, had none of any of this happened, I would have found out the truth on my own.
I doubt it.

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{ｎｏｔｉｆｉｃａｔｉｏｎｓ.}
9/12/12 ❥
I'd really love it if some of you guys would comment because I really don't know whether people enjoy my writing haha •u• I'm kind of doubting my ability right now so it would mean a lot to me(:
06/01/13 ❥
I'm so sorry it's taking so long to get the next few chapters done guys - the storyline is about to get a lot twisty and turny, and I'm trying to work these words properly for full effect c;
28/04/13 ❥
Chapter Four is up! Five is half way done, I think... ^-^''
30/04/13 ❥
Feel free to comment with any opinions you have on the story (whether you like it, don't like it, what you think is going to happen next, if it's becoming hard to understand, etc.), questions, critique, really honestly whatever you'd like to say! C:
02/10/13 ❥
Oh noo :< i forgot about this for so long! My old computer shut down so I lost all my work on chapters five onwards, but I'm currently re-writing them. Thank you to all the kind people voting in the poll!

04/12/14 ❥
So, I'm pretty sure by this point everyone's forgotten about this story, but I just recently remembered it and decided it would be pretty cool to continue seeing as I actually had a reasonably decent idea of the plot for the first time in pretty much ever. Summer break starts soon so I'll have plenty of time to write, so hopefully this should be up and running again in no time! :>

[di-stri]

{Ｃｈａｐｔｅｒ Ｏｎｅ.}

Wᴏʀᴅ Cᴏᴜɴᴛ: 2 115

ｔｈｅ ｂｅｇｉｎｎｉｎｇ

"Aʙɪɢᴀɪʟ, ᴀʀᴇ ʏᴏᴜ really sure you should go out right now? I mean, in this weather?"
The ever-concerned voice of my best friend was somehow reassuring in a way, like no matter what happened there'd always be someone there who cared, through thick and thin - and yet I still never listened to it.
"Of course I'll be alright," I sighed to the dark-blonde-haired girl standing in the kitchen, lingering near the stove. Her pretty face, with it's pale skin and delicate features, was contorted in worry. "It's only a breeze, Annah."
I could still feel Annah's eyes on me as I walked over to the jacket stand and plucked off my soft leather one, with long sleeves but a body that only covered my sides down to my rib cage, revealing the worn union-jack shirt underneath.
"If it helps, I'll be back by the time you wake up," I told my friend sincerely, which didn't seem to help. Annah still looked worried until the moment I shut the door behind me, at which time I could no longer tell.
Annah was right, of course. It was chilly outside, but it was nothing my jacket couldn't handle. My faithful red jacket, red like the colour of my bright, dyed hair. Originally, I'd had what Annah claimed to be 'the prettiest shade of blonde hair I've ever seen', but blonde was a normal colour. A common colour. I had always liked unique and weird things, and so I dyed my hair a shade of red that made everybody I walked passed look at me twice; a shade that made me stick out, just the way I liked it.
After tonight, I would later reflect, I would never want to stick out again.

It took a short walk and a long cab ride to get to the city of Perth, but it was worth it. At night, like it was now, the city would almost twinkle, much like the stars you could barely see because of all the light pollution; almost as if it were trying to make up for the beauty it had taken away. Everything was shining, even through the cold. Even through the breeze that carried on it chatter and laughter from countless groups of people gathered near coffee shops, near clothing stores. Even through the puddles of water on the streets after the recent rain. Everything was exactly like I'd remembered.
I was meant to meet another friend of mine at a café - Dianna - along with some girl I had never met that Dianna was trying to set me up with. It would never work, of course. While I was bisexual enough to accept a girlfriend, I just wasn't one of those people who did well with someone always there, always waiting for me, always caring about me with the illusion I genuinely cared back, like a wall of guilt stopping me from doing anything even slightly reckless, or anything even slightly flirtatious towards another person. No, I was more of a solo kind of girl - someone who could never really stop their constantly on-the-move life to love anyone other than their best friend, who knew me well enough to know when to let me be anyway.
Only, I couldn't find the café. I dug around my jacket pocket, sure I'd drawn a crummy map or some directions on a piece of paper and put it in there. But then I stopped, and remembered.
Oh. I'd left it at the apartment, on the kitchen table.
Ah well, I thought helplessly, I'll just have to find it on my own. This, however, was easier said than done. After an entire hour of wandering the city, I still couldn't seem to find it. The one person I'd asked for directions hadn't known, and I was too stubborn to ask anyone else. The only reason I'd really asked anyway was to start a small conversation and get his number, telling him that in order to make up for not knowing the location of the café, he'd had to give it to me.
I had said I didn't want romantic commitments. I never said I was against the occasional fling.
I checked my phone for a moment and realised it was almost twelve o'clock - I'd left at eight - and I really had been wandering for longer than I'd realised. To be perfectly honest, for the last hour or so, I hadn't even been watching where I was going, and had somehow ended up in a part of town I'd never even knew existed before. It was quiet, and the buildings weren't as high or pretty here. The city lights had dimmed and the temperature had dropped, and suddenly, I was taken over by a wave of irrational fear.
Don't, I told myself silently. Don't let yourself start thinking of all those things Annah always talks about. Annah would tell me the most horrible stories of the most horrible things happening to the most innocent people out in the city, in the suburbs, in the bush. Her stories of real-life events could take place anywhere, but they most often happened in dodgy parts of cities like this one.
I found myself walking more quickly, my heartbeat pounding against my rib cage as I did so, filling my ears.
It was then I realised someone was following me.

Nothing, I later thought, I had ever previously felt, felt anything quite like I did then. All my worst fears flashed through my mind like a horror movie. And I only now believed the possibility of any of them actually happening to me.
I walked faster.
So did my pursuer.
Stupidly - so, so stupidly - I decided I had had enough of feeling scared of this stalker, and that I would loose him if I stepped into the shadows of a nearby, seemingly harmless, dead-end alleyway.
So that was what I did.
And it made it so much worse.
There was a moment of absolute silence as I pressed myself against a wall and the person that had been following me - I now saw it was a tanned man, around the age of 25 maybe, with tousled blonde hair - stopped walking. He didn't look like one of the normal, lanky guys I generally saw at my school. He looked more like someone who snapped the necks of those normal lanky guys at my school. Which made my fear prick up even more.
And then, all of a sudden, the hands got me. There were almost a dozen of them, grabbing both my arms, my hair, coming from all directions and latching onto any part of me they could get a hold of. They pulled me deeper into the dark alley, whispering taunting words to me softly, quips about how I had made one too many mistakes tonight, about how I should start whispering her last prayer now.
"Hello there, sweetheart."
A voice, somehow rough and husky but also gentle and inviting at the same time, echoed through the silent night air. I slowly realised it had come from the blonde boy who had previously been following me, but was now striding directly towards me. I considered thrashing and running away, but the other men had me held too tight. So tight, I now realised, it was probably cutting off a lot of my circulation. Instead I stayed silent.
The blonde boy made his way calmly up to me. He was almost a foot taller than me, which made him even more intimidating. I could easily tell, when he stood so close tome. So close that, if I wanted to, I could almost move up onto my toes and kiss him, should I want to.
I really didn't want to, though.
He smiled down at me now, a smile not suited at all to the situation. He looked as if he was amused.
"If you're going to kill me," I said, my voice soft without my meaning for it to be, as if I didn't dare disturb the eerie silence, "I really would like if you got it over and done with."
The blonde boy laughed, as if what I had said was genuinely funny. The men behind me and to my side all laughed, too.
"Oh, sweetheart," he said in that unimaginably odd voice of his, "now why would I do that?"
"We have so much more planned for you," said another man, sounding older, with a rougher, raspier voice, from behind me. He was whispering it in my ear, and I could feel his hot breath across my face. I shuddered. It smelt of beer and spirits. Far too much beer and spirits.
I asked the blonde boy then, in the sweetest, most innocent voice I could muster; "Would you mind telling the drunk a-hole behind me to stop breathing in my face?"
Everything after that happened really, really fast. The men behind me let go. Instead, they shoved me in the brightest corner of the alleyway, kindly allowing me to see them crowd around me angrily. A few of them were a lot like blonde boy. Some were younger. Most were older. Like the man with the dark brown hair and the long beard who was all up in my face now. He smelt like alcohol. So that was who I had heard behind me.
Face painted with rage, the blonde boy walked through the crowd of men - he didn't have to push as they all parted ahead of him. All but one: beer breath. The blonde boy shoved him aside so hard the older man stumbled and fell to the ground.
Now there was no one between me and Blonde Boy. Blonde Boy and all his rage.
He lifted a fist, as if to hit me.
And then he didn't.
Of course, I don't think he had much choice. He was knocked to the ground, after all. At first I thought it had been Beer Breath, but then, somehow, I managed to see even through the thick darkness. It wasn't Beer Breath. It wasn't anyone even like Beer Breath.
It was a boy, clad in black, who looked about my age - 17 or so. He hadn't been in the angry crowd just moments ago, nor had he been holding me before. But somehow I still felt he was part of the group, all dark and intimidating. Which was why I was so confused as to why, right now, he was punching Blonde Boy in the face.
Everybody but Blonde Boy and the other boy, the one who had just magically appeared as if falling from the sky, was still. It was shock, I knew. Apparently, in this group, nobody ever attacked Blonde Boy.
But then Blonde Boy went limp, face covered in blood, and everything abruptly started up again.
Simultaneously, every man but Blonde Boy lunged at the other, clad-black boy. It was instantaneously dark again and I had trouble seeing, but I knew they were all attacking him.
For a moment, I thought. The moment lasted forever, and my thoughts were detached. Firstly, clad-black boy had saved me. I had a feeling the punch Blonde Boy was about to deliver would have knocked me out, and then God only knows what the other men would have done to me. So, for that, I owed the clad-black boy somehow. To start, I decided 'clad-black' boy wasn't a good enough name. He was now Saviour Boy.
Secondly, the group was attacking him. I considered helping Saviour Boy for a moment, and quickly decided it would be best. We might both be killed, but at least, with my help, Saviour Boy might have some slim chance of escape, as thanks for saving me. Maybe I could then escape somehow on my own, but I'd cross that bridge when I came to it.i
Only I couldn't move. I couldn't move one muscle, not one part of me other than my eyes, to watch Saviour Boy and the group of men. But as I watched, I didn't see Saviour Boy be beaten. Instead I saw Saviour Boy defy all odds, and beat them instead.
Even so, there were still a few strong men staggering towards him, ready to fight when he ran to me.
That's what Saviour Boy did. From across the alley, he ran to me, and took my hand, and whispered a single word in my ear. It took a moment to process. It took a moment to realise what he meant, and a moment to realise he meant it, and that he meant he'd do it with me.
"Run."

