Hey.
Hey. What’s up.
Nothing much. Just chilling.
Nothing.
What?
Nothing. You. Nothing.
Wait. … … Who is this? Who are you? Why – what…?
Phae opened her eyes. The blank white wall greeted her, as it did every time. Every time she dared to open her eyes…that thing was there. That blank. white. wall. It didn’t even occur to her to comprehend anything else. The chair. The restraints. The voice. No, just the wall. Why was it there? Why couldn’t she see anything? Why was it so white? Anything…she would have killed to spot anything else on that wall. A crack. A stain. A dot. Anything. It was too white. It burned her eyes. So she closed them, retreating to blackness.
But then the voice came.
It only ever said five words.
Hey.
What’s up.
You.
Nothing.
Sometimes, she would tell it about the white wall. How she despised it. How she feared it. How she revered it. It would just go on about nothing. About her. About nothing. So then she would give up and look at the wall again. That damned wall. How was it so white? How was it that pure? Phae was thinking about that – the pureness – when it happened.
Black came without her consent, and suddenly, suddenly, she found she could hear. A scream ripped through her, terrible, evil, petrifying, and she found she had a voice too. When she couldn’t breathe anymore, the screams faded into silence. In the silence, in the darkness, she waited, trying to blink her eyes open, listening to the echoes in her ears.
Then…
Hey. What’s up.
Phae’s mind was blank. She didn’t know what to say. What was there to say? But then…it clicked.
Nothing…You?
Phae opened her eyes. Her real eyes. This time, the familiar cracks of what she called her coffin greeted her, as it did every time. She could see dim light illuminating the inside of her coffin, and she cried tears of joy.
Gray. Black. Yellow. She couldn’t believe how much she had missed these colors. She didn’t even know for how long. Her friends claustrophobia and the choking tube down her throat also greeted her at this time. But she didn’t move just yet: she had to have a plan.
Phae had awoken to this situation many times before. The first few times were always the same: she woke up, she saw her coffin, she ripped the tube out, she kicked open the coffin, she ran to a wall, she screamed, she started getting sleepy, she blacked out. Always the same. Recently, however, she tried getting creative. She tried slowly opening her coffin, to sneak out, but she just blacked out inside. She tried holding her breath, to buy herself time, but she just fainted. She tried ripping at the wires connected to her coffin, to do something, but they just fixed it. She tried staying in her coffin, to see what would happen, but they just pulled her into another simulation.
Simulations. Those were her prisons. Her mind prisons. Those were her metal bars, her ball and chains, her shackles. Phae knew other people shared her fate, her hell. Every time Phae emerged from her coffin, she saw cheap yellow light and, more importantly, five coffins, including her own. Always five. Five dull metal coffins, each one thrown aside and wired into the pasty walls. Who could they be? she had wondered when she could. Can they escape like I can? Are they terrible like I am? Maybe that should be her plan this time. She would open their coffins too. She suddenly had to know. Phae could almost see the room now – how she hated it, how she loved it. She could almost taste the stale air in her lungs, she could almost feel the loving caress of reality…
Caress…
Phae…Phae…
Someone was calling her name…
Phae…
That voice…she needed that voice…
Phae…
Phae…
“PHAE!” His voice pierced through the cloud storming, swirling, crashing through her mind…His voice pierced through her pain, her dark, her evil, her power. His voice…it was everything. It pulled her back…thoughts of sun, of light, of warmth trickled through her and then suddenly she could feel it. The warmth. He was there…holding her, his arms wrapped around her… “Luke,” she whispered. Her light. Her light had found her… “Come back to me,” her light said, and she obeyed. The trees once again came to life in the night, the stars came back twinkling, the grass swayed under her knees, the wind blew at her cold sweat, but she didn’t care. All she saw was light. His eyes sparkled, crystals of the moon, his lips caressed her cheeks, her eyelids, her nose, her mouth…She could taste the salt of his tears, could feel the love of his touch…they didn’t need words…she didn’t need to know…he was there, she could feel him, they were together, and together they cried with the wolves of the night.
Phae gasped suddenly awake, sitting bolt right up and toppling out of her coffin. “Luke,” she said, looking wildly around. “LUKE!” She stumbled up off the scratchy gray carpet and started towards the nearest wall. There was no door. Of course there was no door. She could already feel the poison substance lulling her back to sleep, but she fought. She fought for all it was worth. “Luke, come back to me!” She was sobbing. She almost welcomed this pain shredding her heart all over again. “Luke…I’m here…c-come back to me…” Those sick bastards. Her memories, her precious, painful memories…how could they do that to her…those sick bastards…The pasty walls started swimming with the oscillating blurs, and she knew her time was up. Those sick bastards. “Sick…” she managed to whisper, and then she was gone.
“Hey.” Phae looked up. A neighborhood boy stood before her, his hair mussed from running with his friends. She had just watched their shouting shadows shoot past in the moonlight. She didn’t know why he wasn’t with them. They usually left her alone – afraid of that straggling, pale, night witch child that haunted the alley. He didn’t look afraid though. That scared her: he was a child, like her, but he might have stopped to threaten her, like his parents. He approached her and she cringed. “What’s up?” he said. That was odd. She thought for a moment. “Nothing,” she answered curtly, looking away, “You?” He answered with a question. Not fair. “Are you really a witch?” he asked, and she tried making herself smaller. This one was different, but still mean: he didn’t play fair. She wouldn’t answer this time. “Go away,” she told him.
