Hands Of The Dead Caress My Cheeks

Jenna Osten has somehow raised her children despite her sanity slipping away. --TATN/Thalia 02:33, January 2, 2010 (UTC)

One, Mum? Is that you, standing there like a crazy person?
I just got home from school. I came home earlier than my younger siblings. My mum was cutting up some chicken. That wasn't good. I tried to sneak to my room but she turned around and tossed the knife. It sprouted out of the wall next to me.

"Leah! You little-" My mum screamed but I had run off. I knew she'd been drinking.

I hid in the closet as she passed by. Fifteen minutes later, Mel and Shawn came home from school. I had been reading for some time now. Mel came over to me and hugged me tightly. Shawn sighed and started playing video games on the PS2. His favourite video game which was out when I was his age, Jak and Daxter. (A/N:: Anyone ever played Jak? I loved it when I was little.)

"Will you help me memorize my times tables, Leah?" Melissa asked me, giving me big puppy dog eyes.

"Sure. How many do you know right now?" I asked.

"Up to three times four. And then it's harder."

I smiled. I helped my little sister with her times tables until my mother, eyes twitching, came to our room saying there was a lawyer here to talk to us. I shrugged and took my younger siblings downstairs to the door.

The woman standing there, was freaky and had a Georgian accent and kept asking us really personal questions. We didn't answer them because they were that touchy. Finally, I slammed the door on her.

I told Mel and Shawn to get back upstairs fast when I heard talons scratching the door. I tried to get up the stairs, but being a teen, my legs had grown long and gawky. I tripped on the stairs and went face-first into a step.

I got up, my head aching, just as the 'lawyer' burst through the door. But she was no longer a lawyer. She had leathery wings and talons on her feet. Her legs were somewhat like a chicken's, fury and weird. She carried with her a whip.

A shrill scream was let out from my throat. Mel turned around and tried to help me but I told her to run back to the room, now. I found myself cornered by the thing. She hissed and teased me with her whip, lashing it right beside me.

I screamed and tried to defend myself. I finally dislodged the knife in the wall my mother had thrown at me. I used it, but it didn't hurt her at all. Finally, I grabbed one of my father's old collections of bronze swords to see if that would work.

To my surprise, it turned the lawyer into a pile of dust with a screech. Whatever it had been, it hadn't been human.