Okay people, this is a first story for me. I like criticism, since my grammar needs a serious kick in the rear. But try to make it nothing heartbreaking! I am very busy with school so I will update whenever I possibly can. However, I like the plans I have for this story so I will probably be ignoring some of the more important things around me to, instead, be bent over my keyboard to type.

--Enjoy.

(PS: it's in Shadow's POV)

Prologue

How can people's lives look so great and still be foul underneath? Was the question I always asked myself every time I looked into her eyes. She seemed to want me in only the way that people yearned for things that they can't have. It wasn't always like that, she seemed normal, happy, nice, and maybe even understanding of my past. But things changed, and changed did they. She became ravenous with something spoiled underneath, somehow it surfaced in her beautiful personality. Maybe it was something I did, maybe it was always there, I don't know. And I don't think I ever knew.

Perhaps that is why I am drawn to this place.

It didn't help sooth things in me. Coming to the abandoned library now was like putting a band aid on someone who was gored by a rhino. It was completely stupid. But somehow it had always struck a chord with me. We used to come here, we used to spend hours just to sit on these benches and pretend to read when all we did was stare at each other like a couple of third graders trying to get a eyeful of the other without the secret crush realizing it. I don't think I even remembered to flip the pages absentmindedly to make it look like I was actually reading.

That was our grand strategy. We would come to the library at the same time and meet in one of the back corners. It was a safe place. It was our place. No one would come looking for us there, all the bad stayed outside, and we loved it. It was deception, and it was the start to the end of a lot of things.

I walked past a collapsing bookshelf lost in thought. Everything around me was sleeping behind a filmy layer of greenish dust. The entire library was now a rotting heap of filth.

After some strange catastrophic damage that was caused without provocation, the city council declared that the library be shut down, all the books moved, and a new one be built on a separate block. Maybe it was for the greater good that this place was left to rot in hell, but I couldn't help but pick through the rubble of what was left of an ignorant past-life. After all, it used to be the center of my life.

Too bad my life died out of me right here not so long ago.

And the "strange damage"? Well, that's the climax of an even bigger story than my own.

I walked on.

The dust formed a strange smoky atmosphere in the gutted building. It was like a silk sheet pulled over a stage. As it swirled above my head it would play mind tricks on me. The dust was so thick in areas that it seemed to stay still in the air. The kind of stillness that would make you uneasy and your eyes would squint until your eyeballs felt like they would pop. But the stillness was not restful either, despite the deadness in the air. Sometimes when I came here I could almost hear Amy's graceful feet stepping in rhythm behind my own, or a sad face would form in a cloud of dust. I couldn't tell if it was the dust or just the last bit of my sane mind losing itself.

The mind was like the fog around me, sometimes it shows you want you want, but not what you need to see.

There was a loud crack in the air, almost like a gunshot. I whirled around, adrenaline knocking coldly throughout my veins. Looking at the floor I saw a book, dust was forming a fresh ring around it from it's fall off of the shelf. Simple explanation: A book fell off of a rotting self, it happens Shadow. Calm down.

And I told myself that there could be a hundred reasons why I hallucinate sometimes.

I hope I am just crazy now.

Crazy people don't have to deal with the guilt of murder. Why? Plainly because they're crazy. But do they feel guilty if they watch another murder they could have prevented, would it register in their minds?

You want the story of Amy Rose's murder? Well, I'll tell you. I'll tell it to you from the very beginning...