Average

Chapter 1

TRIGGER WARNING: SLEEP PARALYSIS

When I awoke, I couldn't move my legs. In fact, I couldn't move any part of my body. It was as though my limbs were made of lead, and my chest of chromium.

I watched as it rose from where my feet lay under the sheets, it's body creeping into sight. The night made me blind, but I was sure it was a figure. Apart from it's supernatural height, and fingers that seemed to continue for miles, it resembled that of something familiar; A human.

And as suddenly as it had came it vanished into the night. I wondered if I'd truely seen it, or if it had just been my imagination. However, my thoughts were cut short as the sweet lullaby of sleep sewed my eyes shut, and enveloped my senses.

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Rudely, blaring tones erupted from my phone abruptly putting an end to my serenity. Blindly I swept a hand over my phone, ceasing it's continuous cries. Finally, relief.

It was Friday. The last day of the school week, thus my favourite.

After slowly sliding out of bed, I ventured towards my closet, begging that overnight my clothes had restocked. They hadn't. So, I threw on a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt, garnishing my outfit with a red coat. I tamed my knotted mane and subsequently ventured downstairs for breakfast.

Walking into the kitchen, I watched as the pig shovelled cereal into his mouth at an alarming rate; and who, in his starvation, had drowned the tablecloth in milk.

"Charlie, slow down or you'll get the hiccups," Mum scolded. She wasn't a screamer, but manners are one thing she has always cared about.

"But Mum, if I don't finish them within the next five minutes then I won't be able to catch the early bus, and then," Charles continued, "I won't be able to meet up with Matty and Chris this morning! And if I don't go then..." Here is where I stopped listening. Charles - or Charlie as Mum liked to call him - was my twin brother. He had a tendency to ramble on as though he was a scientist attempting to prove his theory to unamused crowds; And speak as though his words were a message sent directly from the gods. I was sure he was a narcissist.

He used to have short brown hair, however last week he'd dyed it red, insisting that it would 'look cool' and 'impress the punk kids' - which it did. Charles' eyes were blue, and his complexion was pale, nearly sickly. (In fact, yesterday in English, Miss Smith had ushered Charles to the nurses office after seeing his ghost-like colouring. She claimed 'no person of good health would have such pale skin' and insisted the nurse make him 'go home and rest up, before he makes the lot of us ill'.)

"Jaide, honey, good morning", Mum called as I raided the pantry for anything besides bread and Charles' animal food.

"Morning," I replied, promptly taking an apple from the many in the fruit bowl and walking out the front door.

I wasn't one to hang around at home on school mornings. I preferred to venture through the woods before the bell rang, signalling my inevitable doom.

The woods were quiet. So quiet that you could hear the light flutter of a ladybugs wings if you listened closely. Not many ventured down the dark, dirt trail, which was surrounded by tall pines. Especially, not after Chief Williams found two bodies covered in moss and leaves by Cannes Rock.

The bodies were supposedly that of Kate and Harry Pince, a couple who lived a block down. The paper said that they were 'on a late night hike' when they were murdered; however if the investigators had paid any attention whatsoever they would have realised that Kate was a paraplegic. She owned a small wheelchair, lined with pink thread and embroidered flowers, in which she traveled the streets in. In no world would the Pinces have gone on a hike, let alone in the dark.

The snapping of a twig pulled my thoughts from the Pinces' deaths. There was no-one on the dirt trail, there never was, but I had checked anyway. There were no deer, no squirrels, not even a small brown finch to blame the noise on.

I hurried my pace, enthusiastic to escape the forest's confinement; refusing to end up another missing body in the woods for Williams to find. The pine trees soon grew sparse, and children could be heard yelling. I could see the tall iron bars, and where the prison buses would park; and the children exiting these buses who nonchalantly filed through the glass doors.

I crossed the road and entered the yard also, following the riptide of the masses down the dreary path.