So, without further ado:
He offered his hand, “Would you care to dance?”
“No!” I hissed, stricken with horror.
He eyed me carefully, calculating. “What if we make a deal?”
“What kind of deal?”
He arched one of his eyebrows and gave a cool smile. “The good kind.”
I pursed my lips at him. “What’s in it for me?”
He lowered his voice so that no one else could hear. “I’ll let you in on a secret of mine.”
While the idea of dancing in general was not a concept I typically relished, and the idea was made doubly bad by dancing with volatile Jaeden, the promise of learning one of his closely guarded secrets was tantalizing, impossibly so.
I sighed. “Alright, just one, okay?”
Before I could breathe a word more, he had swept me onto the dance floor. The music stopped then slowed. Lovely. A waltz. How awkward can this get?
I held my hands on his shoulders, his hands were tightly placed on my waist. “So, what is it you’d like to tell me?”
His gaze swept over the other couples dancing, “Days and nights has thirty-one, on Hollow’s Eve his work be done. The night brings forth such things hidden, till morning comes to do a witch’s bidding.”
I opened my mouth with the intent of insulting his poorly rhyming limerick, but my words died on my lips.
The lights in the room flickered, and the music skipped, once, twice, and then was silent. Jaeden smiled at me, and I started to shift nervously.
“Uh.”
As I peered up into his face, something changed. Pinpointing it exactly was difficult, but his smile faltered, and his normally handsome face turned twisted and ugly. Something that could be easily identified was the color of his usually clear blue eyes. As his gaze turned ugly, so too did his eyes turn black. Beetle black.
“Your eyes…?”
He laughed, “Don’t look so disturbed, Em. It’s tradition. I’m just having a little fun."
I could no longer tell where his gaze was directed. He looked on, wickedly. I released his shoulders, suddenly wanting to be far, far away from him.
“This doesn’t exactly seem like fun, Jaeden.”
Suddenly, and despite the distinct lack of music, he twirled me around. He kept me spinning, so fast and so frantically I could not stop. His powerful hands clasped mine above my head, and I was forced to turn. The room rushed by me as I was spun in sickening circles. Every turn I would see his face. With every passing glimpse, his expression twisted his features to become more and more unrecognizable. After a mere moments, what I saw was horrifying. His eyebrows were arched to abnormal proportions, his grin turned upwards in an inhuman fashion. His eyes remained coal black, and the veins surrounding them throbbed and protruded with dark blood, black roots growing from a bottomless void. They slowly made their way down his face. His nose seemed to be slightly more pointed than usual, as if it had grown. He showed his teeth, they looked as if they had been sharpened to fine points. I gasped at what I was seeing. He no longer looked human. He looked exactly like what he was.
A witch.
Deciding then and there I didn’t like his secret very much, I broke free from his grasp. Feeling like I might throw up, I ran zig zaggedly for the doorway of the gym. The world was still spinning and I had trouble walking a straight path. I bumped into a few people as I went. I apologized, but no one responded. In fact, no one did anything at all. I steadied myself, and looked around. Something was wrong. Something was definitely, very wrong.
Everyone’s faces were ashen, their lips almost black. I stood with my back to the door, frozen in shock. I cast a look at Jaeden, who continued smiling at me, deranged and terrible looking.
Suddenly, and in perfect unison, they all turned their faces towards me. Every person, every solitary being in that gymnasium, was staring at me with dead and hollowed eyes sunken into blank expressions. They all looked ill, as if their life was slowly draining away. Yet, they didn’t seem to feel any pain. Their eyes were empty, as if their essence, what one may call a soul, had left their bodies.
Then, to my rapidly escalating horror, collectively, they opened their mouths. Their bottom jaws dropped, as if unhinged, making a creaking sound that echoed in the now totally silent gym. I don’t know that any of them were breathing or even alive, but their mouths were hanging, open, and they were staring at me.
Each person in the room sucked in a breath, rattling like wind passing through an open window. I jumped.
In complete harmony, as if it had been rehearsed, they started to speak. “Isn’t this fun? Aren’t you having fun? Em? Where do you think you’re going?”
If I wasn’t already before, now I was most certainly scared. I wished he would stop this. I couldn’t find a voice with which to speak, so I rested my hand on the handle of the door, ready to spring it open.
I cleared my throat,“Stop it Jaeden.”
A horrible, creaking noise emanated from my classmates mouths. Laughter.
“Jeaden, that’s enough. You’ve had your fun.”
The laughing grew louder. It was a hideous sound, eerie enough so that the hair on my neck stood straight.
“Jaeden!”
My voice rang out, clear. The laughing ceased, almost violently. Mouths now clamped shut, everyone stared at me. There was a moment of silent stillness.
Without warning, the entire crowd took a giant lurch towards me.
And that’s when I gave myself over to panic. So I did what any red-blooded girl would do.
I wrenched open the gym doors, and I ran like hell.
