1


Wrong. That’s how it felt. All day. She reasoned that it was just because it was a Monday. And those days are the wrong-est, right? Shrugging off the feeling, the girl went on with her day. She met her love in the morning, got her coffee, smiled with her friends, and went to class. Just like the rest of her normal, high school senior days previously. With the exception to the coffee. That was a privilege she let herself have when she could afford it. Otherwise, though, normal.
Art; her favorite class. She had met new friends in there, and a decent teacher. She laughed with them and worked on the current project. Drawing. ‘Awesome. This will make a great gift to him…’ she thought as she focused on it.
Math; one of her favorite teachers. Irritated and cranky, but always helpful. The hated subject, but it was worth it. Programming was worth it. Even so, she found herself watching the clock near the end, every time. With relief, the class ended, and she parted with playful, teasing words to the teacher. Telling him to get back to work. He dismissed her with an irritated wave of his hand and a scowl-grin. His specialty.
Happily, the girl allowed herself to be enveloped in the arms of her love. He kissed the top of her head and told her he loved her. She affirmed her love back to him. Hand-in-hand, the two walked to her class. Another kiss, this one lingering more. She wished him a good day, fuzzy from the kiss, telling him she would hurry to her bus, and thus not see him after the last class. Before she finished, though, she noted concern in his eyes. She asked what the problem was. He looked at her a few seconds before shaking his head and smiling. Nothing. Nothing.
A free period. She loved it. A nag came back. She shooed it away and dug into her book filled with essays from fiction writers with contentment. Some of it was hard to get through, being dense, but she went over it again. Nag. With irritation she shut her book and pulled out her mIpod and tuned it out until the last bell. As promised, she hurried to her bus at the front of the line-up. Said good-bye to the friends she saw on the way, and climbed onto the bus and flopped into the front seat. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her love again. He kissed his hand and touched it to the window in response to her surprised smile, mouthing ‘I love you.’ She imitated. She noted concern again. The bus started up, and she furrowed her brow in confusion. His smile seemed off. Worried almost. She made a phone with her hand and waggled it next to her ear. He nodded.
The bus took off. She watched him watch her before hurrying to his own bus. Turning, she wondered what that was all about. Shaking her head, she slipped her headphones back into her ear, figuring that they could converse about his disturbance later when he called her or she called him. She gently rocked her head with the music as she rode home.
A flash of light. Of darkness. She sat up straight. Looked around. No one else seemed to have noticed. With another shake of her head, she figured that it was probably just her seeing things, maybe zoning out and not realizing that she had blinked, or a reflection flashing her in the eye. Yes, that was it.
The bus slowed down and stopped with a hiss, grumbling as she and the other kids got off. She walked with two of her friends, joking around and asking how their days had gone. Smiles and shrugs. With a wave, she disappeared up her stairs and into her house. A quick greeting before fleeing to the bottom of the stairs. Everyone else was upstairs. She didn’t want to be up there.
She stopped at the foot of the stairs. Something in the back of her mind went off. It was strong, and she couldn’t readily dismiss it this time. In confusion, she squinted her eyes in the gloom of the unlit hall to her room. It suddenly didn’t seem so appealing. She stood there for another minute, arguing with herself. Finally, she reasoned with her subconscious, backing her claims of safety with routine. She had done this a hundred times before. No worries. It’s just her room. Nothing to worry about. Right? Right.
Shaking her shoulders, as if to be rid of the strange feeling crawling up her spine, she strode towards her door, it’s familiar white shape swarmed with shadows. The poster tacked on the door reading “GO AWAY!” with an arrow pointing- conveniently- towards the stairs standing out from the gloom. The girl reached for the door, unable to shake some of her tentativeness, and swung the door open quickly. Nothing.
She smiled at her foolishness and shook her head. The feeling gone, having seen nothing in her room or the shadows past her door in her sisters’ room, she walked through her doorway and threw her backpack onto her bed, directly across from the entryway. Relaxed now, the girl popped her headphones in and turned on a particularly good, poppy, dance song, slipping the mIpod into her pocket. With a shimmy and a kick she turned around to face her closet.
The girl looked in and stopped dancing in confusion. Eyes looked back. She looked to the door, and to her confusion, there was someone else watching as well. She couldn’t figure out why two people were suddenly here. She would have noticed a broken window, she reasoned with herself. The person, a man, took a deliberate step towards her as she stood in an unsure daze. Her dad was home. All day. He would have heard the door open, she argued as the other man moved towards her too. The music reached its loud climax, the point where she would have been jumping around with the mad guitar solo. Her mind was working too slow to do anything though. One of them smirked and looked to the other man. The second shared the look and snapped his eyes back to her.