“But I want to know.”
A dark wind caressed her spine like a mother’s touch. No, she thought. She looked quickly back at the innocent odd boy and she shook her head, grasping at her shoulders as if that would contain the cold. He was scared, she could tell, but not as scared as she was. “Please tell me?” he asked again, “Please, I said please.” She felt herself trembling. The freezing night darkness was inching through her, terrible, evil, mastering her body with a ghostly cold power. “Go away!” she repeated, terrified, gasping. She barely registered the boy anymore; just the cold, that terrible cold. Its power dragged her to her knees, and she tried crawling away. Her hand dipped into a rain puddle and it instantly froze to a mirror shine.
She saw her frightened face and her blackening eyes staring into the night, she saw dark veins climbing over her skin, sucking greedily at her faint color, she saw blood dripping from her eye holes as she cried, black as night – she saw terror, evil, pain, screaming terrible beauty, and power.
A part of her was laughing, a part of her was shrieking, a part of her felt the pain, a part of her reveled in it, a part of her shivered, a part of her bent the dark to her will. She was nothing but the darkness.
Phae tore her hand out of the ice, staring in horror at its pale blue sheen, at the shadow tendrils dancing out like extra fingers. “Go away!” she screamed, and she heard an echoing shout before the darkness finally reached out from her eyes, her body, her soul, and swallowed the night.
Surreal. That was the word. Surreal. Phae’s borrowed clothes billowed about her starved body as she walked. The silence of the halls pierced her. The night witch. Those people were staring at the night witch; though with her black night hair and wan moon skin she thought she more fit the role of a vampire. Utter hatred and utter fear radiated from their faces, sinking like daggers into her heart. “Murderer,” someone whispered and she shivered. Their eyes followed her, their horror followed her, as she passed them and entered her first-ever classroom.
The teacher inside blanched. He ruffled on his desk for the attendance sheet, no doubt found her name, and blanched again. When he looked back at her, still standing in the doorway, his skin was tinged green. “G-g-get out,” he finally managed to say, backing into his desk.
“But – “
“GET OUT!” He grabbed a stapler and threw it at her, his hands shaking but precision dead on. It clipped her on the head before clattering to the floor, and blood smeared it, almost black on the metal surface. She hadn’t bothered to block it. Instead, she breathed in.
Emotion to her was cold, especially fury, but her blood still pulsed warm and steady through her. Proud of her control, she calmly picked up the stapler and placed it on the nearest desk. In its shiny reflection she saw her eyes fade from jet black to their regular amber. She walked out.
Her would-be classmates edged away from her as she walked back into the emptied hallway. She watched as they nervously filed in, she watched as the door shut with a ringing snap. She was alone.
As she should be. Why had they forced her into school? Giving her clothes, books, other supplies, like they hadn’t exiled her when she was a child; it was surreal. She should be in the darkest part of the woods, fending off nuts, fruits, and wild animals, learning from stolen textbooks, forcing the darkness to her control. What was she doing in a skirt and blouse? What was she doing with a bag on one arm and a textbook on the other? She should walk out. They did not want her. They had never wanted her.
Phae stood there only for a moment more then dropped all she was holding. They burned her. But she walked forward only a few paces before a voice stopped her.
“I think you dropped these.”
She touched her hands to her shoulders, shrinking.
“I know I did.”
There was a pause, but neither of them moved.
“So you’re going to give up? Just like that?”
Phae sighed and dropped her arms. She turned around to face him.
“You know what happened in there. What’s the point? Why do I need to subject myself to this?”
He stepped over her bag and closer to her. His golden eyes were sad, pitiful, and she hated to see them. “You can’t live with just me for company,” he said. She turned her back on him, on his gold angel eyes and gold angel hair. She replied curtly, walking forward, “I have others.” He grabbed her arm, forcing her to face him, stopping her like no one else could. “Can the others touch you like this? Can the others stay as long as I can? Can the others age with you and talk with you like a human?” His hand was air but his eyes burned. She answered quietly, “They’re enough, Luke. They have to be.” “’They have to be’? Phae, do you know how painful that is? Do you know how painful it is to watch you waste your life – “ “I’m not wasting my life!” she shouted, her eyes flashing. “I’m sorry but I’ve told you, I can’t be that little boy that died in the alley, I can’t have his friends or his school or his family. I can’t have anyone but the dead. I’ve taken so many of their lives…I can’t – I won’t hurt any more people. And quit manipulating my pity and guilt into weapons against me.” She tried walking away again, but he still stopped her, ignoring her last comment.
“After me you’ve only killed once, and the others…well they tried to kill you first. Anyway, you’ve matured – you’re not hurting people anymore. You know this; you know you have control – ” “No,” she said, “I don’t.”
He smirked away her words and touched the stapler wound on her forehead, showing her the sticky red.
“I beg to differ.”
Phae opened her mouth to respond, but was abruptly interrupted.
The bullet buried into her shoulder with a bang. Phae fell forward, watching Luke try fruitlessly to catch her, horror in his eyes. Another bullet shot into her back, and the pain burned cold where it hit. “No,” she groaned, “Stay…in…control…” But she could feel the transformation, the ice slithering through her veins…The gun sang for a third time through the empty hallway, and her darkness, her demon stopped the bullet in midair. “Please…go away…” She could feel it though…she could feel the darkness…Phae screamed as the other two bullets crawled out of her body and rattled lifeless on the floor, she screamed as her ripped wounds stitched slowly back together, she screamed as black shadows oozed out from her hands, her eyes, her mouth, her nose. She smiled.
Jerkily, she was lifted and turned to watch with cold eyes the wide-eyed, pale-faced boy dropping his gun and tumbling to his knees. “D-don’t kill me,” he whispered, trembling as she once trembled, “P-please, I-I didn’t mean – “ Phae took a step forward, the halls black as death, her mind roaring, howling, sliced through by darkness and controlled by shadows. “Die,” she hissed. And she laughed as he shrieked, she laughed as he cried, she laughed as he died. Clawing through his soul, ripping through his mind…she laughed, she laughed, she laughed, her demon roaring with cold power.
A dull noise buzzed in the edges of her consciousness, forming ambiguous words that morphed into each other. “Mmph,” she said, struggling up off blankets and pillows. The noise rose in pitch, then with a final word, “…justaboutallyouneedtoknowihopeyouenjoyschoolbye!” Phae sensed the source flee the room.
Yawning, Phae opened her itchy, glued eyes and registered that she wasn’t in some jail, some street, or the forest. She was in a bed, like a child, in a bare room with neat beige walls, a wardrobe, and a desk. No window.
Maybe she was in jail.
Phae got up tentatively, and walked dream-like to the door. Cautiously, she tried it and it opened easily. Conclusion: not a jail. So she walked through the doorway and into a handsome hall of stone, arching windows, and flickering chandeliers. Unexpected.
Phae looked to her left and saw the back of some girl rapidly receding down the hall’s rich red carpet. After a quick pause, she decided to follow her. The girl soon took a right and headed up some spiraling stairs, her shoes clacking against the stone, Phae’s silent bare feet several steps behind.
Windows lined the stairs too, showing the fading moon and the rising dawn. Phae looked outside while keeping an eye on the girl, and saw bursting gardens, rolling green hills, the distant village, the neighboring ocean, the stone, wooden, and cement towers and walkways of the school.
It was breathtaking, but…the school. She was still in the school. How was that possible?
She had lost control. She remembered seeing the boy’s pleading gray eyes, his snowy white hair. She remembered killing him.
Phae was struggling to understand this when she finally reached the top of the stairs. Her mouth gaped open. Before her stretched an open space as large as her family’s old house and thrice as long. It was filled with nothing but people; people on blankets, people behind dividers, people on retractable chairs, people talking, people laughing, people singing, people fighting. The polished wooden floor creaked and thundered with traveling feet and birds chirped through about twenty open balcony windows, adding to the morning cacophony. Phae saw more stairway openings lining the wall where she stood, and from there more people were trickling in. Afraid of someone running into her, Phae quickly sat down a few feet away from the opening behind her, trying to look small, inconspicuous, harmless.
She let her eyes roam the people of this room – no, hall. It was instantly clear that they were students. They were all her age or older, and some were even studying or doing homework. Sitting there, Phae caught snippets of conversation, some about school, some about relationships, some about parties, some about her, some about other people. Too banal to focus on. But something did catch her attention. Her heart raced and she looked again through the sea of students. Searching, searching – there. There it was. Her heart stopped altogether as she stared at his hair.
A white flash.
No. It couldn’t be. She killed him. She had felt his soul tearing from his bloody body, he couldn’t be there lying on a blanket, calmly reading. He couldn’t…no, he couldn’t, she thought again, relaxing; no, it was impossible.
The idea still nagged at her though. She couldn’t stop staring at him. He was too far away for her to make out any distinctive features, and this nagging idea wasn’t reason enough to brave the mass of people between them. So she stared. She stared and she stared, witnessing several boys and girls engaging him in conversation, always one by one, never for too long. He talked, presumably pleasantly enough, but just kept on going back to his book. What is he reading? she thought suddenly.
Before this question could consume her, everyone started to get up and leave out the windows. Even the white-haired boy packed up his book and started heading towards the furthest one. Confused, Phae sat still by her little wall space, watching the boy disappear onto the balcony. Then she watched at least fifty people disappear with him onto that same balcony. Something was not right. Looking warily around, Phae stood up and started after the boy. The hall had mostly emptied by then; it was easier for her to avoid people and for people to avoid her.
She reached the window and instantly smiled at the answer to her curiosity. The balcony was a stone walkway, connecting to another building. Phae hesitated, but the walkway was empty. Still smiling, Phae walked freely out into the sun, beaming at the new day’s beauty, breathing in the smell of green from the trees and grass beneath her.
“Hey.”
Her soaring heart immediately choked in her throat. Spinning around, Phae found herself wide-eyes to wary smile with the white-haired boy.
It.
