Excerpt: Spiral

I shivered, and clutched the bag slightly closer to my body. It was a fairly frigid night, and I’d forgotten any sort of heavy coat because the weather wasn’t normally cold. Winter came a lot sooner then I thought it would, I mused on silently as I walked another few steps. I glanced down (habitually) at my watch, checking the time – it informed me that it was 2:36 AM, which informed me I had three more hours before I had to do anything. Not like it mattered if I went to school, anyways.

Geez. The walk home was always so boring. Why did I even attempt it? Simple. It got me out of my house. Away from all the attendants that tried to make me happy without even meeting my eyes. Even now, at seventeen years of age, it still bothered me how no one would meet my eyes. Was I truly that scary? Despite having asked several times as a child, and even more now as a teenager, I had never received an answer to that question.

But, that was something I tried not to dwell on. I had two wonderful little sisters, who never ignored me – when I walked in the door it was always, “Kira! Kira!” Caiselle and Sairelle are five years of age and beautiful, unable to judge me like their older siblings and babysitter attendants always have. Yet again, I have the trouble of locating yet another new school for them. The last school ran out of teachers that could tolerate the two – rather, teachers that could tolerate me. I apparently made the teachers feel “uneasy”. It wasn’t in their job description to come up with reasons to get rid of my siblings to dispose of me, but they did it anyways. Lousy bastards.

I tugged a strand of hair out of my eyes, frowning slightly at it as I did so. What had I come to, glaring at hair, hair that wouldn’t even understand the meaning of a glare if I gave it the proper definition from a dictionary? I truly was a sad person, to be so lonely as to be glaring at a bunch of keratin. Ah, well. Could be worse, couldn’t it? At least I wasn’t talking to things.

I paused as a shadow stepped out from next to a lamppost less then twenty feet away from me. I peered at it, clutching my bag protectively – my wallet was tucked into my pants inside the waistband, where few people dared venture. So far, the quota was zero. I happened to want to keep it that way - would this idiot dare challenge something so simplistic?

There were two things that immediately struck me about the person. First, it was obviously male - he wasn't wearing a shirt, and the lack of any sort of ample bust led to an obvious conclusion. Secondly...there was something wrong with his mouth. My chocolate-brown eyes furrowed slightly as I stared at it, well aware that I should (at the least) be running quickly the other direction. He took a step towards me, and I stepped back. At least some part of my brain was working, thankfully. That was a relief.

"Hello, darling," said the man enticingly as he took another step towards me. His arms were at his waist, and his posture was relaxed - however, I couldn't help but feel that there was something wrong with him. I glanced at his face and backed up another step - his eyes weren't slit right - the pupils were vertical, like a cat's, instead of the normal round of a human like myself.

"I'm not your darling," I retorted sharply, clinging onto the stupid bag. Any smart person, I tried to tell myself, would've dropped the bag and ran like hell by now. No, unfortunately, I wasn't quite part of the "smart" faction. Sad.

"Not yet, you aren't," replied the man with an amused smile. Ohh, that was a freaky smile. Now I could see that dude's canine's were seriously enlarged. Werewolf? With a cat's eyes? Yeah, I definitely knew that I needed to cook more and read less if I was confusing a human being (albeit a strange-looking one) with a werewolf.

I raised my eyebrow in response, pondering my surroundings. I had at least a half-mile left to my mansion-type house, and it was (of course) next to deserted roads. Rich people don't like to live too close together, despite the fact my family's not too rich at all. Well. We aren't. My parents are. I took another step backwards, wondering what I was doing pondering my parent's fortune when I had something much bigger to deal with standing far too close to me for my liking.

"What do you want?" Well, that seemed like a practical question. Silently, I applauded myself, and considered the self-defense courses I had taken. It seemed like years ago - funny thing, it was. I was ten when I took a set of three self-defense courses. I'd never bothered to do anymore. Mentally, I slapped myself - if this was how I faced someone that potentially wanted to kill me, I truly was doomed.

"You." Such a simple, unwelcome answer.

"What part of me?" Now I was just trying to drag things out and find a way to get out of the situation. I truly didn't want to be raped by this...weird-looking creature. I mean, seriously, who would? I spoke more to another person in the past few minutes then I had in years. It was an odd sensation. My voice was slightly hoarse; it was annoying, in a way. I seriously needed to talk more.

...isn't it silly what you wonder about when someone wants to rape you?