Knives and Pens

This sick strange darkness
Comes creeping on so haunting every time.
And as I stared I counted the webs from all the spiders
Catching things and eating their insides.
-blink-182, "I Miss You"

Chapter 3

A/N: Sorry it took SO freaking long for the update! I had planned to update almost every day in the summer, but then I started taking summer college classes and… yeah, super busy. But I swear to update more!

Spiders, everywhere, crawling through the hallway; I've always hated spiders. I try to scream, but no sound can comes out. I can feel them, crawling up my legs, and I stand very still, so still, hoping maybe they'll decide I'm not good enough and they'll leave me alone. No such luck. They keep crawling up, and now I can feel them on my arms and legs. I pray more than I have ever prayed in my life, hoping against hope that they won't bite me.

I try to look around the hallway of Spenser, but it is so dark. I don't want to open my mouth because I fear the spiders will go in my mouth, but I need to cry out for help. None of my friends except one that I can think of might be lurking the halls in his bad boy way at this time of night, so I whimper his name, "Reid?" Didn't think really think he'd be here. "Caleb? Tyler? Pogue? Anyone?" I fleetingly thought of the irony that I could only make male friends here, but that thought quickly fled.

I heard a noise. Footsteps. "Hello?" I call as loudly as I can without opening my mouth.

Through the light filtering through from the windows, I can see a distinctly male figure stop right in front of me. "Well," he says. Even though it's dark, I know he looks familiar, I know I've heard that voice before, but I can't place it. I know for a fact he's not someone I met here at Spenser. "Looks like you're in quite a predicament," he continues, quite patronizingly. The tone of his voice makes me want to punch him, but I cannot move a single muscle.

"Please," I whisper. "You have to help me. Get them off. Make them go away."

But they're already retreating down the hallway, as if his very presence warded them off or they were just a figment of my imagination. I blow out all the breath I was holding. "Thank you so much." No matter how condescending he is, my gratefulness overwhelms my fierce nature.

"Chase," he says, and holds out his hand. I shake it warily. "But I really didn't do anything."

I shake my head. "You saved my life. If you hadn't walked up…" I trail off, not wanting my thoughts to head in that direction.

He smirks. "Anytime."

I smile at him. There is something so dark about him, like an aura, that screams at me to run right now, but I can't. I'm somehow also drawn to him.

And that's when I notice. There is a spider, sitting on his shoulder.

Auden Rose gasped awake. She sat up then looked all around her; nothing was familiar. She was not outside the school anymore. She didn't know where she was. She thought a hospital room at first glance, but there wasn't near enough electronics for it to be a hospital and it didn't have that nasty medicinal smell.

Suddenly there were four faces peering into hers. Caleb, Pogue, Reid, and Tyler. So they had all come here with her, they knew where she was?

"I'm fine, really," she told them to get them all out of her face, but her voice was very weak and quiet and they looked disbelieving. She shifted a little to try to get comfortable. "Where am I? What happened?"

"We brought you to the infirmary," Tyler explained. "Apparently this school is too big for a nurse's office," he joked, trying to lighten the mood.

"You passed out," Caleb explained solemnly. He looked like he wanted to reach out to her, but he didn't. Auden shied away from the electricity and repressed what she was maybe starting to feel about him. She had just met him after all. And, he was probably just a compassionate person, he probably had a girlfriend.

Reid sat on the hospital bed/cot thing. But not gently either. He practically hopped onto the cot then stared directly into her face. "Nervous about meeting so many hot guys?" he teased. Gosh, he was even more arrogant than the guy from her visions.

"No, I—" she stopped herself. It was strange; she had never passed out upon having a vision before. Maybe it was the new environment, a place she wasn't familiar with that had overwhelmed her and caused her to black out in real time during the vision. Then again, they also mostly happened while she slept, so how would she know? "Never mind. Just…if that happens again, please don't bring me here. I'll be fine."

"So you pass out often?" Pogue questioned.

"No! No, I just… never mind. Don't worry about me."

Reid wagged a finger in her face. "We're not going to let you get off that easily. Please, do tell."

She sighed. "Well... it's nothing. There's a reason I got shipped off her to Spenser, but really, you wouldn't believe me even if I did tell you the truth, so what you don't know won't hurt you."

"Try us," Caleb said. The four boys exchanged secretive glances. "There's probably nothing you could put past us that we won't believe. Trust all of us."

Auden sighed. Should she tell them? Or should she just make up some story and lie to them so they wouldn't think she's crazy?