Was.
Him.
The boy she killed the boy she killed it was him no impossible she killed him but it was him his face it was him – “I saw you staring at me in the Nob,” the dead not dead boy said. “Did you want to talk to me about something?” She wanted to see him, and now she had. His thin face, straight nose, pale lips, white hair, and golden eyes were – no. Golden eyes? They were grey, they had definitely been grey…so it wasn’t him? But other than that he looked exactly like him... “Can you talk?” he asked doubtfully. No, she concluded, it couldn’t be him. She had killed him. Anyway, how certain could she be of a face seen through the haze of darkness?
“If you can’t – “ “I can talk,” she interrupted swiftly but quietly. “And I’m sorry for the staring. I thought you were someone I knew.” Thinking the conversation over, Phae walked past him, heading back for the ‘Nob’.
But with a shock to her core, he grabbed her wrist. Phae stumbled into the walkway, gasping with surprise, staring back at him.
“You...touched…me,” she said jerkily.
His fingers wrapped warm around her wrist, and she reveled at her first live, human contact since she was a child.
She never wanted him to let go.
But he did.
Almost immediately.
Until he ripped his hand off her, until she felt the cold shadow of his warmth, Phae had never known how much she’d craved a human touch.
“No,” Phae said, desperate. She reached for his hand, but he backed away. Phae felt her heart plummet, down to her feet, down to the trees below, but she also backed away. She touched her hands to her shoulders, trying to cleanse herself of the cold.
“I-I’m sorry,” she said. Eyeing him warily, she added, “I’m going to go now.” It killed her to say it but she had to. Now she had to find Luke; her center, her normal. Phae turned around and made to leave again, but he still stopped her. “Wait,” he said, using words this time. Phae wanted to wait, she wanted to wait and talk to him, to have the chance to touch him, but she shouldn’t. No, she couldn’t. She kept on walking. “Classes are the other way,” he informed her retreating back. She stopped, and against her better judgment, she turned back around. “I don’t even know what classes I’m taking,” she found herself saying.
He smiled. She liked that smile. It was a nice smile. “Nya was supposed to tell you that,” he said. She remembered the girl in the hallway and grimaced. “I was sleeping.” Why was she talking to him?
“That was inconsiderate of you.”
Phae almost laughed at his reply before fully realizing that he joked with her. Like…a dead person. As in he wasn’t afraid of her killing him. Then she did laugh, but with amazement.
This white-haired boy was the most amazing living person she had ever met.
She was afraid to say anything, afraid to move. Then he might go away. But his next words were golden, “Look, Nya’s in my first class. You should come with me and ask her for your schedule, ‘cause you’ll get punished for wandering the school during class-time.”
Maybe she agreed a little too eagerly; he looked slightly surprised. But his offer still stood and they walked together into the box building before them. This building had wide white-tiled halls and smooth black-tiled floors, but no windows and oddly, no doors. The lights buzzed overhead and his shoes clicked on the floor as her feet slapped, filling the silence between Phae and the white-haired boy as they walked.
He spoke suddenly, catching her by surprise. “Who did I remind you of?”
Someone I killed.
It took her a moment to think of a better answer. “I never got his name.”
“Oh.”
Then… “Well my name is Luke.” Phae stopped dead and looked up at him, incredulous. He had to be joking. His face and hair was one thing but his name too? And now that she thought about Luke, her Luke, she remembered his soft eyes…his golden eyes. What the hell?
“What?” he said. Phae realized she was staring. “Oh – nothing. I – sorry, I – you just…it’s nothing. Sorry.” He was staring at her too, frowning a puzzled frown. But after an awkward stare-down, he let it go and they kept on walking.
“This is it,” he finally said. They stood in front of the only door she had seen so far in this building. It screamed its presence with a shocking blood-red color, and Phae regarded it with apprehension and curiosity. Luke placed his hand on it and said, “Plus one.” He then turned to her, ignoring the question in her eyes. “Just do exactly what I’m about to do,” he said. “What – ?“ Again ignoring her, he walked right into and through the red door.
Through.
Now extremely apprehensive, but also extremely curious, Phae followed suit, right into and through the red door.
After the brightness of the white halls, the classroom seemed very dark. Phae shivered, having always been afraid of the dark. But despite the dimness of the room, she could still recognize the vast difference between this classroom and her first classroom.
It was easy. The first one had desks lined in neat rows, a chalkboard, windows.
This one had no windows, but an arching infinite black ceiling, ten levels circling a sunken center, private boxes with three desks each, and, from the feel of the floor, the same black tiles of the hallway. The stairs navigating between the levels were currently lit up, illuminating all of this.
She hated it. So much darkness…
Phae noticed the box they had entered was empty. Where was Nya? She wanted to get out of here as soon as possible. “Nya’s in the box next to mine,” Luke unwittingly answered. She jumped. She had almost forgotten he was there. Phae now looked at him as he tried to hide a smile. “Don’t be afraid,” he added. She snapped at him before she could stop herself, annoyance overriding the curiosity of his smile, “I’m not.” She felt his amusement as they entered a little black tunnel off to their left, and she scowled at his back. Immediately, they emerged into an occupied box. Even though there were three desks, there was only one person.
