Chapter 3: The Beginning Of The End

As soon as Gabriel glanced over at Luna, who was just awkwardly standing there in the doorway he felt an unusual attraction toward her. He felt as if all of his problems had faded away into nothing. He felt like he was in some sort of incurable paralysis and he couldn't move at all. The only thing that he could feel was his enlarged eyes staring right at Luna, noticing all of her perfectly imperfect features:

He couldn't help but notice her long and beautiful red hair. Her deep and piercing green-blue eyes that had a black ring around the iris. Her pale white skin. Her innocent face that just kept on seducing him to look at her with even more attention than usual. Her soft and small hands that were half the size of his. And her gorgeous angelic body that all fit in together so well that it could draw anybody's attention.

After what felt like a heavenly paradise to Gabriel he was quickly brought back to reality by the sound of Miss Ander's voice. "Earth to Gabriel!", she said in the most playful way possible.

"Huh? Oh uhh... I'm so sorry ma'am. I got a little distracted.", Gabriel said softly. It's like he just had his first kiss with someone that he has had feelings for a couple of years. "Yes it appears so", she giggled.

"But unfortunately I will have to bring you back to reality because I am going to ask you to continue what you were about to say before Luna came into the classroom."

Gabriel's walls that were slowly being broken down seemed to have been rebuilt, and even stronger than before. "Ma'am I appreciate all of your efforts but I'm just not the type of person to talk about my problems. You would be much better off if you just left me alone, please ma'am I'm begging you to just let me be. I'm not trying to disrespect you in any way but I don't want you to waste your time on me."

At this point, Miss Anders knows that something is seriously bothering Gabriel and isn't going to just accept Gabriel's ignorance towards the seriousness of his situation. "Gabriel I know that it's difficult for you to speak about the way you feel but you have got to at least try to get something off of your chest, even if it's something like how your day was. Trust me when I say that it will only lead to circumstances where you will lose yourself in the process of saving others from being affected by your problems. I know that you might be thinking that you can't tell people about your problems because you don't want to hurt or bother other people with them but you have got to learn to trust people, it's the only way that you're going to save yourself. If you don't believe me then just ask Mr. Wilmans here next to me. Please, Gabriel, just listen to me."

Both Gabriel and Mr. Wilmans are surprised by what Miss Anders has just said. Gabriel is shocked because of how true it was to him, he felt that he could relate to every single word that she said and Mr. Wilmans was surprised about Miss Ander's knowledge about these types of real-world problems. Mr. Wilmans also observed how much Miss Anders cared about Gabriel, she even let a tear roll down her cheek, something that no one had ever seen before. After noticing that he could start picking up that Miss Anders was a lot more concerned for Gabriel than she should be and decided that he was going to speak to her about it once this situation has been handled, perhaps on another day.

Mr. Wilmans spoke up when there was a deep silence in the room. "Look Gabriel, I don't know what happened or what's going through your mind and I'm confident to say that Miss Anders doesn't know either. But I fully agree with what Miss Anders has said on more levels than you could understand. She is absolutely right when she said that if you carry on the way that you are carrying on then you will ultimately lose yourself in the process and trust me, neither of us want that to happen because you are such an amazing person and you are a lot stronger then you think you are. I can't say much more except for the fact that both Miss Anders and myself are available for you to speak to. We are willing to speak to you about anything that you would like to speak about. The only way that we can help you is if you actually want to be helped. We can see that you want to be helped but something is stopping you from seeking that help. If you do want help then you will have to open up just a little bit, only then will we be able to start helping you. That is everything that I wanted to say at the moment but to sum everything up, would you please consider talking to us about anything that you would like to speak about or get off of your chest?"

There was a silence so great after everything that was said. The only thing that could be heard was the sound of their own heartbeats. No one knew what to say or do at this stage. Gabriel just sat there in his seat, speechless, looking like he was about to break down. The only thing that he thought of doing was leaving the room and going home, hoping to see his father waiting to greet him but he had a feeling that that wasn't going to happen.

The deafening silence was finally shattered by Gabriel's broken voice. He stood up and cleared his throat. "Thank you both for trying to help me, I really do appreciate your efforts to try and get me to feel happier. If you don't mind I think I have to get going as I need to get home and see if my fath..." He stopped talking when he realised that he was giving away too much information; he feared that they would find out the truth about his home situation. "Sorry, I meant to say that I need to get home to do some homework. But really, thank you so much." Gabriel turns around and slowly moves toward the door when he was stopped by Miss Anders once more. "Goodbye Gabriel, I hope that you get home safe and sound. Come speak to me tomorrow morning, okay?" Gabriel just nods and once again, turns around and heads for the door.