Sorry, I hope the grey isn't too hard to read. If it is, please PM me.
Also, I had to change it all from third to first person, so if I made any mistakes,
you can also tell me about those.

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{Ｃｈａｐｔｅｒ Ｔｗｏ.}

Wᴏʀᴅ Cᴏᴜɴᴛ: 2 206

ａ ｌｉｔｔｌｅ ｂｉｔ ｏｆ ｔｒｕｔｈ

Tʜᴇ ᴄᴏʟᴅ ɴɪɢʜᴛ breeze bit at my nose as I ran side by side with the impossible boy. God knows how long my legs were moving – minutes? Hours? Time passed in a blur, just like the buildings I crossed. I was acutely aware when we passed the border between the dark, lonely, creepy part of town to the brighter, more crowded section. Part of me started to feel safe, but the forefront of my mind knew I would probably never be safe again, no matter where I went and how bright it might be. My heart began to pound even harder than it had previously, and my legs began to shake. I was almost about to drop to my knees when Saviour Boy finally stopped near a train station, breathing heavily himself. I moved shakily to the floor, sitting down where I was reasonably sure nobody would step on me.
Saviour Boy’s face was a mask of calm, the rapid rise and fall of his chest the only indication he had done anything but sat drinking lemonade for the last hour.
“I…” I tried to speak, and got out one syllable before feeling completely and utterly out of breath again. I went to pass a hand over my face in an attempt to calm myself, only to realise I was shaking.
Saviour Boy sat beside me, and I could tell behind those eyes he was fighting with himself to keep his composition. He had the greenest of eyes, clear like grass after freshly fallen rain. They put my own murky blue eyes to shame.
“Are you okay?”
I sat there, shaking with both cold and a maelstrom of emotions welling up inside me which I couldn’t quite name, and knew without a doubt I was not okay. But I couldn’t tell him that. For some reason something inside me hated the idea of inducing pity in the eyes of this boy I had only just met – and met didn’t even cover it. Met made it sound like I’d just passed him on the sidewalk and said hello. No, he’d flown from a rooftop, toppling over a blonde man who was about to give me a concussion and then proceeded to defeat a group of various other dangerous men in order to keep me safe, and then ran with me to a train station before collapsing along with me on the ground.
For some reason, I felt like I owed him something other than inducing pity into those beautiful eyes.
He ran a hand through his tousled brown hair, and I imagined that for a moment he too was shaking. But surely my mind was playing tricks with me.
Apparently realising I was not fit to answer such complex questions as ‘are you okay’, Saviour Boy resorted to words more simple.
“So… what’s your name?”
My mind spiralled into another swirl of confusion and unnecessary feelings. Why would he want to know my name? Should I tell him? Yes, I do think I owed it to him to at least tell him my name. But would it be safe? Maybe I should lie, and say my name is Donna or something. Maybe…
“Abigail.” There. It was too late now – apparently part of my mind had decided without a doubt I should tell him, and tell him the truth. Damn my mind – it was sneaky enough to know that I should just tell him before I could stop myself.
Now I was starting to sound insane.
“That’s a nice name,” Saviour Boy said absently, looking out over the group of people passing in front of us. I looked out to them as well, and it seemed to dim my thoughts at least a little – made them more easily manageable. There were quite a few people, considering it had to be near 1 AM by now. A gaggle of older teenagers were laughing together - a mixture of boys and girls of all body sizes and skin colours, some sober and some very obviously drunk. One girl, a few feet behind them, was jumping about and spinning in the air like she wouldn’t see tomorrow.
A pang of emotion stabbed at my heart as I was reminded how close I came to not seeing tomorrow, and I looked away from the girl, to the only other place there was to look, really.
Saviour Boy was still studying the crowd, and didn’t notice as I studied his profile. He didn’t look like one of those guys who spent their spare time lifting weights, working at the gym, or tried very hard at all to be fit. But he was muscular, there was no doubt. He looked strong, but not obviously buff. Toned, I supposed.
I wondered for a moment how much of his time he spent jumping from roof tops, saving figurative damsels in distress.
“What?” Saviour Boy turned to me with a look of puzzlement, and I realised I’d accidentally said that aloud.
“Oh. Uh, I just mean, like…” I fumbled for the words to explain to him what I meant without sounding nosey or like a complete fool. “I just...”
“You want to know whether I do this full time, huh? This whole saving people thing.” He gave me a small, hesitant smile, and in that moment he seemed like such a normal boy. He could have just passed by me in the school hall, for all the innocence behind his eyes right then. He didn’t seem like some trained ninja teen from a hidden secret society anymore. He just looked like a nice, normal guy.
I nodded shyly, a small bob of the head.
“I guess,” he responded, looking out over the crowd for a second time. I had an irrational urge to reach out and touch his face just then, an irresistible need to know what that soft-looking skin really felt like.
I looked away.
“Usually people don’t get taken in public like that – like you did. Usually some young girl will just be wandering by an abandoned home, in a deserted part of an empty town. Out in the bush camping. Somewhere secluded. Somewhere people won’t notice she’d gone missing for a long enough while to at least drag her to their lair.
“It happens to guys, too, don’t get me wrong – but it’s just more regularly females. And more regularly far further from crowded places than you were. This group of men… they pick their victims specifically. The least risk. Kids who ran away from home. Girls taking a trip somewhere kilometres away from any city. Not seventeen year olds less than one kilometre away from a crowded area – simply lost looking for a café where she’d meet her friend, nonetheless!”
“Hold on - how do you know I was going to meet my friend?” I said, my blood running suddenly colder than before. Was my Saviour boy really just some creep who was following me, and had saved me just to gain my trust?
Saviour Boy waved his hands in front of him, as if I was about to shoot him and he was trying to stop me. “Nothing creepy, I swear. Just, the people I work with, we have to track this kind of thing. Like your cellphone. I know it sounds weird, but we’re the good guys – we do it for your safety. We have to keep up, have the same information the Darkness do. They managed to get their hands on the technology that enables them to read texts, listen to conversations, access everything on your phone just like we do. Only they use it to help them decide whether or not it’s safe to kidnap people, rather than help them.”
"Wait," I interjected, "the Darkness? Who is that?"
"Oh, right. They're... the group that attacked you, I guess. But there are a lot of them out there, more than you saw. It's kind of like an cult, or a gang, or, more accurately, an agency. I work in a similar agency, except obviously we're quite different in morals. Our agency is dedicated to stopping the Darkness - so, of course, someone ironically decided to call us the Light. Anyway, this is probably way too much information. There's a lot to consider, and there's only so much we're really meant to tell people - in fact, we're not meant to tell anyone anything, but victims are an exception."
I sat in silence, staring at my Saviour Boy. So he wasn’t just my Saviour Boy – he’d saved many others too. He possibly worked with a bunch of other Saviour Boys and Girls. Who tracked cellphones and laptops and people.
It was all a bit too much to take in, honestly.
We stayed in silence – me, sitting in shock; Saviour Boy, looking at me worriedly as if he might have just broken my brain – for quite a while onwards. I began to doubt myself, and my competence, and whether I really deserved to know this much about something I was quite sure nobody else had ever heard of. I doubted Saviour Boy, and whether he was telling me the truth, or if he was in fact just a very well trained and very drunk martial arts master. I doubted society, and the government, and all the people who worked for each. I eventually managed to doubt every single thing I thought I knew.
My head became a mess of doubts and worries, thoughts convincing myself none of this really mattered, and most of all, an overload of concerning information. I had plenty of questions to ask, and none of them had anything to do with me.
After almost a half hour my head was beginning to hurt and I felt some part of me breaking down under the weight of everything I'd just gone through, even though I wasn't responsible for a lot of it. There was a lump in my throat, and somewhere inside me I ached for something, something I needed like air. Was it safety? Was it more information? I wasn't sure. All I knew was that, right now, my existential crisis was really not happening at the right time, and I had to keep myself together until I had a chance to really think this all through.
A gentle hand on my shoulder made me jump and spin around, hyperventilating with the image my mind had immediately delivered me of Blonde Boy having found me again, back to finish me off. For a horrible moment that was all I saw before my eyes focused and I realised it was but Saviour Boy, sitting there looking concerned, holding his hand just a little away from me, obviously having promptly removed it after my reaction. I let out a breath I hadn’t even realised I’d been holding.
“You should get home,” he said gently, standing up and offering his hand to me. I nodded, took it and got up on unsteady legs.
“Thanks.” My voice was quieter than I meant for it to be.
“Are you okay to get home or...?”
“Y- no wait, damn it. I was meant to get dropped off by my friend, and I don’t have any money for a cab.”
Saviour Boy let out a little laugh, though I’m not sure why. “That’s okay – I can pay.”
“Oh no, I’m sure I could just-“ I stumbled over the next couple of words. What could I do? Walk? That was practically impossible from here. Take the train? I didn't even have the spare change for that.
“No, honestly, it’s alright.” Saviour Boy still had a small smile on his face as he looked at me, probably expecting another denial. But what else could I do?
I sheepishly agreed, and seemed like no time at all before the two of us were in a taxi heading to my suburb. I felt horrible for having to ask something like this from him, but I didn't see any other choice. I just really hoped whoever he worked for paid him well to compensate for things like this.
“You have a nice hair colour,” Saviour Boy remarked, after two minutes of nothing but thick silence and a feeling of shame radiating from my side of the car.
I could feel my cheeks flushing, and I mumbled a ‘thanks’, telling myself I’d only make a fool of myself if I tried complimenting him back. He smiled and looked back out the window at the sparkling city as we passed.

