Author’s Note:

I haven’t been updating often because I’ve been working on this. This short story is about Sari, ya know, that whole past thing. Most of the characters in the Lordess of the Vampires Series (yes... it’s a series... my brain can’t just stop with one book...) have their own little stories. Andrew’s has his own, which I’ve started on, but I can’t post because of all the spoilers in it. Heh. Almost all of the secrets in Lordess of the Vampires are revealed in that story... can’t post it till I finish writing Lordess of the Vampires. Heh. So here’s something to keep you busy. I was thinking about splitting it somewhere, but I couldn’t really find a good place, so get some popcorn and get comfortable, because this is a big jump from my usual three page chapters in LotV. (And would you believe, this turned out much shorter that I had originally thought?)

Read and review and, most importantly, enjoy!

~Lordess

-Metallic Whispers-

Sari’s Story

I remember that they were talking about me. They were whispering back and forth the way adults always do when they don’t want a nearby child to hear. At the time, I was 7, and I was that child, I was that set of young ears that they didn’t want catching their words. Though I wasn’t listening, I knew they were talking about me. It was a hushed whisper between doctors, and I could see out of the corner of my eye the darts and quick glances they would throw my way. I just sat there and stared, seemingly unaware of anything.

Another voice joined the doctors and I dared to slide my gaze enough to see who it was. Another man dressed in white stood with the faces I had known, the only faces I had seen the past year. I was in a clinic, a nut house almost, but not quite. I was too young to understand that at the time, but the doctors told me that I would ‘get better’ here. I had been there since the day of my brother’s death and since then, the doctors had been trying to coax me out of the ‘shell’ they said I had created.

I hadn’t created a shell, I just stopped talking. I had lost all reason to talk, so why should I speak? Especially to strange men who dressed in long white coats that they only wore to make them look like professional doctors. I despised those white coats.

I tried to get my attention away from the congregating group, but the new man, dressed in a suit and tie, caught my interest. He was different. He spoke at a normal volume, regardless that I was sitting in the next room with the doors wide open. He seemed to startle the doctors with his presence and his ‘lack of respect’ (as they called it) of my fragile state. They actually scolded him for it.

“Sir! Please keep your voice down! We don’t want to startle...” And Dr. ‘Frankenstein’ (I had nicknamed him such because of his freakish height and pale skin that almost looked green under certain lights) lowered his voice again as he continued to scold the new man. The other doctor, Dr. ‘Mix-Match’ (this nickname from the completely absurd ties the man wore) whispered as well, nodding and agreeing with Dr. Frankenstein.

“A year,” the man started, loud again, regardless of their scoldings. “She’s been here a year and still no change! She needs to get out and experience things once again, instead of being cooped up in here with doctors watching her every move.”

‘Yeah,’ my mind agreed. ‘It’s annoying.’

“Matthew, please!” Dr. Mix-Match urged. “I know you’ll be...” Again the volume dropped to a level I couldn’t hear. I heard the man named ‘Matthew’ sigh deeply and he shook his head.

“She’s out of your hands doctor, and into mine. You both have tried what you can, and it didn’t work,” he started. I felt my back straighten. Was I going somewhere with this new man? Where? Why? More questions flooded my head as he continued. “She’s lost so much weight for a child her age and I don’t want to see her have to be forced food through a tube. Just let me see what I can do.”

“And just what are you going to do, Mr. Wilson?” Dr. Frankenstein asked, softly, but they had begun to move closer so I could hear it now.

“I’m going to give her a home,” Mr. Matthew Wilson replied. I heard the footsteps on the carpet as he moved towards me. I didn’t move my head, but raised my eyes as he knelt down in front of my chair so he could see me more clearly, and I him.

This was the first moment I was able to see Matthew fully. I would see him for the rest of my life after that, though I didn’t realize that at the time. I just figured this was another test that I was to go through, another person to try his hand at improving me from what I had somehow become. I decided, for some reason, to be more observant of him than I had of my other doctors, perhaps because I figured he wasn’t a doctor.

His blonde hair stood out the most, for it was almost comical that he spent a lot of time picking out his nice clothes and nice tie, yet barely bothered to brush the slightly long yellow strands back. His eyes were a dark blue that reminded me of the sky because of the lighten nature they held. He smiled and, even at my young age where all boys had cooties, I could tell that he was rather handsome.

He extended a hand towards me and spoke, not as if I was a patient, but as a normal seven year old child, sitting in a big chair. “My name is Matthew Wilson,” he told me. “Your name is Sariania, right?”

I didn’t reply, but he continued anyway.

“Instead of having the doctors as company, the boss of this place is going to let me take care of you for a while, is that okay?”

Again, I refused to answer him and a long silence ensued. My eyes dropped a bit and I noticed that his large hand was still extended out to me, awaiting mine. The edges of my mouth twitched slightly in consideration. Did I really want to live with this man? Honestly, I didn’t think I had much of a choice. I figured it would be much easier to make it pleasant, so I raised my hand off of my lap and fit it into his. His smile widened as his fingers wrapped around my small hand and he shook it gently.

I liked his smile, and I decided I would try to like him, even if he wore white like the doctors.

~*~

Mr. Matthew Wilson’s home was comforting, though I was sleepy from the long car ride, so my judgment might not have been the greatest. He told me he lived in Maine, and that was a long ways from my Chicago suburban hometown. I had refused to fall asleep, making sure to watch everything that passed by, almost afraid that I was simply moving my confinement elsewhere.

His home seemed to tell me otherwise and my fears were quieted. I stood outside looking at it with wide, curious eyes. Mr. Matthew Wilson grabbed my small suitcase from the back of his car before shutting the trunk and moving back to me. He gave a slight push on the back of my shoulder, motioning to walk. I did so.

“This is my home,” he told me, keeping pace beside me, even if he had to walk slow to match the speed of my lazy short legs. “And it’ll be yours too for as long as you like.”

My ears listened as my eyes traveled about. He lived on a cliff side and I could hear the ocean waves crashing against the rocks many yards below. The ocean stretched on for miles eastward. About his house was more or less wild with long, overgrown grass and a tree here and there. To the north was a forest, deep green with the fading light.

Inside of his home was no less a wonder to me. The white atmosphere was almost as unnerving as the hospital I had been at. I was disgusted with the lack of color, but being here felt much different. I didn’t know if it was the smell of flowers (I believe it was flowers) in the air, or the comfortable, normal look of everything.

Mr. Matthew Wilson lead me to my room and I was comforted to see that there was more color to things the further one ventured in. The room he had given me had pastel green walls, decorated with a flowered vine near the ceiling. A few toys rested here and there and I wondered if Mr. Matthew Wilson had bought them for me.

I refused to ask.

Mr. Matthew Wilson placed my suitcase on the edge of the bed. “I think you can manage unpacking,” he said with a small smile. He moved over to me and squatted down on his haunches so he could look at me eye to eye. “In the mean time, I’ll make us some dinner. What would you like?”

I stared at him with an indifferent look. After a moment, his mouth twisted into a curious looking frown. “Pizza?” he tried, but still I said nothing. “Hamburgers? Spaghetti?” Inside, I was laughing at him. How could a man like him think he could get me to talk or eat using such simple tactics like that? I didn’t talk or eat at the hospital, why would I open my mouth and talk and eat now?

