• The masquerade is filled with countless masked faces drinking and dancing. My head is spinning from the bottle of Vodka I had gulped down and, suddenly, all the faces look distorted and alive.
    “Emma, dear, are you okay?” asks my mother. So I smile and turn to her.
    “Fine,” I lie. She pats my shoulder and returns to her crowd.
    I stagger to the side and almost fall on a little boy in a rabbit mask.
    “Excuse me,” I whisper and hold my head.
    “Eww! Your breath stinks!” I simply smile and walk away. And suddenly something catches my eye. A man: at the edge of the party. He is wearing a suit with a black cape. His mask is black and, even though he is far away, a chill runs down my spine because I know he’s staring at me. He parts the crowd as he comes toward me and I run into the kitchen to hide.
    But he finds me there, and millions of questions race though my mind along with the possible ending to my night that I wasn’t at all fond of. I quickly take a knife from the drawer and head toward my bedroom.
    He follows me and whispers my name in a demon voice. Until I arrive at the door to my room. I run inside and hide behind the door, my heart racing.
    “Emma,” he hisses as the door opens. He takes a step inside and-

    I lunge at him, tears streaming down my face. The knife sticks in his chest and he falls to the ground. I scream and black out.
    The clock chims that midnight has struck.
    When I wake my body is sore and my head is pounding, I find the man in black, dead, lying on the floor.
    “Mother!” I scream, “Mother!” Moments later she appears.
    “What in the world are you screaming-,” she yells as she open the door, and then stops as she sees the body. Her face twists with horror as she turns to me.
    “He was f- following me, he was going to kill me, mother!” I chocked out between sobs.
    She gulps and walks over to his body; f lips him over, and unmasks him. She lets out a scream and I turn to see why. I freeze with horror.
    “Father?”