Collegare, Young Writers of Earth [graded readers TXT] 📗

in a year. I hadn’t thought I would ever have to. There was no more point in denial.

I could join her.

The thought made me stop crying. A local elementary school teacher crosses the road without care and gets hit by a car. Dies immediately. I could imagine what the news would say about me. A local elementary school janitor crosses the road without care and gets hit by a car. Dies immediately.

I would join her.

Before I knew it, I was out the door and out of the building. I put my hands in my pockets to keep out the chill. A newspaper stand showed the date: October 10, 2011. Exactly one year. It was our anniversary. We would see each other again.

I looked to my left, where a stream of cars waited for the light to turn green, as I waited for the light to turn green. When the cars took off, I would be in their midst, and the green and red combined would signal a death.

Final pedestrians crossed the street in a hurry and the traffic light turned green as the last touched the pavement on the other side of the road. Cars headed this way.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw auburn hair. I hesitated, but that wasn’t her. She was dead. Plenty of women had auburn hair.

I looked to my right, where the woman was, and I saw she meant to cross the street. Had she the same idea as me? Did she really want to die on this day? My eyes widened as she neared the middle of the street, unaware of the danger she was in.

I ran to her, grabbed her arm, and pulled her back just as a car whizzed past. She gasped, looking frightened as hell. She had a hand to her chest, and seemed about to faint.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She was panting, trying to regain her breath. We walked back to the pavement together. She said, “You saved me. I… I mean, I was so distracted. I didn’t even bother to look at the signs. But you saved me.” She looked up, like I was a guardian angel of something. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Cassiel.” It had been a long time since I’d said that. “And yours?”

The woman smiled. “I’m Hope.”

I shook the woman’s hand and told her I’d see her another day, when, perhaps, she needed saving again. She laughed and started walking backwards, looking at me, saying she might purposely put herself in danger just so I would show up.

I could have mentioned it, I thought, as I walked back to the apartment building. I could have said that I hadn’t saved Hope, not really, because, without her, I would have been dead.

Hope saved me.


THE DARKNESS
Christopher Demarco

The utterly frightening darkness shook Andrew to his core. This was certainly not the first time he had experienced the darkness, but it was the first time it had actually scared him so much. Without his sight, the only sensations available to him were feeling and sound. As he fumbled around hopelessly in the pitch black room for a grasp of something; anything, the sound of his heartbeat thumping and ringing in his ears was the only sensation that appeared to work. His sensations, he then realised, were completely useless to him. And he was all alone.

The darkness had once been a place of relaxation and Andrew felt content there. It was almost like a sanctuary for him, but he knew how dangerous it was all along. Suddenly, a flicker of light burst in a huge flash, revealing all the darkness' secrets to Andrew for the first time before it settled into a small tea-light candle sized flame, maybe two-hundred metres in the distance. No longer enough light to guide Andrew safely, it now simply gave him a tempting object to aim for. Finally a clear direction in the long confusion of the darkness.

The surroundings had remained imprinted in Andrew's eyelids for a few seconds after the huge flash and he moved quickly through the first fifty metres of the darkness. But as soon as the flash memory had faded, he was completely alone once again, and a quarter of the way into the abyss. The flash memory had etched images of rocks and boulders that lined the edge of a small stream, which was running toward the distant flame. Andrew decided that if he took small steps and didn't lift his feet, he could kick the rocks as he went until he got close enough to the flame without tripping. He didn't actually need to see.

As Andrew took step after precarious step, he remembered things about the darkness that he had once been so careful about in the past. Just getting to the darkness was no easy feat in itself and the very fact that he was there now meant he had taken a gigantic risk. When he had visited the darkness in the past, he had barely ever ventured into the deep any more than a couple of steps, because when he tried to move his feet or body, the darkness became light again. The first time was when he was still a teenager, maybe seventeen years old, and the sensation was incredible. He felt the darkness in such a small dose that he was still able to recognise his surroundings; he drifted up and over himself before floating to a different room in the house. He heard his parents talking and realised that he was in no dream: the conversation continued on as he flew across the house. He had turned back sharply when he realised what was happening that first time and saw his own body laying in the bed where he had rested it moments before, then a sharp jolt struck him and he was back in the light.

After the first trip into the darkness, Andrew had never since experienced anything so magical until what he was going through now. And that was exactly what scared him the most – just how deep into the darkness was he? Suddenly, his foot struck a rock, a very large one and it surprised him that he felt no pain at all. The flame was glowing in the distance and Andrew was perhaps only one-hundred metres away now. He dared not look back for the fear of losing the magical darkness and returning to the light. He carried on determined for the next fifty metres and then surprisingly, the flame was melting and began to drip into the small river, setting it on fire in some places and finally, there was some light to guide him the rest of the way to the flame; a little light, which also revealed the true and most fearsome secrets of the darkness.

The first fire boulder brushed past Andrew's ear and he felt its wind as it went past. Instinctively, he tried to look behind him at the object, but found that he couldn't turn his head; something was forcing him to look straight ahead. That, turned out to be a blessing, for the second boulder was coming straight towards him. He tried to side step, but realised that this option had also been taken away from him. Then, he thought that if he could advance a little faster, he could get ahead of the falling boulder's trajectory, but the ground in front of him began sloping sharply upwards, so no matter how fast he moved, he would always be in the path of the falling boulder. It seemed to fall in slow motion; the fire that engulfed the boulder grew brighter and brighter and soon it was almost blinding. The darkness had made his eyes adjust and now they burned with the glow of the flame. But that flame, Andrew knew, had the answer to what ever he was looking for in the darkness. That flame was maybe only thirty metres away now – then the boulder struck home, hitting Andrew head on, with full force.

The impact from the giant flaming boulder did absolutely nothing, much to Andrew's surprise. It did, however, put incredible pressure on his lungs... The candle flame and its answer were getting closer with every step he took and he could feel the excitement in-between the boulders striking him, which was now every few seconds. Andrew thought that it must only be twenty metres between him and the elusive flame and then suddenly, a figure began to come into focus just beyond the small flame, a creature.

Every single boulder now hit Andrew with absolute precision and it was then that he realised what it all actually meant; the pressure he felt on his lungs... He realised at the exact moment that the figure throwing the boulders at him stood away from the once small flame, which now burned bright enough to show the figure in all of its hideous glory. The instant that Andrew got within ten metres of the creature, it stopped throwing the boulders; the pressure on his chest and lungs though, was now constant. Boulders or no boulders.

Andrew and the creature of the darkness finally met eye to eye. Andrew could not turn his head to break free from the darkness and the feeling of powerlessness really scared him, almost more than the creature itself did. Andrew could see the now frightfully large flame reflected in the creatures eyes and it looked as if two small flames were licking his eyeballs, or that the very inner strength of this creature came from the fire itself. The more he looked at the fiery eyes that were judging him, the more they intrigued him, and he couldn't look away, in fact, he didn't want to. He soon noticed that the pressure on his lungs had subsided and he felt completely at ease, and still the creature just watched, with its unblinking, intoxicating, fiery eyes.

From floating around his parent's house in the beginning, to dodging an arsenal of giant flaming boulders being thrown at him by a fire-eyed creature. That was the path that Andrew had decided to take and on that night, when he had crawled into bed and rest his arm across the face of his body, nestling it tightly between his jawbone and the pillow; he knew that he would go back to the darkness. He glanced with his eyes over to where the flame had once been and felt safer now that he could turn his head. But there was something wrong: the