“Hm,” Mr. Matthew Wilson said after getting nothing but silence from me. He slapped his knees and used them to steady him as he stood upright again. “Since you have no opinions for what we should have, I guess it’s up to me. And you know what I’m in the mood for?” I just stared up at him. “Pancakes.”

Without another word, Mr. Matthew Wilson strolled out of the room, leaving me staring after him in bewilderment. Pancakes? For dinner? Was this man in the right time zone? Or the right age group? Only a kid would want pancakes for dinner.

I sighed inwardly and moved to my suitcase, carefully unzipping it and moving the articles of clothing from the travel case to the awaiting dresser. As I worked as slowly as I could manage, I thought more of my new keeper.

He seemed like a good person. Not at all like any doctor I had ever met, even the doctor I went to for tummy aches before my brother died and I was sent to the clinic. He seemed more relaxed and more at home. Seeing him so at ease seemed to put me at ease.

There was something warm about his personality to. The way he smiled and the way his eyes looked about and settled on things with such a calmness to them. I could easily see women his age blushing and falling all over themselves to flirt with him as I had seen many girls do with my brother. But there was more of that warmth in Mr. Matthew Wilson than my brother. It was the kind of warmth like pulling blankets out of the dryer and wrapping them around you in the middle of winter. It soothed every discomfort inside you without even intending to.

His voice had the same calming effect. It could easily put me into a happy sleep if he told me a bed time story or sung me a lullaby.

Everything about him seemed so home-like. I guess it wouldn’t be so hard to like him as I first thought with his white clothes. He was almost perfect.

Like an angel.

As that thought concluded, leaving me a bit mystified, I heard a small yelp from down the hall that jolted be back into reality. I had been sitting on the bed after I finished unpacking and now I slid off the bed and moved with a slow stride to see what all the noise was about.

I smelled it before I saw it. I wrinkled up my nose a bit at the smell of burnt food. I followed the smell into the kitchen were I found Mr. Matthew Wilson scrambling about the room, opening windows, fanning out the smoke, and trying to figure out what to do with the charred round disks that could once have been called a breakfast meal.

It wasn’t until the smoke had cleared and he was leaning against the counter that he noticed me in the doorway. He shifted a bit, his mouth twisting oddly again. “Did you finish unpacking?”

I gave a slight nod.

“Good,” he replied, then turned to the stove where the burnt meal sat. “On second thought, how about take-out for dinner?”

I mentally crossed out my thoughts of him being an angel. I had never in my life heard of an angel that burned pancakes.

~*~

Months passed by very quickly, but at the same time, very slowly. Mr. Matthew Wilson was very patient with me. He never said a cross word or scolded me. He never even got angry. He would just smile and talk and laugh as if I were smiling, talking, and laughing with him. He would always coax me to eat, and occasionally I did, though all of his attempts to make me talk failed.

I was given the leisure to do as I wished around his house and the wide area outside. In the beginning, I stayed in the household, where Mr. Matthew Wilson would usually be. The only times I would leave the house would be to accompany Mr. Matthew Wilson to the grocery story or to the library, or wherever else he had to go.

It seemed very strange to me that this man didn’t seem to have a job. My dad would have to leave very early each morning to go to his job and wouldn’t come home till very late in the evening. Working so much was the only way he could support my mom, my brother, and I. How could Mr. Matthew Wilson be able to support both him and me when he never went to work at all?

It dawned on me later that he worked at home, for sometimes he would go into his office and read papers and make phone calls. He never did stay cooped up in his office long, though. He would always come out and check up on me. I don’t think he got very much work done.

Occasionally, Mr. Matthew Wilson would get visitors. I figured that they were people who worked with Mr. Matthew Wilson and brought work that Mr. Matthew Wilson did to their main office, wherever that was.

One of them was very scary to me, at least at first. He was amazingly tall, seeming to tower over Mr. Matthew Wilson, who towered over me. His name was Ciepher and I swear he had arm muscles as big as my head. Even if he looked so intimidating, he wasn’t scary at all in his personality. He was almost as kind as Mr. Matthew Wilson, though not quite. He was a great deal louder and more physical in the sense that he would occasionally give Mr. Matthew Wilson a hard slap on the back as he laughed.

When he first met me, he did just that. He smiled as Mr. Matthew Wilson introduced me and replied, “What a cute little one, Matthew! But really, I think she’s too young for you!” And he gave a loud laugh and slapped Mr. Matthew Wilson’s shoulder blade and almost sent him flying forward. “You cradle-robber, you!”

Mr. Matthew Wilson only gave a bit of a nervous laugh and smiled (almost apologetically) down to me.

The other visitor I liked a whole lot more that Ciepher. He was quieter and shorter than Mr. Matthew Wilson. He had short black hair and blue eyes that were so much darker than Mr. Matthew Wilson’s that they almost appeared to be as black as his hair. He went by the name Usuakari.

When he first met me, he apologized profusely to me saying that if he knew I was here before coming, he would have gotten me a gift. He placed a hand atop my head gently as he knelt down to be at eye level with me. “I’ll get you a gift next time I come,” he said, smiling. “Promise.”

I honestly didn’t expect him to come through, but he did. He brought me a teddy-bear. I almost said ‘thank you’, but the words were caught in my throat before I even opened my mouth. Instead, I smiled.

After a while, the house started to get boring to me. I had been reading a lot and my eyes and brain were starting to hurt from looking at words all day long. So, with a little coaxing from Mr. Matthew Wilson, I went outside.

He went with me during my first big walk. He showed me a stairway that led down to the beach that didn’t require too much climbing or jumping down. He pointed to things as we walked, saying things like ‘that’s a good place to sit if you don’t want to get wet’, or ‘you can always find good seashells there’, or ‘there’s a cave over there, but it’s really hard to get to’.

He brought dinner out to the beach along with a towel, with the idea that we could have a picnic. The food didn’t look burnt and after eating some, Mr. Matthew Wilson said it was very good. So I ate a little. It was good food.

After that day, I went out exploring almost everyday. I would wake up very early in the morning and walk down the rock stairway to the beach. I mostly went alone, but every now and then, I would catch sight of Mr. Matthew Wilson watching from the cliff side.

I would always find something to do by the beach. I would play in the sand and make sand castles or just draw in the wet sand using a stick. I would gather up seashells to make designs. I would crawl and climb wherever I could. Occasionally I would bring stuff home (seashells and pretty rocks mostly), and Mr. Matthew Wilson wouldn’t object at all. He even bought a bookcase so that I could display them in my room.

On rainy days, I would stay inside and read from Mr. Matthew Wilson’s library. All the good books were way up top, though, so I would occasionally have to go to Mr. Matthew Wilson and give a small tug on his pant leg, then bring him over to the bookcase and point to the one I wanted. He would always smile while doing this, reaching up to get a book and handing it to me. I would smile in return to thank him.

At the end of the day, he would serve dinner. Many nights he would be experimenting with different types of food, trying to find out what I liked and what I didn’t. It wasn’t always good, and when it wasn’t, I wouldn’t eat. But occasionally he would come up with something I really liked and I would eat it.

