It was a dark and cold night. She was running like a cat escaping from a dog to save her sons. She found a place to hide herself from the danger when, suddenly, she felt a warm breath on the back of the neck, a sinister voice said slowly:

“You can’t save them, nobody can.”
On the next day, Bill was reading his newspaper at breakfast time, as usual, when the twins went down stairs:
“Anything new?” Anabell asked.
“Yes, for Jason: Ms. Sophie called, and said that you broke her window again playing baseball”
“It wasn’t me! Jim could not catch such an easy bol!” said Jason ironically.
Anabell had sandy blonde hair with blue eyes and was very intelligent like her brother. Jason was like his sister, but with green eyes, which was the only difference between him and his sister.
Anabell and Jason were eating their breakfast when Bill put a book on the table and said in a weak voice:
“Sorry I didn’t mention it before, but I found this and would like to o stay with you.”
Anabell examined the book. It was very small, and could fit in her pocket. Breaking the silence, Jason stated:
“Sister, you can keep it….. I don’t like reading so much...”
“Thank you!” she said in a lovely voice.
The twins, Anabell and Jason had been found by Bill in a public trash can when they were probably three days old. They were very lucky, as Bill was a good person, so he raised them as his own son and daughter. They were a nice family, good with the neighbors and workers. Everything in the world has a price, however.
“Knock, knock.”
“What do you want, Anabell? It is only three in the morning!”, Jason whispered irritably.
“Don’t you feel that something is wrong?”
“Hum…..NO! Now go back to sleep!” he said a little bit louder than he should have. Anabell uttered a bad word between her teeth.
On the next morning, something was wrong, like Anabell´s feeling of last night. Jason was going to the kitchen when he noticed that she was sitting down and crying. When he asked what the problem was, she only said three words:
“I…don’t…..know…..”
“How don’t you know?”
“I started to cry suddenly, that’s all!”
Jason got a cup of water and noticed that Bill wasn’t there as he used to be. He got the cup and gave it to Anabell. He thought to himself that Bill was still sleeping probably and that he might be sick. When Anabell stopped crying, they decided to check on Bill in his room. A mysterious and terrible fear invaded Jason when he looked at Anabell. She was white like a blank wall. They opened the door and looked at the bed. A black shadow was on the bed, but they couldn’t see, as it was so dark. Anabell turned on the lights and shouted with her brother when she saw what was there: Bill was dead, with a knife stuck in his heart. They left the house running and screaming for help, but nobody came. The neighbors were probably thinking that they were trying to call attention. Jason stopped running and said, crying like a baby:
“We must leave…..otherwise, people will think that…”
“NO!” she said interrupting him, “They never would think something like that about us! They know that we loved Bill! He was like our father, Jason!”
“We never know what people think Anabell! Everything that happens here is like a crime that must be punished with death!”
She seemed to be paralyzed and agreed with Jason. The neighbors were so lovely with them, like a big family on a street. Never again would they say hello to the mailman, taste the lemonade at the children’s little stall, eat cookies made by the old lady who lives at the end of the street. All these events were erased from their lives. They got their backpacks, some food and water, and walked to a nearby forest. They were on an unknown path, which had probably been made by animals. The trees gave them a sensation of fear and insecurity. They felt like bugs being stepped on by the terrifying green giants. Jason saw a red flash passing by his eyes, and fainted. He woke up in a wooden room, with his Anabell staring at him, appearing to be scared. He asked, worriedly:
“Are you okay? It looks that you saw a ghost or something.”
“I’m not sure, she replied, this man, Sam, told me not to tell you…”
“Anabell! I am your brother!”
“OKAY! Okay…You…you became pallid, you started to sweat a lot and your eyes”, she then paused to take a deep breath and continued, “your eyes became red. You ran away from me and when I finally found you, you fainted. It wasn’t you, Jason….. Luckily, Sam was searching for wood when he helped me to carry you to his house. He made you drink a blue liquid, and you became human again!”
He was confused and feeling horrible for making Anabell so scared and worried. When he was going to apologize, he heard a door opening. The man was tall, with brown clothes, dark hair and blue eyes. It was probably Sam.
“Are you okay?”
“Y…yes…”
“That’s good. I made a snack for you! Come!”
