Chapter 2

the blackout monsters…

Like a moth lingering outside a window, in the dark, trapped from entering the lighted room, like a fish outside its home lost and confused on foreign ground, and like a child spiraling and falling while the world took notice and moved on, life fucking happens.

The world moved on from my pain and continued with their lives.
They took away their warm shoulders, their caring smiles and pitying eyes. They stole back their love and affection and kept it for their own welfare. They left me alone. They moved on from my suffering and pressed the pause button they had pushed when my parents left.
They went back to their laughing and joking, their inside jokes and partying, their happiness and love.

I was eight.
I was alone. I had no friends. I had no parents. I had nothing.
I had a thing though. The only thing I thought none of as a gift was the ability of seeing those who could not be seen. I could see the undead, communicate and interact with them. I was eight when I would see these tall black things. I would hear them around my house every night during the hours of twelve A.M and three A.M.
Every night I would awaken with the cold air around my room. I would pull my blanket close to my nose and try to stifle the fear. They came every night. I think my parents were aware of them. They called out to them in hopes of seeing them. They could never see them but they always knew when they were there. I never told them I could see the thing they dreamed of seeing. I was too afraid that their obsessions would use me to communicate with the thin stick figures. I was eight, I was not sure of how much my parents loved me to keep me safe from them.
I never understand how or why I could see them and my parents could not.

But I knew they weren't real so I ignored and showed no respect for them. They came every night until one morning I woke and my parents were gone. Their beds were still made, as if they waited for them, they sat waiting for the things to take them.
Even after they had taken my parents they still visited my house every night. I was nine and they were there. I was twelve and they were there. I feared that they would take me as well. But they never did. Though they surrounded my bed each night with held hands they never took me from my bed. Over time I would close my eyes and not stare at them as they would stare at me. They seemed so angry, maliciousness in their faces. I shut my eyes even though I could feel the cold air thicken around me.
When I was thirteen the only thing I thought of was the cold, they made me cold. I ignored them. They hated that I ignored them. But I didn't care, not anymore.
I just covered myself with a second blanket.

Until one day a brown haired girl looks at me at school.
She was the only one who smiled without the hint of mock or the whisperings of a bet in the air.
I liked her immediately. She was quiet like me, she was smart and funny, she loved to dance to music. I became her real friend when I gifted her my radio. I never told her where I got it.
As long as she loved it I didn't care about anything anymore.

We played together a lot. She loved to wear dresses and bows in her hair. I loved her quickly.
We were together all the time until she found her voice in the school. She started speaking to other kids as well and within a year she had a good circle of friends. As the years passed and we grew into teenagers they often tried to convince her to stop being friends with me. They told her I was a freak, that I was weird. But she always defended me. I hated them. Though we were still close friends her time with me was now cut short because they wanted her too.
They took my best friend away from me. They took yet another thing from me.

It was two hours passed midnight and candles were placed around the Granger home.
It was a Thursday night and the blackout lasted longer than usual. The candles barely covered the dark and they illuminated the steps they took around the house.
Rain had begun and the quiet roams of thunder echoed with each moment.
The silhouettes were inside the house and they treaded upstairs for the elderly couple.

When the door creaked as they turned the handle Mr Granger turned in his bed, murmuring something in his sleep.
One of them walked to Mrs Granger and stood by her side. It stood for three minutes staring at her sleeping body, ten minutes, thirty minutes, hour, three hours had passed when Mr Granger woke from a coldness surround him.

When he opened his eyes he saw a black, skinny figure leaning against his wife.
He focused his weak eyes and saw the blur shape of a face. His sight was unclear because his glasses lay beside the bedside table.

He opened his mouth in horror when he saw black-like smoke leave his wife's mouth and into its face.
Within seconds his wife's face lost its skin and the blanket flattened around her body. In forty seconds his wife was bone.
His mouth quivered as he saw it lift its head and rise. He felt a strange pull from his right and when he turned the second one was against him, leaning towards his face like the first one did. Mr Granger couldn't see clearly but he saw the shape draw closer to him and pain radiated throughout his face.

He could feel his skin pull.
The man shook his head and held his hands on his face. The elderly man could feel the cold within it, the evil it had and seconds later he felt. He felt pain like he had never before. His skin pulled from his face slowly at first. The man yelled and with each second the pain was excruciating. He wanted to cry and scream again but it occupied him. Like knives chopping his skin off the thing drew closer until smoke came out the man's mouth.
After that he couldn't feel anything. While the thing was still pulling from him beside he saw his wife lift from her bed. Only it was her shadow, a ghost. She got up out of bed and stood. The first thing held on to her shoulder and guided her out the door.

No one spoke for a long time.
Troy stared at Jon Landau, he stared at Gabriella and she concentrated on the table. She could feel his gaze on her, this wasn't like her dreams, and she knew he couldn't control her outside her dreams.

She held on to that.

"Don't you dare look at her" Troy said, spitting the words with disgusted hate.

"Troy" she looked at her boyfriend, scolding him with her grip, reminding him of the control she had asked him to have. She shifted her eyes and slowly readied herself for his cold stare. She dragged her gaze and looked from the white table to his hands, his clothing, his mouth and eventually his eyes. He smiled at her when she finally locked eyes with him. Her heart sunk. The strength she practiced faded into the depth of his hooded stare.

"Hi", he said.