I was eating a lot more by the end of the first few months. I had gotten to a normal weight, and Mr. Matthew Wilson was very happy about that. I was smiling more and more often, making more gestures and being all-around more happy. This, Mr. Matthew Wilson was ecstatic about.

However, I still refused to talk.

It was the middle of the fifth month when the lapse happened. I was helping Mr. Matthew Wilson wash the dishes. I would hand me a wet plate and I would dry it with my towel and set it on the counter to put away. He was humming to himself, stopping every now and then to make comment on something or other.

He handed me a wet dish and I took it, but once his hand let go, it slipped out of my own and fell to the floor, shattering on the tile. I jumped back in surprise and Mr. Matthew Wilson winced as he turned to see what had happened. Without thinking I immediately squatted down and started picking up the broken pieces.

“Sariania, wait!” Mr. Matthew Wilson urged, putting a hand on my shoulder. “You’ll cut yourself. Let me go get the broom.” He quickly left, but I still continued picking up the pieces. I held the end of my dress out and used it as a bag to pile the pieces in.

I winced and gave out a gasp as one of the shards broke through the skin of my fingers. I looked down at my hand to see the red liquid sliding down the fingers and pooling in my palm. As I watched it, my eyes slowly grew wider.

I had cut my fingers then too, when I tried to grab Aaron’s knife. It bled just the same, just as much. He bled worse, though.

Aaron.

Mom. Dad.

Alice.

Him.

A tremendous lump formed in my throat and I started having difficulty breathing. I chocked on a sob as images starting filling my head. I had forced myself to forget these images, to forget what had happened that year ago. But now, despite my efforts and all my hard work, they were coming back unbidden and in a rush.

I let go of the edge of my skirt and stood up, still looking at my hand. The pieces that were piled in my skirt tumbled down and shattered into smaller bits.

Mr. Matthew Wilson had come back in the room, but I barely noticed. He set the broom aside and squatted down beside me, taking my wrist and pulling my bleeding hand closer so he could look at it. “Oh, Sari,” he muttered. “I told you not to.”

Sari? Don’t call me that! Only they called me that! And now look at them! Don’t call me that! Don’t call me Sari! Stop reminding me! Leave me alone!

I jerked my hand away from his grip and his blue eyes stared at me in surprise. “Sari?” he asked. “Are you alright?”

I clamped my hands over my ears. Stop calling me that! I was chocking on my breath, trying desperately not to cry by squeezing my eyes shut. I felt Mr. Matthew Wilson try and touch my arm, but I pulled away again.

“Sari, wha-”

Before he could even finish, I opened my eyes and bolted past him. I heard him call my name from behind me and take a few steps to follow me, but I was quickly in my room. I slammed the door and locked it, smearing blood on the white paint. I stared at it with wide eyes, backing up till my back hit the bed. I bolted to the side and ducked into my closet, hiding under the clothes.

I pulled my knees to my chest, hid my head in my arms and cried as I forced the memories back where they belonged.

After that, I stopped eating so much and lost most of the weight I had gained. I stopped going outside and stopped bringing stuff in from the beach. I just stayed inside and sat by the window, looking out. Mr. Matthew Wilson washed off the blood on the door and tried his best to cheer me up. He seemed so sad that I had gone back to the way I was before. He didn’t seem to smile as much.

I also stopped smiling.

~*~

I don’t remember how long that lasted. Mr. Matthew Wilson left me alone for most of the time. When Ciepher or Usuakari came, they attempted to get my attention and get me to smile. Ciepher tried using his jokes, but I refused to smile. Usuakari brought me gifts, but I wouldn’t take them. After a while, I just stopped looking at them all together.

One morning, I woke up to find Mr. Matthew Wilson all dressed up, like he had been when he came to take me away from the doctors. When I wondered into the kitchen, he put a plate of food on the table for me. I sat down, but didn’t eat.

“We’re going to go on a trip today,” he said as he finished up his own meal and set about cleaning the kitchen. “There’s a dress on the living room sofa. I’d like you to wear it.”

Curiosity seemed to get the best of me, so I wandered quietly from the kitchen to the living room. I knelt down in front of the couch and looked at the dress that had been laid out for me. I stared at it, wondering why this sort of dress.

Mr. Matthew Wilson walked in fixing his tie. I turned to him, half expecting him to tell me where we were going. He didn’t say a word, only finished fixing his tie and walking back out. I turned back to the dress and looked at it for a moment before taking it into my arms and taking it to my room.

I stood before the full length mirror after I had put it on. It reached down to my ankles and had short sleeves. A small ribbon flower decorated the center of the square neckline. I fingered it slightly, biting my lip and frowning.

The entire dress was black. It made me worry immensely as to where we were going. I walked over to my dresser and pulled out a black headband, using it to push back my long sandy blonde hair from my face.

I slipped on a pair of white socks, folding over the ends and walked out of the room. Mr. Matthew Wilson handed me a pair of shiny black shoes silently and I sat down for a moment to put them on, buckling them tight on my feet. I quietly followed Mr. Matthew Wilson to the car and we were off.

I don’t remember how long we drove because I feel asleep in the middle of it. I was awakened by Mr. Matthew Wilson nudging me lightly on the shoulder. I opened my green eyes and looked at him with a curious frown. “We’re here,” was all that he said. He got out of the car and moved around so he could open the door for me. I climbed out and noticed for the first time the roses that he held in his hands. He handed them to me and a chill went through my spine as I saw where we were.

I’m not sure if I could have counted the number of times I had been to that cemetery before. The year before, I had made several trips. Enough trips that the soles of my old black shoes had worn thin. Being here again made my heart pound and my head spin.

Mr. Matthew Wilson had started walking down the rows of tombstones. I quickly followed, not wanting to be left behind in such a place. Not here. Not in the graveyard of my hometown.

I clutched the roses tightly as I followed Mr. Matthew Wilson through the maze of plots. He seemed to know where he was going, and by the direction, I knew too. What surprised me was that someone was waiting there for us.

“Mrs. Kenton?” Mr. Matthew Wilson asked. The proud old woman nodded and shook hands with Mr. Matthew Wilson. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Same to you,” Mrs. Kenton replied in a stern tone that seemed to contradict her words. She turned her gaze down to me for a moment before speaking again. “Sariania.”

My gaze fell shyly away from her. She wasn’t a face I had expected or wanted to see.

Mrs. Kenton gave a disapproving frown before turning her attention back to Mr. Matthew Wilson. “So how has my granddaughter been progressing?” she asked in a prying tone. “I see that she hasn’t gained any weight and she still isn’t speaking.”

Mr. Matthew Wilson gave a sad smile. “No. She hasn’t spoken yet,” he muttered quietly. “She was doing well for a while though. She was eating normally and wandering around and exploring. But then-”

“Then she shut herself back in and reverted back to that ridiculous act of mourning,” Mrs. Kenton snapped. She was my mother’s mother, a proud, snooty woman who had never really forgiven my mom for marrying my dad. She hated my brother for what he did and thought I was no different. She was the only living relative I knew of, so technically I was supposed to be in her care. However, as she didn’t like me, she sent me to the doctors to get me fixed up into something she would like.

