Chapter Text
The streets were engulfed in that familiar blackness that you’ve come to know from coming home so late.
Tears pricked in your eyes as the memories from today played over and over in your mind.
“ I’m pathetic ” you whispered to yourself, and you truly believed it.
What had started as another normal day of highschool quickly developed into an agonizing 8 hours of hell.
After stealing your math textbook the usual group who’d picked on you had stalked you through the halls. Tossing paper balls at you, jeering and laughing, pointing and prodding.
It was probably because you never fought back that they did this.
Easiest target in the whole school that's what you are, and the final rotting cherry on top was getting locked in the janitor's closet missing your last class, and staying in there until 5pm.
The pavement gave way to gravel as you made your way down the path into the woods.
A simple shortcut, at night the trees were ominous, unfriendly.
You tightened your grip on your backpack straps as you pressed on. Through the exhaustion you knew your warm bed would be waiting for you, but what was the point of going home?
No one was waiting there to see you.
Your mother was away on another business trip and your father was… well, who knows where.
A comforting thought came through your mind. You, on a night like this with 2 friends walking through empty parking lots laughing and chatting. Riding around in shopping carts, getting slurpees at the seven eleven, doing stupid stunts, getting hurt but still smiling.
Most of your so-called never wanted to do any of that.
You still pretended that that was where you were going, not an empty home, but on your way to hang out with your friends.
What was that?
Your feet stopped. Someone was laughing? You squinted your eyes down the forest path and saw a group of figures standing under a street light.
Smoke rose up from them as you got closer.
You began to recognize those voices. It was your group of tormentors.
Why the hell are they here?
You kicked the gravel beneath your feet, and made up your mind.
You wouldn’t keep letting them get in the way of living your life. The darkness of the forest became more noticeable as you stepped off the path.
The leaves and branches pulled at your skin.
If you kept on this way you could just walk around the group. Easy.
Their annoying laughing and chatting quickly died down. For a moment you prayed they had left, but through the bushes you could still somewhat see the five of them standing there.
They were staring at something on the other side of the path.
A different sound broke the silence, a laugh. It wasn’t theirs though, it was sharper and sinister. Their voices spoke up with fear, and you watched as they began to move away.
One wrong step and you slipped falling on the damp ground.
You hoped you hadn’t caught their attention but a blood curdling scream told you otherwise.
It was one of the girls. You couldn’t quite see what was happening but you could hear their panicked voices, yelling at something to get away.
Then more sinister laughing, the thuds of weight hitting the ground, metal slicing through flesh.
Hurried footsteps cut off by one fell swing of silence.
Fear gripped you and you hadn’t even seen what had happened.
You crawled closer to the path eventually reaching the divet near the very edge.
Someone was crying, it was her, the voice of the same girl who had locked you in the janitors closet. Broken and begging, just like you once did.
You wouldn’t be lying if deep down it gave you some kind of satisfaction to hear her like this.
“Please, please , why are you doing this?” she said.
“Aw honey don’t cry” a deep masculine voice responded.
“We’re not gonna kill you don’t worry” it chuckled “we just want your blood. ”
It sounded like you had just stumbled into a horror movie.
A different voice spoke up “if we did kill you I’m sure our friends down there wouldn’t enjoy your company!” it was higher and more sarcastic.
“Oh and we’ll also take your weed!” the deeper voice added.
“Yeah you definitely don’t need this anymore” the other agreed.
It was killing you that you couldn’t see what was going on. You tried to paw your way up from the divot. Another scream followed by a loud thunk made you stop.
“ Jeez , that bitch was loud!” said the deeper voice.
“That's what she said” the sarcastic one quipped.
You continued your climb as the two of them laughed at their dumb jokes.
You had expected to come up further away from them and sprint down the road, but of course you had terrible luck it turned out.
Just as you pulled yourself out of the ditch you tripped again falling on your face and letting out a yelp of pain.
The laughing stopped.
You lied still, then very cautiously got up.
Standing to your left were two dark figures. Their eyes glowed unnaturally in the dark.
From where you stood you could barely see the carnage that lay a few yards behind them illuminated by the lamp light.
The much taller figure leaned in anxiously speaking; “h-hello!” it waved.
“I didn’t realize we had an audience.”
“…yeah an unwanted audience” the other remarked.
Your mouth was dry, you looked between the two of them before hoarsely saying:
“I-I swear I d-didn’t see anything.”
“Are you sure?” said the shorter one, he stepped towards you.
“Cause I think you were maybe watching us from the bushes, like a creep.”
His voice carried a threatening tone.
“You wanna join your friends?” he tilted his head towards the bodies.
“They're NOT my friends!” you snapped suddenly.
That wasn't supposed to come out so loud.
The man’s glowing eyes had a hint of surprise in them. The taller figure joined him looking at you curiously. “ I’m sorry ” you said quickly. It was a habit.
“What are you apologizing for? If they weren’t your friends then maybe you should be thanking us” said the tall guy.
