Chapter 12: Chapter Eleven

[A/N] I haven't finished writing the chapter for the book that's supposed to go before this one but I wanted to post on time.

Trigger warning for the violence guys... – =͟͟͞͞ =͟͟͞͞ ﾍ( ˉ 0ˉ)ﾉ

My father got back soon after and I ate dinner in silence. He stared at me for some of it, but then grunted and turned back to his food and ultimately said nothing.

In the morning I got up and went to the printer to print out the lost posters for Milk, and Irene was startled seeing me in the office so early.

"You're going to school today okay?"

I looked up at her from where I was crouching next to the printer, watching the warm sheets buckle over the edge as they were produced.

"Not to attend classes but to speak to the school about what happened. They want to make sure you're okay. And they need to know who exactly was involved in what happened..."

I didn't say anything but pulled out more sheets and put them on the stack.

"So get dressed soon, I'll come with you. Don't make your brother wait..."

I was up so early Colby was probably still asleep.

I dressed, put my school things together, and stuffed the thick stack of papers with Milk's face, information and my number on them into my backpack.

We drove to school and I was sat in the headmasters room with the large oval table set up, a few of my teachers there, a few teachers I didn't recognise, the headmaster, the school therapist, and Irene. That made about eight of them around the large table.

I barely answered their questions but acquiesced and wrote out a list of names. Of the group of eight or so boys that had beat me and thrown me into the lake I could only remember about four. If I passed them in the hallway or met them in class I'd know it was them but I wasn't close enough to know everyone's names and I didn't care.

I cared so little that I was yawning by the time they slowly exited the room and had me move to sit with Miss Polwarth in a separate room.

It was already morning break by this time, so when I left the Headmaster's room there were students moving throughout the hallways that stared at me, some of them even stopping to look at me as I moved past.

I went to sit in her little closet like office and she smiled at me with her red lipstick and blue eyeshadow and asked me how writing my diary was going, and if I'd written a new entry about what had happened.

I told her not yet, and she asked me to do so, because it would help, and asked me if I wanted to read any of my diary to her. I shook my head. She asked if I could write and leave the diary there. I said I would not. She looked a little perplexed.

It wasn't that I was meek before, but I was quiet in a different way, and usually did what everyone wanted.

It was so strange to think about it now, as though I'd aged twenty years in an hour, because in the past I'd always thought that I was constantly letting people down, not doing what they wanted. I wondered how I'd gotten to that conclusion.

Still I stayed in her room and wrote the diary entry, an explanation more than the emotional bantering I'd ended up doing before.

She brought me lunch and stayed with me, and I realised slowly that they intended for me to stay the entire school day and Irene had probably left.

I sighed and waited around. Polwarth asked me if I had any work to be getting on with while I was sat with her and I shook my head, in reality I had no idea, I did so little work that I wasn't sure what was going on in class or what homework might have existed.

When the last bell rang and I left I did not see any familiar faces from camp and wondered if they had suspended everyone from the trip momentarily while they figured out who was involved.

I slowly walked home.

I saw the spot where I'd recently vomited up the wall as I passed.

Walking felt good, better than sitting, better than waiting around. The more I thought about it the more I agreed with myself. Walking was great.

I took a detour to make the path home longer, and then took another detour to make that longer, and while I was on my way put up Milk's image on every surface available. Electrical boxes, lampposts, post boxes.

Night descended seemingly quickly, and in a moment the moon was there, in another, stars slowly started twinkling visibly in the sky while the sun was still barely setting, red turning to purple on the horizon of rows and rows of buildings.

The silhouettes were becoming darker and the lamplight spread shadows out across the streets. I kept my eyes trained on every corner, looking for the whisp of white fluff that would indicate Milk turning a corner or hiding behind something.

I turned from the residential area into an area with shops and bars, the local abandoned shopping mall, a nightclub and more densely packed shops. There were people milling about, some drunk, the smell of weed in the air, someone's trousers discarded be the side of the road.

