Shadows in the Dark (6 page)

“
Go away, Jason!” I heard Sarah
say.

“
What? If you
two can watch a
freak
make out with a dim witted jock, I can, too.” Lora shoved her
face into my chest. I could feel the sobs coming.

“
Jason, just go away before I shove
your face into the wall.” I said.

“
Oh, I’m so scared, Luke! Will you
have your girlfriend grab me and float up really high and drop
me?”

“
Shut up!” I exclaimed. My pulse
started to rise. I could feel the blood rushing through my
veins.

“
Oh, is the retarded jock going to
kill me? Oh, God, no!” I stepped away from Lora, leaving her there
with her face full of tears. I grabbed Jason’s shirt collar and
slammed him against the wall.

“
You better shut the hell up before
I rip your-”

I was pulled away from him, making
him slide down the wall. I looked back and saw Lora sobbing,
holding onto the back of my shirt.

“
Just leave him, Luke,” she
sniffled. “He’s not worth it.” I looked over at Jason, then at
Lora. Sighing, I turned and took Lora’s hand. Sarah and Becca were
giving Jason a death stare.

“
Oh, yeah! Yet
that
freak
is
worth your pointless and wasteful time?” That’s when something in
me snapped.

I turned around towards Jason and
saw his stupid face go from smiling to terrified. I don’t know what
terrified him, but it felt good. A sudden rage filled me up and was
at the boiling point. I could see, on the side of my eye, Sarah and
Becca backing up away from me against the wall.

“
SHUT
UP!”
It happened so quickly. At first I
didn’t believe it. But it happened. A bolt of electricity shot from
my hands and struck Jason square in the chest. It sent him flying
into the wall, cracking it in several places. He fell to the ground
with a loud
thump
.

I heard Lora crying from behind
me, and I quickly turned. She was crawling away from me, more
terrified than I have ever seen her.

“
Sarah, I-” I reached out my hand,
then stopped. My hand was shining blue with small electrical shocks
running through my veins. I stared at it for the longest time, more
confused and scared than I had ever been. I looked back at Jason
and saw that he wasn’t moving. Had I killed him?

I didn’t bother to look back at
Lora and her friends up against the wall. I just wanted to run. I
wanted to run away and hide. I had just done something that
shouldn’t even be possible. I wanted to leave them there and never
come back. I wanted to just get out of there.

And that’s exactly what I
did.

…
..

Nick

Every once in awhile, a child is
born... special. That child isn’t like any other person. When they
discover what they can do, it’s up to them to figure whether they
will use it for the people... or for themselves.

Sadly, I haven’t
chosen yet. If I help the people, I’d be helping the people that
haven’t had faith in me. The people that haven’t treated me like
a
person.
But if
I use my power for myself, I’d drown in my own power, letting it
feed on my heart and my mind.

As I sat there in my awful motel
room, I stared at the wall. Everyday, I do this. I don’t leave my
room. I don’t open the blinds. I just sit there and think. What I
can do isn’t the least bit normal. What I can do hurts people. A
lot of people.

What’s my story? That’s hard to
explain. Everything I’ve been through would make the strongest of
man fall down to their knees. What I’ve been through would haunt
the mind of any person. But I pulled through. Sadly... I don’t
think I can last any longer.

At times, I just feel like walking
out there and killing everyone. I feel like I should just make them
all suffer. Our world is too busy basking in its “glory” that it
doesn’t realize that it’s a horrible place. I’m afraid of sticking
my head out of the door. Even before this all happened, I was
afraid. I was afraid to just see people because everyone is
unpredictable. Anything can happen. Trust me... I learned that the
hard way.

Let’s begin my story with
this.

It was a nice, cold Saturday
afternoon. I was sitting on my couch, watching TV with my little
sister, Anna. My parents were out at the store and they wanted me
to watch her. This was the first time they trusted me enough to
babysit my sister.

Anna didn’t pay any attention to
me. She only cared about the talking sponge on my TV. I didn’t
bother asking her if she wanted to do something else. As long as
she was distracted, I was cool with it.

A fire sat under the TV, crackling
silently under the noise of the cartoon. I could hear the sounds of
cars passing by in the street outside.

“
Nick?” Anna said. I looked over at
her, seeing she had gotten up from the couch.

“
Yeah?”

“
Can we do something else? I’ve
seen this episode before.” A small smile had appeared on her little
seven-year-old face. I smiled back at her.

“
Sure. What do you want to do?” I
sat up and stretched, reaching my hands for the ceiling. Anna
turned and walked into her room. I stood and waited for her,
listening to her search for something in her room. She came back
out with a board game. Simple enough.

She sat it on the coffee table and
pulled out the board and game pieces. I knelt down on the other
side of the table and watched her set the game up.

“
Since when did you like
‘Monopoly’?” I asked with a laugh. She set the board game box down
on the floor and sat down.

“
There’s a lot of things you don’t
know about me, Nick,” she replied with a smile. For thirty minutes,
I laughed and talked with my little sister, which is something I
haven’t done in a while. I learned things about her that I would’ve
never thought of. Like how she’s actually really smart. Or how she
has so many friends. I was having a lot of fun with her. But that
ended very quickly.

All of a sudden, my front door
busted open, slamming the door handle into the wall. My parents
walked in and stopped at the coffee table. Easily, I read the anger
in their eyes. My dad grabbed the board and threw it off of the
table.

