by:

After getting punished for a fight he didn't start, Taylor's life has taken a turn for the weird. First it was strange dreams then it was a bizarre feeling that something isn't right. Now he's constantly cold and can't figure out why.
But these things are just the beginning of his problems.

Author's NoteHey its been a long time, bet no one thought they'd be hearing from me again, at least story wise LOL. Sorry for the VERY long absence but life has sucked majorly and frankly its NOT getting any better anytime soon. I want to do something besides wallowing in my own self pity though, so I figured I'd try jumpstarting my dwindling passion again. There are only 3 fully written chapters of this so far, so I can't promise much or many active updates but I'll try. Sorry the first chapter is so short :( Also I'd like to thank my beta readers :D

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1.

“Don’t forget the glitter, Cassie!”

I could hear them from the bleachers, even though I was trying my hardest not to. The girls were louder than they should have been, talking, laughing, giggling. I rolled my eyes and tried to hide behind my iPad. I was hoping to get a little more work done before heading home. I just got this scene where I wanted it. It was little use though. I could already see Brittany Clarke glaring at me. She didn’t want me here and I definitely didn’t want to be here. Neither of us had a choice in the matter though. I didn’t blame her for being angry though. Hell, I didn't blame myself for being angry either. The person I blamed was Donny Duncan. All of this was Donny’s fault. It all started last week and all Donny had to do was leave me alone. Donny’s problem was like most of the Assholes at our school, he just couldn’t help himself.

After the fight and the two of us ended up in the principal’s office, my father was called in. His glare had said it all. He was pissed at me for being me. When we got home that night, he chewed me out for not “being man enough”. That was his usual insult. Well, one of them. “Girly Boy” was another favorite of his. I was short, thin and soft-featured. The fact that I liked to wear my near-bleach-blonde hair at my shoulders made me less of a man to him. After several years of his verbal abuse, dealing with Donny was easy. He was a Neanderthal. When he threw the first punch after I insulted him, I was ready for it. I dodged it, he punched Jessica Smith in the back of the head and that was the end of that.

Of course Mrs. Haines saw it all. That’s how I ended up in trouble too. The school had a zero tolerance policy concerning fighting. It didn’t matter that Donny started it. I was involved so I got the attention detention too. Whereas Donny managed to work out his punishment with Coach Franks, I ended up with a far worse fate: dance committee.

“Taylor, are you just going to sit there!?”

Brittany was now talking to me it seemed.

I sighed. I set my iPad down, wondering what torture she was going to put me through today.

“You three seem like you have this one under control.”

She grunted. “Look you don’t want to be here anymore than I actually want you here. You do however have to help us.”

The “help” they were seeking was on posters.

More specifically, glittery, frilly-looking posters advertising the upcoming Halloween Dance. Last week they announced that the theme for the dance this year would be The Fairy Forest. Something I’m sure most of the girls voted on and most of the boys didn’t really give a damn. I was one of them. While I was forced to join the committee for the next couple of weeks, I had no real intention of helping. Especially when I came home last night with glitter all over me. As soon as Dad saw it, he freaked even more. He went on an hour-long rant about how “boys shouldn’t...” Blah, blah, blah. I tuned most of it out. My mother and older sister tuned most of it too. They generally ignored Dad when he flipped on me like that. My parents laid down the ground rules early in life. As a boy, I was my Dad’s responsibility. So he was in charge of punishing me, he was in charge of lecturing. It was his job to raise me “right”. Mom took care of Alexis. They felt it was fair. It probably would have been if I’d been the kind of son that Dad wanted.

Newsflash, I wasn’t.

Bigger newsflash, I didn’t care.

In two years, I’d be eighteen, then I’d be gone. We started college prep courses last week, and I was already planning on going to one out of state. There were a lot of decent scholarships I was looking into as well. I was done with my family and done with this tiny little town. Now I just had to wait two more years for this town to finally be done with me.

“Taylor!”