Nothing much. Just chilling.
Nothing.
What?
Nothing. You. Nothing.
Wait. … … Who is this? Who are you? Why – what…?
Phae opened her eyes. The blank white wall greeted her, as it did every time. Every time she dared to open her eyes…that thing was there. That blank. white. wall. It didn’t even occur to her to comprehend anything else. The chair. The restraints. The voice. No, just the wall. Why was it there? Why couldn’t she see anything? Why was it so white? Anything…she would have killed to spot anything else on that wall. A crack. A stain. A dot. Anything. It was too white. It burned her eyes. So she closed them, retreating to blackness.
But then the voice came.
It only ever said five words.
Hey.
What’s up.
You.
Nothing.
Sometimes, she would tell it about the white wall. How she despised it. How she feared it. How she revered it. It would just go on about nothing. About her. About nothing. So then she would give up and look at the wall again. That damned wall. How was it so white? How was it that pure? Phae was thinking about that – the pureness – when it happened.
Black came without her consent, and suddenly, suddenly, she found she could hear. A scream ripped through her, terrible, evil, petrifying, and she found she had a voice too. When she couldn’t breathe anymore, the screams faded into silence. In the silence, in the darkness, she waited, trying to blink her eyes open, listening to the echoes in her ears.
Then…
Hey. What’s up.
Phae’s mind was blank. She didn’t know what to say. What was there to say? But then…it clicked.
Nothing…You?
Phae opened her eyes. Her real eyes. This time, the familiar cracks of what she called her coffin greeted her, as it did every time. She could see dim light illuminating the inside of her coffin, and she cried tears of joy.
Gray. Black. Yellow. She couldn’t believe how much she had missed these colors. She didn’t even know for how long. Her friends claustrophobia and the choking tube down her throat also greeted her at this time. But she didn’t move just yet: she had to have a plan.
Phae had awoken to this situation many times before. The first few times were always the same: she woke up, she saw her coffin, she ripped the tube out, she kicked open the coffin, she ran to a wall, she screamed, she started getting sleepy, she blacked out. Always the same. Recently, however, she tried getting creative. She tried slowly opening her coffin, to sneak out, but she just blacked out inside. She tried holding her breath, to buy herself time, but she just fainted. She tried ripping at the wires connected to her coffin, to do something, but they just fixed it. She tried staying in her coffin, to see what would happen, but they just pulled her into another simulation.
Simulations. Those were her prisons. Her mind prisons. Those were her metal bars, her ball and chains, her shackles. Phae knew other people shared her fate, her hell. Every time Phae emerged from her coffin, she saw cheap yellow light and, more importantly, five coffins, including her own. Always five. Five dull metal coffins, each one thrown aside and wired into the pasty walls. Who could they be? she had wondered when she could. Can they escape like I can? Are they terrible like I am? Maybe that should be her plan this time. She would open their coffins too. She suddenly had to know. Phae could almost see the room now – how she hated it, how she loved it. She could almost taste the stale air in her lungs, she could almost feel the loving caress of reality…
Caress…
Phae…Phae…
Someone was calling her name…
Phae…
That voice…she needed that voice…
Phae…
Phae…
“PHAE!” His voice pierced through the cloud storming, swirling, crashing through her mind…His voice pierced through her pain, her dark, her evil, her power. His voice…it was everything. It pulled her back…thoughts of sun, of light, of warmth trickled through her and then suddenly she could feel it. The warmth. He was there…holding her, his arms wrapped around her… “Luke,” she whispered. Her light. Her light had found her… “Come back to me,” her light said, and she obeyed. The trees once again came to life in the night, the stars came back twinkling, the grass swayed under her knees, the wind blew at her cold sweat, but she didn’t care. All she saw was light. His eyes sparkled, crystals of the moon, his lips caressed her cheeks, her eyelids, her nose, her mouth…She could taste the salt of his tears, could feel the love of his touch…they didn’t need words…she didn’t need to know…he was there, she could feel him, they were together, and together they cried with the wolves of the night.
Phae gasped suddenly awake, sitting bolt right up and toppling out of her coffin. “Luke,” she said, looking wildly around. “LUKE!” She stumbled up off the scratchy gray carpet and started towards the nearest wall. There was no door. Of course there was no door. She could already feel the poison substance lulling her back to sleep, but she fought. She fought for all it was worth. “Luke, come back to me!” She was sobbing. She almost welcomed this pain shredding her heart all over again. “Luke…I’m here…c-come back to me…” Those sick bastards. Her memories, her precious, painful memories…how could they do that to her…those sick bastards…The pasty walls started swimming with the oscillating blurs, and she knew her time was up. Those sick bastards. “Sick…” she managed to whisper, and then she was gone.
“Hey.” Phae looked up. A neighborhood boy stood before her, his hair mussed from running with his friends. She had just watched their shouting shadows shoot past in the moonlight. She didn’t know why he wasn’t with them. They usually left her alone – afraid of that straggling, pale, night witch child that haunted the alley. He didn’t look afraid though. That scared her: he was a child, like her, but he might have stopped to threaten her, like his parents. He approached her and she cringed. “What’s up?” he said. That was odd. She thought for a moment. “Nothing,” she answered curtly, looking away, “You?” He answered with a question. Not fair. “Are you really a witch?” he asked, and she tried making herself smaller. This one was different, but still mean: he didn’t play fair. She wouldn’t answer this time. “Go away,” she told him.
