**Trigger Warning: This chapter contains scenes of bullying that are violent in nature. Proceed with caution.**
JADE:
The world turned hazy around me, but their voices were clear.
“You won’t do it? Are you sure you won’t?!”
I was crying liters and liters of tears. I can’t do it anymore, but they just won’t let me!
“I’m sorry,” I said, half-choking to my own moan, sweat, and saliva. “I… I can’t…”
“Why not, huh,” somebody else said. “Didn’t you say he messed with you? It’s your chance! You can get back at him! Go ahead, take that knife and stab him!”
“No,” I mumbled. I was shaking like a leaf while they surrounded me. They want me to hurt someone, but I don’t want to. “Please… I-I can’t…”
“Well then, you want us to do it to you? You’re begging for it, aren’t you?”
I can’t stand their taunting voices and the eyes that looked at me like I was filth. I can’t stand how they laughed at me.
Most of all, I can’t stand that they were once kind to me, but now they have turned utterly evil…
“You want us to strip you with this, right? That’s what you’re asking us to do, huh, Jade?” He was rubbing the jagged edge of the cutter against my partly-ripped uniform, the one they had disgustingly opened with their vile hands earlier.
“You want me to run this along your naked body? I bet that’ll excite you!”
I shuddered. I knew whatever threats were spewing in their mouths, they would do it! They had always done everything they had threatened to do to me so far…
“Please… Just let me go… Please,” I said. I was already crouched down into the grimy bathroom floor, but I crouched down lower. I bowed my head until it reached the tile beneath me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry…” Whatever I have done to them, I don’t know… In truth, it wasn’t a matter of what I have done, but what they thought I’ve done…
“If you are sorry, then strip,” a female voice said. “Let us inspect that body now for ourselves. We’ll make sure it wasn’t you on those photos, Jade… We’ll be your witness!”
My heartbeat escalated even further. I was in a panic earlier, but now, my heart was going into overdrive in my chest that I can’t even hear their words properly.
“Come on, let’s see your body, Jade!”
“Let’s have a look!”
“Let me touch it…”
Several hands forced me to my feet. I thrashed as hard as I could, and I only ended up hitting my limbs against the tiles or the walls.
Several strong hands held me painfully by my arms. Someone held me by the feet and waist too.
“No! Please, no!” I screamed.
It wasn’t the first time I screamed on top of my lungs nor was it the first time I resisted so vehemently from their actions.
Since that day, they had done all kinds of torture on me…
At first I tried to endure it as much as I could. The throwing of eggs or splashing of water was nothing. Even when they ripped my books and notebooks to pieces every day, I did not complain. I was rather okay with it. I simply ignored it.
But when they started following me around at the dead of the night, hurling stick, stones, or nails at me in the dark, or kicking me by the side and punching me on the stomach, I started to protest.
I ran away from them as much I could. I wasn’t good at fighting, so I learned to hide, to run, to be more vigilant, and quick.
Always though, I was on the losing end… They had become wittier. They had become bolder too, just like now…
My screams intermingled with their resounding jeers. I could feel someone pulling at my already opened uniform, reaching out for my bra, trying to yank it away from my chest, while my body was being grappled wildly in all directions.
I heard them scream in excitement. They drowned my voice. I felt like I was on the verge of dying.
Dazed, I yanked my arms around, trying to grasp at someone, anyone, or anything. I was desperate!
My hand wrapped around another hand and at something elongated. I don’t know what it was, but I tried my best to yank it away.
I succeeded! I started to scream with the remaining energy in my body.
“G-Get away from me,” I said as I tried to wave my hand all around. Sure enough, the hands released me, and they inched away from me.
I tried to look at what I was holding. One of my eyes was drenched in tears while the other swelled abnormally from a kick earlier. I still couldn’t see it properly, but I could feel my hand stinging.
Blood! There was blood, and it was my own!
I suddenly realized what I was holding. I was grasping the sharp edge of a razor or a knife!
“Stand back,” I shouted, “stand the hell back!”
Sh*t! I must be crazy! I must be turning crazy!
“You’re going to stab us, Jade? Are you going to stab us with that?” They still had the audacity to mock me even with a weapon! Why the hell are they so bold?
“Go ahead, Jade! Stab us if you could! We won’t die, you know…”
“Hah! The hell you won’t!”
“Go ahead, Jade! Try it! Stab anyone of us here… You’re as good as dead anyway… A dead rabbit in the midst of werewolves,” someone chuckled.
I stopped in my tracks… A few months ago, if someone had said the same thing, I would have laughed out hysterically. Had I not known Kix and had he not confessed that he was what he was or had I not seen with my own eyes that he could transform into a wolf, I wouldn’t have believed them…
Werewolves… So that’s why they were so bold. They were werewolves!
“Do you know what’s worse, Jade,” one of them said, “the pictures in the Internet, all of them, they were from one source.”
I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe any of it!
These people, they already had one leader. They follow only one leader…
“That’s right! Whoever you’re thinking in that little head of yours, it’s him,” one of the bastards said.
“N-No,” I said, “It’s a lie! You are lying!”
“Think about it, Jade! Think about it carefully… Who did you show your body too? Who could have taken those gross and ugly pictures of you?”
I don’t want to hear it! They were lying to me! They were simply lying!
I swung the knife blindly around. I don’t care anymore! I don’t care what they do or if I die! I wasn’t going to hear them say his name!
“You already knew it, right?... It was Kix! He did it!”
“No,” I screamed, more for myself than for anything, and I swung the knife with all my might.
I was stunned when it landed into something solid. I opened my eyes, and to my horror, I saw copious amount of spurting blood.
The knife I was holding landed on the left side of someone’s neck.
It was none other than Kix…
***********
I screamed and sat abruptly as I woke up from my nightmare. Then, when I realized it was over, I cried tearlessly.
“No… Kix,” I mumbled as I held my throbbing temple and wept.
I started to hyperventilate a bit as I was painfully reminded of this memory from my past…
It has been four, long years ago and still that scene continued to haunt me. I can still vividly see Kix’s stunned and pale face as I made that fatal mistake before.
But it was some years ago… Somehow, I had managed to survive it, and save for nights like these when such terrors attack me, I am safe and peaceful…
At least that’s what I thought before I heard a noise…