I never really liked her much, myself.

“Mrs. Kenton,” Mr. Matthew Wilson started. “I think that she-”

“I don’t care what you think!” she interrupted. She threw her hands up in aggravation. “I don’t care what she does! She’s been a thorn in my side for long enough! Just keep her!”

I watched with wide eyes as my grandmother stormed off. Mr. Matthew Wilson gave me a nervous glance before quickly following to catch up to my grandmother. He darted in front of her to halt her. He spoke to her in a voice quiet enough so I couldn’t hear, just like the doctors had done. She came close to exploding at him, as close as a refined woman can get to exploding.

“I don’t care! I don’t want to deal with her any more. She’s your problem now. I don’t want to see her, I don’t even want to think about her ever again.”

Mr. Matthew Wilson watched her as she brushed past him and continued on the way to her car, where the driver opened the door for her. He didn’t move until the car drove away, then turned his sad blue eyes to me. He walked over to me and smiled a sad little smile, placing a hand on my head. “I’m sorry about that, Sari,” he muttered. He had stopped calling me Sariania by then, and left it down to just Sari. I still didn’t like it, but didn’t give any word of protest.

“She wanted to see how you were doing,” he continued. “I couldn’t say no, considering she’s your grandmother.”

My grandmother was that sort of person, I knew. She was also the type to always tell the truth, no matter how blunt or hurtful it may be. True to her word, I never saw her again.

I felt my heart plunge a bit. I knew that Mr. Matthew Wilson didn’t want to hurt me, but now he was running into the same problem as the doctors. He couldn’t find a reason for me to talk. If I couldn’t find one, how could they? Or he? I couldn’t expect them to, but for a while, I thought had felt the hope that they would help me. Mr. Matthew Wilson had given me a reason to smile, after all. I had had faith in him.

Somewhere deep inside, without wanting to, I knew I still had faith in him.

I looked down to the roses in my hands, then to the tombstones we stood before. Mr. Matthew Wilson squatted down and looked at the too, then to me. “Let’s give these roses to the proper people and go home,” he said quietly and calmly. I gave a shallow nod and moved forward, placing one rose on my dad’s grave, one on my mother’s, then one on my brother Aaron’s grave. I still had one rose left and I looked up at Mr. Matthew Wilson curiously.

He extended one hand towards me as he stood and I took it. He led me down another row and stopped before another grave. I looked at it and felt my heart plunge deeper. I bit my lip, feeling the lump form in my throat again and gripped Mr. Matthew Wilson’s hand tighter. He returned the tight grip causing my gaze to turn up to him. He looked down at me with those calm, warm blue eyes and my fear melted away. He nodded and I slipped my hand out of his and walked to the grave.

I knelt down before it, staring at the words inscribed in the stone cross that stood at least half my height. I placed the rose down before it and reached my small hand up to trace the name.

‘Alice Mandy Fuller’.

My lips ghosted the name, though no sound came from my throat. I wrapped my arms around the stone at the center of the cross and rested my head against the cold, smooth surface. I cried. Mr. Matthew Wilson was patient, as he always was, and waited until I was finished crying. I stood and turned to him and he quietly extended his hand towards mine. I took it and we headed home.

~*~

We arrived home very late, and after refusing dinner, I changed into my pajamas and crawled into the big, comfy bed I had been sleeping in these past few months. Lay there, hugging my pillow and staring at the wall for most of the night. I just lay there and thought of many many things. I don’t think I slept, though I don’t recall a single thought that passed through my head that night.

The morning, before Mr. Matthew Wilson even awoke, I left my room and stood before the big bookcase. I looked over all the books, curiously. I had only read a very small portion of them, and mostly stuff children my age and maybe a bit older would read.

Something was very restless inside me. Having all those memories start to resurface was leaving me feeling very empty. I didn’t like that empty feeling. I would have to fill it up. Collecting things on the beach didn’t help much. I had filled up all my shelves with tidbits of things that had washed up. So now there was this.

I picked up a book and started to read.

Mr. Matthew Wilson was a bit surprised when he found me reading, but didn’t say a word against it. As far as he knew, this was just like when I had first come and I’d be outside in no time. I never went outside, though, even when he invited me on picnics. I still didn’t eat much, and never smiled. I just read.

When I finished with one book, I picked up another and read it, cover to cover. Then another. And another. I kept reading. I couldn’t stop. The more I read, the more I understood the books I had read before. The more I read, the more I thought about things beside my memories. The more I read, the faster I could forget.

Eventually, I had read every book in Mr. Matthew Wilson’s bookcase. He had been keeping track of what I had read and when I handed him the last book, he was extremely shocked, for he claimed that he hadn’t even read half the books he owned.

Figuring I wanted to keep reading, he took me to the library and got me a library card. We would come home with armloads of books and I would sit in my room and read. Occasionally I would come out to nibble on some food, but I always had a book open on the table, my eyes glued to the pages and words. The only time I wouldn’t read is when I slept. I would try my best to stay awake to read one more chapter, one more page, but sleep claimed me night after night. When that happened, Mr. Matthew Wilson would carry me to bed or just leave me in the chair I was in and cover me with a blanket and turn off the lights.

This went on for five and a half years.

By the end, I had read most of the books in the town library. I had grown tired of reading, for everything had begun to get hideously repetitive. I’m not sure what grade I had gotten to with all that reading, but Mr. Matthew Wilson said offhandedly that I was probably smarter than any college student in existence.

At the end of the five and a half years, I was 13 years old. I closed a chemistry book with a distasteful expression on my face. I had read all this stuff before. Wasn’t there anything new? Was this all there was to read and know?

I felt so unsatisfied and the empty feeling returned, nagging at me. I pushed the book aside and leaned back in my chair, my green eyes staring out the window. I considered going back out and scourging the shore again, like I had so many years ago. Maybe I could find some miraculous thing that could fill the emptiness inside.

Preposterous. I scoffed the very notion. If something like that existed, I would have found it already. I turned my gaze to the bookshelf that still had all the things I had collected. Seashells, rocks, scrap metal, trash. These things didn’t hold anything miraculous. The books didn’t either.

I’d have to make that miraculous thing myself.

I had had faith in Mr. Matthew Wilson to find that thing, but faith in other people only goes so far. I needed to have faith in myself. I had lost faith when all those bad things happened to me when I was six. I wanted it back. I wanted the emptiness to go away. I wanted to be happy.

I pulled off the things on my shelves and started building. I didn’t care what I was building at first, just putting things together. It was like when I had arranged seashells on the beach, but now things were much more intricate. At first I worked with the seashells, using the tools in Mr. Matthew Wilson’s tool box to shape them, crack them, mold them.

The seashell creations didn’t amount to much of anything, so I turned to the trash and tried building more. I played with old bottles and things and toyed with the metal and wires. I made small things and with the help of some batteries I found under the kitchen sink, I got them to move and walk. But these pieces of moving scrap didn’t satisfy me.

I tore the little things apart and started building something bigger. I wasn’t sure what I was building, but I built it anyway. When I ran out of things, I would go down to the beach and try to find more. Find thing things became so hard after a while, so I began taking things from inside the house. My alarm clock was the first to go. Then went the stereo.

