2nd Place Winner

Scream Test:  Teen Mystery/Horror

Short Story Writing Contest

October 2004

Untitled

By Virginia Powell

      "I despise the very thought of your flesh and blood. Even the slightest suggestion of your existence sends me into a fitful rage. I don’t want to see you ever again. You disgust me.” I said this with as much malice as I could, but she just stood there. Her graceful hands resting against her thighs, her mouth sitting effortlessly, in a beautiful smile. How I hate Cassandra. She is always so perfect, so happy, and so…wholesome. I know who she really is. I know what she did to them and she will never admit it.

      " Don’t you know?” I asked, “You may be breathtaking on the outside, but I’m the only one who knows how grotesque you are on the inside.” And she stared, deep into me, with her penetrating chestnut eyes. Its as if I could feel the heat of her vision burning into my skin.

      " Stop! Stop it! I know what you are doing!” I shouted at her, waving my hands in front of her face. I really could feel the burning this time. “Why don’t you say something, huh? What are you? Chicken?”

      I could tell this one comment got to her. If there were one thing you shouldn’t do to Cassy, it would be calling her cowardly. I don’t care; I just want to know why she wasn’t talking back.

      " I can see it in the headlines. Cassy the coward! Prom Queen demoted for spineless actions!” I added, just to make her talk. That should have done it. That one last comment should have been ‘the straw that broke the camels back’. I want her dead. My hands move slowly and unsurely up towards her throat and stop. A raspy old woman yells up the stairs, “CASSANDRAAAAAH! Where are you! What are you doing up there anyway? Its dinner time!”

      I move my hands away quickly as I hear heavy footsteps trudging up the stairs. She smiles at me. Her evilly sweet smile that, in times past, has captured the hearts of hundreds of love-struck beaus. How dare she? She knows I can’t kill her. What if I punch her face in? Beat her to a pulp? Something, that isn’t killing, that will make me just as happy.

      I pull my arm back for the swing and punch with all of my strength, directly at her nose. At that exact moment, my mother opens the bathroom door and the mirror shatters into a thousand pieces before both our eyes.