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.

then, they started again. And it

bed, clear as day. Her clothes and hair were disheveled. Her skin was bloody and bruised, and there was dirt under her fingernails. Her eyes had a whitish color to them, as if they had been glazed

died,” she said. “It’s your fault that

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 they were even

Jessica continued. She walked over to the side of my bed and reached out her cold, dead hand. It smelled like dirt and congealed blood. “All

scrunched my eyes shut, repeating my

real… This isn’t

stood Lori, James, and Matt. They all reached their dirty hands for my throat. I tried to scream, but nothing came out — so I turned my head in the other direction and waited for them to strangle me, because that

stood my mother and my brother. My mother was holding a baby wrapped in the strangely

she screamed as she began

her to stop, that she was going to kill it, but only the same snarls

as his body withered into nothing.

opened its jaws to speak, but

my ears as the wails of my loved ones

isn’t real… This isn’t

of a sudden:

out a sigh of relief to see that I was alone once more; for the first time, being alone was

you,

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