Writing

Later that evening, her best friend of kindergarten, Rachel, asked her if she’d like to go on a bike ride. Rachel was a ginger, with big, blue eyes who had a rough childhood. Lara was eager to start her summer, so of course, she said yes. Rachel came over and the girls put their equipment on so they could go explore the new trail. It was around 7:15pm ,where a beautiful sunrise lay in the distance. The two of them started heading down the trail, soon to discover something twisted.

The two girls couldn’t decide who was faster, so they decided to have a race. Rachel took off, pedaling as quick as she could. Lara was a very competitive person so she decided to try and catch up to Rachel. They reached a gravel part of the trail, but both girls continued going as quickly as possible. Lara was still a little bit behind, while Rachel was laughing because she was winning. A broken tree laid in the middle of the trail. Rachel slammed on her brakes but Lara was so caught up in the fact that she had passed Rachel, she didn’t have time to see it.

Lara hit the tree head on and was thrown off the bike falling face down on the gravel. Rachel stood next to her bike in shock. Lara’s vision was blurred and she started to look around to try and recall where she was. She looked to her left and saw nothing but trees and when she looked to her right, she noticed something strange. There was a trail of blood leading to a lump of leaves off the trail. Lara stood up and walked over to the lump and started sweeping the leaves. She soon uncovered a decomposing female’s body. She was blue, but her eyes were still open. She had what looked like marks around her neck, like someone strangled her.

Lara let out a blood curdling scream and Rachel rushed over to see what the problem was. In disbelief, Rachel and Lara decided to get back on their bikes and rushed home to tell their parents. At first, Lara’s mother, Angie, thought it was some lie that a 13-year-old came up with for attention, but as Lara had tears streaming down her face, explaining what happened, Angie soon realized that it wasn’t a joke. Angie immediately called the Clearlake Police Department and had her daughter explain what she uncovered.

It quickly turned into night and, Lara, Rachel, and Angie went down to the trail to show the cops exactly where the woman’s body was. All of the cop cars were flashing red and blue lights and there were policemen scattered everywhere. After what seemed like hours of searching, no one saw a body. The police warned Lara and Rachel that making up sick stories like this wasn’t a game and they could get in serious trouble for this. Angie thanked the cops for coming down and searching and then apologized and told them it would never happen again.

Angie was extremely upset with her daughter and told Rachel that she would drive her home and talk to her parents about this twisted game they were playing. After Angie explained to Rachel’s parents about the uncalled for lies, Angie lectured Lara in the car on the way home. She told Lara not to look forward to anything for the next month. Lara knew what she saw but was too scared to speak up to her mom because she knew she wouldn’t believe her. When they arrived home, Lara went upstairs and decided to go to bed.

The next morning was crisp and the singing birds woke Lara up. She told herself that she was going to try and forget about what happened the night before because it was nonsense. She slipped some shoes on and went downstairs to have the normal breakfast with her mom. Angie, still angry, was very quiet at breakfast. Angie and Lara sat in an uncomfortable silence which made Lara not want to be near her mom. She quickly finished breakfast and returned to her room. She was trying to figure out her day’s plan, so she wasn’t bored. She decided that she was going to redecorate her room and do some other chores around the house to try and ease the silence with her mom.

Lara spent all day cleaning, and doing what her mom asked her to. She did the laundry, took the dog outside, took the trash out, and cleaned the kitchen. Lara soon realized that it had already reached 6:00 pm and she was dying to leave the house to get some fresh air. She asked Angie if she was able to go on a bike ride without Rachel because all the cleaning chemicals were giving her a headache. Her mom eventually gave in and told her to be back in exactly an hour. Lara geared up in the garage and set out to the same trail she was on the previous night. She tried to have positive thoughts in her heard and kept telling herself that she just hit her head on the ground so hard that she was seeing things that weren’t real.

Eventually she reached the spot where she flew off her bike but she told herself she wasn’t going to go look again. Unfortunately, she gave into herself and put her bike on the kickstand, and went to see if she could see the same thing, she did the night before. She walked slowly over to the wooded area with leaves covering the ground. She didn’t see any lumps of leaves or anything that seemed off. She continued further into the woods, crunching leaves with each step. Even thought it was the beginning of summer, she started to feel uncomfortably cold. It was weird to her at first, but she decided she wanted to keep looking around so she payed no attention to it. As she was walking further into the woods, it began to get much colder and at this point, Lara was starting to get scared. Even though she was an innocent girl, she grew up reading books about the afterlife and spirts that couldn’t enter they correct world which made them angry and do brutal things to people still on Earth.

She was growing more uncomfortable with each step. She took a few more steps into the woods and began hearing what sounded like a grown man’s voice, that was shockingly close to her. She frantically looked around trying to see if she could match a body to the voice, but no one appeared in sight. The voice was growing closer and closer and was saying, “I’m watching you, Lara. Things that happen in these woods never have a good outcome. I was never like this, but there are some things that I can’t let go in my previous life. I can’t move on and this has made me an angry person. You better run pretty girl, or you’ll end up like Francine.” Lara was terrified at this point and let out in a sprint. She ran as fast as she could but the voice followed her.

Lara started screaming at the voice and was telling it that it wasn’t going to catch her. She begged it not to do what it did to Francine to her. She was running so fast that she wasn’t able to see where she was going. She knew that at this point she was past her curfew and her mom was not going to be happy with her. All of the thoughts going on inside her head started to overwhelm her and she began crying. Her eyes were filled with so many tears that it was even harder for her to see. She kept going and going until she tripped over something. The voice instantly left the side of her head and everything grew silent. There wasn’t any sound in those woods. She pulled herself from the ground and turned around to see what she tripped over.

On the forest floor, a girl laid there. It looked like she’d been there for a while, just like the other girl Lara saw the night before. She was gray, with dark brown hair and a huge wound on the top of her head. Her head was laying in a puddle of dried, old blood and this time, the girl’s eyes were thankfully shut. Lara was feeling so many different emotions at this point. She knew she couldn’t tell her mom because after what happened last night, she would be grounded until she turns twenty-five.

*Still continuing*