For a while I wondered what was missing, what was so strange, why nothing told me to stop as I kept walking, kept tacking Milk's lost posters everywhere, on top of the stickers with prostitutes numbers and bodies on them and between other requests for lost friends and missing property.

Neon flickering signs passed me, the streets got narrower, I moved from bar to bar, a queue was forming outside a club whose music blared into the street every time the door opened. Cigarette smoke puffed into my face as I passed.

I should be afraid, I realised. But I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be afraid of.

This was the bad part of town, it merged with the red light district here. I saw some of the women walking past that might have been prostitutes, glancing at me, looking me up and down. It could have been because of my uniform, or the bruises on my face.

I watched everything like a hawk, observing as I walked and put the posters wherever I could. Everything felt new to me. I'd never seen the world this dark before, above water.

How long had I walked for? More than a few hours...

Just then, all of a sudden, I saw a dog turn the corner into an alley way.

My heart leapt into action, I raced down the street and turned into the same alley way.

It separated the houses and lead right across to the opposite street.

The dog looked a little thinner than Milk, but I couldn't tell until I was up close.

I jogged after him and called his name a couple times but he was too far up ahead.

"Milk!" I yelled into the alleyway.

My heart was racing, so my legs followed to their tune and I raced down the alleyway, straight across and over the next road and down another alleyway, this one turning slightly, taking me into an odd parking area, it wrapped around straight back into the entrance to underground parking that was marked as 'No Entry'.

I stood there for a while, looking around, heart pumping.

"Milk!" I shouted.

Another whisp of a white fluffy tail and the dog was gone down into the underground parking area.

"Milk..." If this was Milk he wouldn't run from me, would he? But the tail looked familiar...

I chased after him down into the seemingly abandoned, quiet parking space. There was trash on the floor down there, and general natural debris like leaves, even weeds. It was incredibly dark and the further I went down the slower I got, confused, I listened in to hear the little paws on concrete pattering further away.

I realised the place must have been connected to the old abandoned shopping mall, which was a relatively small building as far as malls went. They'd torn down a bunch of council housing to build it and then never fully finished constructing it, but the parking area had been in use for the local residents before... well I wasn't entirely sure, maybe it wasn't structurally sound anymore.

"Milk?" I asked quietly.

I moved further into the place, one or two of the lights were functioning in the distance, and there were a few cars still down here.

Footsteps. I jolted and stepped back between two cars.

"I'm gonna kill you!" Someone screamed, sounded like an older middle aged man, his voice was rusty, too many cigarettes. The sound of scraping on concrete, my eyes had now fully adjusted to the light and I saw some people moving in the distance.

Dragging someone across the floor.

"I'm going to fuck you and your mother and I'll fucking rape her, watch me you little bitch! I'm gonna fuck her!" His words were slurred his voice somehow booming despite being so raspy. "Watch me fuck her!"

There was a loud smack, like someone was being slapped, but more muted and heavier, and his yelling dissolved into a scared mewling.

"Be quiet." Someone replied, in a voice so chillingly calm that, for the first time since I'd fallen into that lake, I felt a twinge of something in my chest, telling me to step back.

The earie shadows crept across the floor, the owners casually dragging the man by his head and arms. He wailed but barely struggled.

They stopped under the lamplight, I realised it was shining through an entrance, not from inside the parking garage.

He leant down.

Like a man possessed I watched in dead silence, and before I knew it moved closer, behind the separation pillar. My eyes wide and fixed on them, my heart still pounding from the run.

His eyes reflected the light, terrible eyes that looked sharp and distinct, while the rest of him was still nothing more than an outline.

"Is he on it?"

"Not fully." Someone laughed, but it sounded more like a cackle. "Pull his trousers up, pull the tarp under him." He looked up at the grim reaper standing calmly, the bare hint of an ember from a cigarette disappearing as he turned it in his fingers. "Old man needs a belt."

