The darkness is surrounding me, all I can hear is my heartbeat. Before the darkness takes complete control of my vision, I look at my watch. 12:00, it's midnight. Just as the last hole of consciousness gets filled in a bright light appears before my eyes. I can hear my alarm clock, relieved to the fact of the dream state I just escaped. “Tony, time to go to school,” my mom had called from downstairs. As I finished getting ready, I said goodbye to my mother and got on the bus. I was hesitant but I had put on my watch referring to the nightmare before. The next stop, Matthew’s house. Oh how I hated that kid, he’s always arguing, proving people wrong. The only thing that makes him so infuriating was his tumescent ego. I don’t know how I haven’t gotten caught tripping him yet, I thought while repeating the pattern. As he picks up his things and sits behind me, I can hear him whispering in a monotone voice. I can’t make out what he says, but on the last word I understood him. The last word he spoke before blaring his music, that one word made my heart sank, he had said midnight. When we got to school, that place creeped me out. I was pushed and got scratched by the giant briar bush that seems to be incapable of moving. As I walked to class with my friends I could see Matthew write a tally mark upon his arm. The fear once again came over me, In the last year six kids have gone missing. Everyone of them picked on Matthew, then gone without a trace. Before Matthew could pull down his sleeve, I saw the count, 7. The intense searing of his stare cut clean like a knife. All day, I don’t know how but he was put in all my classes, and he stared at me. Almost every second I could feel his stare as if, in his mind, I was dying a thousand different ways. “Hey Tony,” my friend had gotten my attention, “What’s wrong with you today, you seem out of it?” It took me a second to understand what he meant. “Oh, I just had a lousy night of sleep, that's all,” I replied in an acting tone. But the truth is that, I wasn’t alright. By definition I was the complete opposite. I still have the feeling in my gut, that today was no ordinary day, I feel that this time I pushed him to far. I can feel this thing, like something has crawled into my mind and won’t come out. After school on the bus today Matthew’s music was blaring like always, and when he got off, instead of going into his house he had just stared at the bus till I couldn’t see him anymore. Though I could still sense him staring, ripping every layer of metal the bus had to offer apart. Then I heard a yell, It was my stop and the feeling was empty. Then I just stood in my room. I heard a noise in the back yard and the subtle realization of fear came over me, I had forgotten to lock the door. The front door creaked open after the noise of the back door’s handle moving. I had hid under my bed that was concealed in the closet. Hopefully my fold away bed wouldn’t compromise my position. My bedroom door got slammed open. Then the bed got pulled down, but it wasn’t Matthew, but my mother. Could I have been imagining the noises that came over my judgment. Then the feeling returned and I had woken up. A face hidden by a mask was standing in front of me, and on his back was a scythe, coated in blood. “Welcome to the hunting grounds. You will be given a head start of one minute. There are 2 ways out of here. One, you find 1 of the 2 exits and live. Or two, I find you first. Your minute begins now,” the man said. I took of running dodging the tree’s left and right. It was night. I ran into a briar bush. That's when I realized where I was. I heard the man yell, YOUR MINUTE IS UP! I had feared for my life but I could see light coming from a distance. It was the exit, or so I had thought. As I raced towards It, the man in the mask was holding up a lantern. “Looks like I win,” his laugh was filled with hell fire. He drew his scythe and sliced my right arm. “The right arm, a symbol for strength,” he had said. Then again but this time my left. “And the left arm, a symbol of dignity,” His hell fire laugh confounded my ears, “Both of which, you have none. I took a glance at my watch, 11:59.