I sighed even louder. Instead of leaving my iPad on the bleacher where I was certain it would get damaged, I stuffed it into my backpack as I slung it on my shoulder. Better safe than sorry. I could have left all of it just sitting there, but I didn’t trust this place anymore. Even though the gymnasium was deserted save the small group of us, one could never be too careful. Lowering your guard was never smart around this place. Donny had taught me that. I wasn’t just a target of opportunity to him, I was the bullseye he always hit in his game of life darts.

Trying not to think about Donny and his bullying, I begrudgingly stomped over to the small circle formed in the middle of the Gym. Brittney was still glaring, the others were barely paying attention. I only knew a few of them by name, the rest were cheerleaders and student council. None of which were in any of my social circles. Not that I really had a circle, unless Loner counted. I had no true friends to speak of and at lunch, I generally ate in the Quad, under a tree as far away from everyone else that I could. I honestly preferred it that way. I had a problem connecting with people. My mother blamed herself. I blamed other people.

“What do you need me to do?”

I was already annoyed.

So was Brittany apparently.

She huffed. I get it, she didn’t want me here. She already told me that, twice. This was definitely not how I wanted to spend my after school hours. I had planned on drawing more of my comic. As it was now, I barely made a dent on the new page. I’d only been working on it for the past month or so. What had once been nothing more than an itch in the back of my mind was slowly starting to become all I could think about these days. What’s worse, it was starting to invade my dreams too. It was strange really. Before last month, I never had such ideas. Then one night shortly after my sixteenth birthday, the dreams started. First once every few days then almost every night. They weren’t just normal dreams either. They felt so vivid and real, almost as if…

“You’re an artist, right?”

Brittany again, I forgot we were talking.

“How do you know that?”

She huffed, hands on her hips. “I’m not an idiot you know, I see you doodling in class.”

Yes, I did draw in class but I sat in the back of the room, in the farthest corner from the door. Brittany was an overachiever, she sat in the front row. How could she possibly know what I did in the back of the room?

She didn’t wait for me to respond. “You draw those fairies, right?”

Fairies? How could she possibly know that.

Unless…

Donny.

That’s how I got here in the first place after all. Donny caught me drawing fairies. Well more specifically he caught me drawing one fairy. Her name was Maela and as much as I’d like to take credit for creating her, she came from my dreams. I’m not even sure if she was a Fairy to be honest. She did have glittery wings like one but she was human sized. Donny only caught me drawing her because I’d been careless. You see, in my dream Maela resembled me in that she had white blonde hair and striking blue eyes. I didn’t intentionally draw her to look like me but Donny saw me drawing over my shoulder and of course jumped to conclusions. He made a crack about me “being a fairy after all”, I made some comment about him being a “neanderthal” and that’s when he threw the punch. I’m not even sure how I dodged it, I have horrible reflexes.

The rest ended me here.

“Donny has a big mouth.” I finally mumbled.

Brittany laughed. “Donny? He didn’t say a damn thing. Everyone knows what you draw, you doodle them all over the place.”
What?
“I don’t know...”

She cut me off with a hand in my face. “I don’t give a shit. Look I just need you to draw two of them.” She was holding one of their posters. “Here and here.”

I looked where she was pointing, it was on either side of The Fairy Forest Dance, written in some elegant flowing script.

“I’m not sure...”

“Look it's the only reason the Principal put you here. I told him what I needed and he did it. Now do your job, then you can leave.”

So that’s how it was.

Brittany didn’t give me a chance to respond. Instead, she snapped around, almost hitting me in the face with that long red single braid of hers. That thing could be registered as a deadly weapon.

I followed her to the group, dragging my feet the whole way.

I was a Loner by choice. It's not that people hadn’t tried being friends with me in the past, it's just that I wasn’t all that interested. Most of the guys that tried were only interested in a few things, mostly video games and talking about girls. It's not that I hated either, it's just I didn’t think about them all the time. Sure I played games but I didn’t live and breathe them like I was apparently supposed to. I had a look and as such there were certain things expected of me. Those things were different depending on who was talking to me. I was feminine and soft so clearly I was a sissy and gay to most of the jocks. I was quiet and kept to myself, so I was a freak to many others. I dressed in skinny jeans, a hoodie and carried an iPad with me everywhere, so I must be a gamer.