Mr. Matthew Wilson was confused about this new hobby, but said no word against it. He would occasionally bring home junk that he found and give it to me to help with my building. He was patient when appliances would be found disassembled or missing completely. I think he knew that I was on the verge of something and didn’t want to interfere.

I don’t think he was too happy when I laid hands on his computer, but as was his way, he didn’t say one cross word.

Somewhere in the midst of building, my mind started slipping away from my work and back to the memories I kept pushing away. As my hands worked nimbly at my unknown creation, I let my mind be free to wander as it wished. I remembered and relived what I was forcing myself to forget.

~*~

Alice Mandy Fuller was my best friend in the whole wide world. I met her when I was four and the next two and a half years we knew each other, we were inseparable. I can still remember her perfectly. She was a little bit taller than me with long blonde hair and the prettiest blue eyes I ever did see. While my memory was good, hers was terrible and many people would joke that I somehow stole her memory away from her.

Alice would always laugh along with this and say in a childish way, “What’s the good of remembering things of way back when, when you’ve got too much fun stuff to do today?”

She was such a wonderful person to be around. She was the closest person to me. Not even my relationship with my family could compare to what I had with Alice. We always boasted to be the bestest best friends in the world and that nothing, not grown-ups, not boyfriends, not even fate itself could tear us apart. Everyone encouraged this boast, smiling at our innocent, pure views of things.

Everyone except for one.

I started seeing him a little after I turned six. I remember the first time I saw him in a beautiful garden. I had been running through the passageways, along cobblestone paths, chasing a purple butterfly. All around me were magnificent flowers of every kind, trees that towered above with plenty of branches to climb and sit on, birds, bees, frogs, crickets, bunnies, deer; every child’s paradise.

I giggled as I ran after the purple insect, my hands occasional stretching themselves out in hopes to snag the pretty butterfly. Every time, however, it eluded me, though it would swoop down close to my face as if saying ‘Come on, Sari! Try harder! I know you can catch me!’. So I continued to follow it.

I slowed down to a stop as it swooped up high above my reach. I watched it with a smile as it swooped back down to the side, landing slowly and gently in an awaiting palm that was not my own. My smile faded to pure curiosity as I watched the other person bring the palm close to smile at the little butterfly. The butterfly slowly swayed it’s wings before taking off again and disappearing into the garden.

The man sitting on the bench turned to me and smiled again.

He was a strange man. I had never seen anyone quite like him. His eyes were closed, but I knew his attention was on me. At first, I thought that he was blind, because one of my daddy’s friends always walked around either with his eyes closed or with them open, but not looking at anything in particular. Somehow, I’m not sure how, I knew that this man before me wasn’t blind.

A small breeze picked up the light strands of his purple hair. I had never seen purple hair before. I didn’t know people could grow purple hair! Normally I would have found it odd, but it seemed to suit him. It matched his purple uniform.

All in all, with his kind smile, he looked like a prince from a fairy tale.

“Good evening, Sariania,” he said in a smooth voice. I blinked, my eyes growing wide as I swallowed a gasp of surprise. The man gave a short, amused laugh. “Something wrong? Are you afraid?”

I slowly shook my head, but couldn’t bring myself to speak just yet. Mommy had always said it wasn’t good to talk to strangers. She said that some strangers were very bad people, and that I should stay safe by not talking to any of them.

“Of course you aren’t,” he said with a reassuring smile. “There is nothing to be afraid of. But then, what is wrong, if I may ask?”

I swallowed the nervous lump in my throat and clasped my hands behind my back. “You just startled me, is all,” I murmured quietly. My gaze turned to the ground as I spoke this, but they turned up again as the man gave a calm chuckle.

He stood and I watched him as he walked over to me. His black cape trailed behind him and was lifted by the gentle breeze that passed by. He knelt down on one knee before me and looked at me through his closed eyes. “Well, you will have to forgive me for doing so,” he said. “I did not mean to startle you, Sariania.”

My lips twisted nervously a bit. Mommy would be furious if she knew I was talking to strangers. But I had to know, so I asked, “How do you know my name?” I tilted my head with this question, my sandy blonde hair falling across my shoulders.

The man’s lips slowly curved into a wider smile. “I know many things,” he answered. He extended one hand in greeting. “My name is Greg.”

I stared at his gloved hand, debating. Mommy would really get on my case about talking with strangers, but now that I knew his name, he wasn’t a stranger no more. Besides, he knew lots about me, so how much of a stranger could he be?

I fit my hand into his and smiled. “Nice to meet you, Greg,” I said, giving his hand a firm shake. Greg chuckled and returned the firm shake with a wide smile.

“The pleasure is all mine.”

And then I woke up.

Greg became my dream friend. I would call him my imaginary friend, but I never saw him during the day, like most imaginary friends. I only saw him at night, when I was sleeping. In my dreams, I would go to the garden and meet him in the same place every night. He would take me around the garden and show me many wonderful, beautiful things.

He told me not to tell anyone about him, that our meetings were to remain secret. When I asked him why, he said it was so he could spend more time with me. If other people knew, they might get jealous.

“I can’t even tell Alice?” I asked.

Greg shook his head. “No, not even Alice,” he answered.

So Greg remained my little secret from everybody. It was very hard, though. I was used to telling Alice everything, and she always told me everything about her. She would tell me about some of the dreams she had and I couldn’t tell her anything about mine. I couldn’t. I had promised Greg I wouldn’t.

A few weeks later, my daddy started getting sick. Alice’s mom got sick too, as well as some other people in the suburb. Doctors didn’t really know what it was, but it didn’t seem anything more serious than a cold or the flu, so there wasn’t much worry. Since daddy had to stay home, mommy had to go out and do stuff to keep some money coming in, for daddy’s sick-days didn’t last too long. Daddy usually stayed in bed and had really bad headaches occasionally and didn’t like my older brother Aaron and I playing too loudly. Most the time, Aaron and some of his friends would take Alice and me to the park and we all would play from when school let out till dinner time when mommy would be home.

Sometimes around then, Greg wouldn’t be in the garden where he usually was. In his place would be the purple butterfly. It would fly around and I would chase it, expecting it to lead me to Greg. On those nights, it never did. When I asked Greg about it, he apologized and said that he was a bit busy with work.

“You work?” I asked curiously, swinging my feet under the bench. Greg laughed at this.

“Well of course I do!” he replied with a smile. “Doesn’t your daddy work too?”

“Well, yeah,” I answered, thinking about it. “But I thought you were a prince or somethin’, and didn’t hafta work.” Again, Greg laughed. “What do you do?”

He took a moment to push some of the purple strands out of his face. “It’s a bit hard to explain,” he mused. “I’m kind of a seeker.”

“A seeker?” I asked. “You lookin’ for somethin’?”

“I was.”

“Did you find it?”

“I most certainly did.”

With that, he gave my nose a light tap and the subject was dropped.

It was after one of the nights that Greg didn’t come that I broke my promise to him. Alice and I were in the playground during recess and sitting in the cover patch. I had been drawing in class and gotten in trouble for it and she wanted to know what it was that I had been drawing. I handed her the picture of Greg I had drawn. I just couldn’t keep this secret from her any longer!

