Chapter 1

     Her soft freckled skin glistened in the bright moonlight. The pale glow of the shining moon in the slightly cracked window made her skin seem slightly satiny. Her enchanting blue eyes looked as if they were made from pure silk. He touches her soft face with his gentle fingers.

    “I am so sorry...”

   He says in a shaky voice. His other hand loses its grip on the object that had caused such words. He stared at what he had done in shame. Regret dripped off his face with sweat and anxiety.

   The woman in front of him lay motionless and pale, crimson red dripping down her pale band t-shirt. Her shining eyes are so beautiful, yet so dead.

   The boy stood up and walked away slowly. Leaving his lifeless victim alone in his damp basement, impaled with a blade. Her face had been wet from his tears. He left her there to rot in grime and soot. Who knew how long it would take the cops to find a decomposing body, a few hours? A few days? Nobody could tell, and neither could he. That wait would cause him to lose what little he had left of his mind.

    He regretted every second of his crime to humanity. Yet there was nothing he could do now. She was the only one who truly cared for him. He ruined her. He caused her to drown in her own blood. It was all his fault and he knew it. He had killed his sister with the blade she had gifted him. His mind was damaged and he didn’t know how to repair it. He thought his malicious act would fix everything. He could not be any more wrong. His mindless thoughts betrayed him. He betrayed her. He betrayed himself. As he walked to the stairwell of the damp and frail basement, he stopped to think.

               When will she be found? Soon? Am I going to jail? What if someone saw me? What if they are watching me? What if they are coming to kill me? The people in the walls know what I've done. I can hear them inside of the cracks of the bricks. Scurrying, crawling, scratching. They are going to come and hunt me down. They are coming to crawl into the pores of my flesh and eat their way up to my brain until I die. I can hear them. They are coming closer, they will soon be here. What should I do? I can’t take back what I did. This is my punishment. They are going to control my mind and there is nothing I can do. What have I done? Stop watching me. They can hear my thoughts.

  His paranoid perception caused his already heavy distress to skyrocket. He was using his teeth to bite his taste buds off. He thought it would calm his nerves, but it just caused him to bleed. He looked back at his lifeless sister in awe. The knife sticking out of her throat shone brightly into the boy’s eyes. He broke down and fell to his knees. He grabbed at his coarse black hair with shaky hands and shivers. He pulled, and pulled, and pulled. He was pulling handfuls of hair out of the roots of his head. He thought if he could pull the voices out of his head through his scalp and maybe that would save his life. The blood means they are leaving, right? Right…? He was searching for a reason for his actions, cause he couldn’t be paranoid for no reason. There had to be a reason. Everything was so overwhelming.He couldn’t think. He could only feel. And he felt petrified.

He got off of his knees and looked at the mess of hair and the pool of blood he had made. He didn’t comprehend why he was still hearing the repetitive voices if he had dug out the source of it all. Maybe that wasn’t the source. What if I was wrong..? He thought. He was shaking thinking of any possible explanation to this all – he didn’t find one, but he did find a way to fix one of his worries.

He ran out of the damp basement and into the cramped living space, looked at the stove that was in that tiny kitchen and had an idea. He turned on all of the gas stove tops on high and walked to his liquor cabinet. He grabbed all of his booze bottles except one. He ran back down into that damned basement in which he had committed his crime and threw the alcohol bottles inside without a thought of reason. He knew that the house that he grew up in would go out in flames, and he sadly knew, so would his sister. He ran up the rotted moldy stairs and grabbed the one bottle left.

“Goodbye, Jasmine.”

   He said as he threw the glass against the wall of his kitchen and walked back over to his mucky basement. He checked his pockets and found what he was looking for. He grabbed his lighter and tossed his childhood away with it as it flew into the basement. He walked into the darkness up ahead, in the back of his view he saw bright light and frowned. Yet there was no way he could undo it. He needed to rush. It was time to go to school.