Short stories

At the hands of Ana

 Ana is very skinny, dangerously so. However, she irradiates confidence, a confidence so powerful everybody looks at her with jealousy. She's in control. Her walking is so fragile with her pale skin and long, dry, dark hair... She looks like a ghost, but so beautiful. She tricks us into thinking so.

 She lives in some people's brain. Both a blessing and a curse. She takes the remotes of our brains and pulls each string as she wants. She's in full control. We can't fight her, she's become part of us. She destroys us. Bit by bit, just like she did to Len.

   Len was a happy girl with a great childhood, who'd never thought something so terrifying would happen to her. But it did happen as Ana managed to find a way into her brain. Little did the poor Len know in a year she'd be dead.

   It started quiet and gentle. But the possesssion and the obsession soon became more intense, like an earthquake. Len became a sad, shy girl. She stopped eating. It began with a mere restriction of sugar and useless calories, but that wasn't enough. She wanted to starve that voice which insisted she was unworthy. But the voice, Ana, only got stronger. Ana applauded these behaviours and helped Len worsen them.

   Len felt great as she gained control of herself. Did she, though? She gave all the control to Ana. She didn't gain it, she lost it. The great feeling she felt is also questionable. Who likes the mental fog and the obsession about control? I'm not even talking about how little energy the girl had at the hands of Ana. Len couldn't go upstairs without feeling breathless and neither could she do physical education classes without almost fainting.

   She was wasting away. Her body functions began to shut down and her hair fell down. She was gone too far. I wish I could say she got help but I'm telling this story for a reason, and that reason is that it can't be her telling the story. She's not with us anymore.

   This is what Ana does. She's a murderer, a relentless one. She has no mercy.

   She hasn't been caught and arrested yet. She's still out there killing millions of people. Some see her as a best friend and a blessing but those people cannot say that for a long period of time as Ana kills them and shuts them up. One in ten people caught by her ends up dead. The numbers are scary...

   Don't let her in, don't let her win. We can still change the numbers.

by Diana M. M. Lopes, 10ºA

    It was a Saturday night when the scariest, most terrifying moment of my life happened. It was about 1 a.m. and I was walking home from a get-together at my friend's house. It was very close and I was on the verge of shimmering. Something felt very wrong, but I just couldn't tell what it was.

   After turning a dark corner, I went into a very ominous street. It was dirty and looked abandoned. I instantly sped up my pace. Then, out of a narrow alley came the scariest man I had ever seen! He had an ugly face due to burning scars, and a deadly gaze I instantly screamed, completely horrified.

   I started running away from the scary man but he kept running after me! Suddenly I found some rocks on the floor, picked them up, and started throwing them at him. After many attempts, I finally hit him and gained some distance.

  When I turned a corner, he suddenly caught me and started hitting and scratching me.

   I screamed and writhed in pain! After a few seconds, I woke up.

   Everything was gone. But the scratch marks stayed...

by Inês Marques, 10º A

Short story

   It was a rainy and stormy night when my car crashed. The only sound I could hear was the water drops crashing into the ground. There wasn't any car passing by, I was all alone. Yet, suddenly, I was able to see a light beam coming from my back. 'I'm safe', I thought. I began moving my hands frantically so that the driver could see me. After he stopped the car, I got to have a look at him. He was a middle-aged man with an oily and greasy hair. His car had red spots in the seats and it smelled as if someone had died there. But, since I was desperate and this was my only ticket home, I decided to forget this matter. Despite the man's appearance, he seemed very kind. Too much, to be honest.

   We spent the ride in silence, no one spoke a single word. That gave me much time to observe him, which got me to realize he had some marks above his eyebrows, like some sort of numbers. Since I'm a very curious person, I couldn't just let it go. My reasonable side told me it was a bad idea to ask him, but the other side told me to do it. So I did. And that's when it all went bad. He immediately turned his face to me and, with a heavy expression, he told me: 'As many other men, I was sent to the Vietnam War. There, the urge to kill someone started to develop. On the weekends, we were sent to the field with the only job of killing. And that's what these numbers mean'.

   I looked up at the number 15 above his eyebrow. It instantly began turning into a 16. When I understood what it meant, the greasy man stopped the car and tried stabbing me with a knife. But I had rapid reflexes, so I dodged it. He didn't expect me to do it, so I had time to leave the car and run away.

   And so I did. I ran away through the forest for the longest I could. I was still hearing his footsteps and he was coming closer every second. I pushed myself to my limits. I stopped when I didn't hear anything anymore. He wasn't behind me. I could finally relax. And that's when it all went black.

   I woke up in a cold sweat and that's when I realized it was all just a nightmare.

by Rita M. F. Mateus, 10º A

Rodrigo Moutinho, 10º A