Annoyed now. Why would they barge into her room? The only thing in there were books and games. Her mind started speeding up. Unfortunately, so did the men. Working to corner her, they blocked her small path between them to her door or window, Making them about an arm and a hand away from being able to reach out and touch her. She reached in her pocket, for her phone. That could help. She pressed the numbers ‘911’ into it, thankful for the minutes spent working on how to text in her pockets suddenly. She pulled it out as she pressed send, and moved her thumb to click the speaker button. One of the men’s gaze steeled at the cell phone, and he snapped his wrist at her hand. Something sharp grazed her palm, by her thumb, and the phone flew out of her hand to the wall with a thud. She turned, shocked to see that a small dagger had impaled her phone on the wall. With a gulp, her throat suddenly dry, she turned back to the men.
The one who had stood at the doorway leered at her. In the back of her mind, annoyance tickled her judgment. She pushed it away. Now wasn’t the time to be rash, she reasoned. The girl took a step back, feeling the edge of her bed kiss the back of her knee. There was something off about these two. She felt it. They seemed too… unnatural. No. Not even that. Their faces blurred at the edges. It was hardly detectable, but it was there. She noted that it was all over them, strongest at the crowns of their heads and at their waists. She reached back without turning. Her comforter cushioned her grasp. She flung it at them. One was shocked and only raised his hands, seemingly unsure of what was flying at him, the other was quicker on his feet and pulled out another dagger. Fabric tore, but the thick comforter was enough to distract, at least. A new song started. Calmer. She jumped the man who had reacted fearfully of the attacking blanket. Over him and on her feet, she started to take off to her door.
With a strange buzzing noise, something passed her, brushing against her side, making her stumble a bit. One of the men, the one with the daggers, was in the doorway, appearing there in an instant. His outline seemed to have been left behind from the speed, catching up with him when he stopped, just as quickly as he had appeared. She stumbled and tripped, almost falling into him. He grinned and stepped forward, grasping her by the hair, keeping her upright. He pushed the door shut with his foot, making sure it latched into place. The girl opened her mouth to yell out, but wasn’t so eager to do so when the dagger pressed against her windpipe. The man grinned at her, sliding his finger from his hold on her hair to her jaw-line, tracing it slowly. Goosebumps climbed down her arms and chest. She gulped again, frozen and unsure. His nails looked short, but something sharp touched her instead of his fingertips.
She felt rather than heard- since her headphones were still in her ears- the other stranger get untangled from the bedspread and come up to her from behind. The man behind her grabbed her hair as the other had and pulled her head roughly back, making her look him in the eyes. With his other hand, he removed her headphones and took her mIpod out of her pocket and tossed it behind him. She might have scolded him for it, had it not been intruders. Intruders with knives. The girl couldn’t keep the confusion from her face as she stared back at the upside-down face with fear. In response, he put his face up against hers, cheek to cheek so that she could still see his eye. It squinted with a leer at her.
The dagger-wielder dragged the blade all over her chest, lingering over her heart. The skittish man turned his head. She could hear his breath, a slight hiss. He licked her face, down to the base of her neck and shoulder, keeping her head back by her hair but tilting her to side, out of his way.
He bit down. She whimpered. The girl heard the dagger-man snicker.
Dagger stepped back. “Enough play.” His voice lingered on the ‘ee’ sound. The biter looked up from her neck.
“Can’t we have some fun before we go back?”
“No. Now. Let’s go.” Dagger snapped. Roughly, Biter shoved her head upright and held her. She reached for her head instinctively. Dagger’s blade nicked her arms, forcing her to keep them down. As Biter held her, Dagger stepped close to her again, pressing his body against her and sneering at her.
“Don’t give me problems and I won’t give you any. Got it?”
She nodded.
“Say it.”
She glared at him and forced the lump in her throat away. “I got it, you bastard.”
His sneer wavered, twitching at the edges of his mouth. “I might recommend, girl, that you be a bit more,” the man pressed the dagger back to her neck, “respectful.” He looked back at Biter and twitched his head to the closet. Biter wrapped her medium-length hair around his hand and pushed her to the closet door.
She wasn’t sure what she was seeing. Darkness seeped out from what looked to be a tall window with no discernable edges, looking into a small room. Nothing but the stone of walls could be seen though the strange window, though.
‘This isn’t my closet…’ the girl thought, alarmed. Nothing that was happening was real. It couldn’t be real. Things like this didn’t happen so fast. There was some monologue coming up from one of the men, wasn’t there? Something to give her time to think, to actually assess her absent feelings.
She braced her legs and pushed back, trying to stay away from the strange window. The air from the place gave her the chills.
“Dammit, girl!” Biter griped.
Daggers glared over at her. “I think we need to show her how scary we actually are.”
Biter grinned over at Dagger. “Yes, sir.” He reached for her breasts, roughly dragging his hand over her abdomen, making her yelp and whimper. Dagger slapped his had away from her.
“No, you fool. I told you. Not here. Not now. You’ll have a perfectly long enough time to do as you will to her if she survives getting though.”
