The Castle in the Clearing

It was almost midnight. In the dead of night the wind was wailing through the trees, whose branches looked like skeleton hands ready to reach out and grab someone and hold them captive forever. The castle was enormous and it looked as if it was abandoned apart from one flickering light in the far East window which suggested otherwise. The blizzard was the worst anyone had seen for over one hundred years. The snow was swirling around the clearing in circles, closing it off from the world. The turret to the West was cracked in half. The castle frowned down on the world from great heights. It was a truly spine chilling sight for anyone who set eyes upon it.

My name: Frank Iero. I was not popular, nobody noticed me, not even my family unless they were shouting at me for something I hadn't done. Ugh, I hated those freaks. I had jet black hair and a fringe that covered half of my face hiding some of my scars. My eyes were hazel and framed by a myriad of dark eyelashes. My eyelids were as black as coal as I, before I went anywhere, smothered them in black eyeliner. I had a scorpion tattoo on my neck as well as more tattoos elsewhere. I loved getting tattoos. I was rather skinny, in a gangly sort of way. If I remember correctly, the clothes I was wearing that night were my black skinny jeans that hugged my legs like koala bears on trees, my misfits t-shirt, my black and white converse and a black hoodie with the hood pulled so far over my head that I could barely see. Perhaps it wasn't the most practical of outfits to wear whilst running away from home in a blizzard… Oh well, it had to be done, I couldn't stay in that house for another minute. I ran away from home because I was tired of putting up with my parents and siblings abusing me, physically and verbally. I was treated like dirt and I was sure they had been trying to wash their hands of me for a while, maybe as long as I had lived. However, I had been turning a blind eye towards it. Things were getting out of hand in the end so I decided to pack some essentials and leave that hell-hole that I used to call 'home'. I don't know how I ended up in the clearing in the forest, perhaps it was the way the trees bent and twisted to almost form a zigzagging path that invited me to follow its twisted trail or maybe the way the wind seemed to push me in that direction, but somehow I did.