After twenty minutes of wallowing in shame on my part and comfortable silence on his, the cab driver stopped close enough to my house for me to walk, and I looked gratefully at Saviour Boy as he paid the driver and turned to me. I spoke before he had a chance.
“Are you okay to get back to your house?”
“Yeah, I’m fine thanks,” he said with a small smile. “Well, good night, Abigail.”
“Good night, Saviour Boy.”
I smiled and got out of the car, closing the door behind me and leaving him with the nickname. As I turned and walked away, I never could have known the sad smile that crossed his face before the car was off again.

Sorry if I screwed anything up, I still have to edit it. I'm very lazy ok

[di-stri]

{ＣｈａｐｔｅｒＴｈｒｅｅ.}

Wᴏʀᴅ Cᴏᴜɴᴛ: 1681

ｇｏｏｄｂｙｅ ｌｕｌｌａｂｙ

warning: bit of violence and death in this part, nothing gory but just thought I should put it out there.

I’ᴍ ʙᴀᴄᴋ ɪɴ the darker, lonelier part of Perth City. How did I get here? I’m not sure - all I really know is what I feel, and what I feel is that a man is following me. He gets faster with every footstep and I cannot move any quicker. The shadow of a large, bulky man begins to spread from under my feet, merging with my own. I can feel myself on the brink of tears as I wish with all my heart I could move any faster, but I can’t. I can’t even turn around. I simply walk calmly, as if I was being controlled by somebody else.
I'm beginning to see more and more of the man’s shadow behind me as he gets closer, and soon it’s almost completely covered my own. That’s when I feel his muscled arm slipping around my neck, and his body pressing up against mine. We have stopped moving. I’ve stopped breathing. I’m not even sure I could if I tried.
A tear slips down my cheek as I realise with a dread that spreads through my chest and paralyses my entire body what this man will do, and that I have no way of stopping him.
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to think of nothing, try to ignore everything around me, but I can’t. Behind my eyelids images still haunt me, pictures my mind has created of what it thinks my future will look like from here on.
It is not bright, and it does not go on for long.
I need something to comfort myself with. Something…
We begin moving again. The man behind me moves no further away from me as we walk, and I am forced to open my eyes to at least see where we’re going.
It’s an alley. A dark alley, so much darker than it had been the first time I’d seen it – the first time I’d seen Blonde Boy and the first time Saviour Boy had saved me. They are taking me to the same place, and all of a sudden I know who it is behind me, and I am filled with even more terror than before.
When we reach the back of the dead-end alleyway, I squeeze my eyes shut once again as he flips me to face him and holds me against the wall with his forearm still against my throat. I suck in as much breath as I can before I can’t breathe anymore. Somehow breath doesn’t comfort me.
“Open your eyes,” he whispers. Only it’s not the same husky voice from before. It’s softer, sweeter, nicer. How? I can’t help but open my eyes, and am shocked at what I see.
It’s not one of the men from the Darkness, the gang which had previously attacked me, but Saviour Boy.
“Open your eyes,” he whispers again, though he obviously knows now my eyes are open. “Please, for me, open your eyes.”

I was torn away from my dream by an ear piercing scream, of a voice I knew well. For a moment I thought it might be my Saviour Boy, and was terrified.
But when my mind registered the voice, I realised it wasn’t my Saviour Boy.
The terror didn’t go away.
My eyes snapped open to find my room ransacked, chairs flipped on the floor, tables upturned, my drawers emptied. I slept with two sheets over me, and the first was carelessly thrown across the floor, too far for me to have thrown in my sleep - if, that is, I moved in my sleep at all. I shivered, though not with cold.
The scream bounced off the walls, echoing through my bedroom once again, causing me to jump out from under my lone sheet, running with bare feet through the apartment.
The rest of the house was ransacked too. Nothing was left in its place - not one chair, not one table, not one speck of dust. Not even my best friend, Annah, who I could still hear screaming.
I crashed through her bedroom door to find Blonde Boy with his knee on her chest, a knife to her throat.
Time moved very, very slowly.
First, Blonde Boy looked up at me, a wave of recognition passing over his face. I don’t know how I could tell, but I knew he only recognised me because of my hair. Nobody forgot my hair.
Then he smiled. I was not expecting the smile. It seemed so genuine, so innocent, I was dumbfounded.
Then, without ever breaking eye contact with me, he moved his arm in one smooth motion and cut open my best friend’s throat.

_________________________

Tears welled in my eyes, almost blinding me. Or maybe that was my rage, I couldn’t be sure. Either way, without thinking, I picked up the first thing I saw – a letter opener – and ran at him, screaming. The only thing he could register was shock before I came at him and stabbed his hand so hard he completely let go of the knife, letting it clatter to the floor, staining the rug with Annah’s blood.
He cried out in pain and went to hit me, but somehow I managed to duck and ran at him again, having left the letter opener in his hand. I must have done some kind of full-on rugby tackle move, because he dropped to the floor, hitting his head hard. Blonde Boy’s eyes were closed, and he didn’t open them again.
My heart was thudding so hard against my rib cage I thought it might break free, and I just couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen.
I ran over to Annah, who was laying limply on the bed. Her blood wasn’t flowing like it should have been, though I couldn’t be sure – I was practically blind with all the tears in my eyes.
“No, no, no,” I whispered, leaning over her to listen to her breathing – there was none. Tears flooded down my cheeks and my mind fogged up so completely with this kind of horrible pain, I couldn't even think of anything I could do next. CPR? Prayer? Not that I believed in prayer, and I’d never really listened to anything to do with CPR or any kind of resuscitation, no matter how much I currently wished I had.
“No, no, Annah, please…” It had to be too late. Maybe I should try anyway, maybe I could-
A hand, holding some kind of scented cloth, reached around my head and before I could retaliate, held the fabric to my face. Another of the Darkness. I mustn’t have heard them coming up the stairs – I could see them all now, though. Some familiar faces from my first encounter with the Darkness, some completely new to me.
That was the last thing I remembered before everything went black.

I woke up to a darkness just as full as the one I had seen when unconscious. I had a terrible headache and a scratching feeling against my left cheek.
Cautiously, I moved my head to the side a little, and felt a weird pulling sensation.
That was when I realised my head was covered with a potato sack.
“What the...” I muttered softly, trying to sit up and shake off the sack at the same time. It was just about to slip off when my head was yanked back by my hair, giving the extra bit of movement to get the head cover completely off and give me an even worse headache.
“Hey there, sweet cheeks.” The face of the man above me whom I was forced to look at by the angle of my head was twisted into a cruel smile, and sent shivers down my body.
Blonde Boy.
He had crusted blood under his nose and splattered down his arms, and I shuddered wondering whether it was his or somebody else’s.
“Long time no see,” I said softly, feeling as though he might hit me if I didn’t answer. Then again, he’d probably hit me if I did.
My presumptions turned out correct.
Blonde Boy raised his unharmed, dirty hand and hit me across the face. I‘d say we were even now, but I guess that didn’t really make up for stabbing him. So there was more pain in store for me, then.
“Careful there,” said another, throaty voice behind him as a shorter but bulkier man approached us. “He doesn’t want her harmed.”
“He wants her alive,” Blonde Boy spat. “They’re two different things.”
My heartbeat was beginning to speed up again, and I focused on slowing it. I mustn’t be scared. I had to devise a plan. I couldn’t let them think I was weak.
What was I going to do? I didn't know if I could make it out on my own - I needed my Saviour Boy. But I couldn’t see how he’d know where I was.
Then it hit me.
“You know…” I needed something insulting to say, but my mind was cluttered with plans and pain. I couldn’t think of anything, but it was too late now. “Your buddies are all a bit dumb.”
Blonde Boy spun to glare at me with eyes like blood stained daggers. “What did you just say?”
“Now that I think about it, so are you.”
“Nathan...” the shorter man warned – apparently that was Blonde Boy’s name - “don’t.”
“You’re all pretty butt-ugly,” I said, looking over to the one who’d just spoken, and he looked harshly at me as if he knew what I was trying to do.
“Now you’re just asking for somebody to hit you,” Blonde Boy said coldly.
“What if I am, you nasty idiot? What're you gonna do about it?” I responded, vowing silently to myself that someday I would think of better insults, and more importantly better plans.
“I'm gonna make like a genie, and give you your wish,” he snarled, apparently not seeing the funny side of my terrible attempts at escape. He raised his fist and I braced for impact. As if in slow motion, I saw the shorter guy reach out, telling his accomplice to stop – but not before Blonde Boy’s fist could make contact with my jaw, ensuring the headache I had would never leave me for the rest of my life.
The momentum threw me to the floor, where I stayed, eyes closed.

So I cut this chapter in half, seeing as it was going to be way too long.
Aaaand then I proceeded to not post anything for another five months.
You have no idea how sorry I am, but I'll try my hardest to keep up my act this
year - as if that'll actually happen.