“Who is this?” she asked, her thin lips twisting a bit and starting to curl downward.

“He’s my dream friend,” I said, leaning forward on my knees and lowering my voice a bit. “I’m not supposed to tell you about him. He promised me not to, but I can’t keep secrets from you.”

“Your dream friend?” Alice asked. Her blue eyes were more worried than I had ever seen them before.

I nodded. “His name is Greg,” I explained. “He’s been visiting me in my dreams for a few weeks now, almost every night. He shows me around his garden and we play and talk.”

Alice folded the drawing back up and handed it back to me. “He looks like someone from one of my dreams,” she murmured quietly. I smiled, excited about this. Perhaps when Greg wasn’t with me, he was with Alice!

“You see him too?” I asked excitedly. “Isn’t he wonderful?”

Alice shook her head and my smile slowly faded. Her worried expression was starting to worry me. “The person in my dreams isn’t named Greg. And he isn’t wonderful. He’s scary.” She paused, her blue eyes falling to her fingers that played with the clovers. “He shows me bad things,” she whispered. “And he doesn’t go by the name ‘Greg’.”

“What name does he go by?” I asked quietly, leaning forward to try and catch my friend’s gaze.

“Trickster.”

~*~

The next night, Greg came to me and I had to ask him about Alice and her dreams. He couldn’t possibly be the same person, right? It was really worrying me, and I had enough to worry about. My daddy still hadn’t gotten any better and the house was always felt really tense.

So after a while of playing, I turned to him, biting my lip. “I have to ask you something,” I said sternly, clasping my hands behind my back and standing as straight as I could. Greg’s smile turned into a curious expression.

“Oh?” he replied. “Ask away.”

I paused, wondering how mad he’d be when I told him I broke our promise. “I told Alice about you,” I muttered, eyes drifting to the ground. Greg remained silent and I felt a knot form in my stomach. “She said you look like someone in her dreams, someone named Trickster. I wanted to know if you and him were the same.”

When I turned my eyes up to Greg, I could tell that he wasn’t happy. His mouth was twisting into a deep, disappointed frown. “You promised that you wouldn’t tell, Sariania,” he said in a scolding voice.

“I know!” I said, suddenly very ashamed at what I had done. I shouldn’t have asked. I shouldn’t have told. I should have kept my big mouth shut. “I’m really sorry!”

Greg shook his head slowly. “No,” he said firmly after a deep breath. “I don’t think you are. Breaking promises is very bad. You’ve been a very bad girl.”

“I know,” I whimpered, feeling on the verge of tears.

“No,” Greg said. “I don’t think you do.” The wind started to pick up and turn cold. The sun seemed to fade and was taken over by clouds. “But I’ll show you. And you will learn.”

I woke up with my heart pounding and a cold sweat all over my body. I was shaking badly from something terrible that I had seen, but I couldn’t remember what I had seen. I pulled my covers closer to by body, gripping them so tight that my knuckles were turning white.

The next morning I found out that one of the people with the mysterious sickness in town had died.

I didn’t have any good dreams after that.

~*~

Things only got worse as time went on. At night, my dreams kept getting darker and darker. Most of the time, I didn’t remember what I saw, but even without remembering, I still woke up shaking and very very scared.

The times I did remember, Greg was there. No, I shouldn’t say that. The Greg I knew wasn’t there. The man that was there was the man that Alice told me about. This was Trickster. The dark, haunting man who showed nothing but bad things. He showed me death. Not my own, but to those around me. He showed my family dying, my friends, my neighbors. There was blood and screams. I felt sick to my stomach and sometimes I would wake up in the middle and run to the bathroom to throw up in the toilet.

Mommy and Daddy would still be asleep on the other side of the house, but Aaron would wake up since his room was in between mine and the bathroom. He would come in and hold my hair out of the way as I vomited. He would ask me what was wrong, and I, half crying would try and tell him.

“It was just a bad dream,” he would say, looking at me with slight skepticism. “You probably ate something bad and it upset your stomach. That’s why you had a bad dream.”

Part of me wanted to believe him so badly that it hurt inside. It would hurt more when I would have another bad dream and wake up crying.

One night, I didn’t dream at all. This bothered my subconscious, I guess, because I woke up anyway, unused to the quietness of the dream world. When I opened my green eyes, he was there.

I sucked in a breath and bolted upright, scooting back in my bed till my back hit the headboard and I couldn’t go any further. He stood at the foot of my bed, in between me and the door, so I had no where to go. He smiled that dark smirk that he always showed when the dream was particularly terrible. I felt my stomach churn and my heart drop. I started crying softly.

“Why are you doing this?” I sobbed, my voice barely above a whisper. Both my hands clutched the sheets as if they were my only salvation from this horrible man. “Why are you showing me these things?”

He shook his head and chuckled. It wasn’t a warm one any more. It was colder than ice. “I’m showing you these things because they’re going to happen,” he muttered in reply.

My eyes widened. “Why?” I asked. I couldn’t conceive of this. Bad things this bad couldn’t happen in real life, could they?

“Because,” he replied, the smirk playing delicately. “I’m going to make them happen. I’m going to kill them all.”

“Why?” In my frightened state, I couldn’t think of anything else to ask. Why? Why? Why? That’s all I wanted to know. I needed a reason for all of this. “Why are you doing this?” I chocked on a sob as the tears streamed down my cheeks.

He moved slowly from the foot of my bed towards me. I whimpered, afraid that he was going to hurt me, but he stopped at the edge of the bed and knelt down on one knee. His smile had faded a bit and the coldness seemed to fade with it. It looked as if he had gone back to being Greg. He waited till I had stopped crying before continuing.

“I’m doing this,” he started in a very serious tone. “Because you are chosen and I have been chosen to collect you.” This didn’t make sense to me, but I couldn’t find a voice to inquire further. The lump in my throat was to large to swallow. He stood up and leaned in close, whispering in my ear.

“One day, I’ll kill you too.”

My eyes widened and in that moment, I couldn’t breath. He leaned back and opened his eyes that were redder than blood. Trickster smirked and I screamed.

Aaron came running into my room and when he wrapped his arms around me, I didn’t realize it was him. Sometime between seeing Trickster’s red eyes and his coming in, I had clamped my eyes shut and now I couldn’t find the courage to open them. I was too afraid of seeing those red eyes and seeing the images behind them, the images that he showed me every night.

“Sari!” my brother screamed at me, taking a firm hold of my shoulders. “Open your eyes! It’s me! Aaron!”

I heard him and my eyes snapped open. I struggled to breath as I collapsed in his arms, holding him as tightly as I could. “Get him away! Get him away!” I screamed. “He’s going to hurt you! Get him away!”

“Get who away?” my brother asked. “There’s no one here, Sari.”

I felt his arms around me and one hand stroking my long hair. I heard footsteps and my mommy’s voice ask, “What’s wrong?” I felt Aaron shift in my grasp as he turned to face her.

“Nothing, mom,” he replied. “Sari just had a bad dream.” He shifted again and I knew his attention was on me. I felt the bed sink a bit as my mommy sat down.

