Well, to prolong this little series. Yup…that's the note…read my other stories too, though…please?…Well, r&r quickly or else Earth will be thrown off of its axis and thrown into the sun, for I have super powers. Don't believe what other people say, that I'm a pathological liar, for they will soon die.

Oh, and cuz I know this is going to strike some people hard, this Stephen King-format story, I am going to use the flames on my next arson spree.

Ginger closed her eyes and tried to wipe the pain away. They were watching, waiting, and they almost seemed to be adding to the pain of the slashes all over her body. She was trying to remember all that happened, all that had cut her and Macie up and left Dodie dead, probably left in several pieces.

She breathed deeply, taking in more air than she thought her lungs could capacitate, and suddenly let it all go. Her ribs ached from the breath and the long gash that had been almost deep enough to penetrate her left lung and stomach wall seemed to grow icy hot, as weird as it sounded.

She stared into the eyes of her mother and ever-so-loved (sarcastically said, mentally) brother and let the memory come out. She wouldn't recall ever speaking in a voice that had been as sane as that voice. Sane, yet masking the stark fear that was buried deep.

* ** *

It had all happened a week before. The Oh-So-Merciful-School Gods had granted the Lucky High School the much needed Spring Break.

The air had never seemed so fresh. At least, not since Christmas Break. The flowers were starting to blossom, the leaves were returning, and crack dens were starting to open their shutters to fresh Connecticut air.

The streets were filled with…cars, but the sidewalks was bustling with teenagers walking downtown to the park, and the skateboarders and rollerbladers headed down to the skate park, and etcetera.

Fifteen year old Ginger, Dodie, and Macie trotted down the sidewalk along the fresh stream of kids, like salmon swimming upriver for spawning.

"This…is bliss. This is ignorance, and ignorance is bliss." proclaimed Ginger, opening her arms as a fresh spring breeze lifted her vest and revealing her undershirt. It was just them, for many had fled for Florida or California or, in Courtney Gripling's case, France. Well, that was a exaggerated a little, but the ecstatic feeling was the same nonetheless.

"So what do you guys wanna do today?" inquired Ginger. Dodie was first to burst out in suggestions. Naturally.

"It's Sale Week at the mall! I'm pretty sure that Old Navy is having a sale on those little fleece vests you like, Ginger, but they also have Rugby shirts on sale again. I haven't seen those in two years."

(**author's note. ** Those are all quotes of my family with the exception of the name Ginger and the sale from two years ago.)

Ginger shrugged to Macie as Dodie began to hum silently the tune to the Old Navy Rugby Bunch.

"Here's a story…about a shirt named Rugby…hmm hmm hmmhmmmmm…" Ginger chipped in her suggestion next, reluctantly, and managed to cut off Dodie and her singing. "Well, 'Downfall' just came to theaters last week. We could go see that." A congested groan escaped Macie.

"Those theaters can be so unsanitary."

"You never complained before." Ginger pointed out.

"No, I didn't, did I?"

Ginger shrugged it off.

The girls rounded the corner and turned into the darker side of Sheltered Shrubs, not too much unlike the South Side of Manhattan, down to scale. Tiny restaurants with Italian names and not-so-rich kids playing stickball littered the sides. Ginger had always thought that Sheltered Shrubs had been a fairly clean town, one of the better of Connecticut, but always this thought was thrown out the window when they would pass through this street.

Not all of it was bad. A scrungy, elderly man with a wooden cart stood by the corner. His cart was filled to the brim with flowers freshly cut or stolen from around town. There was a sea of yellow. There was small red roses and baby's breath, but it was mostly yellow in that cart in three different types of flowers. It seemed impossible to fit them all in that tiny, enclosed space of the cart.

The old man smiled his gummy smiled to the girls, who nodded in return. He mentally knew they wouldn't buy any roses or baby's breath today. Teenagers (mostly boys, but every now and then the girls) only bought from his cart or from town whenever love-sickness was very deep in their faces. None of them expressed it. He merely turned back to his transistor radio, hanging from one of the posts.

Ginger, on passing the cart, was able to pick up the news being broadcasted out of the scratched and banged object that probably hadn't seen the light of day since the late fifties. All kinds of horrible news, it sounded like.

Blah, blah, blah, terrorist hijacked Pam 454, blah, blah, blah, suicide bomber blows self up in Pakistan, blah, blah, blah, the mysterious killer, labeled "Nightly Knife," still prowls between Sheltered Shrubs and Brittle Branches. The world was just full of bad news.

Ginger sighed and, with Macie on the left and Dodie on the right, moved on, through the little neighborhood and out again.

(a/n. Weird little ending to Chap 2, I realize. Anyhoo, keep reading as the story starts to unfold. Keep that name in the back of your mind, the Nightly Knife. BWA HAHAHAHAHAHA!!)