by Azzurra Nox
Jon shot her a glare, but then recoiled from the attack as he helped her take out little jars from a bag filled with strange concoctions.
“Be careful, you have to be precise,” Michael interrupted, kneeling down to help Hope in arranging the items in a certain order.
“What do you know?” Jon shot back.
“More than you,” was all he replied as he rearranged the jagged reflective glass and mirrors in another order. This time facing the North. He held on tightly to the glass, not noticing that it was cutting through his flesh.
“Michael…” Lena whispered seeing how he didn’t seem bothered by this.
A strange light emanated from the apparent wound. The three were stunned not understanding why blood wasn’t exiting instead. A sudden fear gripped Michael’s beautiful features, contorting them into a mask of panic.
“You’re not of this world,” Hope said as both Jon and Lena stared with gaped mouths.
The fog began to settle into the night, crawling across the beach. Michael simply stood up and closed his fist. The light disappeared.
“Be careful how you play your game. I can’t save any of you,” was all he said to the accusation. The mist seemed to wrap itself around him like a snug glove, and suddenly everything turned white. The fog devoured them all, and the three of them were left in doubt as the faint sound of a motorcycle sped into the night.
Chapter Four
The room was semi-dark safe for a lamp. The digital clock was flashing 3:45a.m., and yet Jon couldn’t find sleep. Morpheus was keeping away from him, and so he looked at photos in order to coax the sleepiness. He was staying occupied so that he wouldn’t be tempted to burn himself. Perhaps he could call Sydney, but at this hour it seemed out of the question. It was a school night and he didn’t want to wake her up when class was only four hours away. He skimmed through photographs he had taken of Sydney for the Artist’s Gallery at school. A lot of them featured her unblemished profile. Only one photo had Sydney posing without her usual veil, and was taken from an angle that showed her whole face, even the portion with the birthmark visible. On the back of the photo he had scribbled, “Beauty.” Putting the photos back on the bedside table, a book resting nearby caught his eye. Cut Here.
He had read the book a couple of years ago when it was first published, because it had been so popular. Now, with the film adaptation out in theatres, the book’s popularity had increased by tenfold. The reason for digging it out though, had been the fact that the novel had been present in the deaths of Blake and Jake. He kept telling himself that he would reread the book, see if it gave him an insight into why his classmates had died, but he had been so busy lately that he had entirely forgotten about it. Tonight he had time to kill and was soon leafing through its pages, skipping a few. He idly read, feeling his eyelids begin to droop when a paragraph caught his eye, suddenly sitting up in attention.
She stood before him in might and fury. This insignificant man would succumb to her doing. Eyes wild and black as night. Her hair hung down in an ebony waterfall of regal beauty that instilled awe and terror. The man had nowhere to run. Tremble, tremble, little soul, she thought. Tremble as you may please.
The man shook in fright. She lifted her arms up. An evil smile danced upon her stone white face. Her skin glowed in the dark from the sheer paleness like a Kabuki performer. This man was nothing but a fly. She would crush him like a gnat beneath her feet.
“Adriel, please,” he pleaded.
“Don’t speak. You know you want this.”
On his knees, she towered over him like an edifice. She was strong. He was weak. He should know this. There was no use for him to plea. The river flowed behind him. Cars above them honked. She pulled his arms forward. Wrists in view, blue veins almost crystalline under the full moon. A flash of blades and then the blood came forth. Red. Red. Red. A masquerade of red. The man toppled over in agony, she could read it in his expression. But soon it turned into a silent bliss. This was what he wanted. What he had wished for. She knew it. Nothing ever escaped the dark sentinel of death.
Jon stopped reading, and dropped the book, unable to believe what he had just read. The author had just described what had happened to him not too long ago in perfect detail. A chill ran through his body. How was that possible? None of this made sense. The only way it was possible…was if the author had lived through something similar. He quickly grabbed his laptop from the floor where he had left it earlier, turning it on. This similarity only perked his curiosity. Clicking on the internet icon, he hoped that he would find answers to the buzzing questions that zipped through his brain. His fingers quickly typed Madoka Yoshimoto into a search engine, checking out the first site that was listed. Her biography chronicled her later life, but there were very little details pertaining to her early life, just as he was about to give up, his eyes caught a statement, “I used to be sick with leukemia. I saw death in the eye. I dared to grab it, and defy it. Now I’m cured.”
He skimmed through some of her interviews where she discussed how being close to death gave her the inspiration for Cut Here. In many of her interviews she referred to death as a dark angel. The more he read, the more he was convinced that Madoka had seen the same black winged girl that he had. He had no doubts about it, especially by the way the murder scene was described.
Thinking back on the book, he realized how the killer only chose to take the lives of people who were longing for death or were courting it with risky behavior. He set the laptop aside, and immediately seized a notebook, opening it to a blank page and decided to jot down the names of the people he knew so far that had died or encountered the black winged girl. The list read:
Dead: Blake and Jake
Sighted: Lena, Hope, and I.
