The Wicked Jealousy
by Cindy Ramey

Chapter 1:
I walk down the holler to my neighbors home. We live in a rural area, where the mountainous forests are our playground. My name is Chris.... I have lived here all my life...my family. I have a younger brother that hangs with me, follows me around. I don't mind too much. I know I am different. I see things. I can hear voices from the old coal bank as I walk by it. Particulary after school, when I walked home from being dropped off at the mouth of the holler.

As I pass by that coal bank now, there they are. The voices, taunting me, wanting me to step into the dark, nothingness and damp foul smelling hole in the side of the hill. I have dared my brother. My friend and I sent him and my siblings so far back in there. By the way.... they came out just fine. Though, I have been back in there and they didn't go as far as I did. There were things that I shouldn't had seen back there. An evil. The first time I saw it, I was frightened...but now five years later, not so much, If I ignore the voices as I pass and don't look to the coal bank, I don't see the cold black face with piercing red eyes smiling at me from the mouth of the cave.

I keep walking. Ignoring the voices that play in my ears, begging me to come back and join them in the darkness. I get to the home of Grace. She has always been a friend of mine. I have other "guy" friends, but she's always lived near me. But since we both started high school, we don't have any classes together.... so we barely talk anymore.

My brother still plays with her siblings and that's why I walked down here. Just to hang out with her.. not in a school setting. When I walk up her dirt and gravel driveway, I look up at the two story home that they once live it. There was a house fire a few years ago and now basically just the outside and some inside structure is holding that place together. It's sad really, they didn't have any insurance to tear the old place down and rebuild it. And so now, all four children, along with their mother and aunt, live in a small trailer to left of that old structure of a home.

I go into the home with my brother, he immediately goes to the siblings rooms to play with them. I see Grace sitting with her aunt at the table. I could tell something was odd about her aunt. I knew she was now living with them after Grace's father passed, but I never actually met her in person. Grace greets me and tells me to sit with them and I do. Her aunt smiles and looks at me with an almost "knowing" look. I can't even say exactly if it was a knowing look or a connection.... It was odd. I felt as though there was something about her that I could connect with, the feeling radiated from her. There was something else odd... she wasn't too much older then Grace and myself, but I pushed that logic back to her aunt must had been born way later in life, compared to Grace's father.

She smiled at me and offered me her cigarette and I took it, inhaling the smoke. Grace joked...."Since when did you start smoking?"

I smirked back at her. "With Todd under the football bleachers." She snorks back at me and rolls her eyes.

I've always liked Grace and I've liked her THAT way. But something stops me from ever crossing our path of friendship. It's like one of those voices I hear. But this is a visual cue. An ominous shadow that hangs around her shoulder whenever I dare pursue more devious thoughts that involve her and I in more intimate activity. The visual is a warning. And I do not cross it.

Chapter 2:
Twyla. That's her aunt's name. Early Monday morning, I started my walk down the holler to catch the bus that would take me on to the high school in town. As usual, I had to walk pass that coal bank. My focus was straight ahead, but I didn't hear a sound from there. It was quiet. I stopped and turned my head to the opening of that black darkness and I saw her. Twyla, standing at the cave opening, looking back at me with a smile on her face.

"Lay out of school today." She coyly commands as she moves from the coal bank, gallops down the bit of hill there and comes to grab my arm at my side. I smirk back at her and nod, agreeing to skip a day of school to be with her. I let her lead me. And where she leads me is to is an old mill. It's not been use for years. I had been there before. My younger brother and I, just investigating and looking around. There's nothing there but old tools and equipment from when it was a working mill.

Once inside the old mill.... she pulled me to herself and wrapped her arms around my neck. With out even saying a word, I could tell what she wanted. She kissed my lips lightly at first and then more aggressively, pulling at my dark brown hair. I didn't refuse her, I wanted her. There was no black ominous shadow warning me NOT to have her. I took Twyla into my arms. My fingers ran down the curves of her back and to the hem of her jeans. Placing my fingers under the hem, between the fabric and her hot flesh. Circled my fingers along to the button of those jeans. She let me undo the button, unzip her jeans and pull them down.

Later that evening, the bus had let off Grace and the others, I was already at her home, sitting at the table there with Twyla. Grace raised a brow at me as she walked into the trailer door. "Why weren't you at school today... you al'ight?" I smiled at her. "Yeah, I'm fine, I just laid out today and hung out with Twyla here."

I could see this bolt of jealousy suddenly rage in Grace's eyes. Something I have never seen from that girl before. She's always been such and innocent, nice girl and to see jealousy streak in her? It was unlike her. I blinked and stood to my feet. "Heh, I should go..." I pass Grace, who turns to watch me leave. Walking up the hollow now, I could sense a disturbance... I look to the trees, they sway and the wind roars thru the leaves. They move around wildly, talking to me. Inside my gut, I get this sense of dread. The wind gushes passed me and causes me to look towards the coal bank. The voices again...but no face.

I narrow my eyes and walk up to the black opening and peer in. A twig snaps behind me. I turn just in time to have a sharp pain stab me in the gut from the blade she holds in her hand. "Grace?" She is looking at me with such hate and disgust. She knows that I took Twyla. I know she does. I can smell it on her breath and see it in her thoughts. "I hate you Chris." She shoves me into the cave opening and I fall into the cold black water that's at least a couple feet deep. My head strikes something hard and all boes black.

Chapter 3:
Nothing. There is nothing but black. There is no dreams, no thoughts, no consciousness. Nothing. I wake suddenly with the roar of a growl echoing in my mind. I raise up from the blackened, cold water quickly. Inside that the mouth of the cave, looking up at the night sky and moonlight glowing in. All around me I feel eyes upon me, but I'm not frightened. I move out of the water that is at my chest as I sit in it. I climb out of the cave and walk. I walk to Grace's and stand outside her burnt up two story home...staring at the window that used to be her bedroom.

The clothes on my body feel heavy, but they don't feel cold, and I'm confused by that fact.... I peel off the wet shirt and drop it to the ground. I then look down to my gut, where Grace ran me thru. There is a partial hole there, oozing with black...my fingers touch at the opening, but I feel no pain. I can see along the edges of the wound, it has began to heal. I look back now to the trailer, where Grace lives now and then to the sky and trees. The trees begin to rush and roar with the howling wind once again. Warning me. I look back to the trailer and there in the window is Grace. She looks terrified to see me. In fact, I can sense her fear. I can taste it on my lips.

I smile at her and walk towards that window. She backs away, letting the curtains fall back onto the window, separating us. There in the window is my reflection with what light is cast by the moon. My face is pale, but along my eyes and cheek bones, there is this darkness.... as if it were my veins showing from under my pale, cold flesh. But I can't tell, its to dark to really see. I'm confused once again. looking at myself with furrowed brows and this sudden hunger and want to kill. But to kill who? I know who. Someone that I thought was innocent. The one that got jealous. The one that killed me. My reflection shows a wicked smile spread across my cold pale face. "I hate you too, Grace."

The End. Yeah, I know kind of a lame end. But I spent longer then I intended on this. But what I wanted to convey from the dream got wrote out.