~~Demon In My View~~
~*~Prologue~*~
There was a time in my life when I thought I was normal. Admittedly, that was a long time ago but I do remember. It's an elusive memory, tattered around the edges and sepia toned like an old photograph, stored haphazardly in my mind somewhere.
My last vestiges of normalcy vanished when I was five. My twin brother Luke and I had just been enrolled in pre-school, and the pretty young teacher had deposited us into the play area with the other children. That's when I asked her about the dark shadow, translucent and smoky, that framed her whole body. I didn't understand her confusion; wasn't she aware of it? I remember glancing at Luke, hoping he'd back me up, but he was just as clueless.
That night, the pretty young teacher was murdered, strangled beside her car outside the supermarket.
No one connected me to her premature death. Especially not me. At five, I didn't, couldn't, comprehend what death actually was. To me, it was just like she'd gone on an extended vacation to someplace wonderful and magical.
After that, I started seeing the shadows with a regularity that began to seem disturbing. The second one occurred just a few months after the teacher's death. My mom was walking me and Luke down the sidewalk downtown, holding tightly to our hands lest we wander off, when I saw a man stumbling towards us. He was wreathed in a grayish shadow that didn't obscure his features in the least. I saw that his eyes were a hazel blue and slightly glassy, his nose was hooked and his lips were flat, compressed against his teeth in agitation. My hand rose unconsciously in a wave, but my mother jerked me out of his way, muttering something about disgusting druggies. He met my eyes for the briefest of moments before stumbling away, out into the street, directly into the path of a minivan.
I screamed. And screamed some more, watching the man's body as the grill of the van impacted him, sending him up to the windshield where a spiderweb crack appeared in the glass. He landed brokenly on the ground, unmoving. Completely motionless as I continued to scream.
I think that's when I began to crack, my mind slowly fragmenting. That was also the day I damaged my vocal chords so severely, I'd never manage a falsetto again.
Every time I saw the shadows after that incident, I tried to warn people, but my warnings went unheeded. I wasn't sure if they would've helped anyway. As I slowly deteriorated in my own mind, helplessness over my inability to prevent these things causing me to retreat within myself, I still gained some knowledge. Like the darker the shadow, the more brutal their death would be. I saw a lot of the dark shadows, and each one added to my increasing insanity.
I was institutionalized for the first time when I was twelve. At first, I attempted to tell the psychiatrist I was assigned to the truth, until I realized it was futile. He thought I was crazy; I sure sounded nuts. He quickly diagnosed me with schizophrenia and prescribed me some antipsychotic pills. Soon after that I was released back into the world.
Those first few years afterward were pure bliss. There were no more shadows and I met my first real, honest-to-God friend. Ryan came to mean the world to me, especially because Luke and I had drifted apart. My twin couldn't understand me, though he honestly tried for a while. We became strangers living in the same house, and that was when Ryan appeared in my life. I think I came to rely on him, on the feelings he evoked within me. For a short time, I could pretend I was a normal teenager, with no crazy past shadowing me.
Then came the day, when I was fifteen, Ryan showed up at school bathed in a muted gray shadow. I flipped, there's no other way to explain it. I would call it a case of temporary insanity if I wasn't already bat shit. I later learned the damage done to the classroom I was in during my freak out consisted of broken windows, overturned desks and chairs, and papers and other miscellaneous items scattered all around the room like a tornado had ripped through.
Ryan died that weekend, drowned while camping. He got caught in a hidden current and because he wasn't a strong swimmer to begin with, he was swept under. I didn't even get to attend his funeral because I was institutionalized for the second time, whereupon I got to add mood equalizers to my growing cocktail of drugs.
When I was released that time, Mom had grown tired of my craziness and Luke's constant expulsions from school for fights, and sent us both to a boarding school in the Rockies. I think it was as far away as she could manage without actually sending us out of the country. She needed distance from us and we obliged as gladly as we could muster.
Now I'm eighteen, a senior, and I'm no less crazy than I always had been. Maybe a little less high-strung because it'd been so long since I'd seen a shadow. Up here in the Rockies, secluded from the rest of the world, Death didn't have many reasons to visit.
Although all this silence and stillness just gives me too many opportunities to get lost inside my own head. I frequently found myself contemplating my own name. Layla. I'd looked up its meaning before and one of them is simply dark. Layla means dark. Now, there are many interpretations of that single word, but for me it can only mean the shadows.
I can't help but fear my own name was a premonition of doom, set upon me at birth.
If you're still with me so far, I commend you for your saint-like patience. Read on. What follows is the culmination of my degradation into full-fledged insanity. Or, hell, maybe it's actually my salvation.
