James

  When I woke up, the clock beside my bed read 3:15 a.m. My heart was pounding, I was drenched in a cold sweat, and my chest felt heavy. I knew there was something watching me. As I slowly reached for the light, I felt something graze my arm. I quickly pulled away from the light and hid under my blanket. I finally got up the courage to turn on my light. Quickly, I reached for the light, all the while I felt something was breathing on my neck. I flicked on the lights and I turned around. There was nothing there. It doesn’t surprise me; this is the third time this week that it’s happened. No one believes me. My friends laugh, my dad says I am crazy, and my mom…. I can’t even begin to start to describe how much she teases me over this. There is something here, I just know it. The thing is that I don’t know quite what yet. I’m just the 12-year-old James that everyone thinks is crazy. “He’s just making stuff up to get attention,” are the things that I always hear. But I am not. Just last week I got hit by something, I had a bruise and no one believed me. I don’t know what it is going to take to get them to believe me. I have to go back to sleep, but I am too scared half of the time, and this is one of those times. I haven’t gotten any sleep in 5 days because of this.
    In the morning, I am off to school for yet another boring day. Spelling’s my first class. I misspelled establishment on Monday, so I had to take the test today, Friday. At lunch I tried to tell Harold, my best friend since preschool, about what happened to me last night. He said that if I continued to act all crazy like this, he would need to steer clear of me for a while because I was freaking him out. Normally I am excited on Fridays because it is the last day of the week, but not lately. Lately I have wanted to stay at school rather than go to my house. The day is almost over. I am watching the clock, counting down the seconds. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, RIIIING!!! That is the worst bell of the day, the dismissal bell. The bus ride seemed shorter today than normal. That’s just my luck. I arrive at my house, and wearily walk inside. Right as I step into the door, I must be in another dimension, because I was seeing visions of me killing people. Something was telling me to do it. Screaming and yelling in my ears. I want it to stop, but it won’t. My mom said she was starting to get worried about me, because she fears I am going crazy.
    And tonight, out of all of these nights, was the one that pushed me to the edge. Without any support from my friends and family, I finally snapped. I ran downstairs, grabbed a knife, and was heading towards my mom, and oh how she screamed. It was like music to my ears. I took the knife and plunged it into her chest, blood gushing everywhere, all over me, all over her. Her eyes lit up, filled with tears. She was finally gone. I have to say, it was very relieving. Every deep stab, every scream of helplessness, every cry of despair, was so fulfilling. They screamed, I laughed and continued. She was dead. I could see it in her eyes. I looked at her and sighed, “Maybe you should have believed me.” I turn my head to see my sister in the corner all huddled up and crying. She was asking me to spare HER. I looked at her and said, “Dear sister, why must I spare you over my other family? Why do you deserve that?” She was silent, other than the crying. “That’s exactly what I thought.” I slowly started walking towards her with my bloody knife. Then, all of a sudden, she pulls a gun on me. I said, “Why, sister, where did you get that gun?” Once again silence. She points the gun at me and then turns it towards her and pulls the trigger. This mess was bloodier than my mom’s mess. Last but not least my dad. He is upstairs. He heard the shot and ran downstairs, like any father would. I was going to spare him. But he saw what I had done and told me that I didn’t have the guts to kill him. He was wrong. I did have the guts. So I grabbed the gun, pointed it at him and pulled the trigger. Everyone was dead, except me of course.
    Now my main dilemma was what to do with all of  these dead people. I leave them there and flee the house. I grab new clothes and run out of the door. The voices I heard in my house are still following me. As I was running, I changed my clothes, and threw my old clothes into the woods. I felt fulfilled, but at the same time, I was crying my eyes out too. I was scared. What is going to happen to me? Maybe I was really going crazy. But I take my attention away from those questions and towards something else instead. I had a decision to make; where do I go now? Harold had already made it clear that I was freaking him out, so what do I do? I decided to try and make it out on my own. These voices I hear are telling me, “You did it! You killed them!” These voices are going through my head over and over again. They are getting louder, and louder, and louder, and louder, until they are screaming in my head at the top of their lungs.
    This is the point where I covered my ears and started crying. Out of nowhere I felt something breathing down my spine again. I finally screamed out, at the top of my lungs, “WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?” Of course I didn’t get an answer. As I continued walking I told myself I needed to go to Harold’s. I don’t care if he thinks that I am crazy. It is way better than what I was going through. I went to the nearest pay phone and called him. No answer; I found that very peculiar. I got to his house and no one was there. In fact, no one was at any of these houses in this neighborhood. I can understand Harold being gone for once, but every single person on this road? There are 7 houses, approximately 30 people, on this road. That just didn’t seem right. Why would everyone be gone at the exact same time?
    I turned around to see pure blackness. I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face. I heard this very deep, guttural sounding growl. The touch I felt on my back was like a sharp, wet, possibly bloody, fingernail gently scraping down my back. I turned around and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was the most evil, vile, and disgusting thing I have ever seen. It was….