Through Glass by Rebecca Ethington Read Free Book Online Page B

into nothing. I watched them multiply as the thought I refused to acknowledge weaved its way to the surface of my mind.
    The black, the monsters, whatever hell that had opened up on us. It was killing everything that was outside.
    No.
    My mother had taken my brothers to the skate park. My family was outside.
    “NO!” I screamed as I hit my hands against the window. My tears streaming down my cheeks as I pounded against the glass. My anger bubbled up beyond what I had ever felt. I screamed at the blackness that surrounded me while, at the same time, needing to get out of this room; to fight them, to save my brothers. I screamed as the monster turned from Cohen’s grandfather, its movement slow as it turned its black eyes to me in warning.
    I screamed as my anger melted into fear, my heart clenching until my scream vanished and the evil glare froze me in place. The look that the thing had given me shivered through my body before the monster vanished from sight. It left me alone with the terror and blackness that inched closer and closer, threatening to push through the glass and take me with it.
    I looked away from the smothering black of the sky toward Cohen. My heart caught in my chest at seeing him staring at me, barely visible through the blackness that was swallowing us up. His hand was still pressed up against the window. His face was streaked with tears while his eyes were as wide and scared as I felt inside.
    I could see my own fear mirrored in him; the realizations that I had fought acknowledging were now staring right back at me.
    We were trapped inside.
    We were alone.
    I saw the terror in his eyes and felt mine increase. My heart was a heavy mass of lead inside of me; a lifeless piece of flesh that was draining me.
    I couldn’t tear my eyes from Cohen, even though I could barely see through the black.
    He was just there beyond the glass.
    Too far for me to get to.

     

 
    The dancing black ribbons grew and grew until I could no longer see Cohen. It had taken him away from me. I could no longer see anything. My room was as black as everything else, the light sucked from it and surrounding me in an abyss of nothing. The skin of my arms prickled where small bumps had started running up and down my arms and across my neck as I squinted into the darkness, trying desperately to make something out. I knew I was in my room—I could feel my desk under my legs, the glass against my fingers—but I saw nothing.
    The blackness consumed me for one moment before the sounds of the screams outside my window grew, pulsing through the air. I turned toward the window, expecting to see something, only to be met with obscurity which caused my ears to prickle as it heightened the noise. The sounds of terror, fear and death rang in my ears as they vibrated through the air and shook the window in its pane.
    The screams continued before they changed, turning into yelling and grunting that was mixed in with the sound of terror. I heard footsteps as someone ran through the darkness outside and then a man yelling back at his wife as he guided her through the dark only to end in screams of death. My hand tensed against the window as I focused on the black in front of me. My heart pulsed the blood uncomfortably through my fingers; the joints straining from the pressure that I hadn’t realized I had applied against the pane.
    Another sound joined the panicked battle outside; the deep grunts of exertion, a man fighting the assailants even though he couldn’t see through the dark. My nerves tensed in fear as the sound continued to grow and swell around me; the cry of a child joining in before it, too, was silenced and another scream took its place.
    I looked away from the indistinctness outside the window as the shouts kept coming in an attempt to move past it. There was nowhere to look; there was only the black that had swallowed me. My heart beat so loudly, so painfully, that my breath sped up to match it, every muscle hurting with each