_______________________________________________

{Ｃｈａｐｔｅｒ Ｆｏｕｒ.}

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ｗｅｌｌ, ａｔ ｌｅａｓｔ ｉ'ｍ ｌｅａｒｎｉｎｇ ｔｈｅ ｉｍｐｏｒｔａｎｃｅ ｉｆ ｌｉｆｅ ｉｎｓｕｒａｎｃｅ

“Lᴏᴏᴋ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ’ᴠᴇ done!” yelled the shorter man. I could imagine his entire face lighting up in red, though I couldn’t see. Not with my eyes closed as they were, trying to give the impression I had passed out – or possibly died, if you didn’t notice the shallow rise and fall of my chest.
I felt a trickle of blood inside my mouth.
“She deserved it!” By the way Blonde Boy’s voice changed I could tell he was standing up, but no less angry. Heavy footsteps told me he was walking away in an obvious rage, and I came far too close to laughing and ruining the entire façade.
The shorter man, apparently already more calm with Blonde Boy gone, sighed, and walked up to me. He grabbed my ankles and dragged me across the cement. I could feel blood well up on my lower back, and knew I was going to have a very impressive graze next time I got the chance to look at myself. If I did ever get the chance to look at myself again.
Maybe 20 seconds later, I was dumped into a cupboard carelessly, crumpled into the corner.
As soon as the shorter man’s footsteps faded and I was sure nobody would look for me again anytime soon, I immediately scrambled for my phone. I was sure it had been there – I always had my phone with me. Unless, of course, I’d just woken up and was in my pyjamas. But, thank goodness, I hadn’t taken the time to change the night before, and was still in my jeans and t-shirt.
Only my phone wasn’t in my jeans.
I cursed softly – that had been my only way out. I considered trying something else, but no other ideas came to me. None but one.
Cautiously, I pushed open one cupboard door and peeked out. It was the first time I’d really seen where I was, and was not impressed when I did take it all in.
It reminded me of a warehouse: impossibly high metal and concrete walls, catwalks, rusted stairs, and almost completely abandoned. I slid silently out and closed the door behind me.
Not for the first time, my heart was beating uncomfortably fast, but I didn’t have the luxury of focusing on calming it down.
I sprinted on quiet feet to the nearest, darkest corner, which just happened to be another flight of stairs. I made my way up them as quickly and surreptitiously as I could. This time I didn’t stop moving – I went straight around the corner head first into a place I had no idea about.
There were doors. There were lots of doors. None of them meant anything to me. I dared not go into them, should somebody be there.
But my caution was useless, as I could do nothing to stop anybody walking out of one of those doors, as a stranger was right then. They were looking at the ground tiredly, and hadn’t yet noticed me, though I couldn’t promise for how long that would last.
I did the first thing I thought to do – I opened and slipped through the nearest door, closing it softly behind me and thanking my lucky stars it hadn’t been locked.
The room was grey and concrete and plain, with no outstanding features save for a few blood stains on the wall I hoped I’d never have to see again. I stood as closely to the door as I could without actually touching it, and listened for footsteps. I could hear the man muttering something about pay as he passed, before there was silence again.
I waited another minute or so before opening the door a crack and peeking out. When I was sure nobody was there, I slipped out, closed the door gently behind me, and ran down the corridor.

_________________________

This was taking too long. I must have been lurking through the endless maze of hallways at my feet for at least ten minutes - it felt like I was walking in circles - continuously passing the same dull doors, turning the same sharp corners, hiding behind the same metal barrels that seemed to loiter in every corridor when I heard the same creaking noises echoing around me. I knew it was probably the metal of the building groaning under the new heat, but still, better safe than sorry.
I was just beginning to consider swaggering out the front door – which I had passed briefly, and was covered by guards – when I heard muffled voices floating on the air around me. I began to panic, moving on quiet feet as quickly as I could away from the noise, trying to avoid the squeaking floor panels. There had to be an open door somewhere that I could slip into and hide behind. The uniform barrels weren’t in this hall and it was too long for me to run away without being spotted. I tugged on the nearest door handle, but that just caused more noise.
The voices stopped abruptly, leaving the entire warehouse eerily quiet, just the silence and my almost audible heartbeat. I froze, having absolutely no idea what to do next. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t hide. What else was there to do?
Thumping footsteps began, growing louder with every beat. I had no choice – I ran down the corridor, cursing silently at my heavy feet. The floor groaned against my weight as I skidded around the corner and continued running. I could no longer tell the other footsteps from my own, so I refused to stop for at least the next two minutes.

Once I considered myself far enough away and completely lost, I stopped. My pursuer didn’t. He, apparently, had also kept running, but was obviously slower than I was.
I had to find a way out. Feebly, I tried the closest five doors, none of which budged. The steps began to slow, but they were considerably louder now. On quiet toes, I moved down the corridor, further and further, spending most of my time looking behind me rather than in front. Just as I saw the tip of a shoed toe peek around the corner, I hit into a wooden door.
Dead end, I realised, swallowing my dread for feeling at a later date. My hand snaked across the polished surface for the shining silver doorknob, and tried at silently opening it, praying to whoever might be out there that it was unlocked.
And it was.
Holding back a twelve-year-long sigh of relief, I slipped through the door and closed it just as another man rounded the corner. He wasn’t even aware I was there.
Turning around, I gathered this was probably the best tended-to room in the building. Polished, dark wooden furniture – a bookcase, a plain table, a black metal filing cabinet… two. Right in front of me, though, was the grand, deep, rich brown wooden desk, adorned with a green shaded lamp, papers, staplers, and a range of other things you’d expect to see on a grand office desk. But most importantly, there were small boxes for organisation.
Never had I so much loved small boxes for organisation as I rummaged through them quickly, starting with the smallest ones. It was barely any time until I found my phone – my beautiful, precious, gorgeous phone. Immediately I set it to its lowest volume, and called the first person on my speed-dial, which was Annah - who was, obviously, not available to pick up the phone. It rang a few times before going to voice mail, and I hung up. Perfect.
What wasn’t so perfect was what was to follow. Almost immediately after I hung up, a gang of footsteps thudded as heavily as I thought humanly possible up what I believed to be a flight of unstable, metal stairs. I spun around to where I heard the sound emanating from, to realise all too late there was another door at the back of the room.
Pocketing my phone and re-organising the desk as best I could within about five seconds, I rushed out the door I had entered through, only to hear footsteps coming from there, too. I peered down from the catwalk to see a bunch of burly men thundering towards the staircase that would no doubt lead to me. One of them happened to look up and see me.
“Hey!” he yelled, voice echoing off the walls. I gulped, took in a deep breath, and yet again did the first thing I thought to do.
Jumped off the catwalk.

_________________________

Thankfully, as planned, I managed to grab onto the edge of it just before plunging to what would probably be my ultimate death. I had to move fast, as I’d successfully jumped myself closer to the men, cutting down my possible time by half.
I dropped down to the catwalk below, and waited for them to climb the rusty staircase. Another of them yelled out a greeting to me, something along the lines of “Hey, you there,” but it didn’t sound particularly friendly and I didn’t have time for chatting anyway. So off I jumped again, to the catwalk below, catching the one above so I could safely drop down to the other. As they doubled back, I did it again. And once more.
I was now on the supposed ground floor, and the goons had a far way to run on their heavy legs before they got to me, but I was sure there’d be more coming.
I ran off in the first direction I glanced over at, that had no staircase and no doors and only a tiny bit of light. Perfect for hiding in while I gathered my thoughts, and hopefully led the others to believe I’d ran somewhere else.
As I hid in the darkest shadow I could find, I took the moment to try and control my breathing as best I could, to be as quiet as I could. It worked only barely as the others finally reached the bottom, bulky and angry-looking as ever. Thankfully, they didn’t seem all that bright, and took the larger staircase route that was on the complete opposite side of the building than I was.
I relaxed just a little, allowing myself just a little time to calm down, and that was when somebody grabbed me by the shoulders and yanked me back with strong hands, through a door I hadn’t even realised, in the dark, that I was standing in front of.
I opened my mouth to scream and found it covered by a hand, and looked desperately up to see who had me trapped for the third time that day. Briefly, I wondered how long it would take for somebody to finally kill me at this rate.
But then those thoughts were swept out of my head when I recognised Saviour Boy’s face.
“Shh,” he said softly, cautiously removing his hand from over my mouth and letting go of me. “This way.”
The relief that flooded through me was indescribable, a wave of security that I didn’t even realise I’d lost.
I followed him out the door and down a number of other catwalks and flights of stairs without disruption – he, apparently, knew where he was going. Occasionally we’d hear the heavy footsteps of a member of the Darkness running in search of me, but nobody really saw us.
Eventually we got outside of the warehouse through a back door, and I let out a massive sigh of relief, stopping for a moment to catch my breath after all that sneaking around.
“We don’t have time,” Saviour Boy said, a mixture of concern, urgency, and a hint of irritation I hadn’t seen in him before. He took my arm and led me on reluctant legs through a block or two at least of abandoned land, littered with the remnants of various knocked down buildings, before we finally got to the section of the town that hadn’t been demolished. It was just as empty as the rest of it had been; only now there were buildings and sign posts to hide behind.
It was almost eerie, walking through the city that looked so similar to my own, had it been completely evacuated twenty years ago. Glancing inside windows I could still see coffee cups sitting on dusty tables, obviously having once been full but evaporated over the years. There was one particular thing I saw that frightened me most – a child’s toy, a stuffed bear, laying worn and weathered on the sidewalk, looking blankly up into the clear blue sky. It had obviously been dearly loved. No child would leave a toy like that on the side of the street with any kind of will.
I shivered, looking up the pathway as Saviour Boy continued to pull me. I kept looking ahead of me, my head full of white noise, and Saviour Boy kept pulling me for the next couple of minutes until he took a sharp turn and I was snapped back to reality.
His hand was wrapped around mine now and I tried my best to disguise a blush before frowning as I noticed where we were walking into – a dark, dead-end alleyway. For some reason I didn’t feel uncomfortable in it, though I knew I should have been with my history.
I guess Saviour Boy just made me feel… safe.
All feeling of security was gone, though, when he spun abruptly on his heel to face me, not letting go of my hand and making me stumble into the wall. We had reached the end of the alley and, as I composed myself, I was just about to ask what the hell he was doing when I saw the knife.
It was shining silver, glinting beautifully and dangerously in the sunlight as it flew to my side. The pain was sharp and immediate, and paralysed me. Slowly, I dragged my heavy gaze up the knife, to the hand – up the arm attached to that hand to the shoulder, and finally, to the face of the man who had stabbed me.
Saviour Boy looked at me with eyes full of pity and pain, and a silent apology I couldn’t comprehend.
Then it all went black.