Lots of labels.

Lots of misconceptions.

When I finally reached the group, none of them even acknowledged me.

Well, except for one.

I stopped and blinked.

Mel?

She was the last person I was expecting to find here. We were in Art together. We weren’t friends per se but we sat next to each other. She was cool to be around because she was the kind of person who didn’t take crap from anyone and always had some outlandish stories to tell. Her older brother was some kind of extreme sports junkie and kept getting into all of these messed up accidents. They were usually really painful but she always put her own snarky spin on them to make them fun and interesting. I never in a million years expected to find her here. She just wasn’t the type.

When she saw me, she looked just as surprised.

Brittany shot a thumb in my direction. “You all know Taylor, right?”

Some of the girls mumbled something but most didn’t seem to care one way or another.

“He’s gonna draw some fairies on our posters for us.”

Brittany then proceeded to grabbed a few of the mostly finished posters and found me my own spot, away from them.

Fine by me.

She gave me some really cheap colored pencils and markers and set me to work.

It wasn’t long before I found myself not alone.

Mel dropped onto the floor next to me. When she spoke, they were words almost out of my mouth:

“You are the last person I expected to see here.” she said it with a laugh.

When she did, I got a good look at her tongue piercing.

Yep she was that girl.

It wasn’t her only facial piercing either. There was one in her lip, a stud in her nose and one in her left eyebrow. She had several in each ear too. I wouldn’t call her punk, she once described herself as “Alternative” and I suppose it fit her well enough. Her neon green hair was cut short and shaved on one side. There was a tattoo of an eyeball there. It looked weird and a bit out of place but that was Mel. She embraced the weird whenever she could. Her makeup was dark, her clothes a mismatch of different fashions, today was a long sleeve striped shirt, tartan mini-skirt with ripped blue leggings, and black combat boots. There were a lot of tats that her clothes hid as well, I’d seen them from time to time. Each one as bizarre and as crazy as the next.

I’m not sure why we didn’t hang out actually.

She was my kind of weirdo.

I finally shrugged. “Didn’t have much of a choice.”

“Oh yeah, I saw that shit yesterday.”

I completely forgot that Mel was in my Math class too, where the “incident” took place.

I didn’t really know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. Instead, I tried using the crap that Brittany gave me to draw with but finally gave up after only a few tries. These pencils were horrible and the markers had fat tips, making them all wrong to get the finer details. Groaning, I went rummaging through my pack, hoping that I brought my stuff from home. I generally didn’t carry my good pens with me anymore because most of my drawing I did on my ‘pad now. Sometimes though, I kept the pens in my pack for class. I had to shift a few things, take some stuff out before I found them.

“Hey, you still drawing these?”.

I turned, Mel was holding one of my notebooks. How had she gotten it so fast?

I tried to take it away from her but she pulled it out of my reach.

“What are these things anyway?”

The “things” as she called them were just doodles. I drew them all the time. At first they were nonsensical things I just started drawing a couple of years ago. I thought they were silly at first. I used to daydream and doodle them into page margins and things. Lately though, I’d found myself drawing them more and more. They were getting a lot more elaborate too. First they were squiggles but now they were these complex caricatures that were starting to look like some foreign alphabet. They weren’t though, I looked them up. I spent hours googling but couldn’t find a thing. That didn’t deter me from drawing them though, so I decided to put them in a notebook. I thought maybe I could use them as some weirdo language in my comic. I was even starting to form them into reasonable words.

“Its just some language I made up for the comic I’m doing.” I said, finally managing to wrestle the book from her hands.

“Oh cool, can I see it?”

I hesitated before shaking my head.

I didn’t let anyone see my comic.

“That’s cool, I’m pretty private about my stuff too.”

