I remember being pulled out of my room, I couldn’t see anything, it was so dark, I woke up to hands around my arms, I thought it was a dream, they were gentle, it was surreal. How was I supposed to know that in the darkness of my safe home five people were very gently taking me into their hands all at once, scooping me up and lifting me. I didn’t realize it until we descended the stairs and went to the driveway of my home. I don’t remember being scared, I was too tired, I thought it was some fucked up joke my dad and his friends were playing on me.
It wasn’t them though, when my eyes were fully open, I was sitting in the back of a dimly lit van, there were other girls in there, the ones that carried me, and a few boys, but I wasn’t use to seeing girls.
“We saw you,” one said, brushing my hair from my eyes, “through your window, yesterday night…”
One of the guys, much more firm in tone, unlike the girl’s airy voice said, “they just sorta knew you were our number six,” then he smiled at me, turning back to the face the front of the car after having backed up.
“Right… for what?” I asked, but one of the girls was already unbuttoning my shirt, pulling it off of me slowly, stripping me.
I wasn’t resistant, being stripped was something I was use to, she seemed pleased by this, but I was not use to being reclothed, and when she draped a cloak, over my shoulders, I was shocked. The people in the back quickly did the same, stripping and pulling on cloaks.
I could see a house, we were pulling up to someone’s house, the lights were still on, two cars in the driveway. Where were they taking me?
“What’s your name?” A young blonde girl asked me as she slipped out of her panties.
“Kali, my name is Kali.”
“I’m Debby, you can call me Debs, everyone does.”
Then, one by one, the five strangers added names to each of their faces as they cloaked themselves.
We left the van, they were telling me I was going to join them, this was like an initiation, they all went through it at least once, and I would be stronger if I made it out of it fine.
If?
I decided not to question, and I realized there was a knife in the pocket of my cloak, and Adam, he was loading a gun.
When James came back around from the other side of the house, he had blood on his face, and his hands, “Someone was outside, you guys, but they left the back unlocked, we gotta do this quick, ok?”
I didn’t know what to do, I’d never hurt anyone, why were they doing this, who were they, what kind of group was this. My mind flooded with questions that seemed to come with no reply, so I stood there, stiff and awkward, my chest rising and falling a little more quickly as Sophia took my hand and lead me down the path to the back yard in which we would make our entrance into the house.
That’s when I saw the corpse, neck slit, stab wounds to the head, bubbled blood pouring past his lips.
I felt sick.
I felt…..
Nora leaned down, looking the man in the face, handing me her knife and whispering “hold on a second, a necklace slipping from her robe, I hadn’t noticed it until now, but it was decorated in human teeth, why could I only see them now? In the car I was so dazed, I thought they were shells.
But there she was, bending down and placing a foot on the corpse’s head, fingers firmly placed on one of his front teeth only to give a rough yank, enough to slip it from the bloody maw with a cruel snap.
She looked pleased…
I, without much pride left, vomited in the bushes.
Then they pulled me inside…
