DeathRide

Chapter 1: The Travel

The rapid descent made me exceptionally dizzy, as I stumble off my flight. The ten-hour trip from my hometown, Skarsity, made it nearly impossible to move my legs. It was about 3:00 am back home, but on the tiny island of Teiniss, time was much later. It seemed like I was in a trance, because when I looked down, I realized as I walked out the door, I had forgotten Avis on the plane. Panic soon began to take over all sense in me as I scrambled back towards the plane. Then, a small, weak tug on my baggy shirt, displaying the name 'DeathRide' on the very front, jerked me back to sanity. When I looked down, I found Avis's pale white face; her dark royal blue eyes adding the only color to her stone-like skin. She just kept tugging, and eventually pointing to the food court.

Out of nowhere, I heard someone shout my name. When I turned around, a wide, yet beautiful, dark skinned girl came running towards Avis and I. Avis looked remarkably confused, my feelings were mutual. I don't think I've ever seen this girl in my entire life, yet she lunges forward and squeezes me so tightly I can barely breathe. I desperately attempt to catch my breath as I watch Avis sprint towards the salad bar, her bleached ponytail following her every move. I've always told her how beautiful she looks, especially when she runs, but she never agrees.

Avis used to be so healthy, meat on her bones and all. But now, it seems as though she enjoys starving herself. She barely eats a thing. Though whenever she does eat more than just a small salad, two hours later she's retching it up again. I usually leave the house when she does that, because if I stay, I end up crying for hours. So instead, I head out and buy myself an orca slush drink from my favorite store.

When the girl finally let me go, I instantly collapsed on the little blue leather chair behind me. Gasping for air, I slowly managed to regain my balance and got back up again. "Who are you?" I opened my mouth to ask her, yet no sound came out. The silence between us was nothing but an extreme intensity. After nearly five minutes of dead silence, the dark girl spoke up subtly against the low moan of the clean white airport.

"Excuse me?" I looked up at her, confused.

"Who are you?" I asked, still startled from the surprise attack.

"You don't remember me?" she asked, she looked as though she was about to break out in tears, "Its me... Kakari, from third grade." She hugged me again, this time with a much lighter grip.

"Oh..." I just muttered quietly. I didn't know what else to say.

Just then, Avis came running with a huge plate of mixed fruit, but mostly tiny little raspberries, strawberries, kiwis, and grapes, with the occasional orange or lemon. When she sat next to me, she immediately plopped the largest kiwi she could find, right in my lap. When I looked up, the dark girl was over at the little tacoria across from where we were sitting.

While Avis continued to slowly eat her grapes and raspberries, I pulled out my cell phone from my handbag and carefully dialed the number for a cab. As Avis finished off the remainder of the fruit, I realized that we still had to pick up our luggage. When she finished, Avis just looked up at me as if I knew exactly what to do with the now empty, shiny, multi-colored platter sitting ever so delicately perfect in her bony fragile hands. I just sighed and left the large sparkling dish innocently on the chair I was sitting in, and we left down the aisle of the airport to pick up our things.

Avis held my hand tightly as we went down the elevator to the luggage collection centre down in the basement. The first thing I noticed when we walked down was the multiple people staring at my big blonde and pink hair, seven of the 30 coontails and feathers dangling around my face. All I knew was that we had to get our things and get out of there as soon as possible. Turning around, I saw that Avis had already found our things and began pulling them off the conveyor belt.

When we headed outside, luckily, there was a bus just down the walkway. I struggled to get on, still lightheaded from the flight, and that random girl squeezing me so hard. Avis got on just shortly after me, and immediately sat in the first available seat as I paid or the ride; just behind this sad looking Asian girl. She looked about twelve years old, roughly the age of Avis. Her clothes were dirty and old looking. Her face was covered in mud and what appeared to be traces of blood. Her eyes were this dirty rusty-red color, which only added to the dark red color splattered on her face and clothes.

I just sat down by Avis, trying desperately to ignore the girls' beat-up appearance. Other than the bus's loud roar, it was nearly silent, until the beaten girl turned around and tapped Avis on the head. At first, Avis didn't pay any attention to it, but after what seemed like about a minute and a half, she looked up and screamed. The beaten girl screamed immediately after, then jumped back and hid behind her seat.

"Who are you?" Avis asked her, just peering over the other girls seat.

"Kirsten..." she moaned back, almost as if it pained her to speak, "Who are you?

"Avis." The other girl came back up from the 'safe' spot behind her seat, seeming much more welcome than she did before. Avis smiled brightly, her pale skin lightly glowing in whatever sunlight there was. "Why were you tapping on my head?" the question rose abruptly.

Kirsten just slowly ran her fingers through Avis's ponytail, "I wish I had pretty hair like yours..." I could tell Avis was severely creeped out, and I could tell why. No one ever dared to even touch Avis's hair before. It was easy to tell Kirsten had her gaze fixed on Avis, though the constant roar of the bus kind of took the dreamy effect away.

As the two girls continued their somewhat awkward conversation, I decided to try out the cell phone service here, which I figured out was extremely crappy, so I just sat back and tried to get some well-needed sleep. A few minutes later, the bus came to a slow, steady stop. When I looked up, I noticed we were at the small bus stop just a few houses down from my new school. As Avis and I stood up, Kirsten just looked up, out the window, and then stood up.

Outside, the sun shined up my stony-grayish skin, the air warm and humid. This was nothing like Skarsity. Back at home, the sky was always a dark shade of black-grey clouds cover the sky nearly ninety percent of the time. Plants never grew, the grass was rarely green. All the houses in the western part of the city were constantly flooded from the consistent rainfall. About once every day someone from that part of the city would be reported either dead or missing. It never snowed, the sun shined maybe once per month. That gave a huge advantage to majority of the criminals; no one ever noticed any real crime. No one would be able to tell the difference between a natural death and a homicide. People back home were constantly scared because of it all. I don't like to think, nor talk about it much.

When we continued to walk, Kirsten was following us. But why? Does she want something from me? Does she expect something from Avis? If she does, what? Maybe she was one of those escaped mental patients I always see on television back home. Maybe that's what explains the blood and mud covering her fragile little body. So many thoughts floated through my head. I couldn't take it anymore.

By the time we made it to the door of the big, musty looking building, my face had become a faded, yet noticeable pink color. Out of the corner of my eye, I could just barely see Kirsten slowly continuing to rub her hands against Avis's hair. Suddenly, I just lost it as I furiously turned around.

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