[di-stri]

{Ｃｈａｐｔｅｒ Ｆｉｖｅ.}

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ｓｏｍｅｔｉｍｅｓ ｙｏｕ ｊｕｓｔ ｒｅｇｒｅｔ ｗａｋｉｎｇ ｕｐ ｉｎ ｔｈｅ ｍｏｒｎｉｎｇ

Mʏ ᴇʏᴇs ᴏᴘᴇɴᴇᴅ slowly and reluctantly, a pounding headache pulsing through my entire being. I groaned and tried to sit up to find myself held by cords - sliding via needles into my arm, holding nubbins to my nose to deliver oxygen, attaching a peg-like contraption from my finger to the pulse monitor. My blurry eyesight scanned the room slowly, far left to far right.
There was a curtain. A heart monitor. A small set of drawers doubling as a table. A bunch of buttons against the wall, a little remote, another wall, a television, a window, a visitors seat with a slim, handsome boy seated in it, a cupboard…
Wait.
My head snapped back to the seat beside my bed so quickly the world spun and did a couple of acrobatic backflips before finally resting into its designated place. I blinked once, twice, to try to get away the blur of tears that came with the sharp pain in my nose, that apparently quick movement and a bad headache resulted in.
The boy smiled. “Hello.”
Once my lazy sight had sharpened, I quickly took in the boy’s appearance. Blonde. Short hair. Astoundingly clear blue eyes, like a weedless ocean expanding into the depths of his soul. What was he doing in my room? Speaking of my room…
“Where am I?” I asked.
“You’re in hospital.”
I sat up so quickly my heart monitor and a few of the tubes were almost yanked off of me. I felt at least half a dozen needles tugging at my skin, but that didn’t stop me.
“Hospital?” My high, disbelieving voice rang out off the walls, the curtains and the closed door. From the room behind me, I could almost swear I heard a man hissing “shh”.
“Yes,” the boy said, seemingly unaware of my tiny outburst. “Hospital.”
“Who are you?” I asked abruptly. “How long have I been here? Are you staff? Are you one of those distant cousins I never see unless someone's getting married or somebody almost died?”
He almost laughed. “I’m Chase. I’m not staff, and I don’t believe I’m one of your distant cousins. You may have met me before, but I doubt it.”
“Why might I have met you before?”
“Oh, I get around. Generally wandering the city streets with a clip board, lingering on a picture in Jake’s wallet, watching films, hacking into the government computer systems…”
“Governme- Are you some kind of terrorist?” I asked, voice catching on ‘government’ and rising on ‘terrorist’, so that maybe if I was kidnapped or brutally murdered somebody would hear and piece it together.
“No, no, no, no,” Chase said, waving his hands in front of him in a way that seemed almost familiar to me. “I’m from the Light.”
“The… Light..?” That reminded me of something, but I couldn’t pinpoint what.
“A secret organisation formed under select part of the government’s supervision, specifically to defer or preferably stop any action from an anti-‘good’ organisation wittily named the Darkness. I presume you’ve heard of them?”
That was it. “I... think so,” I said, uncertain as to reveal just how much I knew - which, honestly, wasn't as much as I might have liked.
“Good, good. I thought so. I also presume you’ve met somebody else from my department..? Probably dressed in black – that’s tragically like him. Green eyes, brown hair, slightly repelling personality..? His name is Jake.”
“I don’t know. Maybe?” I said. The brown hair, green eyes, black clothes and working for an organisation supposedly dedicated against the Darkness and to helping people sounded like Saviour Boy, but his personality didn’t seem repelling to me at all.
“You probably have. We have sources saying he was the one that stabbed you.”
And then I remembered. I remembered being saved, and stabbed - I felt almost like I remembered falling to the ground, bleeding out, trying to stop it with my feeble, weak hands, and slowly watching the world go dark around me. I looked down slowly to the blood-soaked cloth at my waist, felt the pain radiating from it. I remembered well.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice suddenly tainted with a kind of darkness, a kind of pain and anger that couldn’t quite be explained, let alone mixed with confusion and forgiveness as it was. “Yeah, I know him.”
“Great,” Chase said happily, “Well, he disappeared a month or so ago and then he stabbed you and ran away and hasn’t been legitimately seen since. Of course, there are rumours floating around that he’s visited this hospital, specifically your room, a couple of times. I believe these rumours, and I believe he’s been coming here to see whether you’re conscious or not for the last few weeks. Now that you are, I believe he’s coming back to finish you off, waiting until you’re awake so he can watch the life drain from your eyes. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s done it.”
I found myself sitting there numbly when he finished, my mouth having opened in a surprise and horror like none other, the feeling spreading down every inch of my body as the room went silent.
“Basically,” Chase said, “We’ve got to get you out of here now.”

_______________________________________________

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Iɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴏᴠɪᴇs, breaking out of hospitals always seemed rather easy. You just had to exit the room, slip past the nurses, make it down the extensive corridors and through the door without being seen and you were out. The process was relatively similar in real life, however it was considerably less simple. For instance, exiting the room was, in itself, a challenge. Not only were there other patients around and nurses doing regular checks on “the girl who was almost murdered”, but there were bandages and drips and heart monitors to consider. Once those were dealt with, there was the pain. Laying in bed was enough for me, let alone having to get up and move, especially quickly. The corridors were hell. It didn’t take much time in hospitals like the one I was staying in to realize that no matter what time you decided to leave your ward, you were bound to bump into one person or another. Thankfully, all the people we bumped into happened to be patients who were in general too drugged up or unwell to even pay that much attention to us. Nurses passed by too, of course, but it was hard to bump into them when Chase and I were busy hiding from them in storage rooms and behind pillars.
It was a trek, but we made it out within the hour.
The doctors didn’t want me to leave – they thought it would tear my stitches, or I might go into a critical condition just going out for coffee. My wound was, in all honesty, a rather bad one. But if Chase was right, it wouldn’t be getting better any time soon.
“Shh,” Chase hissed as my feet brushed up gravel in the parking lot with each dragging step. We were already outside the hospital, but there was always the chance of a member of staff coming out for a smoke or a chat and seeing us, or a patient or visitor reporting our strange pair.
“Sorry,” I whispered back, though there was not much I could do about it, and really I didn’t care to be taking too many unnecessary precautions right now. The wound was bad enough to be sending pain signals all the way down my hip and legs, and it was making it difficult to walk and even think entirely straight. Chase had parked his car at the far end in order to “not attract attention”, but it felt more like he had parked it on the other side of the world.
“There’s just a little while longer to go,” he told me softly, jogging from tree to car as I stumbled along the edge of the line of vehicles. He seemed to recognize my pain, and I wondered briefly if he knew what it was like. Chase had said, “It wouldn’t be the first time he’s done it.” Did that mean that perhaps he, too, had been a victim of Jake’s? My Saviour Boy no longer seemed like a saviour at all. Had he just saved me all those times so that he could watch me drop to the ground, watch the blood slowly trickle between my fingertips as my breath slowed and my heart gave out?
Disgusting.
Chase stopped at a black Holden near the furthermost corner of the lot. It looked a lot like half the other cars in the area, but as Chase pulled the key out of his pocket and slipped it in the door I knew it must be his. He slid into the driver’s seat and left me to wretch open the passenger side door and jump in myself. Within a few minutes I was watching the hospital shrink behind the many other buildings of the city from behind the car as we drove away.
After a minute of silence, I asked; “So, do your people have any theories as to why Jake went rogue?”
“He’s always been a bit different from everyone else,” Chase responded calmly and without hesitation, not taking his eyes off of the road. “I figure maybe he’s had it in his head the whole time, and only did it last month.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, he’s always been pretty obsessive. He was constantly looking at this one case – something about the head of the Darkness, I think. But other than that, he was always analysing this one particular girl’s file.”
“That’s so creepy.”
“Yeah, it really was. Would you like to know who’s it was?”
“I doubt I’d know them,” I said truthfully. I knew quite a few people, but nothing in the Light’s kind of repertoire.
“Oh, I’m sure you do,” Chase said with the slightest hint of a smile at the corner of his lips. “I mean, I’d hope you would. I’ll give you a clue: it’s you.”
I paused for a moment. “Me?”
“Yes, you.”
I paused for another moment. That couldn’t be right. Why would Jake have been looking at my file? “Why?”
“That I’m not so sure of,” Chase admitted. "Maybe he thought it had something to do with what he was researching. Maybe he just went a little bit crazy. Or maybe he just really liked you."
I wasn't sure if I should be flattered or repulsed. It was a nice prospect, being the subject of someone's interest, but someone's obsession? And an unhealthy one at that? It simply didn't sit right in the heart. But perhaps that was just the fact he'd tried to kill me.
I shook my head and looked down at my bandages. They were getting a little bloody, but nothing I couldn't handle. I'd grabbed a handful of painkillers on my way out of the hospital, but there weren't many and I didn't particularly feel like wasting them, so when my hand automatically went to my filled but small pocket, I had to purposefully pull it away. Not today, kid.
"So," I said after a long silence. "Where are we heading to?"
We were well out of the city by now, on the freeway in a direction I couldn't really think about over the growing sound of my own heartbeat in my ears. The longer we drove, however, the less and less houses there seemed to be, so we had to be going somewhere reasonably secluded.
"An old place I used to own," Chase told me. "I bought it a long time ago - or maybe someone else did and gave it to me, I can't recall - and figured it would probably be more useful kept and not lived in than sold for potentially less than I bought it. Turns out my judgement was good."
"How long will we stay there?" I asked. Thinking about that question, my homelessness began to finally sink in. I didn't have my apartment partner any more. I probably wouldn't be able to afford the rent, and I couldn't replace Annah, not any time soon. Even if I could, it wasn't safe to go home any more, not now that Jake and the Darkness both knew where I lived.
Oh god, I considered for a moment. What if Jake was working with the Darkness the whole time? He could have been a double agent, just staging all that fighting... oh my god, did I really idolise a cold-hearted killer?
"I'm not sure," Chase responded, interrupting my desperate train of thought. "However long it takes to take Jake down."
"Take him down?"
"Well, what else would we do?" he asked. "Ask him nicely not to try to murder any more innocents? I don't think so."
I took a deep breath and turned to look out the passenger side window out to the side-view mirror. There was a single car behind us, but I didn't question it. While we were far out, we weren't far enough for there to be no one else who lived here.
So they wanted to kill Jake.
Fine with me.
──────────────────
It wasn’t long until we reached Chase’s abode. It was fenced off, both by actual fencing and by thick walls of ivy. Once you made it through the creaky gate entrance, however, you could see the actual house itself. Chase had parked just outside, and when I glanced at house and then back at the car it looked incredibly out of place. The dark hue was fine, that much was true. But the car was clean, shiny, and unscathed. The house was old and broken. At least two of the windows were shattered, the paint was peeling off the walls and the wood of the door was so cracked I was unsure we'd be able to make it in. The house did not look like somewhere anyone should be living in any more, let alone a structure that should even be allowed to keep standing.
Chase look out his keys, opened the door with little struggle and walked right in.
I was forced to follow after him, of course, and the interior of the building looked not much better than the exterior. The paint was stuck to the walls and ceiling a little better than it was outside, but it was extremely badly lit and I didn't even have to touch the furniture to know it was covered in dust. Objects were scattered over the floor and tabletops, everything from what I presumed used to be foodstuffs to a single toothbrush beside the old, broken television and stand.
"Home sweet home," Chase commented, walking through the open doorway to the hall.
I cringed and followed after him.
He directed me through a labyrinth of doors to one near the end of the hall. It, too, was made of cracking wood, and it had obviously been closed so long it took Chase some real effort to open it. Once he did, however, he reached in, turned on the light, and revealed the room itself.
In the middle sat a blue-sheeted double bed covered in plastic. To one side was a wardrobe, however it would have been impossible to use as it had caved in on itself some time ago. To the other side, a set of drawers. Chase walked in and tore off the sheet of plastic from the bed, scrunching it up and sticking it under his arm.
"Here's your room," he announced. "Good luck. Have a look around."
Chase walked out, and I took another glance at the room.
Three items of furniture. There really wasn't much to look around at.
I sat on the bed. This, I decided, was going to be a long week.

