Reflections on that night
There was a time I thought having any friends at all was a good thing. I didn't really discriminate who I hung out with because of the fact that so few people wanted to hang out with me in the first place. Who could blame them, nobody wants to be around a lanky weird looking teenager like me. Or at least that is what I thought. When I found this group of, in hindsight, unsavory individuals, who took me in, I leaped at the opportunity.
We weren't a gang per say, we never did anything serious enough or "hard" enough to qualify for such a title. We did small stuff, keying cars, breaking windows, smoking in the school bathroom, some tagging here and there. We never tried to hurt anyone, we were just annoying teenagers like anyone else.
Our self proclaimed leader though, lets call him John, he wasn't happy that we were so small potatoes. John was a bigger fellow than us and we felt safe around him, but he was also the guy that really pushed the envelope on the kinds of things we did. I'm not going to say we had no choice in the matter, I'm not going to blame everything on him, but we just would not of been brave enough to commit half the misdemeanors we ended up doing without him goading us on.
That is what he was doing that fateful night, but this time it was something much darker than his usual ideas. John and I were alone that night, wandering the streets looking for easy cars to break into. Everything was still slick from the fresh sheets of rain that had peppered the city for hours on end and left that damp smell in the air. He spotted this girl wandering the dimly lit street alone, skipping and humming without a care in the world. She looked about our age, but something about her was strange. Maybe it was her pink hair, maybe it was her dress with the balloons on it, maybe it was that jovial attitude she had while being all alone on a city street, but something about this girl was just...
...unsettling
She almost didn't seem real, like she didn't fit in the dreary street she was walking in. John was mesmerized, he said some things about her that I dare not repeat in polite company, and he 'invited' me to follow him so we could have "fun" with her.
John had never EVER gone that dark on us before, and I didn't want anything to do with what he was saying but..... well, he was a charismatic and intimidating individual, and back then I was nothing short of a coward, and in a lot of ways I still am.
I glanced over at her as we walked and I noticed she had caught my eye and winked. At least I think she winked, I am not sure, it was pretty dark and we had an entire street between us. My heart was pounding in my chest as John slowly walked in the girls direction. I kept close behind him, a nervous wreck as I tried to figure a way out of this mess that didn't make John turn on me.
The pink haired girl giggled for some inexplicable reason and went into an alley, puddles splashing as she skipped. I remember the hairs standing on the back of my neck as it seemed to echo around us. John was practically salivating as he rounded the corner behind her.
"Hey, where'd she go" he had said. I peered from behind him to see that she had indeed vanished
"I'm right here silly" a bubbly voice had echoed around us. She sounded unnervingly relaxed, and the fact that I couldn't see her only set me on edge even more.
John called out to her, saying he wanted to talk and have some fun, though he phrased it a bit more...lewdly than I care to get into.
she just giggled though, and the echo from that giggle seemed to stretch on forever. I couldn't help but feel like the Alley was narrower and longer than it was when we had walked into it.
John was getting annoyed now, he never did like getting laughed at and demanded the girl come out.
"Down here" she had said in a sing song voice. He glanced down at his feet to see a reflection, not of him, but of the girl staring at him from a puddle. His face visibly blanched even in the dark damp night. the girl laughed some more and my former friend instinctively smashed his foot into the puddle to break up the reflection.
His foot sank right through and he lost his balance. Even though it was just a puddle his leg had plunged through like it was much deeper. He squealed that something had his leg. He clawed and thrashed at his leg as something seemed to start yanking him further into the small puddle, each one forceful and made the guys whole body lurch. He begged me to help him, but I was frozen in panic, my heart thumping in my ears for several long seconds before I actually moved in to grab him. John was crying, he looked almost his age in that moment, a teary eyed highschooler who was frantically trying to save himself from some underwater force in the middle of a city alleyway.
"I like to play with reflections, its kind of a specialty of mine" the giggling voice played through the air "and there are so many fun puddles out tonight"
I looked behind me as I kept tugging and saw her, skipping down the alley towards us. Her voice sounded so much closer than she actually was, and the alleyway was impossibly long now, I don't remember seeing anything in this place that had this long of a building. I looked the other direction and it was more of the same, endless walls with repeating trashcans and puddles, the street we came from nowhere in view.
Johns voice lost any masculinity as it cracked horribly in terror, thrashing and splashing at whatever was clinging onto his leg. The puddle seemed to be getting bigger. Long spindly pink appendages were wrapping themselves around more and more of him, jerking further into the water, but never hard enough to break my grasp on him.
The girl kept skipping from a distance, a fog playing around her body as she came closer and closer in her eerily cheerful way. Each of her foot falls and her melodic humming played on my ears, sending my anxiety into overdrive as I kept tugging on John. The self proclaimed thug was sobbing now as he clung to me, the panic redoubling as new fleshy pink tendrils with fingernails gripped onto his waist and pulled him further down. They were like the girl's hands, but stretched and warped like a fun house mirror and frightfully strong.
There was another powerful tug, this one knocking me to my knees and almost pulled me into the water as well, John's irises were pinpricks and he was frothing from the adrenaline overdrive. his nails gripped into my arm as he tried to climb up my body. It hurt and I bled from the scrapes against my skin, I had only just realized I had been sobbing in fright and had wet myself. John had probably not fared any better in the strange water with the fleshy warped fingers clasping onto him.
The Girl was next to us now, happy and bubbly as ever
"Well you two are sure in a pickle huh?"
John was gone to the world, all he knew was panic, fight or flight, a primal animal instinct of wanting to survive. I wasn't that far behind him. The girl reached out at Johns hands as his fingers burrowed into my arms. I had stopped trying to pull him out, now I just wanted to get away from the slowly growing puddle that had whatever monster lurking beneath it.
"This little piggy went to market" she cooed as she pried one of his fingers out of my skin
"This little piggy stayed home..." she did it to another, each one lessening his grip on me.
he redoubled his efforts, begging and pleading and sobbing frantically as he was now shoulder deep and I was practically in there with him.
"This little piggy had bad thoughts..." she continued, punctuating this one with a snap of his bone, the hand retracted and was promptly gripped by several normal proportioned limbs that resembled this girls own arms. I saw that in the pool of water was swimming hundreds, thousands of this girl, all looking the same, some of them looking like some kind of strange horse like creature, others stretched and contorted in unnatural angles, all of their eyes staring right at Johns mostly submerged body.
she patted my head "and this little piggy had none"
I stared at her, frozen in place as she pried Johns remaining hand off of me
"but this little piggy" she paused and looked into space in realization "well...he isn't going home so I guess this rhyme doesn't work anymore does it?" She shrugged and let John go, and his final terrified scream was promptly cut off by being submerged in water.
I leaped to the puddle, but it was just regular dirty rainwater now, John was gone. The strange never ending alleyway was gone too, as was the girl. I was thrust back into reality with only bloody scrapes on my arms and damp jeans to prove any of it had happened.
'Hey girls wait up!"
"Pinkie Where have you been?" Called a girl with rainbow colored hair from across the street. I just stared at her from my kneeling position in the alleyway, probably frozen in shock. There was a whole assortment of girls looking like they were ready for a night on the town
That Girl, that...thing... skipped up to them as happy as ever "I was playing This little piggy with a new friend!" she exclaimed
"Sugarcube I don't think I'll ever get what you're saying half the time, lets go girls we are going to be late!" Said a blond one with some mirth in her voice. As the group moved on down the way the one they called Pinkie glanced over at me from where I knelt and gave me that same wink.
Its still out there, and if I can help it, I'm not going to have any bad thoughts, because...because I don't want that happening to me as well....