As he opens the door and closes it behind him he walks toward the main entrance of the school so that he can go home. There are still a few school kids in the school as the time was only 16:15 and there were still a few sports and extra-murals that are taking place but even those activities are about to end soon. As he sluggishly approaches the exit, he hears a faint sobbing noise coming from around the corner. His curiosity ends up taking control of his actions and he inevitably investigates those noises. As he gets closer he translated those noises to the sound of a girl crying, which came from the girls' bathroom.

As he put his fingers on the door handle he felt another jolt of 'motivation' to enter the room. It was yet another supernatural force that encouraged him to enter the girls' bathroom. As he went inside the sobbing got louder and louder until he stopped walking. He found himself standing in front of the middle stall waiting for his confidence to force him to speak up. He knocked on the stall door and said, "Ex... Excuse me? Is everything okay?"

After Gabriel spoke up, the sounds of silent crying had ended and he then heard the girl sniffing her nose to clear up the snot that was running down from her nostrils. She then responded, trying to sound as strong as possible but there was only so much emotion that she could hold back. "Yes I'm fine, just leave me alone, please."

Gabriel nods to himself and turns away from the stall door and goes towards the exit. Just as he was on the path of leaving he felt something pushing him back again, almost as if he was fated to meet this girl. He then takes one step back and speaks out again, still facing the exit door. "I can tell that you're not, do you maybe want to talk about it?"

The girl can't help but let out a sigh of hopelessness and ended up screaming with desperation, "Just please leave me alone I'm seriously fine!"

Gabriel then left the room and decided to wait for her outside the bathroom doors on one of the benches at the school's entrance hall. He waited there for about an hour and a half. The time was 18:01 when he heard footsteps coming from the cracked tiles just outside the girls' bathroom. He quickly got up and headed towards the sound's origin.

To his surprise, he saw Luna, the girl who interrupted his past conversation with both Mr. Wilmans and Miss Anders.

He wanted to open his mouth to talk to Luna but the words that he wanted to get out were stuck at the tip of his tongue. He was a little embarrassed because of this but didn't really care because he found himself lost in Luna's eyes and once again, he felt like he was in a paradise where his problems ceased to exist. His unbreakable gaze was interrupted by the sound of Luna's heavenly voice, "Gabriel? Helloo? Hey! You there?!"

Gabriel quickly snapped out of his daydream and responded almost immediately, "Oh, I'm so sorry about that, I just had something on my mind."

Luna squints her eyes trying to figure out why Gabriel seemed so distracted.

After a few minutes of wondering, she suddenly opened her eyes wide when she thought of a possible reason why. She even started to blush at the thought of that reason. Gabriel notices that and decides not to question it because he doesn't know her well enough yet. He does however try to discover the reason why she was crying in the bathroom.

"So, Luna is it?" Gabriel asked.

She nods in confirmation.

"Well..."

Luna quickly interrupts Gabriel before he even says the second word of the sentence. "Look, Gabriel, before you carry on I just wanted to apologize about earlier... I was in a bad place and I should never have shouted at you like that." Gabriel accepts the apology and doesn't make a big deal out of it. "Luna, listen, it's okay. I understand the emotions that you're experiencing so you don't need to explain anything to me."

"Thank you so much for understanding. It really means a lot to me." Luna responds.

Gabriel then suddenly gets strange urge that he should go home immediately and so he excuses himself from Luna's presence. With a slight smile and great excitement, he says something to Luna before he turns around and leaves the school premises. "Alright Luna, unfortunately, I have to leave now but I'm looking forward to speaking to you again soon. "Luna responds with her cheeks red as roses. "Okay that's perfectly fine, thank you so much for speaking to me Gabriel, I appreciate you showing your concern about me."

As Gabriel rushes home he glances once more at Luna and finds that she is standing there in the same spot, staring right back at him with her teeth biting her bottom lip and her hands playing with her hair.

As he opens the main doors Luna snaps back into reality and buries her face into her palms and uncontrollably jumps up and down from feeling overjoyed about meeting Gabriel.

* As Gabriel steps into the streets of Winterbrett, he suddenly gets an indescribable pain in his abdomen and feels this pain shoot out across his body. His mind races between different scenarios and reasons that could be waiting for him on the path home. He finds himself walking faster and faster as he gets closer to his house and he eventually breaks out into a full-on sprint. It's almost like if he doesn't hurry up then his current life course will change completely.

As he approaches the street where his house is located in he finds himself just standing there with his hands on his knees and bent over, completely breathless from the sprint. After recovering and getting his breath back he jogs the rest of the way down the street. He gets closer to his house looks around at his surroundings and gets a foreboding feeling that something unholy happened to his neighborhood when he was gone.