She knew better than to look away once she locked with him. He trapped her, his voice lingered the hint of a threat. Even with Troy beside her the intense fear she always felt was there, staring at her, "Hi"

He smiled, his eyes glistened, with his voice soft and threatening, "How are you?"

She wanted to tell him off, enforce the brevity but what came out was a small insecure, "I haven't been sleeping well lately".

"You know I'm not sorry for that. I asked you to see me" he turned to Troy, "However the invitation did not include him".

"You son of a bitch" Troy said.

"Why am I here, Jon?" she asked, strengthening her grip on Troy once again.

"I wanted to see your face" he adds almost immediately, his eyes lightening.

She took a calming breather, "Why am I here, Jon?"

"I wanted to see your face"

"You wanted to see my face?"

"Yes"

"Why"

"Because I love you"

"Okay. Now what?"

"I want to talk to you. Alone" he said.

"That's not happening" Troy said, staring icily at Jon. "Say what you have to so we can get the fuck out of here"

"I'm not saying anything until Gabriella is sitting opposite me with an empty chair beside her", he murmured, his hood directed at Gabriella.

"Fine" Troy got up from his seat and walked towards one of the empty tables, grabbed a chair, and walked back and sat it next to Gabriella. "There, empty chair".

"Troy. Stop it" Gabriella said, seeing the anger in Jon's eyes heighten; anger she knew usually escalated quickly after a point. "Maybe you should stand next to the guard"

"What" he spurted, looking at Gabriella, "I'm not leaving you with this freak show"

"Troy, don't call him that"

"What a freak show?" he yelled.

Quicker than anyone would have guessed and responded Jon jumped on the table and spread his locked hands over Troy's head and strangled him.

"JON! NO!" Gabriella tried to push him off the table but his rage powered his hold over Troy. Everyone in the room stopped and stared in fear and shock as four guards ran towards him and with combined man power pulled him away from Troy. They dragged him away and Jon yelled, "They'll take you, you need me" he said, all way through as the guards dragged him out and towards his cell.

"Are you okay" Gabriella walked towards him and touched his face and neck, inspecting for bruises.

"I'm fine" he said, dismissing her worry.

"No you're not, Troy. What happened to that little talk we had in the house and minutes before we saw him. What happened to hearing him out?"

"The guy's a lunatic. You can't listen to anything he says"

"Well I just thought maybe just maybe if we listen to him he might stay out of my head"

"He's not going to bother you anymore", he said warily.

"And how do you know that? Will you be there when he forces me to watch kill someone else I know? Oh that's right, you can't, can you?" he leaned up, looking into him. "You know I just want him to leave me alone, Troy".

Troy sighed, "I'm sorry. The guy just makes me so angry".

She locked his gaze in hers, searching for some solution to her confusion, but all she got was his contrition, nothing more. "Just forget it, Troy" she said and walked out.
"Baby" he called running after her.

Later that night Gabriella sat in her bed reading the article about Grant Hill, again.
Grant Hill was never nice to her, never polite to her, frankly he was always a jerk but he was dead now and her dislike of him was the reason behind it. She searched his eyes trying to remember the hate she had for the twenty-one year old.
But all she felt was regret, and guilt. The Hill's were mourning their son's death. Their son's permanent absence from their lives and she lived on.
That was not fair.

He knocked on the door, "Can I come in?"

When she didn't respond to him he came in with a box in his hand. He walked to her and sat the tray on the bed and perched on the corner of it. She concentrated on the article, avoiding him when he clicked and opened the box. First he pulled out a ticket of some sort.

"This was my first concert. I was eleven"

The second item held in his hand was a bracelet. "This belonged to my mother, she gave it to me to pass it down. I was seventeen"

"And this CD contains the song I heard when I met you freshman year of college. Last year"

She looked away from the article and watched his hands. "And this is the movie ticket for our first date".

He pulled out an Ed Sheeran album, "'Kiss Me' was the song you used to tell me you loved me for the first time, eight weeks ago"

She lowered her head at the thought.
"This box contains everything I have ever cared enough about that I'd never want to forget. I forget Gabriella, and memories are too important to me to rely on past thought. And this thing that this guy is doing to you kills me, I sleep because hearing you talk about your nightmares in the aftermath is better than being forced to watch you in pain. Because he never lets you wake up until he wants you to and I hate that. I hate it, and I wish I could help but I can't and I know I can't so I take sleeping pills and I sleep it off. It's selfish of me I know but I can't deal with it. I don't how to deal with it and I'm sorry about that. I'm truly sorry that I can't help you the way you need me to"

She looked up and met his blue eyes, the pain in his eyes told her to never tell him about her nightmares. She had no idea that it affected him that badly and after hearing his words she swore she would make it easier for him. Even if it meant lying.

"I love you, Troy"

"Is the word allowed back in?" he asked and she nodded. Bending her head as she cried from where she sat, covering her face. "No it's not, not yet" he said and got on the bed and held her

She cried on his shoulder.

"I don't have to say it for you to know though, right?"

She nodded on his shoulder. "Hey" he placed his hand under her chin and gently leaned her up towards his eyes. "Every time I look at you, I'm saying it, okay?"

"Yes"

"Oh, Baby, I promise you I will destroy this guy, whatever it takes"

I waited for a very long time that night.
She never slept that night.
I lay in my cell waiting for her but she never slept. I waited for hours. That night I never got a chance to warn her about the danger that was nearing her.
I never got a chance because of Troy Bolton, again.
He took her away from me.