“But I want to know.”
A dark wind caressed her spine like a mother’s touch. No, she thought. She looked quickly back at the innocent odd boy and she shook her head, grasping at her shoulders as if that would contain the cold. He was scared, she could tell, but not as scared as she was. “Please tell me?” he asked again, “Please, I said please.” She felt herself trembling. The freezing night darkness was inching through her, terrible, evil, mastering her body with a ghostly cold power. “Go away!” she repeated, terrified, gasping. She barely registered the boy anymore; just the cold, that terrible cold. Its power dragged her to her knees, and she tried crawling away. Her hand dipped into a rain puddle and it instantly froze to a mirror shine.
She saw her frightened face and her blackening eyes staring into the night, she saw dark veins climbing over her skin, sucking greedily at her faint color, she saw blood dripping from her eye holes as she cried, black as night – she saw terror, evil, pain, screaming terrible beauty, and power.
A part of her was laughing, a part of her was shrieking, a part of her felt the pain, a part of her reveled in it, a part of her shivered, a part of her bent the dark to her will. She was nothing but the darkness.
Phae tore her hand out of the ice, staring in horror at its pale blue sheen, at the shadow tendrils dancing out like extra fingers. “Go away!” she screamed, and she heard an echoing shout before the darkness finally reached out from her eyes, her body, her soul, and swallowed the night.
Surreal. That was the word. Surreal. Phae’s borrowed clothes billowed about her starved body as she walked. The silence of the halls pierced her. The night witch. Those people were staring at the night witch; though with her black night hair and wan moon skin she thought she more fit the role of a vampire. Utter hatred and utter fear radiated from their faces, sinking like daggers into her heart. “Murderer,” someone whispered and she shivered. Their eyes followed her, their horror followed her, as she passed them and entered her first-ever classroom.
The teacher inside blanched. He ruffled on his desk for the attendance sheet, no doubt found her name, and blanched again. When he looked back at her, still standing in the doorway, his skin was tinged green. “G-g-get out,” he finally managed to say, backing into his desk.
“But – “
“GET OUT!” He grabbed a stapler and threw it at her, his hands shaking but precision dead on. It clipped her on the head before clattering to the floor, and blood smeared it, almost black on the metal surface. She hadn’t bothered to block it. Instead, she breathed in.
Emotion to her was cold, especially fury, but her blood still pulsed warm and steady through her. Proud of her control, she calmly picked up the stapler and placed it on the nearest desk. In its shiny reflection she saw her eyes fade from jet black to their regular amber. She walked out.
Her would-be classmates edged away from her as she walked back into the emptied hallway. She watched as they nervously filed in, she watched as the door shut with a ringing snap. She was alone.
As she should be. Why had they forced her into school? Giving her clothes, books, other supplies, like they hadn’t exiled her when she was a child; it was surreal. She should be in the darkest part of the woods, fending off nuts, fruits, and wild animals, learning from stolen textbooks, forcing the darkness to her control. What was she doing in a skirt and blouse? What was she doing with a bag on one arm and a textbook on the other? She should walk out. They did not want her. They had never wanted her.
Phae stood there only for a moment more then dropped all she was holding. They burned her. But she walked forward only a few paces before a voice stopped her.
“I think you dropped these.”
She touched her hands to her shoulders, shrinking.
“I know I did.”
There was a pause, but neither of them moved.
“So you’re going to give up? Just like that?”
Phae sighed and dropped her arms. She turned around to face him.
“You know what happened in there. What’s the point? Why do I need to subject myself to this?”
He stepped over her bag and closer to her. His golden eyes were sad, pitiful, and she hated to see them. “You can’t live with just me for company,” he said. She turned her back on him, on his gold angel eyes and gold angel hair. She replied curtly, walking forward, “I have others.” He grabbed her arm, forcing her to face him, stopping her like no one else could. “Can the others touch you like this? Can the others stay as long as I can? Can the others age with you and talk with you like a human?” His hand was air but his eyes burned. She answered quietly, “They’re enough, Luke. They have to be.” “’They have to be’? Phae, do you know how painful that is? Do you know how painful it is to watch you waste your life – “ “I’m not wasting my life!” she shouted, her eyes flashing. “I’m sorry but I’ve told you, I can’t be that little boy that died in the alley, I can’t have his friends or his school or his family. I can’t have anyone but the dead. I’ve taken so many of their lives…I can’t – I won’t hurt any more people. And quit manipulating my pity and guilt into weapons against me.” She tried walking away again, but he still stopped her, ignoring her last comment.
“After me you’ve only killed once, and the others…well they tried to kill you first. Anyway, you’ve matured – you’re not hurting people anymore. You know this; you know you have control – ” “No,” she said, “I don’t.”
He smirked away her words and touched the stapler wound on her forehead, showing her the sticky red.
“I beg to differ.”
Phae opened her mouth to respond, but was abruptly interrupted.
