“Sabrina, your hair!” shrieked Katie as she pointed at it. Sabrina’s eyes began to lose their brown color, growing redder and redder until she more resembled a demon or a vampire than a second-grader.
“Your eyes!” shouted Tyson as he too pointed at Sabrina. The breeze grew stronger, and the sun hid behind clouds, enveloping the street in shade. The temperature had dropped about ten degrees.
Then, without warning, Sabrina lunged at Katie, throwing her to the ground. Her nails had grown three inches and she thrashed them about, scratching every part of Katie that she could find. The cuts, though not deep, began to bleed. The green nail polish that had looked vibrant and fun on Sabrina’s nails just that morning now looked eerie and venomous. Katie’s eyes filled with tears as she screamed at the top of her lungs.
“Stop!” shouted Tyson. His voice shook with fear and confusion. Sabrina ignored him. All her concentration was on Katie. In that moment, she hated Katie with all of her being. She wanted her dead. She didn’t know where this impulse had come from. All she knew was that if Katie wasn’t around, things would be much easier.
After a second of thought, Tyson decided that he would help by throwing himself on top of Sabrina to knock her down. He never made it. Tyson was midair when Sabrina took a swipe at him. She hit him across the face and he slammed to the floor, unconscious. There were three bloody gashes across his left cheek.
Sabrina glanced down briefly at Tyson with malice in her eyes, before returning her attention to Katie. Katie was still conscious. She wasn’t screaming anymore but silent tears were still pouring down her face and she was holding back her sobs.
“Why are you hurting me?” Katie asked. Her voice was relatively steady through the pain and fear. “We’re your friends.”
Sabrina raised her hand behind her, ready to make a final blow. “No, you’re not,” she said, surprising herself more than Katie. Sabrina looked at her hand, then down at Katie. Her eyes widened with fear when she saw what she had been doing. Sabrina’s eyes faded back to their normal color. She released Katie from her grasp, lowered her other hand and ran away. When Katie looked up, Sabrina was gone.
Katie rolled over to her side and coughed up blood. She let out a moan of agony and finally began to sob.
At that moment, a stranger approached. “What happened?” asked the older man. He and an orange-haired woman ran towards Katie and helped to get her up. She had numerous scratches across her pale face and her flower shirt was torn to shreds.
A tan SUV drove up to them and skidded to a stop. The door burst open and a man leapt out and ran towards them. “Hey! Get away from my daughter!” He was tall, powerfully built and had brown, tightly curled hair. “What the hell did you do to her?” He grabbed the stranger by the shirt, pulled him close to his face and then tossed him back onto the ground.
“We didn’t do anything, we swear!” the man answered quickly, getting up and putting his hands in the air in surrender. Katie’s father clenched his jaw, considered punching the man, but then thought better of it. He exhaled through his nose to calm himself while the stranger spoke again. “We saw this little girl, your daughter, being attacked and we ran to help. Some bully or something. She was around the same age as these two.”
The stranger finally noticed Tyson’s injuries and let out a gasp. “Oh, wow.” Katie’s father also hadn’t noticed Tyson until now.
“Your daughter was on the ground when we arrived. Another girl with dark hair was pinning her down. We were just taking a walk through the neighborhood,” the woman explained, eyeing Katie’s father determinedly. Katie was sitting on the ground, silent, running her hand through Tyson’s hair.
“Thank you for your help, but I’ll take it from here,” Katie’s father said. He hurriedly explained to the couple that Tyson was a friend of his daughter’s and that he’d get them both help with their injuries. The couple looked at Katie and hesitated for a moment before leaving the strange scene and continuing with their walk.
“It was Sabrina,” Katie said weakly. Katie’s eyelids started to droop, and before long she fell to the ground, unconscious. John bent down to pick up his daughter and noticed the scratches across her face. Her skin was slowly turning purple. He then looked over at Tyson, who was also turning purple, and much faster than Katie was. John Dimes picked up his daughter in one arm and Tyson in the other and jogged as quickly as he could manage back to his house.
The Dimes family lived in a beautiful white house. One could describe it as idyllic. The front yard had vibrant green grass and white gravel that marked the driveway.
John hurried up the stepping-stone pathway that led from the street to their front door and shouted, “Natasha!” He yelled again as he kicked the front door open. “Natasha!” He carried Katie and Tyson to the living room and laid them on the couch.
John’s wife, Natasha, came running in. Natasha Dimes had pin-straight blonde hair that rivaled even her daughter’s hair color. Her perfect smile had always been able to dissipate any sadness, though it was markedly absent now.
“What is it?” she asked her husband as she frantically rushed towards her daughter.
“They were attacked by Sabrina,” he said. “And they’ve been poisoned. I don’t know how much time they have.”
Natasha nodded and said, “Bring them to the bathtub. I’ll take it from there.” She then hurried towards the bathroom and started to fill the tub with warm water.
One of the many reasons that John loved his wife was that she worked so well under pressure and
