I'll tell you all right now that I have never done a story like this before. In fact I'm worried it'll sound like shit but I'm going to do it! FYI there is some gay bashing in this first chapter. This isn't at all how I feel about the gay community. It just fits with the character. I hope you guys enjoy this. Inspired by the novel Let Me In.
It's always surprising when something happens in Black Road. Our little town was only attractive during the spring when all the flowers come in bloom. All plant businesses and hiking trails are opened up again but once winter raises her cruel head everything goes dark. Half the time it seems like a ghost town with all the people hiding indoors. If you were born here like I was then you would understand.
A surprise did come at the end of October. The dead body of a high school student was found in the woods. I remember because I walked right past it on my way home. The police had blocked off one of the trails with their caution tape. I stopped and stared for a while. They were loading one of the hospital beds into the ambulance. Instead of seeing an injured person like you usually would there was a black plastic bag. Plastic bags meant death, when my cat had died my mom had wrapped him in a plastic bag and buried him. The plastic the police used was to preserve the body so someone could try to find out the cause of death. I knew I read about it a lot. One of the police officers saw me and started to come toward me. I ran of not wanting him to tell my mother I was fixated on a murder site. The last thing I wanted was for her to worry about me more.
The last thing I wanted was for my mother to worry about me more than she did. She had tried her best to shelter me from what she thought was a cruel world but she could never keep me away from the library. Every worker there knew who I was after my father died I spent most of my time burying my pain into the written word. I finished the Childs section in one year. I was 10 then, I'm 14 now almost done with the adult section. I snap out of my thoughts as I near my cul de sac.
My neighborhood is a dead end street, there are only 5 houses. In the first house is Xaldin, he's an older man who jogs a lot. He keeps to himself mostly. The 2nd house belongs to a couple, Marluxia and Larxene. You can hear them fighting sometimes but they don't do it often. I hope they never have children Larxene doesn't seem like the mothering type. My mom and I are in the 3rd house, nothing special there. The 4th house is empty and the 5th house is where my friend Lexaeus. He's two years older than me but we have lived here our whole lives and as the only kids we became friends. I walk quietly past his house. I can hear his mother in there crying. Why is she crying? Their family was one of the happiest I've ever seen. There had to be a good reason. I couldn't go over and see I was already late from watching the police. I reach my porch and see a small truck at the 4th house. An older man was moving in there, his hair was pulled back into a ponytail. He had an eye patch too like a pirate in an old flannel shirt. I might say hi to him tomorrow I think as I enter my house.
The moment I walked in the door my mother had rammed me into one of her panic hugs. "Oh Zexion where have you been? On the news the police said they found the dead body of a student near one of trails. I thought it was you!"
I pat her back to calm her. I tried not to scare her now a days, since dad had died in a fire she would freak out over the little things. It's really annoying but it's her way of coping with things and I know I can't blame her. I pull away from her chest.
"Mom I'm fine. I wasn't even near that trail today; I took the safe path like you told me too."
My lie seems to sooth her. We eat dinner and have our usual dinner small talk about what had happened that day. I told her most of what happened like how my math teacher smacked her ruler on Axel's desk to wake him up. She laughed, I didn't. I laughed at him when I was in class; He saw it and had pushed me down the stairs for it. "Look at the runt thinking its funny! Whose laughing now?" Still ran in my head even now. I didn't tell her that, I don't like her to worry.
"Zexion where are you going this late?"
"Mom I'm only going to the park behind the house I'll be fine."
"Make sure you take your hat then!"
I ignore the hat on the hook and make my way outside. The snow wasn't that deep for a normal person. I'm shorter than all the kids in my grade including the girls. My doctor would always tell me that I would sprout up as soon I hit puberty. I'm 14 and still the same height. I finally get onto the paved sidewalk, Xaldin and Marluxia would shovel it out. I'm sure they were getting paid by the city, either way it got done.