He tried to find a common ground between them all. Blake and Jake were popular and seemed as though they had no troubles. It made no sense for them to want to beckon death. But he didn’t know them well enough to judge if they were truly happy. After what Lena had confessed to him about her mother, and the attempt suicide with barbiturates, he knew that she had dangerously courted death. Ever since his brother had mysteriously disappeared, Jon may have thought about death a few times, or rather, more than a few. Learning to live without a twin is like trying to learn how to walk again without legs. The thought was inconceivable, the action too strenuous to overcome. Hope, he knew lived a miserable existence. It had to be being poor and derided by everyone at school. He couldn’t see how she hadn’t wished for death on a couple of occasions. Madoka’s reference to the black winged girl was “angel of death,” and he wondered if such a creature could exist. Could an actual angel of death come to you because you’ve longed for it so long? All these thoughts were piling up in his head and he only wished he could share them with Lena. But they hadn’t spoken as friends in such a long time. How could he break the silence?
The last time he saw the black winged creature was that day at the beach. He was certain that he saw her black hair in the water, splashing around, wild and fierce. She was determined to take him down with her. If Michael hadn’t been there to pull him up, he may have very well given in to her seductive charms. The water had begun to fill his lungs, feeling lightheaded and he was tempted to not fight back. It was easier that way. Sydney said that she and Connor had tried to pull him out, but that the tide was too strong and that it felt as though he was being pulled under. Michael didn’t seemed fazed by the girl’s force, and had been able to pull him up. It ate at Jon that he got saved by Michael, that in some way he was in debt with him. He wouldn’t even dislike Michael that much if he hadn’t gotten what he most desired, and that was Lena. But there was something strange and utterly eerie about him at the same time. Like the unexplainable absence of blood when he had been cut.
Looking over at the clock, he noticed that it was now 5:37a.m. Soon he’d be getting ready to go to school. He could already hear his mother waking up in the next room. There were the soft step of her slippers shuffling across the woo
den floors and the sound of water running in the bathroom from where she was splashing water on her face in order to wake up.
He was going to get up when something caught his eye. His computer was still on Madoka Yoshimoto’s website and on the left side of the page was a list of cities for her book tour. She recently published a new book and was touring the world’s major cities. Los Angeles was on the list of cities she would soon appear in for a book signing. Scrolling down at the page, he looked at the date. It was three weeks from now. A thought began to form in his head that soon morphed into a plan. He was unsure how to execute it, but he would soon figure it out.
There were no signs of the sun creeping into his room, although it was nearing dawn. The sky actually looked overcast and cloudy. Crows cawed outside. He rubbed his eyes trying to keep awake, although now that it was time to get ready for school he suddenly felt tired. Reluctantly, he dragged himself out of bed. Maybe after a shower he wouldn’t feel so sleepy. Besides, he couldn’t possibly skip class. Not today. Not after what he found out. So many things were falling into place for him. Suddenly, the enigma was beginning to unfold, and what he discovered was that there were so many questions that still needed answers.
Chapter Five
The Honeys stood in the hallway near their lockers chatting away as though no one else existed in the hall but for the three of them. Lena dreaded this part of the morning more than anything, but she couldn’t pass it up, not since Bethany got her in the exclusive group. So she tried to fake a smile, although it seemed a little forced, and walked in their direction. Dior was showing off her gold lacquered nails, explaining how it was the same shade that Kate Moss wore for an event in London.
“Hey girls,” she said attempting to sound cheery, as her eyes scanned for any signs of Michael in the near distance, but he was nowhere to be found. She hadn’t seen him since that night at the beach. You’re not of this world, Hope had said to him. The thought still unnerved her.
“Lena!” Bethany exclaimed, “I was just telling Dior how you should try out for the cheerleading team.”
Her attention was jerked back to the Honeys. Dread filled Lena at the sound of that proposal. This wasn’t her calling, and she couldn’t pretend to enjoy that sport even if she were put at gunpoint.
“Um, I don’t really do that, Bethany.”
“Oh, come on! We’ve all seen you dance! You’ve got rhythm and grace, plus you’re light and you’d be perfect as the top of our pyramid.”
“Yes, besides, we need another member ever since Blake…has left us…” Dior tried to be discreet about the topic, “I’m pretty much a shoe-in for captain without her around, and you’d be perfect because you’re so light, it’d be easy for you to do the stunts.”
The hall was crowded with teens scattering back and forth, grabbing things from their lockers. Clacking metal sounds of lockers being forced shut immersed the hall with a loud din. Voices had to shout over the sound, causing a commotion. In the midst of all this, the first bell rang and Lena was grateful because she could pull away from the three girls.
“I gotta go. Can’t be late for Algebra!” she waved goodbye as she hurried down the hall. Dior, Bailey, and Bethany had been nice in letting her in their group. Even if she wasn’t that keen on them, it was better than being alone. Although she missed Jon and Amelia and couldn’t get over how well the three of them has meshed. They completed one another. She felt like they were the Three Musketeers, all for one, and one for all. But sadly, that hadn’t been the case. She longed for those afternoons spent at Jon’s house watching films together, munching on popcorn and drinking various sodas that the three of them would mix and match together with different booze coming up with questionable concoctions and daring each other to try the outcome.