Finished!! Kind of!! I hope it's alright - I have big plans for the rest of the story already <:

[di-stri]

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Wᴏʀᴅ Cᴏᴜɴᴛ: 1 985

ｂａｄ ｄｅｃｉｓｉｏｎｓ

Eᴠᴇɴᴛᴜᴀʟʟʏ, I ᴏᴘᴇɴᴇᴅ my eyes to darkness and cold. I had fallen asleep not long after Chase had left me in my new room, despite it only being late afternoon. Obviously I was still rather exhausted from the last few days.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the unlit room, and it took me another moment to realise I was in fact still in the bed I had fallen asleep in. Waking up in the same place you fell asleep was always a good sign, and one I hadn't gotten all too much recently.
It had to be quite late at night – or perhaps very early morning – and I must have been woken by something. For instance, the voices I now noticed outside my door.
Of course, one of them was Chase. But he was talking to someone else, someone I couldn't decipher, but someone I felt I had met before. They were far enough away for their voices to be extremely muffled, but I could still hear snippets.
“I told her… psycho… you’re not welcome here anymore… trying.” That was Chase.
“Do… care?” That was someone else.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Of… matter! I won’t… like you.”
“Staying.”
I was missing too much – I couldn’t keep listening. Their conversation continued for another couple minutes, and I could tell both of them were trying not to raise their voices enough to wake me. If only I could tell what they were saying! It seemed important. It must have been, if they were having the conversation in the dead of night.
"Earlier, were you... following us?" Chase's voice.
"Yes." The mystery man.
So the car behind us on our way from the hospital wasn't just another resident of the area. For a moment, my heart started pounding violently. What if it was Jake? What if he really was here to finish me off? It couldn't be - him and Chase couldn't be having such a calm conversation if Jake had a thirst for blood.
"Leave," I heard Chase say though the door. It sounded final, an end to the conversation which had gone on for who knew how long, and the other man grunted. After a minute of other various movement noises, I eventually heard the door open and close loudly. Another few seconds later, I heard footsteps approach my door.
Quickly, I pulled my blanket back up closer to my shoulders, closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. The door opened a crack, allowing light to flood in. It stayed open for only a few moments before closing again, and the footsteps left.
Like that, I fell asleep again.
──────────────────
The next thing to wake me up was the sunlight steaming in from the dirty window behind my bed. I groaned and turned over, but eventually accepted that I'd have to get up and start living again some time. When my feet touched the floor it was cold, but I put up with it and walked out into the hall. I walked in the direction of the non-blocked end of the hall and rubbed my eyes. God, I felt sluggish.
"Welcome to the land of the living," Chase commented as I walked into the main room. "Actually, maybe I shouldn't speak so soon. You still look pretty dead to me."
"Shut up," I told him, though the words weren't harsh. "Is there a working shower in here? Do you even have soap?"
"I'm sure I could find some somewhere," he said, getting up out of his chair at the dining room table and walking down the hall to a seemingly random door that happened to hide behind it a white-tiled bathroom. It was dusty and slightly cracked, but not as disgusting as I expected. I ran the water in the shower and it washed away most of the dirt to reveal a reasonably well-preserved cubical. Chase came out of the cabinet under the sink with an armful of things - a bar of soap, still wrapped in plastic thankfully, and a bottle of conditioning shampoo. I thanked him, placed them in the shower, and closed the door behind him as he walked out.
I took off my shirt and looked at myself in the mirror. I was bruised nearly everywhere. There was a huge, grossly-healing graze on my back from when I'd been dragged across the cement in that warehouse. I could almost see the finger marks, painted in black and blue, of one of the Darkness on my upper arm. I sighed and took a step into the shower, allowing the lukewarm water to wash away all my worries, if only for a moment.

After I finished my shower and had changed into the clothes I'd taken from my closet the hospital, I walked back into the main room where Chase was still sitting. He'd taken out a black, bulky laptop and was tapping away furiously at it as if he had far too many emails to be writing in far too little time. He only paused to look up at me when I spoke.
"Hey," I said in an effort to catch his attention, which I did. "I wanted to ask you something."
"Shoot," Chase responded, closing his laptop lid both in order to focus on me and almost as if he were hiding something. I shook my head. He couldn't be. He'd helped me, right?
"I heard voices last night," I told him.
"Oh," Chase said. "That's a real health concern, maybe you should get it checked out. Stress drives people mad, you know."
I rolled my eyes. "They were real voices, Chase. One of them was yours."
"That's not possible."
"It has to be."
"I slept right through last night, Abigail. You couldn't have heard me because I wasn't talking." I didn't recall having ever told him my name. Ah, it was probably from the clipboard on my hospital bed. Or maybe it was just another Light thing.
I frowned. "You're absolutely sure?"
"Positively. It might have just been a dream."
I didn't believe him. I didn't say that.
"Anyway," Chase said after a moment's hesitation, "I have to go out today. About now, actually. I have to go to the Light agency, fill them in on what's been happening. You stay here, and don't let anyone in, okay?"
He didn't wait for a response before standing up and collecting his laptop. Chase walked down the hall, presumably to get the rest of his things, and I stayed in the main room as he did so, thinking over what he'd said. It wasn't a dream, I knew that. It couldn't have been.
Chase walked back in with a suitcase and a cheery smile on his face. "Have fun," he told me with fake sincerity as he strode past and made his way to the door. "Don't get almost-murdered again."
"I'll try not to," I said as he stepped out the door. I didn't know if he'd heard me. I heard the door lock behind him. So, I wasn't leaving whether I wanted to or not.
──────────────────
The house got pretty boring after a little under an hour. I'd made my way through almost every room by now, sweeping up dust wherever it bothered me most. It was all pretty boring and empty, and obviously somewhere nobody had called home for a long time now. The only room I hadn't gone through yet was Chase's.
I knew it was his room because it was the only one with things inside, and the only one that was already dust-swept. That and the fact it was the main room of the house.
I considered going inside. I had no idea how much longer he'd take. He couldn't possibly mind, right? It wasn't like this is where he always lived. There couldn't be anything inside that he really wanted to hide.
It only took another half hour before my boredom rose to the point that I finally decided to go in.
The room was organised a lot like mine, with a small window behind a double bed - however his sheets were red - and a wardrobe and set of drawers. Unlike mine, his wardrobe was unbroken and filled with clothing, and he also had a desk and cabinet. The cabinet, I could tell, was the most regularly used piece of furniture in the room, but it was grey metal and held closed by a padlock I couldn't even attempt to break into.
I tried the drawers next.
The bottom drawer was filled with socks and underwear, so I didn't look too far into that. The first, however, contained a few things - some Vicks vapo-rub, a bandaid, a butterfly knife, a pen, and a journal.
I glanced around, almost as if I was checking Chase hadn't come home when I wasn't paying attention and decided to hide in one of the many shadows of the room. Obviously he hadn't. I took out the journal and went go to sit at the desk on the other side of the room.
It was a well-used book. When I opened it the spine opened according to gravity rather than use, and fell open flat against the table in the very middle of the book.
The left page was simply the ending to a different journal entry, presumably one that started the page before. The right page was the beginning of a new one.
I didn't see Jake today. It's been so very long now. I don't know if he'll ever forgive me for what I've done. I don't know if he'll ever find out.
Nobody knows. How long can I keep this secret to myself? I was so very close to telling Mandy today at lunch, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. They'd kill her. They'd kill her just like they killed everyone else. Everyone else I loved. Oh god, what have I done?
I moved back away from the book slightly, as if it were a person itself and being too close to it may put me in danger. What was he talking about? Who was 'they'? I had to read on. I flipped to a random page earlier in the book.
Jake William Alsandair: green eyes, dark hair. born on September 18. master of martial arts to an unknown extent. tutored to a college level...
Alsandair, huh? What an odd name. It wasn't quite as odd as the fact that all the notes about Jake filled a good two pages or so, going on to talk about his interests, previous occupations, old girlfriends - almost everything there could be to know about the kid. I didn't read it all, because honestly, I didn't want to know anything more than I absolutely had to about him, but I read enough to be creeped out. I flipped to another page, and realised that it, too, was about Jake. I did that a few more times before finding one that didn't start with his name.
I keep thinking about how our mother died. About how she was murdered. In front of both me and Jake. I don't understand how I got mixed up in all this. I wanted to be an accountant, for God's sake. Where did all that go? I miss when-
I looked up in surprise when I heard Chase's footsteps in the hall. I panicked, closed the book and stood up from the seat. I couldn't make it out of the room without him seeing me. How had he come inside without me noticing? How long had I been reading for? I made such a horrible mistake. He was going to walk into the room at any moment now, start yelling me, telling me to get out...
Chase arrived at the open door way.
He looked at me with a blank, slightly confused expression for a few moments before it seemed to finally sink in.
"What on Earth do you think you're doing?"

