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It was a fun night. Don’t get me wrong, we have a lot of fun nights, way more than I can count anyway. But that night seemed special, super special. It felt like the summer just passed by in a blur after that weekend. We won the tournament, no duh, just like every year and people bowed at our feet. You know same old.

God, it feels like I was dreaming. Well, now it’s the beginning of the school year, I have to face the rabid fans of the Queens of the Soccer Field. Oh boy. Not ready for that. Anyway, I’d like to get to sleep now; I’ll tell you how my first day of school was in tomorrow’s entry.

Sept. 8, 6:56 PM
Ok, right now, I have to come out with it. I’m scared out of my wits. Geese, I’m still not cursing even when- Well I think it would be better if you heard about it as it happened.

I woke up to the sound of squealing in my room. Lilly and Kim, my twin sisters, were running around like crazy. I looked at the clock and groaned. How they were able to get up that early was beyond me.

“Get up, Mandy!” Lilly shouted in my left ear.

“Yea Mandy,” Kim shouted in my other ear, also using Lilly’s stupid nickname for me, “Get up! You don’t want to be late one your first day of high school!”

“No, I really don’t,” I bit out at them sourly as I heaved my legs, clad in black pajamas, out of bed, “You guys are so good at observing that type of thing.”

With that I stomped over to my dresser, pulling out a black shirt that proudly said in dark green letters, “Stay back, my temper doesn’t have a leash today.” When I opened my jeans drawer, nothing was in it so I started to search around my floor. I finally picked up a pair of my overlong and very baggy jeans. Running over to my closet that was stuffed full with black dresses, pearl dresses, black and white dresses, black and red dresses, and one black and green dress, I grabbed one of my many belts that hung on the wall. It was black with silver studs on it.

Scurrying over to my bureau, with the little ones close at my heels, I searched for one of my twelve different black eyeliners. After searching on top, in the bottom drawer, under it, and the extremely long drawer at the top, I found one. Lilly giggled and made a grab for one of the eyeliners that had been next to it, but I snapped the drawer shut.

She started wailing about wanting to put on make-up like me.

“No,” I explained, “You shouldn’t be wearing eyeliner just yet. Stick to your red lipstick.”

I quickly put on the eyeliner around my eyes until I was satisfied. I grabbed my backpack, crammed the finished homework inside, and ran downstairs. I heard Lilly and Kim follow loudly, probably trying to get down first like they always did. They seemed to be inseparable, but they fought over who was better a lot. Maybe a little too much.

When I got downstairs, she-witch- I mean, my step mother, wasn’t up yet but Dad was just about to leave.

“You’re teaching them bad habits you know,” I said casually as he kissed Tommy, my little brother, good-bye. “It’s unhealthy for them to be up so early.”

He smiled knowingly at me. “That might be true but someday they are going to have jobs so, technically, I did a good thing.” He kissed me on my squished up nose that told him I didn’t like how his brain worked, and went out the door. He does that a lot. He just leaves without telling Dianna, my step mother (I like to call her “She-Witch” behind her back because she’s just that awful) that he’s leaving. I think he hates her just like the rest of my siblings do.

I ran over to Tommy and hugged him as hard as I could, twirling him around.

“Hey!” Kim complained in an extremely whiney voice, “let us have a turn!”

“NO, my spins are reserved for brothers only,” I said, tapping them both on the head. “Besides, you need to get breakfast now that you’re up.”

“Do I hear little children scampering around downstairs when they should be in bed?” squawked She-Witch from her bedroom upstairs.

“Hide” I mouthed to the smaller children. They all scampered about like mice, trying to get in a spot where She-Witch wouldn’t see them.

I heard her coming down the steps.

“Are my children up?” asked the high pitched, fingernails on a chalkboard-like voice that belonged to the She-Witch, Dianna. Her hair was obviously not brushed yet, for the auburn, wire-like strands were flailing around her head, making it look like it was on fire. Man, that was a good mental picture. Her hallowed cheeks and pointed chin made her look like she would suddenly grab a broom and fly off into the night, erm, early morning. Hence the name: She-Witch.

