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.

it

was bloody and bruised, and there was dirt under her fingernails. Her eyes had a whitish color to them,

she said. “It’s your fault

even swallow. “You’re not dead,” I whispered, shaking my head. She couldn’t be dead. Surely

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

and scrunched my eyes shut, repeating my mantra in

real… This isn’t

opened my eyes, Jessica was no longer alone. Behind her 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

bed, however, stood my mother and my brother. My mother was holding a baby wrapped in the strangely patterned blanket from the photograph. She was bouncing it and shushing it, but it

up!” she screamed as she began to

same snarls came out of my mouth. Then, to my horror, she lifted the baby over her head

the while, Taylor choked to death behind her. I watched as his body withered into nothing. His flesh melted off of his bones, leaving only a

at me. It opened its jaws to speak,

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

real… This

of a sudden:

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

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: smoke and leather. He had smelled like that when I laid my head on his back during our midnight motorcycle ride all those weeks