Just A Girl
Chapter One: A Dying Candle
He had ebony hair. Hers was like fire unleashed.
His smile was like ice. Hers was like a dying candle.
Dying.
He was everything she was not.
In a whirl of past and future and present and time, oh, yes, time, fateful time, he came out of the book like a serpent – slimy and cold and everything dark and evil.
She stared at him with a face white as the paper of the book, now blank. Empty of all her thoughts and feelings. Empty as her mind and her heart and her soul.
She caught a whiff of his dangerousness and shivered, but still stood her ground. He smelled of smoke and the crisp air outside.
"Tom," she said with a shaky voice, "you smell of smoke." It was a feeble attempt at conversation and yet still voiced how she felt inside. Fearful.
He laughed but now the laugh was not friendly. But I haven't heard his laugh before, she thought and felt the coldness wash through her body, leaving her mind limp and almost incapable of thought.
He laughed again and took her with him to a room far beneath the school. He kept laughing. He would not stop.
"Tom," her voice came, "Tom! Tom!" She was nearly hysterical and yet he would not listen to her. "Tom, where are you taking me?"
He did not answer her question but instead said dreamily, "You were only a girl."
"Tom!" Her face was whiter than before and she kicked weakly at him. He did not release his hold on her arms.
"Only a girl. Just an eleven-year-old girl who thought she had found solace in a friend." He half spit the words out.
"What are you going to do with me, Tom? What are you going to do with me?"
"What am I going to do with you? I wonder………"
"You're going to kill me, aren't you, Tom," she accused and almost instantly her eyelids closed like Sleeping Beauty – not in sleep, but in death.
They flicked open once again.
This was not the Tom she knew.
He laughed at her pain.
The candle flame was waning.
It was almost out.