A break in the clouds illuminated their faces for a moment. They were both deathly white with black circles around their milky eyes.
“What did you do to them? Their not…”
“Dead? Noooo!” said the tall one stepping to the side to block your view of the massacre.
“Their just taking a little dirt nap after we roughed them up a bit. It was barely worth it though their weed was total garbage, right Paul?” You could make out his pained expression regretting he said his companions name aloud.
The shorter one ‘Paul’ was still staring at you.
“...yeah. Jeez Jamie can’t you keep your mouth shut!” he snapped.
“Sorry!” he laughed, putting his hands up. “So what they know our names? They’re obviously gonna die soon so its chill!”
Oh shit
You took a step back “w-what? No, no I don’t want to die… not yet at least.”
“I-I promise I won’t t-tell anyone!”
“Promises, promises” mused Jamie as he stepped closer.
”You stutter a lot, that’s gonna make this fun”growled Paul.
For a second the blackness around them shifted, and looked as if the shorter guy, Paul had disappeared. You whipped your head around, before hearing a chuckle behind you.
“BOO!” he yelled.
You nearly jumped out of your skin falling back onto the ground.
The two of them fell into a fit of laughter, sharp fangs on full display.
You were shaking as you stared up at them, but then that fear turned to anger.
If they were really gonna kill you they would have done it already, these guys were just toying with you and getting a kick out of it. You were done letting people push you around.
“You two are assholes!” you shouted.
“Quiet! You're gonna wake them up” Jamie pointed towards the pile of bodies.
Paul howled at this joke. You picked yourself off the ground and dusted off your jeans.
“God I can’t take this! J-just kill me already ok? I’m sick and tired of being a punching bag!”
They got their laughing under control and silently grinned at you.
“You're funny,” said Jamie. “Thanks?” you responded.
“I don’t think it's fair to kill someone who wants to die, that's not fun” intoned Paul.
Jamie looked at you and turned to him “wait, are we really gonna let them live ?”
This thought excited him.
You frowned and looked at the ground. A small part of you hoped they wouldn’t change their minds. “This was weird, but I have to go home now,” you said.
“Why?” said Paul. “Cause your mommy said so? …you do have a mom right?”
You nodded, “y-yeah she doesn’t really care, and she's gone for the week.”
Why the hell did you say that out loud?
Paul smiled “shit that rocks! You can do whatever you want then!” Jamie nodded really fast.
You’d never thought of it like that. Technically you were free to stay up as late as you want.
You thought back to your fantasies of hanging with friends until midnight.
Jamie was bouncing up and down “what are we waiting around here for? The night's still young mother fuckers!”
Were you really gonna ditch going home for the night to follow these two… ghouls around?
“Yeah! Why don’t you come hang with us?” Paul said to you.
“We promise we won’t kill you” added Jamie.
You smiled sheepishly “ok, why not?” You were afraid to say no.
“That's the spirit!” Jamie quickly pushed the two of you along.
“Forgot to ask, what's your name kid?” said Paul.
“My names…
The rest of the night was blur, running around town with two guys painted like demons.
At least you assumed it was paint.
The three of you snuck into a seven eleven and scared the cashier half to death, convincing him you were ghosts and in turn leaving with an armful of snacks and drinks.
You guys pushed each other around in shopping carts, running into parked cars and crashing into bushes. Paul even keyed one of the cars and put a live racoon in it.
You toilet papered the front of your highschool (something you’ve secretly always wanted to do)
And played bowling with garbage bins and a soccer ball.
You were getting nearly sick from all the sugar and snacks and when that happened the three of you made your way to the park and lied down on the grass watching the stars listening to the sounds of the night.
After that you made your way to the swings and watched as Jaime spinned Paul around on one of them. Both of them trying to see who could make you laugh the hardest.
You slowly started to forget what they had done earlier. To you they just seemed like a couple of sweet, silly guys almost friends not… murderers .
The two of them seemed to like it that you weren’t put off by their appearance, and you never asked them about it. It’s like they had no sense of time, or consequences acting as if they really were ghosts, or some kind of creatures living outside of society.
You kind of liked it.
As the night went on you felt your eyelids grow heavy, and your yawns clued them in that you probably couldn’t stay up for much longer.
Eventually you found yourself standing on your front lawn. You didn’t remember walking here with the guys. It was as if some unknown force had picked you up and carried you home.
You gave them a tired ‘goodbye’ and ‘thank you’ before climbing into your bed and passing out.
That morning you woke up late, luckily you had a spare that morning so you didn’t have to go to school for another hour.
You turned off your alarm and closed your eyes again, wishing to return to that wonderful dream you were having. In your dream, your two best friends were demons, smiling pale faced demons.
You never read the news that morning because you slept, and because you slept in you never saw the headline: “Five teens found beaten and bloody with strange bite marks on their bodies. They claim they were attacked by two pale-faced demons …”