For those of you who read my little sum-up of February so far, you saw this coming. For those who didn’t it’s just a bigger surprise!

As promised, here’s a sample of the story I was working on before I became sick. Feel free to leave your opinions and ideas in the comments or email them if you’d like. All feedback is appreciated!

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“Hmm. I have a feeling that the main character is going to be put through something that will require him to sacrifice something. That’s how the plot seems to be leading itself.”

The tiny girl flipped the pages of her obviously over-sized novel. In comparison to her tiny body the book could have acted like a small divider that protected everything below her neck. Book propped up against her legs and her narrow fingers traveling along as she read the words Violet carefully read her novel: The Unfortunate Life of Mr. Takeshi. Those who knew about that book we’re at least the age of twenty-one, legal adults who wouldn’t dare pick up the book unless they wanted to have nightmares for the following month.

Young Kazumi kept her excitement for such horrors on a tight leash as he eyes darted across the aging pages. She was the sole collector of the unedited edition before it was released for a general publishing first edition.

As she lost herself in the vivid description of graphic gore, shredded limbs and torn body parts Kazumi had to constantly regain her immersion into her horrific novel after hearing all of the other children running around and having fun.

Kazumi tilted her head to the side to see the dozens of children running on the playground, “What’s so fun about running around a yard and screaming your head off? If anything, you’ll just get a sore throat and a headache afterwards.” She hid back behind her book and let out a disappointed sigh before continuing her reading.

Kazumi was obviously different from the rest of the elementary school students. While most of them enjoyed burning out their absurdly high amount of energy, jumping across imaginary lava pits, playing fake gun wars with their fingers, or just climbing across the massive jungle gym like actual animals, Kazumi would prefer to find the darkest corner of the sun-lit playground and read horror novels aimed towards older crowds. Kazumi had purposely made herself the “black sheep” of the entire school, but it allowed her to avoid unnecessary conversations from other students.

However, seeing such unusual behavior caused her homeroom teacher, Mrs. Honomura, to call her parents in for a one-on-one meeting. It was futile as her parents approved of Kazumi’s high desire to read, regardless if it was a children’s book or a violently graphic novel. They were just happy that their child actively wanted to read.

Nonetheless, Kazumi thrived in her alone time.

Today, as she read about her favorite main character having to choose between losing a leg or an arm, a group of children on the playground thought it would be a good idea to disturb her daily reading ritual. Many of the school children felt like Kazumi was unusual, almost like she was a robot sent into spy on them like their imaginative playtime sessions. In their sessions robots possessed supernatural reflexes, able to dodge anything within a matter of milliseconds.

To see if she really was a robot, one of the fifth-graders grabbed a red rubber ball and launched it with all of their strength. This particular fifth-graders was known for hurting other students during a game of dodgeball: he was rumored to have knocked out an entire row of teeth from another student who got hit in the face with a ball. With a quick wind-up the student launched the ball with all of his might, his target seemingly unaware of the red sphere flying towards her.

It took no more than a second for the ball to travel across the playground. Right as the ball was about to crash into Kazumi’s book it came to a sudden stop. The only thing is, nothing caught the ball nor did it hit anything: the ball was suspended in mid air. Confused about if they should be scared or amazed the children kept their eyes on the ball to see what would happen next.

Noticing the sudden silence on the playground Kazumi put the book down and immediately saw the dodgeball just a few inches away. However, from her point of view, she could clearly see the reason why it never hit her. Her eyes darted up Kazumi saw a familiar arm extending out from over her head.

The arm was muscular along its entire length, veins lightly protruding on the forearm. The skin was an unnatural color, an off-gray color with faint hues of blue patches. The hand tightly gripping the ball was large and had talon-like fingers that could shred anything to strips within seconds. The hand occasionally squeezed the ball like a beating heart.

To many, seeing something so dry, so dead-looking would throw them into a fit of panic and fright. For Kazumi, she knew the body that the arm was attached to and felt no such fear. She didn’t have to look back to see who was behind her.

“Thank you, Ogaki. I was just finishing up this chapter when that ball was thrown.”

Kazumi brought her attention to the group of students bundled together across the playground. They’re still in shock about the ball, but she could see a growing fear in their eyes; she knew that they were unable to see “Ogaki,” but that was only because Kazumi didn’t want to cause an uproar as it would further disturb her reading.

“Throw the ball back, Ogaki,” she said as she picked her book back up and went back to her reading.

Following the young girl’s words the arm gently tossed the ball back across the playground. It quickly fell and went rolling along the gravel ground. The other school children didn’t dare touch the ball, thinking there might be something cursed on it. After a moment of complete silence one of the children breaks out in a sprint, screaming at the top of their tiny lungs. Many more follows behind in the same manner.

Kazumi took one last glance at the other school kids, “Idiots.”

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