“I asked you a specific question, brat. Now where are those runts?” she screeched at me without waiting for an answer, while grabbing the hair at the back of my neck. Right then I wished for her a devastating and painful death. Long and slow.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about Dianna,” she dropped me with the intention of having me crumple to the floor. I didn’t, I got to land nicely onto my feet. “Maybe you’re hallucinating again,” I added as an afterthought.

At that point all of the children jumped her and sent her toppling to the ground. She started screeching some curses that she definitely didn’t let Dad know that she used which sent the little ones flying upstairs, covering their ears and saying things like “Daddy will ground you for saying that.” Great, now I was the target of her wrath. She started squawking about something with the word “bus-stop” and the phrase “or you’ll die.” I decided to take her advice for once.

The bus ride was boring, as usual. Homebase was boring, as usual. First, third, and fourth period were boring, oddly enough. Lunch was filled with noise that hurt my head. It looked like most of my team weren’t in my lunch period. OK, so far, high school sucked. But she had Nikki in all of her classes for the rest of the day so it was exciting enough, but nothing extraordinary.

Getting off the bus, I waved to all of the kids that also go off at my stop. I didn’t see the cars but Dad’s was probably parked in the garage. I went to turn the handle of the front door but was shocked to find that it was already opened a few inches.

Odd was just going to get worse.

I have to stop here because they’re making me sleep now. I’m too choked up to write anything else anyway.

Sept. 9, 10:13 AM
“Dad?” I called, uncertain that anybody was home. Maybe they had left to go get ice-cream of something.

As I walked down the hall, I failed to notice the red liquid that trailed along the polished wooden boards.

The kitchen was the first clue that something was wrong. I could see that every single knife was missing.

“Dad?” My voice started to shake now, not want to know what I would see once I turned the corner to the living room.

To describe it in one word was massacre.

First of all, there was blood. Everywhere. On the walls, on the couches, one the carpet, on the ceiling, on the lamps, everywhere. The first one of them I saw was Dianna. She looked awful.

All of her hair had been either cut or ripped out. There were large gashes in her scalp where the scissors had hit her, because a killer wouldn’t care about getting a little blood out. Her arms had huge gashes in them. She was laying on her stomach but I could see the point of our thinnest and longest kitchen knife. That’s when I noticed that there were several knives buried into the walls, gashes on the couch. They used our kitchen knives? My stomach flopped over pathetically as I fought back the urge to heave.

Dad was next to be spotted. He looked peaceful. He was smiling and the only apparent wound was our heaviest knife, right through his heart. I watched the trail of blood that was still oozing from it. It ran down his chest and pooled onto the ground in a small puddle. On one side of it, I saw a wiped trail of blood. I followed it to the garage door. It too was spattered in my family’s blood. When I opened it, I let out a small pained wail.

They hadn’t even left my little sister’s alive. They were leaning back to back, Kim’s head was in a garbage bag that was tightly tied around her neck. I walked over slowly and took it off. She looked like she was sleeping. I didn’t even look at Lilly, for fear that I would cry. I never found out what they did to her.

Walking back to the living room, I realized that I hadn’t found Tommy yet. He was lying next to the coffee table. He looked the worst. I wouldn’t have recognized him if I hadn’t know that it was him. His skin was marred and torn. I walked over to him, hardly registering the puddle of his blood that I walked into.

I was simply cold.

There is no other way to describe what I felt. Just mind numbingly cold. Everything was fading in front of my eyes, which were brimming with the threat of tears. The world seemed to be in a haze, things were swimming, diving, and rolling across my vision. My stomach was filled with butterflies and my heart, lungs, and liver were crawling up my throat, clogging it up and throbbing there painfully. The tears felt that it was their duty to break my illusion first. They poured down my face, dripping into the crimson pools below me. My throat was so choked up that it made it painful to cry. I fell to my knees in front of my brother. Arms trembling, I hugged his limp corpse so tight that, had he been alive, would have made him cry.