_______________________________________________

{Ｃｈａｐｔｅｒ Ｅｉｇｈｔ.}

Wᴏʀᴅ Cᴏᴜɴᴛ: 1 332

ｄｅｖｅｌｏｐｉｎｇ ｔｒｕｓｔ ｉｓｓｕｅｓ

Hɪs ᴠᴏɪᴄᴇ ᴡᴀs even but surprised, and I could tell just by the way his lips moved that the rage was about to come any moment now.
"It's not what it looks like," I said, though it was obviously a lie - this was exactly what it looked like. His top drawer was still open and his journal was on the desk I was standing in front of and my hands were still covered in dust from cleaning the other rooms and the journal had collected some of this dust in finger-print-shaped circles on the cover and page edges and it was all just really very incriminating.
"It is exactly how it looks like!" Chase echoed my thoughts, his voice rising in the anger I had known was coming. I couldn't stop it, I knew I couldn't. Why even bother?
"You're right, it is what it looks like. You know what I've been doing, so I won't lie to you. But this-" I said, gesturing to the book still sitting innocently on the desk, "what the hell is this?"
"That is none of your business!" his face was beginning to get red and I could see a single vein rising on his neck already. I was so incredibly screwed.
"Why is it all about Jake? What is with your obsession with him?"
"I have no obsession whatsoever!" Chase stepped forward, closer to me but also in the direction of the drawers I had been rummaging in. I remembered the knife inside the top drawer - the open drawer.
"It's all about him! Why?"
Pressing on was a mistake. The second I saw Chase glance over to the drawers, I knew exactly what was going to happen. We both sprinted over to it at the same time, but there was no denying he was simply closer and perhaps even faster. Even once his hand was in the drawer my momentum took me forward, and I couldn't manage to turn around before he seized my bruised arm and pushed me against the wall. He put his forearm to my throat and held the butterfly knife to my side, just under my ribcage, and I had a brief flashback to the dream I had had right before Annah was killed.
"Why were you going through my stuff?" he asked.
"I got bored," I responded honestly. The knife dug closer to my skin, almost ready to pierce it.
"Tell me the truth. Why? Why were you in there? Why were you reading that? What do you know?"
I considered making a sarcastic remark referring to some of the creepy things he'd written in his notebook, but decided against it. If I wanted to keep my life to myself, I'd also better keep my wit to myself as well.
"What do you know?" Chase repeated, loudly this time, practically yelling in my face, as he moved the knife in closer. This time my shirt and skin couldn't hold it off any longer, and the blade stuck into my side, and I cried out.
"Tell me," Chase ordered calmly.
"I don't... know... anything..." I told him breathlessly, and he pushed in the knife further and I couldn't help but scream.
"Shut up!" he exclaimed, looking out the window worriedly. The house was secluded, but apparently not completely. How could he be considering neighbours at a time like this? He had a knife under my ribs, for heaven's sake - he obviously couldn't care that much about what people thought of him.
"Just... tell me why," I said to him, unable to take my eyes off his face and look down at the wound I could already feel damaging me beyond repair once again. Why, oh why did I keep getting stabbed?
"Would you really like to know?" Chase asked me, but again didn't bother with a reply. "Obviously you didn't read far enough after all. He's my brother, did you know? The great Alsandair pair. The things we've done in our time, you would never believe."
He smiled to himself for a moment, before remembering the weapon he so obviously had inside the person in front of him. As a final act of defiance he twisted it and I made another pained noise, except this time more strangled, as I guess my vocal chords weren't dealing well with all this agonised stress. He took out the knife and removed his arm from my throat and threw the knife to the side with a disgusted look. He didn't even look back at me as I crumpled to the floor, and only grabbed his journal off the table on his way out.
I gasped for air from my place on the floor and held my wound. I knew what this would do to me, and I knew I would have to go to hospital for it, yet again. It was a lot like what Jake had done to me, honestly. Except perhaps with less murderous intent. But really, I decided, you never knew with the Alsandair pair.
It took all I had to stand up and look at the window frame. I needed to get out of here before I bled out, or Chase decided to be a little more like his brother and come back for more. There was a latch on the window that I could open, but there was also fly wire covering the entire pane. I would just have to deal with it.
If it had taken all I had to stand up, it took more to open the window. I stopped measuring in 'all I had's when it came to pushing out the fly wire with my spare hand - the one that wasn't holding my wounds.
Before I left, I decided to take a few steps to the side and kneel down to pick up the knife. I had an idea to help me get away, and at this point I figured I really needed a weapon to defend myself with anyway. After that, I climbed up onto the bed and slid out the window, and that's when I heard Chase's footsteps again.
I closed the window quickly and didn't bother with the wire. Immediately, I ran to his car and used the butterfly knife to slit three of his four tyres. I didn't have time for the other. I had to get out of there.
I was over the fence by the time I heard Chase run outside and curse at the sight of his car. I peeked through a hole in the planks of wood and vaguely saw what he had in his hands - it was big, and looked dangerous. An axe? A sword? A chainsaw? A club? I wasn't about to hang around in order to find out.
I crawled across the length of the fence in his neighbour's yard. Nobody was home, I knew that. The house had practically completely flattened, as the roof had collapsed and the walls were breaking. Nobody could be home if they wanted to be.
I heard Chase climb into someone else's yard - he must have thought I was on the opposite side of the house.
I jumped another fence.
And another.
It took a few more pained jumps and climbs before I reached the road. I didn't generally have a very good sense of direction, but I always, always knew where town was, and so I knew which way to head on the road.
I could barely hear Chase wandering about the deserted neighbourhood now.
It didn't matter, anyway. I couldn't stay here.
The road was long, and mostly empty save for some broken cars and weeds. I couldn't see the city on the horizon but I knew it was there.
I took one last look at Chase's place. He had to be a psychopath, I had no doubt.
I faced towards the horizon again, clutched my side, and began to run.

[di-stri]

{Ｃｈａｐｔｅｒ Ｎｉｎｅ.}

Wᴏʀᴅ Cᴏᴜɴᴛ: 2 605

ｔｈｅ ｈｅｌｐ ｏｆ ａ ｋｉｌｌｅｒ

Iᴛ ᴡᴀs ᴀ long, long way from Chase’s house to the city, particularly on foot. He never ended up catching me, whether it was because he didn’t know where I was or simply because he just didn’t care. I had to stop a few times to catch my breath or briefly feel sorry for myself, but in general I was a rather good runner and very good at pretending to not notice the stabbing (hah!) pain in my side which did not go away. I was beginning to suspect my old stitches had ripped, but there really wasn’t much to do about that. I just had to keep moving forward. Every now and then - approximately every two or three kilometres - I began to doubt myself, and doubt what I thought I was doing, and where I thought I was going. But I knew where I was going, and I knew what I was doing. I was going towards the city. And I was surviving.
I’d find a home once I’d managed to be sure Chase wasn’t about to rock up behind me in his black four-wheel drive.

