CHAPTER I

Thump… Thump… Thump. Alice threw the small plastic ball at the ceiling of her bedroom out of boredom. Her friends were fighting again and she didn't know what to do. They were her two best friends. She hated when they fought. Whenever they fought, she would heavily drink alcohol, and that was the point she was at now. She was confused and drunk. It was her time. Her room was a very retro-Goth styled room. Everything she owned seemed to be very dark and sinister. Her walls were painted black, and on her walls were a bunch of quotes that she had collected and either painted them with white paint, or taped them to her wall ripped out from a piece of white or binder paper. She wasn't really to be described as a person of order. She was lying on her bed in the center of the room, all the lights in her room were on, and she liked the light. Across from her bed was her old brown dusty vintage dresser and placed on her dresser was her neon green Lava Lamp. Commonly, she would sit in her room and stare at the lamp for hours and watch the colors swirl. She never truly understood how the lamp worked. Aside from her lava lamp, she also had a disco light ball from her childhood and a strobe light. She wasn't quite sure when or where she got them but she loved her lights all of which had their own special place on her dresser. I have been watching her for weeks, because well, that is my job. I knew everything and nothing about Alice at the same time. From what I noticed in her room she was quite, reserved, but her body language made me think she was otherwise. This past week I have been watching her nobody has ever visited. Not even a soul has entered her room, not a friend not a parent or nothing. She was afraid of the world. I knew this because she often wrote about it in her diary. When she goes to school everyday, I used to look at it. The diary focused on sadness and loneliness one thing that stood out to me, was a passage that said she felt alone and smothered at the same time. She wasn't happy with her life that was clear. Perhaps she even wanted to commit suicide but she was too afraid to follow through. Maybe she liked the thought of death? In her diary it read sadness but on her walls all that were written was quotes about the world, quotes reminding her to carry on. My favorite quote that she wrote, I would like to believe it is also her favorite quote, it read" In order to create a positive action we must develop here a positive vision. - Dalai Lama." It was written in bold bright yellow paint and every night before she went to bed she would recite it as if she were wishing for some type of change. It was her ritual. Looking down at her now I can tell once again she was thinking staring at the quote and the ball, but mostly focusing on my knocks she heard from the ceiling. It was time for me to finish my task. But it was hard. It never is hard but this time I gave the victim a personality, a persona even if that wasn't really who she was. I learned her dreams and aspirations of being a world famous accountant. I learned her name… Alice. That name was permanently engraved in my brain. She was hurt, broken but I so wanted to see her get out of her torture her chamber that I could relate to so well. I wanted her to win and live the life she wanted. I wanted her to find happiness. She reminded me of myself her innocence was majestic. Her laughter was addictive and that sweet yet sinister and killing smile could be the death of any man. She was beautiful. Not a classic Cinderella beauty but a beauty nonetheless.

Minutes passed since the last time she threw the small ball at her ceiling. She was thinking. She heard a thump, as if the roof was responding over her head. She was startled. Thump, she heard again. It was funny. She thought the roof was alive. It was only me, it was weird she was so scared. She didn't need to be scared I was here for her. I knew her, why didn't she recognize me? Didn't she know who I was? Didn't she know what I was? It made me mad, I knew so much about her but I knew she could never know anything about me. It was against the rules, against our ways. Alice stumbled out of bed and grabbed the round tall fancy looking brown wooden stool. She climbed on top of the stool and began to feel the ceiling with her fingertips, feeling all the creases and flaws. Then, she placed the palm of her hand above her head flat on the ceiling. Something tempted her to look over at her clock. It read three-o- clock AM, "Dead Hour" she thought to herself. She closed her eyes. It was the summer of 1980 in Austin, Texas. Life at school could be better, but life at home was just as good as she could have ever wished it to be. Her mother spent more time at home, instead of being gone all the time on business trips, and they where getting Alice help. They were getting Alice the help she so desperately needed and she wouldn't want it any other way. However, her friends Kelly and Grace would constantly be at each other's throat and would always have her choose sides. They didn't seem to care how Alice felt about it. They hated slash-loved each other. Meaning, they would fight to such a point and take everything so far you would think their friendship would be done for good, but the next week they acted like nothing ever happened. They would drive each other and everyone around them to a point of insanity. Truly, it was a toxic relationship. I wanted to have that, I want to be toxic. I want to have an emotion to fight for. I want to have a reason besides to kill. I wanted to have a relationship with somebody, any type of relationship. Anger flooded my body, I took a deep breath and watched her carefully, I was curious what her next move would be. Alice was stuck being forced to choose sides in between them. She hated it. She was a little tipsy. She stroked her hands across her creamed colored popcorn ceiling her fingers got caught on every bump she felt. She liked the feel of the texture under her fingers. Something was wrong, very wrong. She could feel it. A shiver tingled down her small fragile spine. What felt wrong to her felt so very right inside of me, it was killing me. It was wrong for it to feel right, but that is what I was. It wasn't supposed to feel right. But it did, the life from that girl I knew was coming close to an end. I was happy but I wouldn't be the end of her. I couldn't be the end of her. Her 17th birthday was days away, she thought to herself. She anticipated this birthday all year, and lets face it, probably the majority of her life. Something inside of her knew it was going to be the end. Her mind was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. She stared back at her hand and focused back at the sounds being produced from above her head. She focused on the beat and the rhythm the constant repeat thumping.

All of a sudden, the thumping began to speed up and the house started to shake, her mood turned from curious to afraid. All of which she had the right to feel. I tasted her fear in the veins of my immortal body. It felt to her like some sort of earthquake and she had no time to react as the ceiling crashed into a crumble on top of her. Her ceiling wasn't weak, but some force sent it tumbling down as if the building was hundreds of years old. Instantly, she was crushed by the heavy impact and blood began to stain her chocolate brown hair and the shag carpet underneath her body. The impact crumbled her like a hand would crumble a paper snowball. She was crushed, but not dead as she watched every drop of her blood slowly escape her body. The alcohol numbed most of the pain, but her body still hurt like hell. She wanted to cry, she wanted to scream, and she wanted to pray but she couldn't. She wanted to call out to her family and friends and tell them she was sorry, she wanted to promise never to drink again but it was too late. Seconds felt like hours, but seconds, where only seconds. She took one last breath, and that was that.

That was the end of Alice Evangeline Ferrarah. It took five seconds for the roof to crush her face in such a way that it was not recognizable anymore. Five seconds of agony and pain and confusion, all of which entered her body all at once. As she was there on the floor she looked like a goldfish, out of water and thrown on the ground and stomped on. She looked like a fish gasping for the oxygen rich ice-cold water. The feeling death, like all deaths made my flesh feel at ease. This death in particular had a toll on me. We take lives because it is there time. It wasn't her time. she was supposed to have a happy ending, not this. She doesn't deserve what she received. She deserves a life! She was making progress, but not anymore, not now….