Bandage131

"Well," Brandy said the second Hadraniel and I got back to school, "if it isn't the Limey and Little Miss Daniel." I rolled my eyes. "Danielle. How many times do I need to tell you that?" She glared. "I don't really care. But, the school paper would probably like to know what you and Brit Boy were doing outside school this morning. Care to tell me?" Hadraniel responded, "You don't even work for the sodding paper." She smirked at him. "Doesn't matter, Ringo, I know people. And if you and Yoko Ono here are seeing each other on the side while she's fucking Kevin, I'm pretty sure those people I know would like to… Know…" I pushed past her. "Beat it, Brandy. It's bad enough your hair color is brighter than your personality, but your IQ must be lower than your bra size if you think Ronny and I are fucking each other on the side." The look on her face was one of someone monumentally pissed. If I had to guess, I'd say she wanted to beat the shit out of me. Instead of getting physical

I walked through town and found exactly no one. It was creepy as hell, almost nerve-wracking. The sun was directly overhead, which didn't stop things from seeming completely out of whack. I pinched myself to see if I was dreaming, but of course I wasn't. That only made perfect sense. I passed by cookie-cutter houses with minor differences. One house had a slightly different porch railing, another was yellow instead of blue, a third had an alternate slope to its roof. Cars were parked in front of every garage, running the full gamut from sports cars to sedans to SUVs to pickup trucks. If there was room for a semi cab, I bet I would have seen one of those. I walked up to one house and peeked in the window. I couldn't see anyone inside, but what I could see looked an awful lot like my house. I recognized my mom's personal room style, with the chairs laid out almost theater-like in two rows facing the TV. Mom had this rule that if the family were sitting together watching TV, we

Kevin was waiting for me at school when Paul, Hadraniel and I got there. He had this big grin on his face that I wasn't sure I was comfortable with until he gave me the big news I already knew, that Brandy and Aiden had broken up. I didn't actually realize he was that invested in high school soap opera, but it just made him that much more adorable to me. Well, adorkable really, but same difference overall. Paul kept checking his phone for anything from the GameStop manager. I'd have told him not to do that, but I honestly didn't think he'd listen to me. I didn't think he had anything to worry about. He said the manager was optimistic, and that place was always looking for help. I'd considered applying, but then I saw this one cashier staring at my chest and decided I didn't want to deal with potential workplace harassment. I'd find a job somewhere, one that I could handle with ease. Hadraniel was still in his extremely unpleasant mood from yesterday. He liked to stay angry, that guy.

Seven months later… Naturally, the very first thing I did was back the car lightly into a pole. I groaned loudly, then glared at Hadraniel before he said anything. Of course, glaring didn’t stop him at all, because he immediately said, “Do you even know what you’re doing, you bloody tart?!” I just sat there, continuing to glare at him. He didn’t seem to understand why, however, so I decided to ask him a question: “And just how many times have you driven a car?” In the back seat, Thandie was snickering to herself. She was busy tapping away at her phone, probably texting either her boyfriend or her girlfriend. I wasn't sure which one she was more into, but I'd probably havta say the girlfriend. I kinda thought the boyfriend was just there for sex purposes. In the other back seat was Mom, who reached forward to pat me on the shoulder. I'd asked her to be in the passenger's seat, but she said it would probably be safer with the angel up front, and I honestly couldn't disagree with

Ginny's house was relatively ominous to look at. Three floors, gray paneling and windows that almost looked like stained glass looked down upon me like I was the smallest thing in existence. It was the epitome of every haunted house Hollywood had ever made and it genuinely scared me. How the hell had Ginny ever lived in this terrifying place? I gulped and hugged my bag tight to my chest. I felt like the final girl in a horror movie forced to flee from a Jason Voorhees knock off. This place was scaring me so much I could only think in movie tropes. Goddamn it. This already felt like it was going to go badly. I walked up to the front door and knocked. Just when I thought I should have rung the doorbell instead, the door opened and a thin man in his early fifties with a very gray mustache stood there, glaring down at me and making me feel even smaller than the damn house had already made me feel. "You sellin's somethin'?" he asked, in a tone that suggested he wanted me out of his sight

I returned to Earth and for whatever reason ended up in the door to the roof access stairway at school. There was crime scene tape blocking it off, so I just used my scythe to cut it and made my way downstairs. Naturally, the school was deserted, with the exception of cops and crime scene investigators. The place felt… Cold. Almost artificially, like somebody had turned the AC down so low that it felt like winter inside the building. I made my cloak change into a hoodie and found a way outside. When I got home, Mom immediately put her arms around me and held me close, like she used to when I was little and did something silly like scraping my knee on the sidewalk or falling off my bike. Nobody said anything, but nobody needed to. Even Paul looked depressed, which surprised me since I didn't think he even knew Ginny. Maybe it was just the fact that somebody died at school, or maybe it was because it was a suicide. I didn't really put any thought into it. I dropped my bag off in my

Chapter Two - And Things Were Going So Well... Irvine had replaced many of the planks on his boat many times. Much like the hotel across the street, the boat had been in his family for generations, had been passed from parent to child and each one of them had added to or taken from the little craft. Irvine had long wanted to add some metal to the boat, just for reinforcement, but he hadn't had the time to do so yet. Of course, he would have had the time, if he weren't so busy getting his ass handed to him at the bar every few days. He wiped down the plank he was going to use to replace the one with the hole and set it down in the bed of the boat. The old plank only had that one solitary hole in it, almost perfectly round like somebody had intentionally cut it. Granted, that wasn't entirely wrong. Someone had cut the hole, and that person had been Irvine, done as a way to show his father that he'd improved the boat and that a single hole wasn't going to sink it or even cause any minor