I had no idea how much time had passed before I reached town. It could have been anywhere from an hour to a day. All I knew was that it was dark - very, very dark - and the sun would likely be coming up quite soon.
I made it to the underground train station – the Joondalup line – and found a place in a corner that I could curl up and rest. At least down here I was sheltered from the weather. Oh, my God, how I had fallen from my apartment life in the last week. I must have looked practically homeless, in my dirty clothes and huddled up alone. I stayed like that, sitting in silence, for only a little while before I began to overthink.
What did I really want right now? Annah. I really wanted my best friend, the one girl I always knew was there for me; the only person who I dare say I ever truly trusted, and the only person who never let that trust down. But my opportunities for that were long gone. What else could I possibly want? Someone new to trust. Somewhere safe to stay. Someone to love. I think, at this point, the commitment I had always been so intimidated by was finally starting to seem more appealing. Commitment, trust… that sounded better than anything right now.
But then again, so did food.
I sighed and curled myself in an even tighter ball. That was enough consideration for one night. I needed some rest. I closed my eyes, and I couldn’t be sure whether or not I had managed to fall asleep. If I had I was sure it was one of those rests that felt like they lasted only a second – when you were just laying down one moment, and the next it was morning and you had to get up and you had no idea what had just happened. More of a passing of time than a method of overnight refreshing.
Either way, for the second time in a row, the sound of a voice bought me back to consciousness.
It was soft, and cautious, and frankly I thought it might be a little bit scared. But then again, so was I when I heard it.
“Hey… are you alright there?”
I didn’t know whether or not I should open my eyes. Whether or not I should look up. I recognised the voice, after all, and it was not someone I’d like to have seen again.
Jake.
“Are you awake?” he asked.
I dug my nails into my palm in a little fist, the pain waking me up enough so that I could think clearly. It was definitely him. This was definitely not a dream. What did I know about Jake? He wanted to kill me. Who had I learned that from? Someone else who had tried to kill me. Who could I trust? No one. I could only trust what was actually happening, rather than what I had been told. And what was happening was that Jake was not, at this precise moment, trying to kill me. So I looked up.
“Oh, you are. Hello again.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. Last time I saw him he’d stabbed me, tried to kill me. What was there to say to that?
“I know last time we talked didn’t go down very well. Could I please have some time to explain? You look very cold. I have a jacket.”
He did have a jacket – he was wearing it. After a moment more of silence, Jake hastily took off his jacket and laid it on me. It was incredibly warm. For a moment, it felt just like being back at home.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. Early. The sun is just coming up now.”
I took that information in. So I must have fallen asleep after all.
“Why are you here?” I also asked.
“I don’t know. I felt like I should be here. I don’t really have anywhere I’m meant to be at any given time lately, and I couldn’t get to sleep. I decided the central train station might be a fun place to go in the dead of night.”
“How can I trust you?”
Jake paused. “You can’t. But I’m the only option you have left, other than staying down here until the crowds come in and you get trampled and laughed at.”
“It sounds better than being stabbed again. I’ve had quite enough of being stabbed lately.”
“That’s fair enough. How about I promise not to stab you so long as you promise to come to my apartment and get some sleep? I’ll leave the door unlocked if you want, so that you can get out if you feel like you need to. I’ll promise to do whatever you like so long as you promise to let me take you to the hospital again tomorrow.”
“No,” I said. “No, I’ve had quite enough of hospitals, too. They don’t bring on very good memories.”
“Alright. We can talk about it tomorrow. How does my place sound?”
That was a very good question. Frankly, it sounded dangerous. But it also sounded extremely appealing. If I was going to die, I may as well die in comfort in somebody’s house, rather than by starvation or hypothermia in a public train station. “Good, I suppose – but I don’t want to sleep. First, once we get there, I want you to explain everything.”
“Deal.”
------
It didn’t take half as long to get to Jake’s apartment as it had to get to the station from Chase’s. In fact, the apartment was situated in the city itself. The walk reminded me of not too long ago, when I had come here to meet Dianna and that other girl. I wondered briefly what they thought had happened to me. Did they know about Annah’s death, or how she’d died? Did they know about my disappearance? It didn’t matter now, I supposed.
Jake had to prod me a few times on our way there so that I didn’t collapse on my feet. Not only was I mentally exhausted but I was also physically. Once we walked in I didn’t bother to take much into consideration. The walls were white. The living room was mostly clean, with only a few things out of place and some tracks of dirt from the front door way. It was considerably nicer than Chase’s home had been – a white sanctuary in comparison to a broken, old hellhole. Too bad I hated both of them.
“So,” I said as I settled myself down on a seat in the main room, “tell me, Jake, why have I been stabbed twice now? No, wait, start from the beginning – why have you been looking me up for such a long time?”
“Well,” Jake said, and took a deep breath; “it’s a long, boring story that I’ll shorten down so you won’t fall asleep. I work with the Light, right, who work against the Darkness. I didn’t really ever mention it to anyone, but my main objective as a member of the Light is to track down the head of the Darkness – kind of like the C.E.O. I suppose. There’s a bunch of boring stuff I’ve found out, but nothing interesting enough to mention- until I came across you. For some reason, you seem to be linked to him. I mean, he was always sending out scouts to your home, watching your phone more than anyone else… I was wondering why he gained such an interest. So, obviously, I took an interest myself.
“Which is why I knew where you were in the city that night – I’d been tracking you for a while, and when I linked up gang activity in the same area to your plans, I knew something was wrong. I figured they might have been trying to kidnap you, which I suppose they ended up doing anyway. Sorry about that.”
“What you should be sorry about is what happened afterwards,” I told him coldly. “Explain that, would you please?”
“Right. Okay. So, obviously I knew the Darkness were starting to take active steps towards whatever their eventual goal is with you, and you’d naturally just gotten far closer to whatever it was than you should have. You did extremely well in getting yourself out, but you just honestly hadn’t studied the place for as long as I have, so I helped you out.”
“I am so sick of people not thinking I’m capable of helping myself any more,” I muttered under my breath.
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Go on.”
“Sure. So I was helping you out, getting you out of the warehouse I’d managed to locate thanks to your phone. But once we were out there I knew it wouldn’t be enough. They would eventually just come outside, see you, grab you again… I’m good, Abigail, but I’m not good enough to fend off the entirety of the Darkness. So I did the first thing I thought of doing: I sent you to the safest place I could think of. A hospital.
“I mean, think about it. You’re no good to them mortally wounded. They wouldn’t bring you in like that. You’d have to go to hospital, at which time they wouldn’t be able to reach you. From there, I thought maybe I could move you somewhere safe, find somewhere they didn’t know about, somewhere like my apartment. But then Chase got there before me, and it just… became a bit of a mess.”
“He said you were coming in to check if I was conscious so you could ‘finish me off’. He said you’d done it before.”
“I was coming in to check you were still alright. And I’ve never tried to kill anyone, Abigail, believe you me. Not anyone innocent, at least.”
I took a few moments to let it all soak in. So Chase had lied this whole time. Jake was still my Saviour Boy, there for me all along. But it felt wrong to call him that now. I had thought he’d tried to kill me for so long, there was no regaining that trust now. And how could I even know he was telling the truth about not trying to kill me? Actions above words, I supposed.
“Were you the one at Chase’s in the middle of the night?”
“Yes, that was me.”
“Why?”
“I followed you from the hospital – I’d been staying in the car park for a while at that time, checking there wasn’t any suspicious activity. Chase was one of my partners, but he’s not any more. At the time I hadn’t heard of any plans to move you, so I followed to check it was okay. Obviously it wasn’t.”
Obviously. Jake had seen the secondary stab wound on my side, and had to know who it was from. I was partly surprised he hadn’t asked yet, but I also understood. I deserved my answers first. “Why isn’t he your partner any more?”
“He told the Light I had gone AWOL, tried to kill you and strayed from the path of good. He told them he thought I might be working for the Darkness. I am now, obviously, somewhat of a fugitive.”
“But you’re not working for the Darkness, right?”
“No, definitely not. If you believe anything I say, at very least believe that. Please.”
“Okay, I’ll believe you.” I took a mental note and filed it in my mind for later reference: Jake may be part of the Darkness.
“Good. Thank you. Now you should go get some rest.”
“You too,” I told him. I hadn’t generally taken much time to look at his face in the last hour, but now that I had I realised just how worn he looked. The bags under his eyes were considerably more prominent than they had been the last time we’d met, and the stubble on his chin and jawline was beginning to become a little obvious. When I looked down at his arms and hands I realised they were scratched, grazed and bruised from doing God knows what, and I dare say I saw his fingers trembling on his knees as he held them like they might be the only thing keeping him from falling over.
Before I could take any closer of a look, Jake stood from his seat and offered his hand to help me up. I was in a chair, so it wasn’t all too difficult to stand up myself, but I took it nonetheless and let him lead me into one of the few rooms of the apartment. It was a bedroom, with unmade covers and objects strewn over all surfaces. I didn’t know much about insomnia, but I knew a room that looked as messy as this one did was not for sleeping so much as night living.
“Sorry about the clutter,” Jake told me sincerely, picking up a few fragile pieces from the hard wood floor and placing them on his even worse organised desk. I chose not to mention it. “This is the only bedroom in this place, so you can take it – you deserve a good sleep after all that. I’ll be on the couch if you need me.”
I had no chance to object before Jake walked briskly out of the room and partially closed the door behind him.
“Sweet dreams,” I heard him call as he strode away.
“You too,” I told him, though I doubted he heard me. For a moment the idea of sorting through his things crossed my mind, just in order to check he really was who he claimed to be, but I quickly remembered what had happened the last time I tried that and decided against it. Instead I walked straight to the bed and collapsed on top of it, pulling the blanket over my chest. It smelled potently of boy – male deodorant with a hint of mint gum and sleepless nights. I couldn’t decide if it was a nice scent or not.
I closed my eyes slowly, allowing my body to relax and my mind to empty itself.
The last thing that passed through my mind was the last thing Jake had said – “sweet dreams”. I didn’t know if I could trust him, but I knew one thing, whether he did or not – “sweet dreams”, at this point, were an unrealistic wish.

[di-stri]

Wow you can actually post now sorry :3

[leaving soon]

Amazing Bookmarking!

[di-stri]

Aw thank you <33

[sweetdragon]

Brilliant Door <3
It's really well written and it has a good story line. I'm so proud of you for actually posting it for others to see. c:
sweetdragon
xxxxoooo