“It wasn’t a dream!” I screamed, crying into my brother’s shirt. “He was here! He was here! I saw him! He said-”

“No one’s here, dear,” my mommy said. I felt her long fingers brush at my hair. “Open your eyes and look. There’s just you, me, and Aaron.” It took me a while of her fingers stroking my hair to gather up enough courage to open my eyes. True to her word, we were the only three in the room. Trickster was gone.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “But he was here!” I said frantically. “I saw him! He really was here!”

My mommy quieted me with a gentle look and stroked my cheek, using her thumbs to brush my tears away. “I think it was just a bad dream,” she said quietly. “But the dreams over now and you’re safe.” She leaned over and gave me a tight hug. “You go to sleep and don’t think about it. In the morning, you’ll feel better.”

She stood up and left, heading back to her room. Some might have thought that she was being insensitive to my feelings. Even if it was just a bad dream, some people might have thought she should have stayed longer. But mommy had been so tired recently. Daddy wasn’t getting better.

Aaron stayed for a little while, though. He grabbed one of my teddy bears off of a shelf and gave it to me. “I know you’ve been having a lot of bad dreams. But you’re just worried about Dad,” he muttered in a quiet voice. “He’ll be fine though. He’s strong. He’ll get better. Just wait and see.”

I didn’t believe him. I don’t think he believe himself, either.

The following morning, Alice told me that her mother died. My family went to her mother’s funeral a few days later. Exactly one week after that, I had to bring out the black dress again to go to my daddy’s funeral.

~*~

No one really knew what to make of the strange sickness that was going around. The doctors and specialists didn’t know what to make of it. A lot of people were dying very quickly, but no one could figure out where it came from, or if it was contagious or not. The newspapers wrote articles about it with titles like ‘Virus Attacks Town’. I cut that article out of the newspaper and kept it, because my dad was one of the people mentioned as the virus’ victims.

It started getting so bad, that the idea of the town being quarantined came up. The plan was never set into motion however, because as soon as the virus came, it left. People stopped getting sick and stopped dying. Things quieted down. Even my dreams went back to normal for a while.

I knew it wouldn’t last, though. I was right too. A month and a half of quiet and Trickster came back to visit my dreams. This time, he didn’t show any deaths. Instead, he just smiled and said “Your time is coming soon, Sariania.”

Mommy was staying home a lot more often now. She seemed weaker and more tired every time I saw her. Aaron and I tried to make it easier on her by playing at the park and not bothering her. Aaron said that us being around all the time wasn’t good and that she needed time to relax and get things back together. When we were home, we made sure to help clean up and cook and stuff like that.

Aaron didn’t really play at the park any more. His friends would try and get him to play baseball or basketball, saying that it wasn’t healthy for him to not get things back together. He wouldn’t listen. Instead he would sit on the bench and watch over me and Alice.

Alice and I wouldn’t really play much either. We would really just fiddle and exchange a few quiet words. We didn’t have to talk though. We knew that the other was hurting just as much as we were and just being together was comfort enough. We would help each other get through this terrible time. “One day,” she said quietly. “One day we’ll be away from all this. Trickster won’t be able to get us and we’ll be safe and happy. Have faith in that.”

Someone might have found it ironically humorous that she died the same day she said that. I didn’t find it funny at all. I was there when she died. I was watching from the sidewalk when that car hit her and drove off.

It was one of the few times Aaron wasn’t there to look over me. He had gone home to work on a school project and had given me specific instructions to be back home before dark. I didn’t follow that order, because when the sun was setting, there were police officers questioning me, trying to find out who had run over my best friend.

He came to me, however, moving through the police officers and people till he reached me. One of the police officers tried to stop him, but once finding out that he was my brother, let him pass. I was sitting on the park bench and Aaron sat down next to me.

“We aren’t going home tonight,” he muttered quietly. He was staring at the sidewalk before him. “We’re going to be staying at our neighbor’s, the Caldwell’s tonight. Grandma Kenton will be here in the morning.”

I didn’t understand what he was saying. I partially blame how distraught I was over Alice’s death. I partially blame Aaron for not saying it at the very beginning. I suppose he was trying to be easy on me, knowing that I was very hurt from this death that I wouldn’t want to know of another one.

Why couldn’t we go home? I needed mommy. I wanted her to hold me and tell me it was all right. I wanted her to sing me to sleep so I could have good dreams again, knowing she was watching over me. Why couldn’t we go home to mommy?

When Mr. and Mrs. Caldwell was driving us home, I realized why we couldn’t go home. We drove past the house and there was an ambulance there, getting ready to drive away, though in no rush to do so.

Mommy had died. Her heart had just stopped working.

The next morning, Grandma Kenton arrived and we went back into our own house. I pulled out the black dress again, knowing I’d be needing it. Grandma Kenton was very quiet those few days. She had actually been meaning to come down after Daddy died to console Mommy, but she never did get around to it. She was a very busy woman, after all. Now guilt was nagging at her and to console her own guilty conscience, she was going to take care of Aaron and I. She had little choice then, for she was our only living relative that we knew of.

Mommy and Alice had a joint funeral, for everyone who knew my mommy, knew me and Alice and everyone who knew Alice knew Mommy and me. It seemed the easiest thing to do, even though my mommy was buried next to my dad and Alice next to her mom a few rows away.

Grandma Kenton’s chauffer drove us back home and Grandma Kenton turned to us in the back seat. “You two need to go and pack,” she said. Her eyes were red from crying. “I need to go finish some things up in town. I’ll be back in a few hours to pick you up. Don’t go dilly-dallying.” Her voice was straining to be strong and stern, but it quivered with sadness.

Aaron and I slid out of the car and made our way up to the house. He pulled the suitcases out of our parent’s closets and I quietly helped him drag them to our rooms. He silently left me to my packing and disappeared into his room.

My limbs seemed so heavy, I was a bit afraid that I was moving too slowly and that Grandma Kenton would come and not let me pack the rest of my stuff. I packed all my clothes first, then my shoebox full of photos and newspaper clippings. I had cut out another one the other day, with the title ‘Strange Deaths Spreading!’. It was in reference to a new wave of death that had hit the town. My mommy and Alice hadn’t been the only ones to die in that few days. There had been more hit and runs in those few days than in the past year. The entire town was spooked. I just felt numb.

I had cried at the funeral, so hard that by the end, I thought I didn’t have any tears left in me. I was wrong, however, and I started crying quietly to myself as I continued to pack. I put in all my knick-knacks in the second suitcase, only putting the fragile ones with my clothes, so they wouldn’t break. Everything in my room had been given to me by my mommy, my daddy, Alice, Aaron, or Grandma Kenton. It hurt deep inside to know that most of those people weren’t alive anymore.

I emptied my small room of everything I really wanted to keep. I found that all my stuffed animals wouldn’t fit into the two suitcases, so I decided to only keep one that I would carry with me. I tried to drag the suitcases out to the living room, but I didn’t even get them past my doorway. They were much to heavy for my small arms. I set my teddy bear down and wiped away my decided to see if Aaron would help me.

I found Aaron in his room, sitting with a calm, thoughtful expression on his face. The black outfit he wore to the funeral had been exchanged for a t-shirt and jeans. It lay neatly folded on the bed and I wondered if I should have changed myself. I decided that it didn’t matter. I watched him as his light green eyes stared at the floor, trying to grasp an idea that seemed barely out of reach. What was he thinking of?

