This Halloween season has inspired me to write a short scary story. I am going to post it in parts as I write it as a way to encourage myself to finish it. Accountability! I hope you enjoy!

<Warning: This will contain gore and some triggering content such as bullying, self harm, violence.>

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I just wanted it to stop. 

People are cruel sometimes for reasons no one understands. I didn’t fit in well. No matter what I said it or did it was taken the wrong way. Everything was carefully skewed to fit the narrative that something is fucking wrong with me. 

“Psycho ass bitch.” She practically whispered it to me as she shoved my head against the wall. I felt the bang reverberate in my neck as I dropped my binder to the floor. She let go of her grip on my skull and stomped away, pleased with hurting me. I stared at the back of her head as she threw it back and laughed. I wish I could hurt her back, but here I was too weak and afraid to do a thing.

We were friends once and it kept me weak. I think she knew that. Who knows, she would never explain.

I tried asking. I practically begged. “Why aren’t we friends anymore? What happened?” She laughed and said I was stupid for thinking we were friends in the first place. I cried so much that day. I don’t know. I don’t know. At some point I started to question if I made it all up. Am I insane? 

It had been going on for months. From what I understand she heard from a friend through a friend that something was wrong with me. Summer vacation was always hard for me. I hated being stuck at home. It wasn’t something I chose, but I guess enough isolation gives people the time to make up a story. I was in the psych ward, I was a recluse, I hated people. That’s what they said. 

The first day of school I walked up to her and said hi and tried to give her a hug. She looked at me like she never had before. So full of disgust. She was always a beautiful girl but I could tell she had really come into her own. Full of confidence and dressed in fresh new clothes. I was given some new shirts and pants but nothing I could feel good in. Just new clothes, for a new year, and I better make them last. 

Ever since then I kept to myself, tried to avoid the spit fire thrown in my direction. It’s not that I wasn’t angry, I felt the anger every day. It creeped under my skin and made me itch. I was just around anger so much that I wanted to hold it in. I saw what it did to people. It made them different, made them hurt others. I didn’t have much I felt proud of beyond my self control. 

That self control started to wane thin. Those words started to crawl under my skin and poison my blood. It wasn’t fair and it didn’t make sense and why why why couldn’t I have a sense of peace?

I rushed to my locker as soon as the bell rang. I wanted to get home. Home felt empty, but it was a type of suffocation I felt safe in. I pulled down the handle and wrenched it open. There it was, the ending to my patience. 

Laying directly on top of my light blue back pack was a dead rat. It looked like it had been ripped apart by an animal. Its intestines sprawled across, dried blood dripping down onto my bag. 

Something in me broke that day. A coldness spread across my chest and constricted it. I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw everything from my locker and dig my fingers into her eye sockets. I wanted her to scream too. 

Instead, I closed the locker shut and left.