She liked to talk though, that much I knew from class. I was a person of few words and was generally bothered by people like her. There was something about Mel though, something that put me to ease when I was around her. Maybe it was her stories or maybe she was one of those chill, lax people that I didn’t mind being around. Regardless, her talking didn’t annoy me. Instead, I always found myself working through it. Even now, as I sat cross-legged, sketching out my fairy, I listened to her talk. I liked to sketch things out before doing anything permanent. Usually I did that to music but with Mel here, I felt it kinda rude to put in my ear buds. So instead, I used her voice as my distraction. I let her words wash over me as I worked. It didn’t take me long. I drew out a few crude little fairies before I settled on one I felt worked. It wasn’t my greatest work but it wasn’t meant to be. Brittany hadn’t asked for a masterpiece, just something for some cheap posters.

As soon as my sketch was finished, I quickly set to work putting it to the poster.

The first one took about ten minutes.

I smiled when it was done.

“A pixie?” asked Mel, looking at it over my shoulder.

“It's a fairy.”

She scrunched her nose. “Fairies look like that?”

What did she mean by that?

I looked at my drawing. It was of an elegant looking woman in a simple long gown, with long flowing hair and butterfly-like wings. I even made her bending at the waist, her hands pointing at the words. Sure she didn’t look like something out of Disney but she was a fairy.

“What are fairies supposed to look like, if you’re such an expert?”

She took a moment, was about to open her mouth when we were interrupted:

“That’s AWESOME!”

Brittany.

She had apparently come over to see what was taking me so long. I think she was expecting to chew me out but when she saw the poster, her scowl disappeared. She was now practically beaming. I couldn’t help but smile, it was good to see that someone appreciated my hard work. She really did too. She kept praising me over and over again for a good five minutes. She stood by while I added an identical figure to the other side of the words, so both fairies were flanking the dance’s name just like she wanted.

She was ecstatic.

She took the poster from me as soon as I was done and quickly rushed over to the other girls.

I could hear the ooo’s and ahh’s.

It felt nice.

Mel scoffed, giving my shoulder a bump as I packed up my things.

“Looks like they’re happy.”

I gave her a smug look.

“Well at least they know what a fairy looks like.”

She didn’t have a rebuttal. Instead she stuck her hands into the pockets of her hoodie, shrugged and wandered back off. Just like that, she wasn’t interested in me anymore. I shrugged it off, used to it by now. I drew an audience when I was drawing sometimes. I mostly ignored it. I think Mel was just looking for some company and it was nice to have her around. Like I said though, we weren’t friends. Just as well too, Mel was great but only in small doses. I’m not sure I could stand being around her all the time.

The meeting broke up shortly after. Apparently we only had a limited time to use the Gym. The dance wasn’t until the next weekend after all, we still had a few days before our decorations needed to be done. As per my punishment, I was in it for the rest of the long haul. Which meant I’d be here after school for the next week or so. Not that I really had anything else to do. I knew my Dad was going to be pissed though. I was pretty sure he thought it was going to be a one-time thing. He liked to drag me to the garage as soon as I was done with my homework. It was all a part of his “education”. It was a waste of my time but at least it kept him off my back most of the time.

As I was leaving, I overheard Brittany talking to some of the others, but I didn’t stick around long enough to listen. She did ask me to finish up the rest of the posters tomorrow, which I agreed to. I left the Gym, meandered down the short hallway to one of the nearby exits. It opened up into the west parking lot, now deserted. As soon as I stepped out the door, I was hit by a fierce gust of wind.

I shivered.

It was starting to get cold these last few days.

Not unheard of for late October but kinda surprising.

I thought for sure the forecast said it was supposed to be sunny and warm until the weekend?

Shrugging it off, I pulled my hood over my head and started the mile or so trek home.

Looks like Winter was coming early after all.

Elsewhere

It watched.
It waited.
It listened.

Author’s note: As I’m sure all of you know, comments are life blood to an author. I’m not begging or demanding, but I certainly would appreciate anything you have to say (or ask). It doesn’t have to be long and involved, just give me your reaction to the story. Anything critical you have to say, PLEASE do so in a PM. Pointing out people's flaws or mistakes in a comment is hurtful and NOT appreciated.Thanks in advance...EOF