I pushed the door open farther and made as if to take a step in, but I stopped as my eyes locked onto the object in his hands that reflected the sunlight that streamed in through the window.

A knife.

Aaron’s gaze slowly turned up to me, but the look on his face told me he didn’t register who I was quite yet. I looked to the floor and found that both his suitcases were still empty. I bit my lip worriedly as I looked back to the knife. What was he doing with that?

“Grandma Kenton will be mad if she comes back and found that you haven’t packed,” I muttered quietly. Aaron’s gaze turned from unrecognizing, to recognizing, to slight disgust very quickly. He stood from the bed, tossing the knife between his hands. He moved to the window and looked out it.

“I don’t care if she’s mad,” he said crossly. “I’m not going with her. I’m not going anywhere.”

I felt like crying again, but I refused to let myself. “But Aaron, you can’t stay here,” I whimpered. “Who’ll take care of you? Grandma Kenton is going to take us to her house and-”

“I said I’m not going anywhere!” Aaron shouted, swiftly turning is head back to me, his dark blonde hair falling into his eyes. “I don’t need someone to take care of me. Not anymore.” I swallowed, surprised that my brother had yelled at me. My eyes fell down to the knife in his hand that he was gripping so tightly. I remembered one of the things that Trickster had shown me in my dreams and my heart dropped.

No. He wouldn’t, would he? He wouldn’t! He wouldn’t do that to himself!

But a look into my brother’s eyes and I knew exactly what he was going to do and just how determined he was.

I panicked. I couldn’t lose someone else.

I ran towards him, which caught him a bit off guard. I grabbed at the knife and I had the cold steel in my hands before Aaron realized what I was trying to do. He jerked the knife back and pushed me away. I gave a small scream and gripped at my hand. The fingers stung very badly and I raised it to see what had happened.

A line of blood across my fingers started dripping downwards and pooling into my palm. I stared at Aaron with a frightened expression. He seemed just as surprised as me. I took a step back and whispered quietly, with a shaky voice, “I’m gonna call Grandma Kenton.”

Aaron moved towards me, face growing stern again. I bolted towards the door, but he was faster. He reached over me and slammed the door shut before I had a chance to get out. I started crying again, frantic. I screamed at him to let me out, but kept his hand firmly on the door to prevent my leaving.

“I saw him too,” he said after a long while. My screams and tears stopped. I stared up at my brother in shock and surprise. He swallowed and started again. “The man with the purple hair and the red eyes. I saw him too.”

He took a few steps back to the middle of the room. I could have easily unlocked the door and left, but I was frozen in my place.

“He’s a demon, you know,” Aaron said. I could see his strength faltering. “He wants to kill us all. Especially you.” I swallowed, knowing this was true. I didn’t know why it was true, but it was. “He’s just toying with you right now, you know. He’s just torturing you. Torturing all of us. But we can beat him.”

I stifled back a frightened sob. “How?” I asked in a quiet voice.

Aaron lifted the knife so it caught the sunlight coming from the window. “We beat him by not letting him kill us,” he replied. I was finding it increasingly difficult to breath with the racking sobs that kept coming up and increasingly hard to see through the blur of tears.

“No, Aaron!” I said, barely able to stand any more because my knees were shaking much too hard. “Don’t!”

“We can’t escape him any other way, Sari,” my brother said. His eyes were so determined, and so scared at the same time. “Don’t let him win.” I watched as he raised the knife to his wrist. “Follow right after me, Sari.” He slit one wrist and with a shaky hand, slit the other one. He dropped the knife and it fell into a growing pool of his blood. Aaron fell to his knees and looked at me for a moment before falling forward.

I didn’t scream, or even cry. A completely numb feeling over took me. I slid down the door, my legs no longer strong enough to support me. I just stared at my brother’s slumped form, unmoving. Somewhere in my mind, the idea occurred to me that this wasn’t really happening. It was comforting to think of it that way. It was just another one of Trickster’s tricks, really. That’s all it was. I would wake up soon, in my bed and find everything okay.

I never did wake up.

Grandma Kenton found me. Walking up to the front door, she passed by Aaron’s window and had peered in, seeing Aaron on the floor and me sitting by the door with a completely blank look on my face. I don’t remember this, I don’t remember hearing her scream and yell at her chauffer to call the police and the hospital. I just remember the doctors telling me that it happened.

Grandma Kenton took to her house in a town an hour or so away. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t talk. I just stared off into nothingness. This I don’t remember either, but the doctors told me it happened, and I could do nothing but believe them.

Eventually my grandmother was convinced that something was wrong, so sent me off to the ‘clinic’ to get help. I stayed there a year, and then met a man who took me away from all that. The rest of it has been told.

~*~

I had finished building. My hands were trembling and I was more tired than I had ever been before. I took a step away from the table where my creation lay and froze. I lifted a shaky, skinny hand to brush back strands of my hair. It was short now. During building, I realized it was much to long and kept getting in my way. So I cut it. I think some of it became part of my creation, but I didn’t really remember anything about it.

My creation had human form, but not just any form. Blonde hair that curled around her shoulders, slender form, pale skin. She was what Alice would have looked like at age 16. An almost perfect replica of her.

I don’t remember anything about putting this creation together, but I knew I had worked on it for many months, possibly years. Matthew had started to get worried, I knew, but I had been ignoring him. My mind had been so focused on this work that I lost care for anything else.

Many wires were still attached to her open, machine filled midsection and attached to a large generator on the other side of the wire. I had somehow, some time, managed to put some of my own clothes over her artificial peach skin. Slowly, my hand reached out and flipped a single blue switch on the generator to see if my creation would work.

A humming noise filled the room and for a while I wasn’t sure anything would happen. And then a twin pair of electric blue eyes opened for the first time and turned to look at me. There was a squeak with the turn of the android’s head, her body getting used to the movement it was given access to.

The android smiled at me and I just stared at her. “Hello!” she said, her voice friendly and light, but deeply electronic. “What’s your name?”

I couldn’t find the voice to answer.

“Did you create me? I’m presuming you did,” she continued without answer. “My memory chip seemed to be engraved with your touch, and the DNA that’s on many of my wires seems to match yours.” Slowly, with a strange, mechanical sound, she sat up, her body twisting and turning itself rigidly till she faced me completely. She smiled again. “My name is-” she stopped, tilting her head to one side. The motion was extremely jerky, and the creaks continued until she stopped the motion. “I don’t know my name.”

I paused, tilting my head a bit, slowly easing myself into the chair behind me. I stared at her for a moment and she back at me in a curious manner that reminded me of a mouse. I swallowed the lump in my throat and licked my lips.

“Faith,” I told her. It felt strange to use my vocal chords again, yet pleasant to say this word aloud. “Your name will be Faith.”

“Faith,” the android repeated. She smiled again. “I like it.

“I am Sariania, your master,” I continued, my shaky, weak voice growing stronger with every word. “You can call me Sari.”

The android’s smile widened. “Nice to meet you, Master Sari.”

Somewhere in this moment, I’m not sure where, the emptiness was filled.