I walked to the big oak in the center and fished around my pocket. I pulled out my dad's old pocket knife; he had given it to me before he left for work that day. I always kept it with me in fear of my mother wanting to throw away such a dangerous weapon. Unlike her I didn't fear it. I cared for it and handled it the way my father had taught me too. I stabbed the tree trunk in front of me, and I begin to think of what Axel said to me earlier in the day. My stabs become faster as I yell.
"Who's the fucking runt now?"
"I don't know."
The new voice flew me off guard making my hand slip, sending the knife into my palm. I yelp. Only the point the made it into my palm so there wouldn't be a scratch. Thank god. I turn to where the voice had come from. On top of the slide was a little girl only a few years younger than me. She was wearing an oversized blue sweater and one of those denim skirts mostly seen in summer. That was all she was wearing, she wasn't shivering either.
"What are you doing here?"
"What are you doing here?"
I glare at her. "I asked you first!"
She shrugs her shoulders a bit. Her voice is light and quiet. "I came here to explore the woods behind the house. Now it's you turn."
"Well I was just… practicing!" There was no way I could tell her I was stabbing a tree. She might be a tattle tale; this was one tale that should not be mentioned to anyone.
"What where you practicing? You look like you were trying to murder the tree."
"Romeo and Juliet!"
Why did I scream that, I've never read the play before? I just knew someone got stabbed.
"Did you even bother to read the play? That isn't how it goes."
She slides down and grabs the knife at my feet. "It's more like Yea, noise? Then I'll be brief. O happy dagger! This is thy sheath." She flakily stabs herself in the chest with the handle of the dagger. "There rust, and let me die."
I watch her dramatically throw herself into the snow. What the fuck did I just see? She pulls herself out of the snow. "That's how you do it."
I snatch my knife out of her hand. "What's it to you!"
I begin to run off knowing what I had done was rude. I didn't want to look at her; she disgusted yet intrigued me at the same time.
Xigbar opens the bar's old wooden door. This was the only bar in this little shit hole of a town and he needed a drink more than anything right now. He order a beer from the straggly waitress who had the "I could be at home watching life time" Look. One of his hands taps the old scratched up table while the other hand keeps his head supported. Someone had found the kid he killed in the park. It was all over the news, people calling it a satanic ritual because he was drained of blood. Xigbar remembered what he did perfectly. The kid had been stupid to trust him when he said he needed help moving a sled out of a tree. Then again if he had been smart he wouldn't have died. He wasn't able to hide the body because of some stupid female hikers. He had run down the path and slipped in the ice losing the blood to the cannel. Demi had been so mad at him she hadn't spoken to him all night. That's what lead him to drink like always did when he was depressed.
"Fucking Ice."
He mummers as he takes a drink. A slurred female voice comes from behind.
"You fuck ice?"
Xigbar jumps and spills some of his beer. He turns to look at the woman she was tall like a model. Her blond hair was plastered to her head probably from walking around outside. She clumsily sits down in the chair next him reeking of Vodka.
"That's some pretty kicky shit you're talking about. Is that something faggots are into or does no one want to have sex with you anymore because you're old as shit?"
How the hell was still talking? She was obviously intoxicated but she could still manage to get out a full insult.
"You need to leave me alone."
"Why did I scare you? There are a lot of red necks in town who do a lot of bad thing to faggots like you. Try and fight me and you'll get you dick cut off and feed to you."
He gets out of his seat and glares at her. Last thing he wanted to do was start a fight.
"You know you have one fowl mouth on you."
"And you reek of cow shit old man!"
Xigbar was on the edge of slapping her when another man ran over.
"There you are honey! It's time to go home."
This man must have been her husband or a boyfriend. He didn't see a ring on his finger. She turns her seat around.
"I was just making friends with the lonely old man!"
"Sure you were but we need to get going before you get into another fight."
She pouts a bit but lets him pick her up. He apologizes to Xigbar as he carries her out. Then he remembers that those two where his neighbors and he would be seeing a lot more of her. God fucking dammit he thinks to himself.
