Destiny (1)

“Who told you?” I hissed, almost silently, my voice like venom. You could cut the tension with a butter knife.

“What do you mean?” Ash replied dubiously. His face slowly morphed from horror to worry, extremely concerned.

“Who told you my parents’ names? Who told you I was adopted? And why would you make up such an extravagant story to upset me?”

“I didn’t, it’s all true!”

“Then show me your power!”

“I can’t!”

I paused. Who did this guy think he was? Trying to remind me of my sorrows? I couldn’t fathom his purpose.

“Oh, because the Sceptre stole your power?” I scoffed. He went quiet and looked down.

“That’s exactly what happened.”

I swore and swooped up my bag. “Goodbye, Ash,” And I sprinted out the room, tears dripping off my nose all the way.

I curved my pencil around the shape of the apple, trying to perfect my still life drawing. I could still feel a slight dampness in my eyes and my sunhat was still perched uncharacteristically on my head. The eccentric art teacher, Mr Alster, just smiled as he passed me, winking at my artwork. Ash had gone to his lesson, which, since we have such a weird system in our school, was different to mine.

I sighed at the sight of the wobbly line I had just drawn, and reached to pick up my rubber. Unfortunately, I managed to brush it off the table. Oops. As I swept down to get it, the hat fell off my head. I froze.

A gasp of delight came from the other side of the room. Sasha was grinning wickedly in my direction, probably excited to have another reason to annoy me.

“Fay has green hair!”

Mr Alster has left the room at this point, so I had no one to defend me. Josie was in another lesson too.

The whole class guffawed, and all I could do was stare stupidly at my paper and wish that the ground would swallow me up.

“I bet it’s slimy too,” Zach added slyly, “how was your dye catastrophe?”

A wave of outrage swept over me as I wished I could tell him the truth, that I didn’t know what was going on. I could feel the blood boiling underneath my skin, and my hands clenched to tight fists.

“Go away, leave me alone!” My voice was drowned in laughter as is got louder. Suddenly, all the noise stopped, and was replaced with multiple gasps of disbelief. A vine was wrapping around Zach’s leg, coiling its way up to his stomach. I glanced at Sasha, expecting to see the same expression plastered to her face as everyone else, but was greeted with a surprise. Her face was - um - amazed, happy, maybe even… yearning. Greedy. And yet she was unperturbed by Zach.

Throughout all this madness, real life was still going on. The fire crew had chosen this moment to have a drill, and the alarm rang loudly, filling me with relief.

Our class filed out, the bell still ricocheting around our ears, and my hat safely balancing on my head again. Not that it was much use. Now Sasha had seen, the whole world would soon know.

For the second time that day, a pair of hands shoved me to the side, and I stumbled blindly into an alleyway. How many alleyways did this school have…? I glared up at the sky, acknowledging two signs. One read “Art Block” and another read “School Block”. Then my view was clouded with a sharp grinning face, its eyes piercing like a cats’.

“What are you doing here, Sasha?” I moaned, massaging my temples and wishing I didn’t have such a stonking headache.

I glanced behind me, unsuspecting, but the rest of the gang slunk slyly in. A pang of panic rose up inside me. They couldn’t do anything to me, could they? I mean, they would be suspended! Probably expelled! And for all her nasty, Sasha had never done anything worse than minor blackmail as far as I could tell.

Sasha replied, but when she did it came out as a horrific snarl, as if multiple people were speaking in sync.

“We have come for you, Fay Thorwood. You must be eradicated from our world for it to be free of blemishes.”

Her voice, like nails down a blackboard, made my limbs go stiff. I shivered uncontrollably, and just as I was just considering the much preferable alternative that I was going mad, I witnessed an impossible sight.

Sasha and co. were merging into one person, their smiles growing in size and spite. After what felt like forever, I realised how constricted my throat was and I took a choked breath, trembling with unadulterated fear. Taking an involuntary step back, my eyes absorbed this - creature’s - sheer size, and four heads perched on top of the body.

“Who are you?” I spluttered with exertion. In reply, the monster just smirked maliciously. It was so ghastly that I let slip a scream, but over the noise of the alarm, I wasn’t sure that anyone heard it.

When I had finished, I breathed deeply, preparing to scream again. Unfortunately, the four-headed beast hurtled towards me at great speed. I turned to run, but an icy cold hand twisted around my throat. At that precise moment, hundreds of things ran through my head. I won’t list them all here, but most of them were meaningless. The important ones were:

I was about to die

There was no way I could stop it

I’d left my bag in the classroom

OK, that last one wasn’t important, but it felt it at the time.

I struggled for breath and shuddered one last time before my body went limp, and I collapsed. Just before everything became black, I caught a boy in the corner of my eye. I couldn’t see who it was, but he was dragging the monster away from me with a look of outrage on his face.

And I got a very good idea of who it might be…