Someone else grunted. "Fat fucking lardass."

The man started wailing, there was the rustle of plastic underneath him, and I realised his hands were bound and pulled up. It was the strangest wailing ever.

"Okay we're good. Do you want a last meal honey?" The one that cackled spoke to him, and I saw him leaning over what looked like the guys feet.

The guy standing there casually, tall and relaxed, seemed to be rifling through a backpack, standing over him, his boots on either side of his head.

Elegant hands retrieved something, calmly shaping it into a ball. Then he leaned down calmly, broad shoulder hunching over the man, and suddenly, violently, shoved it into the mans mouth, extended to his full height and stomped down on his head.

The breath whipped from my lungs, I gasped slightly. There was a crunch as the foot landed, his head smacking the floor from its slightly raised position, and the man made an odd, loud rasping now, before screaming from his chest. I thought I saw his eyes bulging out of his head, he was silent now, his eyes were frightened.

Heart pumping I watched still as anything, so still that I could hear my muscles creak when I breathed.

The shadows seemed to rise up with him. Maybe it was the way he moved, of the lit cigarette whose ember glimmered once then faded as he put it out on his own jacket, and seemingly put it in his pocket, or the slow dawning realisation that the object he pulled out of said pocket really was a knife.

There was no hesitation, and I slowly crouched down toward the ground, my legs strangely week, as I watched him murder the guy, heard the frightened screeching of the guy, the renewed fighting, a useless struggle, some laughter from the the guys accomplices. Each stab was surprisingly silent and surprisingly loud.

My heart pounded in my chest, my hands, my throat, cold sweat on my neck and forehead as I sat there like a rock, unable to move. Watching the unfeasible scene from, what felt like, the blacked out stage.

Then there was a gargling like he was vomiting, and then the body going silent, the plastic being pulled together, the rustling like a roar in the quiet black garage, footsteps as they moved around him.

"Burn him?"

He took a while before responding, wiping something off his jacket, then nodded, running his hand through his hair. "I want someone to come back and melt the rest."

He looked down eerily at the limp corpse at his feet and put his foot on the neck, then stepped down on it. "I'd piss on you but I didn't drink enough for that." He spoke quietly, his voice low and clear and deadly.

When he spoke the words sounded strangely terrifying, as though he was cursing the man's next life to end the same way.

My breathing might have been fast as I realised I had to back up now.

They were switching on their torches to tie the tarp together with sellotape, and at the slightest sound they could turn them on me and I would be caught.

Then there would be two still bodies wrapped in white plastic being taped together in thick black tape, limp and ready for an early grave.

My heart pounded as I backed up, every step sounded like thunder in my ears.

I stayed crouching even as I moved backwards, until it got too hard to move silently and I had to get up.

I edged back towards the exit.

Not quite nervous, but cold, and my heart was beating fast.

When I got close to the exit I saw the light from the lamp post round the corner reflecting off of the convex mirror in the upper corner.

And then, the moment I meant to speed up, my foot hit a can, it scattered across the floor, and there was silence behind me.

I kept walking through the dark concrete area, toward the incline, the strong musky smell of old urine blocking my nose.

"Stop." Came the low calm, deadly demand from behind. Somehow so loud, cutting into the sharp quiet, the echo barely tracing his voice.

It felt as though something had stepped into my shoes.

My body stopped, and a trickle, like rain, dripped down every inch of my skin.

My heart thumped once, then twice, a slow loud heart beat that he might just have heard. Cold, hot, then cold again, my hair raised on my skin as I felt the strange presence behind me, drawing me in even as I felt his eyes like knives on my back.

And then I sprinted into a run.

[A/N] Warm thank you to the Wattpad Creators Program and my amazing patrons, and also everyone here who is supporting me. Big kiss. ෆ(ˇᵋ ˇෆೄ