My Hockey Alpha

Nina

Minutes passed, then hours. Soon, it could’ve even been days; I had no way of knowing how long I was down there. As time ticked on, the bright fluorescent lights in my cell never faded, making me lose all sense of time. I felt myself beginning to lose my grip on reality.

I couldn’t cry or scream anymore. Not only did my tears dry up and my throat became too sore to make another sound, but also I began to realize that it was useless. No one was coming for me. Maybe Edward was right; maybe none of the people who I had come to know over the past four years were even real. Maybe it was all just a figment of my imagination…

If they were real, wouldn’t they have come to save me by now?

After an indistinguishable amount of time passed, the voices began. They were soft at first, barely even whispers.

“Nina…”

A voice called my name. I ignored it at first, but it grew stronger over time.

“Nina.”

I shook my head. “It’s not real,” I whispered to myself, my throat so raw and sore from screaming that the words hardly came out. “It’s not real…”

“Nina!!”

I jumped. I knew that voice: it was Jessica. She sounded scared, like she was screaming for help. “Jessica?” I called out, but there was no answer.

The voices stopped for quite some time. I eventually began to think that I never had really heard them to begin with. Maybe I was dreaming; somehow, I must’ve fallen asleep despite the bright fluorescent lights beaming down at me from the ceiling.

And it wasn’t just

bloody and bruised, and there was dirt under her

she said. “It’s your fault that all of us

throat. It hurt to even swallow. “You’re not dead,” I whispered, shaking my head. She couldn’t be dead. Surely Jessica was home right now with Lori, if

cold, dead hand. It smelled like dirt and congealed blood. “All you ever cared about was yourself. You should die, too.

my head away and scrunched my eyes shut, repeating my mantra in

real… This

hands for my throat. I tried to scream, but nothing came out — so I turned my head in the other direction and

my brother. My mother was holding a baby wrapped in the strangely patterned blanket from the photograph. She

as she began to shake the

she was going to kill it, but only the same snarls came out of my mouth. Then, to my horror, she lifted the baby over her head and threw it as hard

to death behind her. I watched as his body withered into nothing. His

me. It opened its jaws to speak, but

shut my eyes again, wishing I could cover my ears as the wails of my loved

real… This isn’t

of

the other. I slowly looked around and let out a sigh of relief to see that I was alone once more; for the first time,

loved you,

my head, my eyes wide, to see him standing at the foot of my bed. He looked exactly the same as when I last saw him, when we retrieved Justin’s file from Edward’s house. He was even wearing the same all-black clothing. His curly brown hair was still ruffled from running through the streets as we sprinted away. If I lifted my head more, I could even smell him: