I stared over at what used to be my best friend.

“You’ve… changed…” I choked out.
Her fiery red hair whipped around her fragile round face, which hasn’t changed at all ever since she disappeared a few years back.

“Your hair… your… f-face.” I struggled to choose the right words. “They’re the-the same like they were before… before…” I couldn’t quite finish my sentence.

“Before I disappeared?” she said in a mocking tone, but simultaneously with a voice full of surprising power.

I shuddered under her glare. “W-w-we-well… yeah… Everything….” I looked at her… and I mean REALLY looked at her for about the millionth time. “Everything’s changed…”

I knew she could sense the fear in my voice because she then started to speak, breaking through the barrier I was building up against her stinging words.

“Yeah… I’ve changed… But so have you. I left and about three weeks later you replaced me… a new best friend… I would get my revenge… but it would just be too easy…. too… amusing,” she put an emphasis on the last word.

This angered me. “You didn’t just leave me… you left with a piece of my heart! I had all of my faith in you. You promised you would never hurt me… and yet you did!” The tears that I was holding back were now openly spilling down my face. “You changed… so I did too! And you left me hanging and I needed a shoulder to cry on… someone that was ALWAYS there to support me... that was the only thing I ever asked of you, and you were unable to do that… you lost my trust and now you can’t get that back!”

I sighed, squeezing out the last of the tears in my eyes. “It’s just… I’ve always been jealous of you… you were always the better one… the prettier one, the smarter one, the one that everyone loved… and then you disappeared, leaving me… then out of the blue you come back for help… looking… well… beautiful… and I’m still the same old me…” I said with sadness clearly in my voice. Then it hit me. “You never told me what happened to you! Where you… went…”

Her sharp features turned to face me. Her once-flat nose, now pointy and aware… her once almost-invisible lips, now a beautiful red, her lips full and carved into tiny hearts at the top. I realized that I was STILL jealous of her… Then I got to the eyes…. I looked behind the curtain of agony, aggressiveness, toughness, and saw… well all of that, but something else as well… love.

“I….” I looked down. “I want to know…” Her beautiful green eyes (which had once been brown) stared me down… “No you don’t!” All of the tenderness gone from her voice, she turned around, but not in time for me to miss her eyes changing color… literally. They were green and full of love and when she turned around they were this dark purple, full of aggressiveness and venom. “It was the humans… they tried to keep me away from my fate… but not the Knights of the Darkness, the Knights of the Darkness just wanted me to be who I really was, able to express myself. The anger from my parents death, the anger at people who backstabbed me… everyone!”
The anger and agony she had apparently been keeping in all of these years exploded all around us.
“Are you frightened, you frail little human?” She said, again with a mocking tone implying she really didn’t have the nerves for me right now.

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When I got home I slammed the door shut and locked all of the locks.
“Mooooooooom I’m homeeeeeeee!” I yelled up the stairs. I heard the shower running so I knew it was no use.
I gave a frustrated sigh and went upstairs to my room. I turned on my laptop and let it boot up. Then I opened Google and searched Knights of the Darkness, but nothing came up. Well, nothing USEFUL at least.
I decided to make a voice recording. I would have a calm voice and I would apologize to me ex-best friend, saying how sorry I was and blah blah blah. I knew she wouldn’t really like it or even appreciate the effort, but I decided to make it anyway. I was going to improvise my speech.
I turned on the record button and the screen started counting the seconds. I gulped heavily and took a deep breath.
“Hey… it’s me. I, uh, just wanted to apologize. I’m sorry that I was so mad today… it’s just that all of the stress that was building up all those years you were gone just… exploded. I was always worrying, constantly. You might not realize that and right now you might be thinking that I’m just trying to make a save, and I am, but I really did miss you all of those years. Always wondering where you were…. What you might be doing that second… but most of all the guilt… I always had a feeling that it was my fault that you disappeared. I mean… I held a kind of responsibility over you. And then you were gone. I remember feeling empty for about three weeks, and then someone took a hold of me and decided to try fixing me up… and I accepted the help.” The words were pouring out of me, flowing freely, all of those feelings… until a horrible realization came over me. How did she ever find out that I had replaced her? How did she know what I was doing all of these years?! I thought to myself. The seconds ticked, and time passed by. It was about a minute before I realized I was still recording. Still gazing at the screen unbelievingly, I made my hand move the mouse and click the pause button.
“Ugh, you don’t have to apologize… your little recording makes me sick,” a voice I knew all too well spoke from the dark corner of my room.
“Wh-what are you doing? H-how did you get in?” I asked confused and completely in shock, though I was hoping none of it was showing. I noticed that her eyes were a yellow now, and in the depths of those sunflower yellow eyes I could see the laughter and happiness I recognized.
I was making a scale in my head- yellow representing happiness, green representing she was okay and not afraid to share, and purple meaning she was incredibly mad. So mad it was indescribable in words.
“You realized I was here all of these years and you started wondering. I think that’s dangerous for the Knights of the Darkness. So I promised them I would take me with you. Oh, and by the way I lived in your house all of these years. I posses no items so it’s easy for me to just settle wherever. I just hid wherever you weren’t. Over the day no one was here so I slept, and over the night you were here so I was out hunting and taking care of… business. I am a creature of the Darkness, therefore of the Night, so it all makes sense.” Sensing confusion, she added “I have the key from all of those years back. I protected you from robbers, and may I just say you had a lot of them. On an average I would say about… eh… 3 a month. They always tried to come back for more. So then I started attacking them and not just mind control. Oh, I can read minds. I think that that was all I wanted and needed to say. So now you can come with me, go through the Change and fulfill your fate. Let’s gooooo.”
She started to grab my hand, but I jerked away from her. Her eyes immediately changed to a clear blue… the fourth color on my mind scale. Blue meant she was hurting or she was sad.
“Your eyes give you away. But I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings right now. I just can’t leave my life behind… I mean my friends… my family… my house… everything. So you can just go back to your little Knights and leave me alone. My life was a lot less complicated until you came back. First, you disappear, I mean leave. That’s complication number one, and then you come back, which is complication number three.” She gave me a weird, confused look, but her eyes were that purple again, which showed that she was trying to control herself, channeling the anger. “Oh, complication number two… is… was… when my dad died.” I tried not to be as bold as before, seeing that it upset her. I wondered why but decided not to ask because she was opening her mouth, and clamping it shut, obviously thinking about how to say whatever it was she was going to say. Then when she finally turned around, making me think she wasn’t going to say anything, she exploded all around me.
“NEVER make a mockery of my Knights, human!” She spat the word at me as if it was poison. “They are the ones who took care of me, unlike the whole human population. And with the power of the head Knight of the Darkness I order you to come with me this instant!”
My whole body sprung up, and my feet ran over to where that creature I once considered my best friend was standing. My arms reached out and I clung to her as if my life depended upon it. I tried telling my arms to peel themselves away, but it wasn’t working. What’s going on?! I panicked.
“Ahaaa, I see you are not an exception to the power of the Darkness. You must bow to it, just like all of those other unworthy humans do.”
“Stop it Melanie, I don’t want to leave. Please let me stay here!” I cried into her shoulder, giving up the fight for my dignity. I swore to myself I would never beg anyone for anything. Well, there goes that, I thought to myself as I was being crushed to her body with a force I have never known.
Melanie tore me off of her, punching me in the shoulder so hard she sent me flying across the room, causing me to painfully crash into my wall. “Never call me that horrible, pitiful name ever again! I am now Leader Alice of the Darkness!” her voice was overwhelmingly powerful.
“I’ve never seen such a deep shade of purple in my life,” I blurted out as I made eye contact with her once again. It was my saving phrase.
She walked over to me and in a mocking tone (there’s a shock) she said: “Ugh… Cassandra, you are such a human.” Her eyes turned green again. Her eyes were like a dictionary to me, a key to knowing what she was feeling. “To you I am now Alice.” That was it. She ordered me to call her Alice. No arguing. Period. And she said Alice with such… nobility… but I decided I was going to save it for later because it looked like we were getting back to our old selves… open in front of each other.
“Oh my God, do you remember when we put that fake rat into the school kitchen and the cook fainted and we didn’t have anything to eat all day? Hahahahahaha!” She brought up memories that were stored so deep into my mind, I had totally forgot about them. “Hahaha… no seriously though, you have to come with me,” she said, all of the amusement gone from her eyes and voice.
“So this trip to friendship is a kind of an on and off thing, huh?” I asked. “Well it’s not worth it if it’s going to be all wobbly.” All of a sudden Alice sprang at me, her purple eyes burning with the passion to kill me, her fangs that outstretched in the air of her leap aiming for my throat.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” I woke up screaming, my whole neck sweaty from my horrible dream. It’s the one I’ve been having for three years now. Ever since Melanie had been kidnapped and not seen by anyone after that. Melanie was taken on March 12th, 2009 and today is March 12th, 2012. It is the three-year anniversary since my sister Melanie was kidnapped. I looked over at my night stand, which was now covered in pictures of the two of us. I looked at the one closest to me, which was a picture of me and Melanie when we were about seven years old. “Good night Melanie,” I said to the picture as I blew a kiss to my sister hoping we would soon be reunited.