As he was jogging down the street he heard the street lights breaking one by one as he passed them. He turned around and saw that dark red blood was dripping from the sharp edges of the broken glass that were both on the floor and still connected to the metal frame. He took a step back and the street light next to him shattered. The glass shards that fell were all formed in a circle that surrounded him, with the sharp edges all facing him, this included all the other glass shards from the other street lamps. He then felt a drop of blood fall on his forehead. He wiped it off and looked at it on his finger.

As he was looking at it he noticed that it started turning darker and darker until it was black. As soon as it turned black it started spreading all across his hand and before he knew it, it spread across his arm. It then started spreading further along his torso, just like the previous nightmare he experienced. The only thing that was different this time was that he felt this darkness take over on the inside as well. He felt his teeth getting longer and ultimately sharper and suddenly his sight turned red as well, his eyes had turned from blinding white to a bloody red.

He then put one foot forward and saw that there was a black triangular-shaped carpet of dark smoke that was laid out right beneath him that followed his every move as he walked forward. The black platform of smoke kept following him, not leaving a single trail behind.

He reached his house and stared intensively at the front door, unsure of what he will find lurking within. He moves his eyes up towards his bedroom window and then down towards the living room. After this he slowly steps onto the stone pathway that led to his front door. He reaches the staircase and steps on each step, one by one until he is right in front of the door. He turns back and sees that there is a trail left behind that was emitted from the dark smoke following him. It covered the pathway but stopped just outside of his property. He also noticed that the triangular-shaped carpet of dark smoke had disappeared, only the trail was left behind this time.

He hesitates but eventually convinces himself enough to open the door. As he puts his hand on the door handle he cautiously moves the door forward and the gap between the door and the door frame widens. As the crack gets bigger he notices that the room gets darker and darker which is controversial because light is supposed to flood the entrance hall but is instead being filled with a sinister blanket of darkness. He goes inside the entrance hall and immediately gets a shiver down his spine that rattles him down to his core. After he further intruded into his home he was knocked back off of his feet again, only this time it hit him much harder than the last time. As he landed on the front porch he felt all of the darkness inside him leave his body, it hurt but not enough to make him scream. He saw that his hands had returned back to normal and the dark smoke that followed him around had disappeared. He was on his back, staring at the ceiling. He then rose up onto his knees and saw that his entire body had returned back to normal. He saw that there were black ashes all around him that had a red glow around them. He looked closer and realised that the ash was the darkness inside of him.

After he calms down and gets brave enough to go back inside he stands up and dusts himself off.

As he opens the door he hears a voice coming from inside the house, a voice that belongs to a woman, a woman that sounded extremely familiar.

"Gabriel? Is that you? Why don't you come inside? Dinner is almost ready and it's your favorite tonight, Lasagna!" When he realises who's voice it is he runs through the hallway and heads for the kitchen but he slows down rather quickly when he notices a pool of blood on the floor which evolves into a trail of blood that led to the kitchen. He continues to follow the blood trail and sees a human foot around the corner, as he sluggishly moves his feet further inside the kitchen Gabriel sees the source of the voice, a dark figure that looked like it came straight out of hell. It had a tall and skinny body that was red all over which was also emitting a dark red smoke around it, just like the black smoke that surrounded the darkness inside of him. It had a face that would scare anyone; long and sharp teeth with blood dripping from each and every tooth, blood all around its mouth which had scars and holes all over its checks, a nose that was so disfigured that it looked like half of it was bitten off by something, eyes that were sewn closed, long arms and legs that had razor sharp blades along its forearms, and big hands and feet that had pitch-black nails with jagged edges.

After seeing this creature Gabriel shuddered and was shaken to his core when he saw its mouth moving and heard his mother's gentle and nurturing voice come out of the mouth of this demon-like creature.

The creature instantly teleported towards Gabriel. "I love you Gabriel", it said as its mouth got wider and wider. Gabriel kept moving further back, trying to get away from this thing in his kitchen but stopped when he saw it slam the warm body of its victim onto the kitchen counter. He noticed that the victim was slowly being slaughtered and butchered into multiple tiny pieces.

The creature kept staring at him, even though it was using its forearm to chop the victims arms up into mincemeat at the same time. After chopping the arms up it sprinkled the meat all across the lasagne sheets. It eventually chopped up the entire body and all that was left was the victims head, which was placed on top of the now complete but unbaked lasagne.

His eyes grew even wider when he saw that it was his fathers head.

He was frozen inplace, unable to pass out for some reason. He was forced to watch his fathers head being used as a decorative item for a food dish.

The head then suddenly woke up and screamed, "FOLLOW THE BLACK DISGUISE!!! LISTEN TO THE MYSTERIOUS BLACK DISGUISE!!!"

After seeing and witnessing everything that just happened he fell to the floor, ultimately losing consciousness. *

The next time he woke up he was in the back of an ambulance with Luna right there next to him, crying so much about something that happened to what he thought was a stranger to her.