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I looked down at the little piece of paper I was handed. This was my schedule for my freshman year of high school and it looked awful–Geometry, Physics, French, PA. I didn’t even know what PA was. It sounded like some form of PE, or a typo on said word. This was ridiculous. The only [...]

I looked at the waiter. She was a pretty girl, reserves, very fair. This couldn’t have been the right job for her. She really did not seem like the type to enjoy talking to people. But a lot of the girls in Itsir were like that–I was already used to it, no matter how unsettled [...]

I watched the clock. It was ticking the slowest I had ever seen it move. Seconds, minutes, hours. They all seemed the same. Except for the ticking. The tick of the clock was incessant, unbearable, obnoxious. It was tedious, ridiculous–the only thing left to focus on was the pain in my leg.

I looked around the dance. It was extremely formal as promised, an almost perfect mimic of a legitimate masquerade. I looked down at my own dress. It was almost too much to walk in. I couldn’t recognise anyone. Everyone had taken great care to hide their identities–hopefully I wasn’t an awful exception.

I cast around to examine this new landscape. Certainly there were no buildings, no roads, no lamp posts, or anything else to say city. No, instead there was light grass and a few scattered trees, boulders and dirt; it all smelt so clean and fresh, not like anywhere I had been before.

I looked up to see who had saved us. Oh, god, my leg. I was a pretty young girl with shockingly blue eyes against ghostly white skin, almost an apparition with a nearly spiritual beauty. It hurt so much. She smiled at me and said something I couldn’t comprehend. Ugh, pain. Ugh. My leg. “Huh?” [...]

I looked at Dimitri and experienced an immediate flashback: A dance, a school dance. Him. The emo boy Alysse seemed to be acting like a slut around, her new victim was the opposite of a victim. He was a straight out predator and she knew it–that’s why they were together.

I looked ahead. We were on a mission. We had a place to be. We had to go on, battered and in pain, ripped apart and clumsily shoved back together. We had to look forward and focus on our goal. If we didn’t make it to stop them, then maybe no one would. We might [...]

I looked down the street. There were houses and fences and yards everywhere. It was a suburban nightmare, with excessive neatness and quietness. I could just picture the 2.5 children in each house. Nothing was out of place. It was just how he would like it. It was too easy to picture him here.

Gabrielle opened the door to the church. It was empty but for a single nun, garbed modestly in black and white. She had a matronly face and looked as the door opened. Gabrielle looked down, embarrassed, not sure how to go about this.