“What the hell?” I exclaimed as I
stood up. Dad got his face into mine and jammed his finger into my
chest.

“Who the
hell
do you think you
are? We are your parents! I don’t understand why you go around
doing these... horrible things!” Mom grabbed Anna and took her into
her room.

“What did I do?” I asked, pushing
him away from me.

“What did you
do? What
didn’t
you do? Did you not think we’d find out eventually? Do you
think we’re stupid?” Dad picked up a couch pillow and threw it at
me, hitting me in the face.

I could feel my heart racing and
my pulse rising.

“What are you talking
about?”

“Ditching school for months! Doing
drugs! Stealing from stores! I don’t know how you kept this from us
for so long. But, my God! How can you live with yourself?” Dad
picked up another pillow and threw it.

“Easy,
Dad
. I handle it how you
do. I pretend it doesn’t happen. You act like nothing’s wrong with
this family, yet you come home every night, drunk as hell! I hear
the things you say to Mom. I hear the things you say about Anna and
I. I know who you are!” The veins in my neck popped out and my face
was turning red. “You don’t care about this family! You were never
there for me! So I found a hobby! Like father, like
son.”

The fire under the TV
flickered.

“You don’t know me!” Dad
yelled.

“It’s ‘cause you’re never
there!”

The fire flickered again. Worse
this time.

“Get out of my house! Just get the
hell out!” He flipped over the coffee table, tipping over
everything that was on it.

“
Your
house? I’ve been putting more effort to help this family more
than you have!”

The fire grew larger, seeping out
of the fireplace.

“How dare you talk to
me-”

“
HOW DARE YOU?
You’re a poor excuse for a person! You’re pathetic!
I’m
embarrassed
to call you my father!”

The room grew hotter as the fire
grew larger and larger.

“How about you
do this family a favor and do what you should’ve done years ago!” I
grabbed the flower vase that was on the floor and smacked him in
the head, sending him to the floor. “
GET
THE HELL OUT!”

That’s when it all happened. The
fire bursted out of the fireplace and surrounded the whole living
room. I fell to my knees and looked around, terrified. The fire
covered my whole house, melting everything I loved. But I wasn’t
getting burned.

The fire spread everywhere. In the
kitchen. In the bathroom. Every room in this house was swallowed in
flames.

Even Anna’s.

A sudden drowsiness filled me and
I fell to the floor. At that moment, I thought I was dying. Sadly…
I wasn’t. I passed out, falling into a sea of darkness. I don’t
know how long I was there, but when I woke up, I awoke in what used
to be my home.

What I saw was what made me snap.
What I saw was what made me run away and never turn back. What I
saw made me realize that I was a monster.

Everything that had meaning to me
was burned to ashes. My room. Every last family picture. My family.
My Dad’s body was burnt to a crisp. All that was left were his
bones. Same goes for my mother. Same goes... for Anna.

I never tried to go back to my old
life. What lied in my old life is only betrayal. Betrayal to my
family.

Now you know why I must be where I
am at this moment. All I do is hurt the things I love. I am a
monster. I am hell with legs. I am a walking
flamethrower.

So now I must choose whether to
use my awful power for the greater good... or for myself. Save the
people that would deny me as a person? Or kill the people that see
me as a monster? But no matter what, I will do what I do for what I
did. I will do it all... for Anna.

…
..

Luke

Just a few hours ago, I had shot a
lightning bolt at Jason Truet, sending him flying into the wall. My
girlfriend, Lora, crawled away from me like I was a monster. Same
goes for her friends. But who’s to blame them? From what I saw, I
was a monster.

After that, I ran away from the
school. I didn’t stop at home or anything. I just kept running.
Running and running, I just didn’t stop. I ran faster and longer
than I ever had in my whole life. Now, as I sat behind a dumpster,
shivering in the cold, dead of night, I cried.

I didn’t know what to do. Hell, I
didn’t even know where I was. I was completely lost and didn’t know
who or where to go to. All I could do was stare at my hands and
wonder how I had shot lightning from them a few hours
before.

To pass time, I stared at the
stars. From time to time, a plane would fly by and I would watch it
as it flickered in the darkness of the night sky. When I wasn’t
doing that, I would listen to cars as they passed by. It would
drown out the people as they walked by, talking about stupid things
that no one cared about.

I did that for a
good hour or so. Then, I realized that I wanted to try
it
again. I wanted to
see if I could control it.

So I sat against the cement wall
and lift my hands up. They seemed normal, but I knew what they were
capable of. At first, I just flung my hands around like an idiot,
hoping that would get somewhere. It didn’t.

I sighed and banged my head
against the wall. How did it happen before? I couldn’t remember how
I did it.

That’s when I lift my hands and
closed my eyes. I concentrated. Concentrated harder than I ever
had. I thought about the school and Jason. I thought about Lora and
how she and her friends crawled away from me. I thought about
everything that happened a few hours before.

Faintly, I heard a small buzzing
sound. A faint, blue light started to seep through my eyelids. When
I opened my eyes, my hands were glowing blue and had small,
electrical shocks flowing through my veins. Again.

I jolted up and stared at my
hands. My heart started to race. The electrical shocks in my veins
seemed to flow faster. I had done it.