Five-year-old Leea Hartnel found herself alone on the playground.

The other children were suddenly gone up in smoke, their parents - and most importantly, her parent - nowhere to be seen.

Everything was deathly silent, the only sounds the creaking of an abandoned swing and Leea's own breaths rattling in her small chest.

Her blonde hair lifted lightly in a breeze now icy where it had been warm just moments before.

Leea shivered.

"Daddy?" Her voice echoed across the playground.

The swing creaked once more. The wood chips crunched loudly under her shifting feet. Her weak cough rang out across the play area, the sound bouncing off nearby sidewalks and vinyl siding to shout back at her.

Her daddy was gone. And so was everyone else.

Suddenly Leea had a terrible feeling; it started at the base of her spine and crept up her back to her neck, around over her ears and behind her eyes, making her head hurt.

Tears swelled in the child's misty grey eyes, and she hugged her thin jacket tight as the breeze only got colder. "Daddy!" She cried. "Daddy, where are you!"

No reply. The swing creaked again. The wood chips crunched louder.

"This is not funny, daddy!" Leea shouted, choking on frightened tears. "Why are you hiding? I'm scared, Daddy! Just, come out already!"

Fat droplets traced her pale cheeks, carving lines through the dust that had gathered as she played.

"Daddy!" Leea cried as loud and as high as her voice could go, her small body jerking forward with the effort. "Daddy, come back!"

But her daddy did not come back. And the wind got even colder.

Leea shivered as her breath began to come out in cloudy puffs that she only ever saw when it snowed, and her scrambled mind remembered that it wasn't supposed to snow in October here.

What was happening? Where was her daddy?

Slowly, sniffing harshly. Leea tilted her head up to peer at the grey sky.

The clouds were dark and gloomy, but they did not cast down snow or hail or anything else. Why was it so cold?

Leea looked around the playground again, and she froze, her small heart nearly seizing in her chest; there Daddy was, but something was wrong with him.

He was on his knees, his head bowed, something clasped in his hands as his lips moved with chants he did not speak aloud.

Leea stared, paralyzed, trembling, as a thick red dripped from his between his fingers, from his hairline, from his eyes, out the soles of his cheap tennis shoes and through the collar of his button-up shirt and down his chest.

"D-Daddy?" She choked out as the scent of blood reached her.

Suddenly she wasn't alone anymore. Suddenly all the children and their parents were back, but they were not as when they left either.

They were all on the ground; that thick red clinging to them in all the same places it did on her daddy, but they were not upright and breathing as he was.

They were all terribly still, scattered about the playground as if they had dropped where they stood and lay there as the blood that kept them alive drained out through unseen wounds.

Leea couldn't move. She was trapped in place in fear and shock, her eyes hardly blinking as she looked down at the boy lying directly in front of her feet.

His name was James, and he was five years old too. He really liked his dog, Marco. He also really loved climbing on the monkey bars.

Leea had been playing with him just moments before; and here he was. He was on his back, staring up at her with dead eyes, blood smeared down his young round face and matting his feathery brown hair.

Leea stared back at him for what seemed like hours, and when her body finally unlocked, she screamed.

Her cry sliced through the quiet like a flaming sword through flesh.

Her daddy's head jerked up, and immediately he tucked it back down, his lips moving all the more, his sticky hands clinging to whatever was between them like it was all that kept him alive - and it was.

Leea wheezed out breaths, her lungs refusing to take anything in full as her stiff legs finally decided to move, and she fled to her daddy's side.

She dropped to her knees, skidding the last few inches to grasp his arm tightly and crush herself into his side, her harsh pants puffing out in icy clouds before her.

"D-d-daddy?" Leea strangled out. "D-daddy help them!"

But her daddy kept moving his lips, not looking at her, not acknowledging at all that she was clinging to him, that she needed him right now, that her young innocence had just been stabbed through its chest and was bleeding to death at his side as her shaking fingers grasped desperately at his sleeve.

The air was getting colder with each second; Leea could feel the sweat on her neck crystallizing, could see the frost creeping up the metal slide, could hear the distant laughter of something evil swirling around them in the wind.

Suddenly her daddy started saying his chants aloud.

It was no language Leea had ever heard - it was not Spanish, that was for certain, and though she had only heard a little bit of French she was not sure it was that either.

His voice grew louder, and louder, and without warning he shot to his feet and punched the air with whatever he had been holding. "Suscipe me!"

Leea yelped and leaped back, tripping and falling back as blinding light arced down through the clouds and caught in her daddy's upward fist.

It crackled around his bleeding body, hissing and popping and randomly spiking out before there was a loud SNAP! and it was gone.

Her daddy collapsed back to his knees.

Leea lay there, propped up on scraped elbows, the back of her head stinging from the fall and her eyes screaming from the light. She squinted desperately, trying to see if her daddy was okay, even if her heart pounded heavily and her throbbing head wanted to lie down and never sit back up…

The wind was laughing again, and it was getting louder.

Dust gathered and swirled in front of her daddy's kneeling form, twisting and swirling into the vague shape of a person.

Her daddy's head snapped up.

The dust person laughed once more. "You should not have come here, Gabriel."