“Wh-who are you? What do you mean?” the girl managed to stutter.
Both of the men snapped their gazes to her. Daggers stared at her. Through her. She felt the blood leave her face under his scrutiny. He cracked a sneer at her.
“We are going to show you. You know you aren’t fast enough. You’ve seen this. Stay. Do you understand?”
She steeled her own gaze and nodded stiffly. Daggers stepped in front of her, towards the window. He turned to face her, smirking at her mockingly. She couldn’t figure out why it was so significant.
Then he took another step back, putting himself only half a pace away from the strange area in her closet. She jumped back in shock, pressing back against Biter, who forced her back to her previous position with a sharp shove. The blur covering Dagger disappeared, along with the normal appearance of a human man. The only thing the same on him was the mocking sneer. From his waist sprouted wings, leathery and-though folded- were as tall as he was. It was an awkward protrusion, and the most significant change on him, but she tore her eyes away from them to his face. Where the whites of his eyes were supposed to be was replaced by onyx, with hawk-like amber irises. Claws as long as the fingers they sprouted from extended from his hands, and long horns curled back and then turned back up from his head.
“Why…? Why…? I don’t wanna go. Let me stay! I won’t tell anyone!” she stammered, finally getting a kick of fear. She fought against Biters’ grip on her hair, reaching up and trying to loosen his fingers. Irritated, Biter nicked her wrist as he slapped her hand way. She quivered as she was shoved closer to Dagger and the window.
Dagger’s hair had gone from a dull dark brown to a sleek ebony. He grinned, flashing four very sharp canine teeth. She was shoved closer to him by Biter. The girl gulped as a claw extended towards her face. She wasn’t feeling so bold any longer.
“Oh, dear,” Dagger purred, “I would, but you see… I serve a higher power. He wants to have some expendable toys. You will serve that purpose.”
The girl squeaked and fought against the demon- for she was fairly certain that they were the same- holding her hair, clawing at his hand and pressing against him. Dagger gripped her throat firmly, still allowed her to breathe, and lifted her from the carpeted ground. His sneer remained, and the girl was sure that it rarely left. Biter let her hair go and also stepped around to be in front of her and in line with the window. His human façade also faded suddenly, and his hair- a similar brown to Dagger- changed to a bright and fiery red, with pure black and sleek horns curving up in a more familiar fashion. His eyes were more golden than amber.
“Est dual abugh, manha kiilohs. Etra!” Dagger snapped over his shoulder to Biter. Her brow furrowed in confusion. Dagger grinned at her look of befuddlement. “If you live, I’ll give you plenty of time to learn what I say when I speak my own language.” He traced her jaw with the sharp of his blade as he taunted her. She was sure she wasn’t looking foreword to what he was suggesting.
Biter, in the mean time, had grunted and moved to the window and began to speak a similar language. The air in her room began to crackle and snap. It sounded to her as if the very fabric in which her room was made of was braking from a strain that it was not used to. Though he was standing squarely in front of the window, he only seemed to concentrate. If he was doing anything magical, he wasn’t waving his arms about as she expected him to do. The window didn’t change, either. At least, not outwardly. She felt as though it was different somehow, but it didn’t change it’s bleak and empty scenery nor the darkness that it emitted.
Dagger carried her to the window, standing just a few inches away. Slowly, another grin filled his sharp features. “I think, good comrade of mine, we have a winner. What do you think?” Biter came back, pale and with a thin sheen of sweat on his brow and appraised her with Dagger. He grinned as well, though the girl found that Biter’s grin was more threatening. More a promise of horrors to come.
“Indeed, comrade,” Biter spat, “A winner. Can we take her now so I can play?”
“Ah, my friend, you are so impatient to get what you can out of the new toys.” Dagger leered at her as he continued, “But I am leading this little… expedition, and thus I have first claim on our little friend.” The girl felt her face loose any color left in it. “Let’s get her to her new home and be done with this damned fjuiica.”
With that, Dagger pulled her in close to his face-touching foreheads. He grinned at her once more, forcing his lips roughly over hers and biting hard enough for her to feel her own blood flow into her mougth before sharply extending his arm and sending her flying into the window.
A loud crack sounded in her ears, and she could nearly taste the blackness that engulfed her. She had no more time to think or react as she flew through the window. As quickly as she had passed though, she lost her consciousness, neither feeling nor caring about the cool, damp floor that kissed her body.
Dagger and Biter watched in amusement as she broke through the barrier. With satisfaction, and his normal sneer plastered on again, Dagger jerked his head to the window. Biter growled savagely, disappearing into the window. Dagger followed, closing the strange opening behind him.

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Story © ME
THis is the beginning to Dreams of the Ream, a story I am writing for myself about my character Willow Wolfblade.
It is supposed to be kindof choppy in the beginning, and lacking description, since I am trying to portray routine.