The bullet buried into her shoulder with a bang. Phae fell forward, watching Luke try fruitlessly to catch her, horror in his eyes. Another bullet shot into her back, and the pain burned cold where it hit. “No,” she groaned, “Stay…in…control…” But she could feel the transformation, the ice slithering through her veins…The gun sang for a third time through the empty hallway, and her darkness, her demon stopped the bullet in midair. “Please…go away…” She could feel it though…she could feel the darkness…Phae screamed as the other two bullets crawled out of her body and rattled lifeless on the floor, she screamed as her ripped wounds stitched slowly back together, she screamed as black shadows oozed out from her hands, her eyes, her mouth, her nose. She smiled.
Jerkily, she was lifted and turned to watch with cold eyes the wide-eyed, pale-faced boy dropping his gun and tumbling to his knees. “D-don’t kill me,” he whispered, trembling as she once trembled, “P-please, I-I didn’t mean – “ Phae took a step forward, the halls black as death, her mind roaring, howling, sliced through by darkness and controlled by shadows. “Die,” she hissed. And she laughed as he shrieked, she laughed as he cried, she laughed as he died. Clawing through his soul, ripping through his mind…she laughed, she laughed, she laughed, her demon roaring with cold power.
A dull noise buzzed in the edges of her consciousness, forming ambiguous words that morphed into each other. “Mmph,” she said, struggling up off blankets and pillows. The noise rose in pitch, then with a final word, “…justaboutallyouneedtoknowihopeyouenjoyschoolbye!” Phae sensed the source flee the room.
Yawning, Phae opened her itchy, glued eyes and registered that she wasn’t in some jail, some street, or the forest. She was in a bed, like a child, in a bare room with neat beige walls, a wardrobe, and a desk. No window.
Maybe she was in jail.
Phae got up tentatively, and walked dream-like to the door. Cautiously, she tried it and it opened easily. Conclusion: not a jail. So she walked through the doorway and into a handsome hall of stone, arching windows, and flickering chandeliers. Unexpected.
Phae looked to her left and saw the back of some girl rapidly receding down the hall’s rich red carpet. After a quick pause, she decided to follow her. The girl soon took a right and headed up some spiraling stairs, her shoes clacking against the stone, Phae’s silent bare feet several steps behind.
Windows lined the stairs too, showing the fading moon and the rising dawn. Phae looked outside while keeping an eye on the girl, and saw bursting gardens, rolling green hills, the distant village, the neighboring ocean, the stone, wooden, and cement towers and walkways of the school.
It was breathtaking, but…the school. She was still in the school. How was that possible?
She had lost control. She remembered seeing the boy’s pleading gray eyes, his snowy white hair. She remembered killing him.
Phae was struggling to understand this when she finally reached the top of the stairs. Her mouth gaped open. Before her stretched an open space as large as her family’s old house and thrice as long. It was filled with nothing but people; people on blankets, people behind dividers, people on retractable chairs, people talking, people laughing, people singing, people fighting. The polished wooden floor creaked and thundered with traveling feet and birds chirped through about twenty open balcony windows, adding to the morning cacophony. Phae saw more stairway openings lining the wall where she stood, and from there more people were trickling in. Afraid of someone running into her, Phae quickly sat down a few feet away from the opening behind her, trying to look small, inconspicuous, harmless.
She let her eyes roam the people of this room – no, hall. It was instantly clear that they were students. They were all her age or older, and some were even studying or doing homework. Sitting there, Phae caught snippets of conversation, some about school, some about relationships, some about parties, some about her, some about other people. Too banal to focus on. But something did catch her attention. Her heart raced and she looked again through the sea of students. Searching, searching – there. There it was. Her heart stopped altogether as she stared at his hair.
A white flash.
No. It couldn’t be. She killed him. She had felt his soul tearing from his bloody body, he couldn’t be there lying on a blanket, calmly reading. He couldn’t…no, he couldn’t, she thought again, relaxing; no, it was impossible.
The idea still nagged at her though. She couldn’t stop staring at him. He was too far away for her to make out any distinctive features, and this nagging idea wasn’t reason enough to brave the mass of people between them. So she stared. She stared and she stared, witnessing several boys and girls engaging him in conversation, always one by one, never for too long. He talked, presumably pleasantly enough, but just kept on going back to his book. What is he reading? she thought suddenly.
Before this question could consume her, everyone started to get up and leave out the windows. Even the white-haired boy packed up his book and started heading towards the furthest one. Confused, Phae sat still by her little wall space, watching the boy disappear onto the balcony. Then she watched at least fifty people disappear with him onto that same balcony. Something was not right. Looking warily around, Phae stood up and started after the boy. The hall had mostly emptied by then; it was easier for her to avoid people and for people to avoid her.
She reached the window and instantly smiled at the answer to her curiosity. The balcony was a stone walkway, connecting to another building. Phae hesitated, but the walkway was empty. Still smiling, Phae walked freely out into the sun, beaming at the new day’s beauty, breathing in the smell of green from the trees and grass beneath her.
“Hey.”
Her soaring heart immediately choked in her throat. Spinning around, Phae found herself wide-eyes to wary smile with the white-haired boy.
It.
Was.
Him.