Jason and Anabell went to the kitchen and saw a table full of a delicious food: bread, butter, cake, tea, milk, jelly, peanut butter…. Salivating with hunger, they sat down and started to eat when Sam took something from his pocket. When Jason noticed what it was, he shouted:
“Anabell, lay down!”
But it was too late, the knife was almost reaching Anabell’s neck, but then something extraordinary happened. The knife stopped just 5 centimeters from Anabell. A woman (with sandy blonde hair, and a little bit shorter than Sam) appeared at the kitchen door. Sam roared and attacked the mysterious visitor. She shouted out a strange word, which Jason didn’t understand at first, then Sam was thrown back with such force that the wooden wall broke. Sam became pallid, his eyes became red, and he started to grow hair around his body, which was the same description Anabell had given of Jason when he fainted, except for the extra hair.
“Anabell…did I become something like this?” he said pointing to the creature, that moments before, was Sam.
“Oh…yeah…I forgot to mention the hair…Well….you became hairy too.”
“And you tell me this NOW?!”
“SORRY OKAY?!”
When they finally realized that a battle between a monster and a woman was happening, they turned their heads around and saw the monster attacking the woman, but when Anabell tried to protect her, she said:
“Stay away, Anabell!”
“Wait a minute…….. How does she know my name!?” she thought. Sam jumped and attacked the woman head on. When the she stepped back and said something like “bubble gum” six skewers of fondue were floating in the air, and in a fraction of second, they were behind Sam, who was motionless. The skewers crossed his body and he fell in the floor. He was dead.
“Gotcha!”
“I want some explanations here, lady!” Jason said surprised and white.
“Everything will become clear at the right time”, she said, “and my name is Marie, by the way”.
“How do you know my name, Marie?” Anabell asked.
“To tell you the truth, I know both of your names”.
“How?” Jason asked.
“Because I am your mom. Sam is your father and you both aren’t normal like the other kids.”
The twins almost fainted together when they listened to the affirmation: “Marie our mom? And Sam…our FATHER? How could this be happening? Why had she abandoned us? Why did Sam, that is, our father try to kill us?” Many questions such as these popped up in their minds, when Marie spoke:
“I will explain everything to you now.”
“Sam and I met at school, but we weren’t normal. Both of us knew that we were special, so special that we could be dangerous to other kids. My life turned upside down when Sam discovered that he was able to become what you saw today, and when he discovered that I was a witch, like you, Anabell.” Anabell was in silence. “We left the school for the security of others and went to a hidden place to study our powers. We then fell in love and you two were born. But when I told him about the fact that I was pregnant, he immediately became aggressive. He never liked to be a monster after you were born, I tried to hide you from him, as he would kill you, so I used my magic to transport you to the safest place that I could imagine…”
“If you call a trash can secure”, Jason said, but Anabell punched him discreetly.
“He kept me here so he could discover where you were, but he did not kill me because he knew that I could curse him. I only didn’t do it before because when you’re with, you can’t do magic without the trees (she was locked in a room with no contact with the world). Witches get the energy for magic spells from the trees.
“So that words that you said before…” Anabell asked.
“Yeah, waffles and bubble gum” Jason spoke. – What? No... I can’t tell you the words because they are too dangerous to Anabell to learn. She can die if she tries to say something of this level. But you have a good premonition sense for a witch of your age, be happy about that! But I don’t know why he wanted to kill you two… Maybe because he didn’t like the fact of become something genetic on the human society…”
“If witches have premonition sense, you knew that this was going to happen? And how you knew about my feeling?” Anabell asked.
“Even the witches of the highest level of magic can only know what happen on the next 5 minutes. There are two types of premonition: the feeling and the image, I used a water paddle to see the images and I felt what you two felt on those years that we lived separated. But my heart broke when you discovered that Bill was dead.”
On the next morning, they bought a little cottage in the middle of the forest, the twins went to a new school and Marie found a job in the city. They lived happily until the end of their lives, and Bill could finally rest in peace, his sons were happy again.


The cold night
The giant trees
The sinister man:
Nothing compared
to Bill’s death
The twins suffered
Why is the world like that?
But they feel better
With their mother’s hug
She loves them so much