Seeing only darkness is bad but feeling the redness drenched around me is exponentially worse. The warm, wet liquid is slick between my bruised fingers; it’s slippery where I crouch behind the school stairwell with a dirty hand clamped down on my mouth and a mind that’s reeling.

I can still hear the squelching of flesh when she stabbed Sam right in the throat; the way red squirted across the white...

A pair of small boots hopped on wet stone, expertly avoiding the dangerous quicksand that had become the ground. In reality, the grass and dirt had turned into mushy mud from the constant downpours the town annually endured; yet nobody told Abriel this crushing fact.

The town elders nor any adult bothered to correct his mind anymore. They couldn’t talk to him even if they wanted to.

Another preca...

Screaming. Shouting. Sobs. Voices and clashing of metal drowned her mind that had already sunk so deep. Her body moved on its own accord; she rose off her bloodied knees as if she were a puppet being dragged up by a string. Perhaps she was a puppet—just a mere puppet to the only one who could never seem to let her go. The one who was by her side each day and night; the one who could never love her...