Then I saw it. His mouth had moved! My God, he was still alive.

“Ma- Mand- Mandy?” he just barely whispered out.

“It’s OK now Tommy, I’ve got you,” I said, tears pouring out harder now, “I’m going to get help, your going to be alright.” I felt like I had lost my mind but I still stretched my arm out to grab the scarlet-spattered, beige pillow laying on the floor. Carefully lying him onto it, I got up and stumbled over to the phone. Trembling, bloody, and tear-stained hands fumbled over the numbers as I dialed. 9-1-1.

It rang once.

It rang twice. “Come on you son-of-a-b***h operator!” I screamed at the receiver.

“Hello?” A calm female voice echoed through the phone as she talked to me.

“My family- My family, they’re- they were-” my words tumbled over each other as I tried to speak to her.

“Miss, you’re going to have to calm down if you want to tell me what happened.” The lady’s voice was so calm it sickened me and, if possible, freaked me out even more.

“Calm down? CALM DOWN?” I shouted into the phone, my voice rising, “You’ve never been put into this situation, how can you tell me to calm down?” While I was screaming, I actually managed to get out what I had found. And that idiot lady was speaking to me, clam as ever.

“OK, miss, I’m going to send a squad down there,”

I didn’t even respond as I threw away the phone. All I cared about was that help was coming. Tommy had a chance to live. I wasn’t going to be left alone.

“Mandy?”

I was there before he finished his sentence. “What do you want Tommy?” my voice was shaking as bad as my hands were. “Does anything hurt?”

“No, I can see God now.”

Those words shocked me bad. They stopped my tears. He was leaving her.

“What?” I was near hysteria.

“I just came back because I remembered that I have to tell you something.” He was weakening, slipping from her hands like sand. “The guy who was here told me to tell you that life is a b***h.”

I cracked a half-insane smile. “It is, isn’t it Tommy?”

“I also need to tell you that Daddy, and Lilly, and Kim, and me love you.” A single tear rolled down my brother’s cheek. “They say bye also. Bye Mandy, I love you.”

His body slowly went limp, as if Satan wanted to torture me with the pain of Tommy’s last breath forever. Finally, his body stopped clinging to the cliff of life and was falling into the bliss of death.

I clutched at his body as I heard the sirens of my salvation. Or condemnation, I wasn’t quite sure which. All I was sure of was that Tommy had finally died. I knew for some reason that he was kept alive just so that they could see me suffer and so that he could deliver that message.

She heard the thudding of footsteps as the paramedics thundered into the house. I could hear the chatter of people. I’m sure that that sirens had attracted all of the neighbors. I could suddenly hear a familiar sound above the crowd.

“I don’t care if it’s a crime scene, my friend is in there and now she is permanently scarred for life. If you don’t let me through, I’ll punch your handsome face inside-out.”

Nikki

I stood up, suddenly on autopilot. Walking slowly down the cream painted, polished wood floored, blood stained hallway, I went outside. All of my neighbors gasped. It would have been comical had it been any other situation. But this wasn’t any other situation. I could see the tears welling up in Nick’s eyes.

“Oh God Manda, what happened?”

“Hell” I broke down inside, but my outside stayed emotionless, as if my soul had been ripped out.

After that is almost a black patch. I remember being rushed to the hospital. Black. People checking up on me. Black. Sitting in front of an officer, refusing point-blank to answer him. Black. Now here. It was a normal, white, bland, white, boring, white hospital room. And I was the patient. Lucky me. The police had tried six times to get answers out of me. But with no success. I am allowed to skip the beginning of the school day because I’m “traumatized” but I have to go back for the rest of the day because there is nothing “Physically wrong” with me. Stupid nurses. What do they know? I have to leave at 11:30.