~*~Chapter One~*~
It was snowing again. Of course, because the universe couldn't be kind enough to gift the students at the Cornick Academy with a balmy 35 degrees Farenheit without snow.
Layla Chadwick sat in the window seat in her dorm room, knees drawn up to her chest, gazing out at all the phosphorescent brilliance laid out before her. Today marked the first day of her senior year and she had nothing to show for the summer she'd spent back home in Florida. No tan because she boycotted the beach, no hilarious stories of catching up with old friends because she had none, old or otherwise. Even her eighteenth birthday had been uneventful, just another day on the calendar.
No, her summer had been spent sequestered away in her bedroom, alleviating the constant loneliness by listening to intense, hardcore rap. It was easier that way. Alone, she didn't encounter any of the shadows that had plagued her since she was five. She didn't have to be the freaking harbinger of death for some poor person who envisioned a bright, endless future for themselves.
It was almost a relief when Layla and Luke had to catch a plane back to Colorado for school. In the Rockies, the tight restriction around her chest eased a bit, allowing her to breathe a little. Whether it was the freezing air that burned her nose and crystallized her lungs in frost, or the fact that she was surrounded by a small amount of healthy teens that were in no danger of dropping dead, all that mattered was that since she was fifteen, she hadn't seen one single shadow. Not since Ryan.
Pushing down the grief that attempted to choke her at just thinking his name, Layla stood and gazed speculatively at her reflection in the full length mirror bracketed to her door. She saw a diminutive girl staring emotionlessly back, long, raven black hair cascading in shiny waves to her waist, smooth, alabaster skin with a faint tracery of blue veins visible just beneath the surface. Her face was flawless, no blemishes to speak of, high cheekbones, a small, straight nose and sensually plump lips a natural reddish-pink. Then there were her eyes. They were so dark as to appear black at just a short distance, but upon closer inspection they were a deep grape purple, kind of like orbs of Welch's grape juice.
Layla was glad no one was willing to room with her because she would have received a reputation as a conceited bitch along with being a freak. She had a habit of looking at her reflection more than the average person but not because of some latent narcissistic trait. She couldn't understand why God would gift her with such an alluring, ethereal beauty, but then curse her with something that guaranteed to keep people at arm's length. They could sense the wrongness in her and steered clear. Thus, she spent considerable amounts of time scrutinizing her reflection, trying to find in her image the imperfection that turned her peers off. Surely they couldn't know what exactly she was able to do.
Sighing, she turned away from the mirror in disgust and hurriedly threw on some clothes. All the other girls in the senior dormitory were already at breakfast by the time she went downstairs to the common area. It wasn't like she'd expected any of them to wait for her; in all the time she'd been there she hadn't put forth any effort to establish friendships and neither had anyone else. Solitude was best for Layla. Friends were overrated.
Shoving out the door, a frigid blast of air momentarily stole her breath, bringing forth involuntary tears. Forging ahead, she hugged her arms around herself, burrowing deeper into her hoodie. It was a short walk from the dorm to the school but she cursed herself for leaving behind her big, warm winter coat. It had seemed rather pointless to wear it when she'd be taking it off the moment she entered the hot sanctuary of the school. She was suffering for that mistake now.
Luke was waiting for her up ahead, right outside the double doors of the cafeteria. He was dressed similarly to her, in jeans and a hoodie, but unlike her he seemed impervious to the cold. His blond hair, which was perpetually tousled, flopped forward onto his forehead, green eyes bright as emeralds in all this brightness.
They couldn't be more different, especially in appearance. Layla had damaged her body with only one tattoo on her back while Luke used his body as a pincushion. There was a diamond stud in his left ear, his right eyebrow was pierced, tongue, both nipples. Those were just the ones she knew about. Then there was their personalities, which could only be described as night and day. When she'd had Ryan, Layla came to the realization she was pretty effervescent, able to laugh and joke with abandon. She just needed someone to open up to. Luke, however, was an angry teen boy without the angst. He was apathetic on the outside, with barely suppressed fury inside.
"Hi, Luke," she murmured.
He nodded in greeting.
After a moment's hesitation in which they stood in awkward silence, they both reached for the door handle in perfect synchronization. That twin connection that never really had a chance to flourish. Luke held the door open silently, allowing her to enter first, where they then went their separate ways.
It never failed. For the past few years, starting on day one at this school, Luke always waited for Layla outside those same doors, then they'd walk in together and sit on opposite sides of the cafeteria. They never interacted at all, in school or out. In their whole lives, Layla could count the number of conversations she'd had with her twin on both hands, and that was being generous.
Keeping her head down because she didn't want to chance encountering the shadows, Layla released a sigh and found her usual seat. This year was already shaping up to be more of the same old routine.
~*~*~
It was fucking snowing again. Perfect.
