Black Edge [Prologue]

That day you came home from school was different than any other. You lived life by a routine. Routines were safe and planned -- nothing could surprise you. You came home and went immediately to the small room at the end of the hall, as you always have done. You fished out your homework, and that was where things drifted from the usual path.

Your grades were perfect, straight A's in every class. Not once did you neglect your student obligations -- they were your sure way out of this place you call home. I frowned, fidgeting nervously behind you, a terrible feeling swelling inside me. Tears were threatening to mist over my eyes without just cause. A premonition, maybe.

The backpack you carried was tossed uncaringly against the wall and you stood by your bedside for a long moment. Face blank and frighteningly vacant, I cried out to you thought I knew you'd not hear me. Fear choked me as I helplessly watched your next move.

You slowly removed the sheets from your bed and wrapped them around your arms. Then you left the sanctuary of your room and went out back. I followed, hardly able to form coherent thought. A horrifying possibilty occured to me and it was reducing me to a sobbing and gasping wreck.

Outside in the backyard was a big oak tree with high and far-reaching branches. The two houses adjacent to us were vacant and the one behind, that family was on vacation. These facts were alarming.

You took the sheets from your arms and with steady hands ripped even, wide strips from the cloth and set them beside you. All the while, your face remained empty and ingnorant to my screams and stomping. Noise was futile. My very presence was futile.

I tried to grab the strips, to tear them away from you, but they simply went through my little fingers. I wailed in absolute frustration and twisted my fists in my hair, pulling, as if the pain would give me a grip on reality. This couldn't be real. This was as far from reality as delusion could get.

You were stronger than this! Otherwise why would you have bothered with your grades? You had said if you had good grades, you could get into a good college across the country. School was your escape, not this! You were stronger... It was a thread of hope I held onto, repeated like a mantra in my head even as you tied the sheets together into tight knots.

Even as you climbed that wicked tree, I held on and waited at the base. My breaths were coming hard and I felt as if I was drowing. My cheeks were starting to hurt from the twisting of my mouth and tears were streaking through my hair as I leaned back to look up at you in that tree, tying the sheets around a particularly high branch.

Finally, I recognized your expression. That vacancy and utter deadness of your eyes, I finally understood. How many times could I count the moments when I've seen you don that mask? I hadn't bothered to count because the sheer number would break apart my soul everytime I knew that number would continue to escalate.

It was the face you put on whenever around him -- that man who so surely destroyed your life and your spirit time and time again. He was the reason you retreated into your room, the reason you slaved over books and homework, the reason you isolated yourself from people.

Every day he'd drag you into his clutches and I'd watch him hurt you, unable to leave your room. It was when he hit you, cut you, and beat you that you slipped on that empty mask. It scared me when you put it on because I feared maybe this was it -- the last straw -- and you'd never take it off.

That mask was your protection from him, a little escape when your room was out of reach. It provided your own abyss where you could hide and let its vast darkness numb the pain being inflicted. I wish I could provide you more than what that void could. I wish I could take away the pain for good and take you away from him.

You made a noose and didn't hesitate to put your head through it. Again I screamed and again, you didn't hear me. You didn't see me. I tugged at my hair harder, furiously, peering up at you through my tears blurring your precious image. My legs shook, my knees quivered, and I felt as if I was about to explode.

Then you lifted your leg over the edge and I suddenly found an overwhelming, all-consuming desperation to stop, to make you hear me. So I opened my mouth and screamed loud enough to break the barriers between you and I.

"Stop!"

Like a switch was flicked on, your eyes suddenly filled with life and alarm...

And you slipped.