Jaime sat alone on a park bench. It was mid-fall and the leaves were the colours of burnt sienna as they fluttered from the blue sky above. The breeze would wash across Jaime's pale skin and she would close her eyes trying to cling on to some kind of serenity.
It was so quiet.
All that could be heard in the clearing of the forest was the birds flying somewhere warm for the inevitably harsh winter that was to come. Once the ice storms and blizzards began, she needed to find shelter. During the summer, she could afford to find refuge under highway overpasses, old bridges and bus stops out in the country but Canadian winters were not a thing to be messed with. Frostbite and hypothermia would kill her in the first week if she couldn't find warmth.
As she sat silently, she remembered a time when she would play in the freshly fallen leaves with her father before Thanksgiving dinner. The joyous laughter rang out in Jaime's ears, the laughter she shared with her family.
For any other person it would be pleasant but for Jaime it brought back the nostalgia. For her, nostalgia was a dangerous thing. Her happy memories were stained with blood and corrupted by grief. They were poisonous to her conscience.
Jaime just sat there staring at the floor, her bag full of supplies and weapons next to her. Another day, another month, another year, she thought. Time was dragging on, the loneliness encroaching on her. What she wouldn't give to be living back in her family home with her mother and father, a steady relationship with her boyfriend, a place on her high school cheer leading team, consistent good marks in school and a good chance at being accepted to an ivy league college in the USA. She had everything going for her. Jaime had the idyllic, upper-middle class , white picket fence life. The long flowing brown hair, the stunning blue eyes framed by dark lashes and the dark red lips.
After the ruthless slaughter of those she held dear, Jaime ran. She was gone before the police could question her about the death of her family. She never looked back to the town where she lost it all. Jaime always thought her house would stay abandoned. The horrific blood stains would never be erased and neither would the past. It's history would forever haunt the building.
From the first look, the murders resembled an animal attack but Jaime knew it wasn't. They were blacked eyed demons. The same hideous creatures that had been following her and watching her from the day she was born.
Unfortunately, she never found the demons that had mowed down her boyfriend, father, mother, uncle and grandparents. Jaime never found them because, 5 days later and 3 towns over, the vessels of said demons were discovered by hikers.
The police surveyed the crime scene and discovered that all the bodies had large stab wounds by a triple-edged blade, in addition, they all had burnt out eye sockets. Something had been waiting in the dark for the demons, seeking retribution before it chose to reveal itself to Jaime Evans.