Chapter 1
Sabrina knew she was going to have a shit day the moment she woke up and noticed the sun in the sky, or lack thereof. This was supposed to be her day to sleep in but of course whatever entity was out there could care less about that. She looked out the window and saw the beautiful pink and orange of the sunrise. “At least the god had half the decency to wake her up to something pretty,” she thought.
She sat upright and pulled the blanket off her, finally glancing over at that small digital clock she had gotten at a salvation army almost a decade ago. It was sitting on the little nightstand her best friend Ivy had fixed for her about 2 weeks before, the last time she had seen her. She let out a loud sigh at the memory.
“Why do you always feel the need to fix things” she had told her. Ivy responded by shrugging and saying her favorite phrase “Everything needs fixing at some point.” It was supposed to be a short visit, Ivy was only going to help her set up a couch but the dingy little nightstand had caught her eye.
Sabrina groaned at the memory of her couch sitting abandoned in her living room, still not put together. The time had read 5:47 am, leaving her 4 hours and 13 minutes to waste before she had to leave to make her 12:00 pm class on time. She tried to think of a chore, of anything she could do to kill the time, besides putting together that couch. She made a mental reminder to find someone to call for that.
She stood up and pushed the windowsill open and stuck her arm out, letting the wind brush against her skin. Despite it being October, it didn’t feel like a particularly cold day. She decided she would go on a run,or rather a walk since she wasn’t the biggest fan of running. She didn’t bother to change out of her pajamas, black biker shorts and a thin, but extremely loose fitting black t-shirt. She walked down the hall to the bathroom and mustered up the energy to wash her face and brush her teeth.
She trudged over to her living room, well at least that’s what she called it. She didn’t really have another way to describe her 4x4 apartment. It was the only thing she could get on short notice and reminded herself, constantly, that it was only temporary. Sabrina felt a familiar ache in her heart, one that she got whenever she had too much time to herself and began to truly think about her condition, about her current situation. She missed her parents, and her sister. Walking away from her family had felt like walking away from a version of herself. She walked to the other side of the room (the less than three strides it took unfortunately) and grabbed her running shoes. She barely spared a glance to the pieces of the couch still scattered in the room, opened the door and walked out.
Sabrina Valentine had lived what most would say was a good life. Her parents had always been well off, her father, who was a workaholic for as long as she could remember, was the head of a construction company. His most recent project had been constructing the new city mall. The mall stood a towering 50 ft and had since become almost that of a tourist attraction. Her mother was less ambitious, she worked as the principal for their local middle school. She had made Sabrina’s time at middle school a living hell. It was bad enough that the kids had teased her for it and even worse that her mom had gotten nearly every teacher to spy for her.
Alas she had always recognized that she was privileged in life but there was a craving she had hid from everyone her entire life. The craving for something more. Her life had always felt too mundane, the world around her had never been interesting to her. The word that always crossed Sabrina’s mind was plain. She had spent many of her early teenage years pouring over conspiracy theories in her desperate search for something more but that was all she had found. Conspiracies. Ideas with no real proof that only fools clung onto. She realized, her senior year of high school, that she wasn’t interested in the what ifs and the maybes. She wanted something real. It was the same reason she had stopped going to church when she was 15. She didn’t understand the concept of worshiping something she couldn’t see.
It made her a hypocrite perhaps, since she was always chasing after something she couldn’t see and didn’t know was real. The thoughts rarely affected her however, since she barely gave herself the time to dwell on them. Except times like now, when she was on her dreaded walk with the only signs of life out being her and the birds.
Sabrina hated silence, she could never understand how people found peace in it. Her mother always used to say she could never sit still. Her mother. There was that pang in her heart again. The memories from two weeks ago replayed in her head as if it were the present. The disappointment that clouded her mothers face, the anger that was etched in her fathers. She thought it would end like any other night. That her parents would excuse her for being a stupid teenager. She had reminded her parents so many times that she wasn’t the one driving, but the words didn’t seem to reach their ears. “How could you be so reckless!” her father had said.
In the corner of her eye she caught something peculiar. She shook off the memory and tore her focus to the trees, she had seen something, she was sure of it. She silently cursed herself for having been lost in thought.
Her current living conditions had been courtesy of Ivy. Sabrina hadn’t had a credit card and no way to actually rent somewhere to live. Legally. And Ivy was going to college hours away and couldn’t sneak her in her dorm, not they hadn’t considered. So Ivy pulled some strings, Sabrina didn’t really want to know how but she had gotten her a temporary place to stay. At least until the school year was over. It wasn’t the shadiest place to live, but it wasn’t exactly Beverly Hills either. She couldn’t help but ponder if someone had been following her on her walk. She reached for her bag which contained her pepper spray until she realized she didn’t have it. She hadn’t even thought long enough to grab her phone. She cursed herself aloud this time. Oh how she loved that she always had a knack for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
She caught that strange blur again, this time it was moving a bit slower. The blur didn’t seem to be a blur however. It had begun moving back and forth between two trees, paying her no attention. Run, the voice in her head said and like always she ignored it. Every bone in her body was telling to turn around but she was feeling far too curious. “If it wanted to hurt her it would’ve,” she thought. She took a slow but steady step to the blur. Lost in curiosity, Sabrina didn’t notice the stick until the sharp crack it made under her foot.
The blur- no thing stopped abruptly, its gaze landing on Sabrina. She felt her heart plummet to her gut as she locked eyes with the creature. True fear stuck her core as she laid eyes on it. It is almost a man but not. Its body was emancipated, the bones piercing through its pale thin skin. The creature was almost twice her size, with a head that resembled that of a deer but where there might have been fur was only bones that came together to form a ghastly terrifying face. The thing cocked his head at her and she watched as it slowly smiled, baring his razor-like teeth at her as if in a silent invitation. She then glanced down to where he was holding himself upright on the tree. She noticed his hand, or rather his interpretation of hands. With long bony fingers that formed sharp claws.
An image of the claws effortlessly slicing into her made its way into her head as she became even more aware of how long she had stood paralyzed with fear. Sabrina had always craved for something different, but now that she had gotten a little taste of it, she closed her eyes for a moment, gathered herself and ran.