The boy she killed the boy she killed it was him no impossible she killed him but it was him his face it was him – “I saw you staring at me in the Nob,” the dead not dead boy said. “Did you want to talk to me about something?” She wanted to see him, and now she had. His thin face, straight nose, pale lips, white hair, and golden eyes were – no. Golden eyes? They were grey, they had definitely been grey…so it wasn’t him? But other than that he looked exactly like him... “Can you talk?” he asked doubtfully. No, she concluded, it couldn’t be him. She had killed him. Anyway, how certain could she be of a face seen through the haze of darkness?
“If you can’t – “ “I can talk,” she interrupted swiftly but quietly. “And I’m sorry for the staring. I thought you were someone I knew.” Thinking the conversation over, Phae walked past him, heading back for the ‘Nob’.
But with a shock to her core, he grabbed her wrist. Phae stumbled into the walkway, gasping with surprise, staring back at him.
“You...touched…me,” she said jerkily.
His fingers wrapped warm around her wrist, and she reveled at her first live, human contact since she was a child.
She never wanted him to let go.
But he did.
Almost immediately.
Until he ripped his hand off her, until she felt the cold shadow of his warmth, Phae had never known how much she’d craved a human touch.
“No,” Phae said, desperate. She reached for his hand, but he backed away. Phae felt her heart plummet, down to her feet, down to the trees below, but she also backed away. She touched her hands to her shoulders, trying to cleanse herself of the cold.
“I-I’m sorry,” she said. Eyeing him warily, she added, “I’m going to go now.” It killed her to say it but she had to. Now she had to find Luke; her center, her normal. Phae turned around and made to leave again, but he still stopped her. “Wait,” he said, using words this time. Phae wanted to wait, she wanted to wait and talk to him, to have the chance to touch him, but she shouldn’t. No, she couldn’t. She kept on walking. “Classes are the other way,” he informed her retreating back. She stopped, and against her better judgment, she turned back around. “I don’t even know what classes I’m taking,” she found herself saying.
He smiled. She liked that smile. It was a nice smile. “Nya was supposed to tell you that,” he said. She remembered the girl in the hallway and grimaced. “I was sleeping.” Why was she talking to him?
“That was inconsiderate of you.”
Phae almost laughed at his reply before fully realizing that he joked with her. Like…a dead person. As in he wasn’t afraid of her killing him. Then she did laugh, but with amazement.
This white-haired boy was the most amazing living person she had ever met.
She was afraid to say anything, afraid to move. Then he might go away. But his next words were golden, “Look, Nya’s in my first class. You should come with me and ask her for your schedule, ‘cause you’ll get punished for wandering the school during class-time.”
Maybe she agreed a little too eagerly; he looked slightly surprised. But his offer still stood and they walked together into the box building before them. This building had wide white-tiled halls and smooth black-tiled floors, but no windows and oddly, no doors. The lights buzzed overhead and his shoes clicked on the floor as her feet slapped, filling the silence between Phae and the white-haired boy as they walked.
He spoke suddenly, catching her by surprise. “Who did I remind you of?”
Someone I killed.
It took her a moment to think of a better answer. “I never got his name.”
“Oh.”
Then… “Well my name is Luke.” Phae stopped dead and looked up at him, incredulous. He had to be joking. His face and hair was one thing but his name too? And now that she thought about Luke, her Luke, she remembered his soft eyes…his golden eyes. What the hell?
“What?” he said. Phae realized she was staring. “Oh – nothing. I – sorry, I – you just…it’s nothing. Sorry.” He was staring at her too, frowning a puzzled frown. But after an awkward stare-down, he let it go and they kept on walking.
“This is it,” he finally said. They stood in front of the only door she had seen so far in this building. It screamed its presence with a shocking blood-red color, and Phae regarded it with apprehension and curiosity. Luke placed his hand on it and said, “Plus one.” He then turned to her, ignoring the question in her eyes. “Just do exactly what I’m about to do,” he said. “What – ?“ Again ignoring her, he walked right into and through the red door.
Through.
Now extremely apprehensive, but also extremely curious, Phae followed suit, right into and through the red door.
After the brightness of the white halls, the classroom seemed very dark. Phae shivered, having always been afraid of the dark. But despite the dimness of the room, she could still recognize the vast difference between this classroom and her first classroom.
It was easy. The first one had desks lined in neat rows, a chalkboard, windows.
This one had no windows, but an arching infinite black ceiling, ten levels circling a sunken center, private boxes with three desks each, and, from the feel of the floor, the same black tiles of the hallway. The stairs navigating between the levels were currently lit up, illuminating all of this.
She hated it. So much darkness…
Phae noticed the box they had entered was empty. Where was Nya? She wanted to get out of here as soon as possible. “Nya’s in the box next to mine,” Luke unwittingly answered. She jumped. She had almost forgotten he was there. Phae now looked at him as he tried to hide a smile. “Don’t be afraid,” he added. She snapped at him before she could stop herself, annoyance overriding the curiosity of his smile, “I’m not.” She felt his amusement as they entered a little black tunnel off to their left, and she scowled at his back. Immediately, they emerged into an occupied box. Even though there were three desks, there was only one person.