EPHEMERAL.

[ 01. CHAPTER ONE : I WAS BORN WITH THE DEVIL IN ME : ❝for the first time in a long time, i feel good.❞ ]

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Six friends sat on a metal table in the middle of the school grounds. Their names; Emma Duval, Will Belmont, Jake Fitzgerald, Brooke Maddox, Riley Marra, and Mallory Thompson. They were deemed the popular clique but only a couple of them had bad blood running through their veins.

"I thought we agreed to trash that video." Emma spoke first, looking away from Audrey Jensen who was across the hallway.

The video that Emma was referencing was that Nina Patterson, queen bitch, had recorded Audrey making out with her girlfriend in a car park and it had been released to humiliate the short haired girl. It was very effective.

"She was bound to come out one day." Brooke sighed, perching herself on top of the table. "Look at her."

"What's the big deal if she is a lesbian?" Jake said nonchalantly.

"Because Nina forced her out of the closet and ridiculed her?" Mallory raised an eyebrow at the olive-skinned boy, her lips pursed in annoyance.

"I wasn't the only one on that group thread." Jake shrugged after Emma looked at him in disappointment. "And I did delete that video. After I sent it to PJ. Girl-on-girl is his demographic."

"PJ's a pig. No wonder he accepted that crap." Mallory complained, scoffing quietly to herself as she twirled strands of her hair around her pointer finger.

"Riley?" Emma turned to the Asian girl sat across from her.

"Sorry." Riley sighed. "Zoe saw it on my phone."

"What about you, Mallory?" Jake challenged, a smirk on his lips.

"Nina sent it to me and I deleted it after the first two seconds." Mallory glared at him, kicking him under the table.

"Ouch!" Jake exclaimed, rubbing his throbbing kneecap. "You're a violent chick, Thompson."

"Do you guys even understand the term 'viral'?" Emma cut in, looking at the two teenagers across from her in disappointment.

"I don't see Nina anywhere." Riley complained, looking around the courtyard to prove her point.

"You know she did the wide release." Will pointed out, turning to his girlfriend.

"Of course it was Nina." Brooke spoke. "She's a spoiled sociopath with no impulse control. I mean, she's probably ditching right now to avoid your good girl wrath."

"I'm sure your friend will be fine." Mallory reassured the brunette sitting next to her, softly rubbing her shoulder.

"We're not really friends anymore." Emma shook her head, tears coming to her eyes.

"Just give it 24 hours." Will captured Emma's attention again, placing a reassuring hand on the small of her back. "Someone will text and drive their Hybrid into a tree. We'll have a new headline."

"Maybe Audrey will Taylor Swift her anger into creative energy for one of her little films." Brooke shrugged.

"Emma, she'll be fine." Will comforted her, hoping to get her to stop worrying. "Okay?"

"Barf." Mallory rolled her eyes playfully at the lovebirds.

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"Cavemen made fires." Mr Branson, the English teacher, spoke clearly to his class as he wrote on the chalkboard. "Those fires cast shadows and those shadows created fear. Men have been obsessed with scaring each other since."

"His name's Kieran Wilcox." Brooke turned to her three female friends, whispering quietly to them. "He just moved here from Atlanta."

"I thought you weren't into high school guys." Jake butted in.

"No, that was just you." Brooke's face turned sour, not even turning to look at Jake.

"Brooke." Mr Branson called, wiping his hands clear of chalk residue. "Would you please tell us which genre originated with The Castle of Otranto?"

"The castle genre?" Brooke cleared her throat, pursing her lips at the teacher.

Mallory started giggling quietly to herself at Brooke's answer, knowing it was a total shot in the dark. She stopped when Brooke's hand harshly met her shoulder in a rough slap.

"The gothic genre." A voice piped up from the back of the classroom.

Mallory turned to see it was the hot new boy, Kieran Wilcox. She thought he was attractive but he wasn't exactly her type.

"Thank you." Mr Branson sighed. "Guys, look, I get it. Nobody wants to sit around reading 500 dusty pages about monks and curses. But nobody's forcing you to watch The Walking Dead."

"Ooh." Jake perked up, raising his hand in the air. "Is The Walking Dead on the midterm?"

"Really wish it was." Mallory muttered to herself, noticing out of the corner of her eye that Noah Foster, a self-proclaimed geek, smirked at her statement.

"Zombies are not literature, Jake." Emma chuckled at her friend.

"Why not?" Kieran furrowed his eyebrows. "George Romero, Horace Walpole, it's all the same bones."

"Or the same rotting flesh." Mr Branson pursed his lips. "Kieran's right. Gothic genre is all over TV right now. You have American Horror Story, you have Bates Motel, Hannibal."

"What about Texas Chainsaw or Halloween?" Jake questioned.

"Uh, those are slasher movies." Noah cut in, a smirk on his face.

Jake looked at the pale boy with furrowed eyebrows, wondering why he had spoken.

"Movies and TV shows are completely different, Jake." Mallory said. "Although two of the shows that Mr Branson mentioned originate from slasher movies."

"You are correct, Mallory." Mr Branson smiled.

"You can't do a slasher movie as a TV series." Noah shrugged, and as he received a look from Mr Branson, he continued his speech. "Well, think about it. You know, girl and her friends arrive at the dance, the camp, the deserted town, whatever. Killer takes them out one by one. 90 minutes later, the sun comes up as survivor girl's sitting in the back of the ambulance watching her friends' bodies being wheeled past. Slasher movies burn bright and fast."

Mallory took great interest in watching and listening to the boy speak. She felt like she could listen to him talk for hours about horror movies. His gaze locked onto hers for a moment as he talked, a smirk coming to his face before he turned back to the class.

"You know, by the time the first body's found, it's only a matter of time before the bloodbath commences." Noah finished off his monologue, taking in the faces full of interest.