I don't... I don't want to think about what just happened. I don't want it to be real. I don't. I shouldn't have... It's all my fault. It's all because of me! And yet... I didn't take the chance. The chance to take away the pain...
I failed. Utterly. They're both as good as dead, and... and I'm on the run. Nothing with me but the clothes on my back and the random crap I managed to stuff into my backpack. Oh, and my laptop, of course. My laptop which, as far as I know, still has the freaking Eye in it!
And if I had left sooner, this wouldn't have... They wouldn't have...
Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself. I should... I should start at the beginning.
I tried to fake being sick this morning, but Mom didn't buy it. Apparently Tom had faked it enough times that she could tell when it was real and when it wasn't. So I had to pack after school, and that's what I'd done as soon as we got home. The storm yesterday inspired me to act fast, before something even more drastic happened. Guess I wasn't fast enough.
I heard someone struggling with the lock on my door, so I threw my backpack somewhere they wouldn't see it. Wouldn't want them to know I was leaving until the last minute.
My mom has a key to all the rooms in the house, so I knew it was her when the door opened without my consent.
"Hey, honey," she said. "Is everything alright?"
"Yeah," I lied, opening one of my schoolbooks onto a random page and scribbling something down on a sheet of paper."Just doing some homework."
"Listen," she said, sitting down at the foot of my bed. I could tell she saw right through the lie, but she didn't try to force it out of me. "Tom and I have been worried about you. You seem so... cast off from us, you rarely even come out of your room anymore. And yesterday, when you were going on about ducks..."
Oh yeah, did I forget to mention? I asked her and Tom if they'd seen the ducks that had been all over the neighborhood recently. If they'd seen them turn into that storm. They told me they hadn't seen any ducks.
"We were just wondering if you were okay," she continued. "If there was something we should be worried about."
"N-nothing," I stammered. "No, nothing at all."
"Are you sure?" she asked. "See, Tom found your blog, and..."
Oh God. The blog. I hadn't thought they would find the blog. I did the only thing I could think of. I'd say I should've done the opposite, but... It was already too late by then anyway.
"It's true," I told her, grabbing my backpack from where I had thrown it, and my laptop from my desk. "And I know you won't believe me, but the longer I stay here, the more danger you're in. So I hope you understand that I have to leave." I started to get up and walk towards the doorway.
"Oh, I believe you," she assured me.
I stopped. "You do?"
"Of course," she said. "And I can help you take away the pain."
"Wha...," I stammered, edging slowly towards the door, hoping against hopes this didn't mean what I thought it meant. "What are you talking about?"
"I can help you escape your troubles," she continued, still keeping her voice quiet, as if she was still worried about me. "You won't ever have to die, you won't ever feel pain. Join us, and all your problems will be blown away. Conscience can't get to you once you're one of us."
"No...," I whispered, unable to form any other word as my mind clouded over in unspeakable horror. "No. No no no no no NOOO!"
And then, her eyes, those dark brown eyes that looked just like my own, turned a deep, dark red. Her brow furrowed in anger as she pulled a butcher knife from... I'm not entirely sure where she got it from.
"Then you leave me no choice," she muttered, her voice... not quite like her own.
I ran. I didn't know what else to do. I ran down the hallway as I heard a low moan behind me: A mixture of pain and pleasure that I really did not want to hear from my mother.
I opened the front door, but Tom was also waiting there with a machete in his hands. Don't ask me how he got the machete. He raised it over his head, and I flinched and shut my eyes, waiting for the pain, but it didn't come.
I opened my eyes, and saw his disembodied hand lying on the ground. Where his hand used to be, there was no blood, no bones, no anything, just a huge, gaping hole. And then a feathery, flat-beaked head popped out of it.
If I'd been scared of the ducks before, that was nothing compared to how I am now. Ducks. Freaking ducks. Is this supposed to be some kind of sick joke? What kind of eldritch being takes the form of ducks to terrorize their prey? Ducks!
Then the ducks started flying out of his arm. I turned around and saw more ducks waddling down the hallway. So I did the only thing I could with the resources I had. I started hitting them with my laptop.
When the first duck flew out, WHAM! Second one, POW! Third one went down with a similarly ridiculous onomatopoeia. But then, they started to get back up, and I could only hit them one or two at a time. The ducks in the hallway were getting closer, by the sound of it.
I took Tom by surprise and kicked him to the ground, disorienting some of the birds. I took that as my chance and made a run for it. Somehow, even with my backpack slowing me down, I managed to run to the car and shut the door. I remembered we keep a spare key in the glove compartment, so I fished it out of there while the ducks pecked at the windows with their oddly-shaped beaks.
Yes, I know the glove compartment is not a good place to keep a spare key. And yes, I know I don't have a license. None of those seem very important anymore.
I stuck the key in the ignition and put it into reverse, backing out of the driveway while the birds continued pecking fruitlessly. Then I sped towards the highway as fast the the speed limit would allow me, shaking off the birds as I did so.
I've only driven a couple times before, so I'm not exactly used to it, but I know the basics so I didn't have much of a problem with that.
I did have a problem with the fact that I had no idea where to go, however. I just drove off in some random direction, and I didn't stop until just about half an hour ago. I'm in a pretty large town, and the GPS says I'm in... Well, I'm not gonna give out my location on the Internet. Better be safe than sorry.
Well, I guess it's already too late for that.
I don't know what to do. I put my own family in danger and now there's no way to get them back and... And now they're trying to kill me! And the worst thing... The worst thing of all is that it's all my fault. All those bad decisions these last few days has led to this. If only I had made better decisions...
I'm running now. INSANITY, if you're reading this, feel free to mock and ridicule me all you want. Your insults don't matter anymore.
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