These thoughts followed her to class as she sat down in her seat. She wondered where Michael was and why she hadn’t seen him in the hall. Hope’s accusation still hung over her like a terrible nightmare, and yet she had witnessed the lack of blood and still she couldn’t quite wrap her head around it.
After several weeks of being alone, it came as a surprise to Lena that Jon sat down at his original desk next to her.
“Hey…I know this is random, but you’ve got to read this,” he dropped a copy of Cut Here on her desk.
“I don’t get it. I’ve read the book. What about it?”
“Turn to the pages I’ve marked.”
Lena leafed through the book and found a bookmark placed near the middle. A few paragraphs were highlighted. She read the scene. A name stuck out at her when she did. Adriel. That’s how Hope had referred to the girl from the beach! It had to be a coincidence though. It was only a name. She continued to read. A shiver ran down her spine as she recognized the tale. What the scene detailed was extremely familiar to the course of events that Jon had told her at the hospital after what seemed an attempt suicide. To this day, he still insisted that he hadn’t tried to kill himself, but rather had been attacked by the black winged girl, in other words, Adriel. She dropped the book on her desk. Jon watched her for a moment, before he began to explain to her, “You see? The author has seen her! The author knows about the black winged girl!”
“Adriel. That’s her name. Hope called her that too.”
“Hope?”
“It’s a long story, but anyway, that’s not even important. What’s important is that the scene is eerily similar to what you said happened to you that night in your room.”
“Ditto. Which means that Madoka Yoshimoto has seen Adriel.”
“But wouldn’t she be dead now?”
“I survived her.”
“True.”
“What I picked up from that scene is that she’s some kind of angel of death.”
“Angel of death?”
“Yes. I made a list of who has seen her, and who died at school. Pretty much she’s after all the ones who are troubled.”
“Troubled? Why would anyone like Blake Barnes be troubled? She had a flock of guys around her at all times and was in the most exclusive clique of the whole school.”
“Are you happy? Now that you’re part of that clique yourself?”
The question came out of nowhere and hit her like a deliberate slap, unexpected and hard. It took her a moment to recover, before she defended herself, “I don’t really care about being a part of it or not. Bethany was the only one who cared to make me feel welcomed after…” she couldn’t finish the sentence aloud. After our group imploded, she thought but didn’t dare utter those words for fear of his reaction and because she didn’t want to admit just how much she really missed both him and Amelia.
“I just meant that, being part of a popular clique doesn’t mean you’re happy. We don’t know how Blake really felt. Maybe she was more profound than how she appeared.”
“Oh.”
Sister Agnes entered the classroom, and the morning chatter came to a sudden halt as she began to write on the chalkboard. Lena tried to look like she was paying attention by pulling out her Algebra book from her messenger bag along with a notebook that contained last night’s homework.
“Mister Russe, I see you’re back at your original seat this morning,” the nun said to Jon having noticed that he was seated next to Lena.
“I was running late this morning and forgot my book at home so I’m looking off of Lena’s.”
“Let’s try to be less distracted, Jonathan.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Once Sister Agnes had turned her back to the class, Jon leaned over to Lena and whispered, “Madoka Yoshimoto is going to be in L.A. three weeks from now for a book signing.”
“What about it?” she tried to not catch the attention of Sister Agnes who had begun to explain that day’s lesson, her eyes on the board as she spoke from the side of her mouth, “What do you have in mind?”
“We have to go. She’s seen the angel of death. She can explain a lot of things.”
“What if she doesn’t have any answers to your questions?
”
“We have to try.”
“Jonathan! I’m not going to allow you to sit next to Lena if you’re just going to chit chat.”
“I’m sorry, Sister Agnes. I was just asking Lena a question about the homework.”
“We’ll deal with that when we’re going over the homework. Right now focus on today’s lesson.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Lena pretended to look engulfed in the lecture, whilst stealing glances over at Jon who was intent on writing. He pushed the notebook in her direction, she quietly read his message, We must meet Madoka. She has met Adriel meaning she should know more about this, than us.
“If you say so,” she whispered back, although she wasn’t entirely sure of their plan. Wouldn’t the author feel invaded if they asked her questions that weren’t pertinent to the book? Although, it all depended on how they worded the questions she reasoned. But they wouldn’t be allowed to talk to her that long. Wouldn’t her reps only allow them a couple of minutes maximum? This plan seemed a little faulty.
How do you plan to talk to her for long? She wrote on the notebook. Jon quickly wrote back, I have a plan. Trust me. She was about to write a response back when an announcement was made over the intercom.
“Good morning students of St. Lucy Academy, we’re proud to announce the finalists for the Royal Court of the Junior-Senior Prom. Prom Queen finalists are: Sonia Bargeld, Bethany Thomas, and Dior Fontaine. Prom King finalists are: Darren Biggs, Michael Lucecarentes, and Jonathan Russe.”
“WHAT?” Jon exclaimed loudly. “I think there’s a mistake!”
“Jon, that’s awesome!” Lena said with a smile spread across her face.
He stood up, “This can’t be true. Sister Agnes, I think they messed up. There’s no way….”
“Mister Russe, the votes have been thoroughly counted. I was there. Don’t get agitated over this. It’s an honor.”