Unimaginable Friends

I really don't like to bitch about problems, especially if they're my own, but recently things have happened that I will not just sit here and ignore. Shit has gone too far, and I refuse to put up with it anymore.

So, I basically have a character - like, an OC or something like that - but they have almost become... real.

Now, I know I sound like some delusional buffoon, but please, allow me to explain.

When I was younger, I used to have "ghost buddies" (at least I thought they were for a while). We would play games and stuff, but people would always tell me I needed real friends. I would often reply with "They are real! Can't you see them, too?" but of course, people didn't buy it. They all told me I was full of shit, and eventually I began to believe them.

I was told that they were called "imaginary friends" because they were something I created to keep myself company, so technically they weren't real.

I would tell my ghost buddies this, and they would be sad and tell me that it wasn't true. I was also getting older, and I needed to get "real friends" and "be social". Apparently, that was a big mistake. As soon as I told my other friends that they had to leave... things got dark. Real fast. The moment I told them I had to get "real" friends, while most of them left, a few stayed, and they were quite pissed.

Almost the entire rest of elementary school was hell because of them; I would try to have friends, but they would always get hurt. When I say that, I mean like... one time I had a friend over, and we were jumping on the trampoline, and he flew off of it. He claims he was pushed, but I never touched him. Another time, I invited another friend to my birthday party. (Although nothing was wrong with it) she had a severe allergic reaction to my birthday cake. She'd never had allergies before, and nothing in the cake could be traced as a direct cause of the reaction. My friend told me she felt like someone was choking her, which explained the bruising on her neck the day after...

Eventually, I realized that I needed to have a talk with my friends. You know, the ones that people couldn't see...

On August 15th, a few days before school was about to start again, I remember that was the day I decided to have a chat with my friends.

I remember the night so vividly: the warm summer air that seemed to softly fade as it eased into the cool of the early evening twilight, the last rays of the day's sunlight washing over the treetops of the oaks in the nearby woods, melting over the rooftops of houses like soft butter. It was a beautiful night, I won't deny.

However, the following events were a rather abrupt awakening to this pleasant dream.

I sat on my bed in my room, the door locked so I could have some privacy, since talking to ghosts would make me sound like I was insane (which I am not, by the way). I decided to call for the person I always knew was there - Sugar Floss.

Now, I know it sounds like the name of a Mary-Sue or some kawaii bullshit character - which she undeniably was - but I could always rely on her. She was actually a character I'd made when I was 12; that's when I first got depression, and unfortunately happened to be a total anime-obsessed dork at the time. She was someone I could talk to, a fictitious character built around a coping skill I'd acquired (somebody I could vent to, basically). Sugar was a shimmering little pink fox with sparkly fur, which she covered with a frilly white dress with flowers and lace. She'd follow me around whenever I'd want her to. Sounds nice and innocent, right? Absolutely. There was nothing wrong with Sugar Floss (other than being an OP Mary-Sue, obviously), it's what she became that was so... evil.

Anyways, I called for her, she appeared as normal, but at the same time, several other things appeared - these weren't imaginary, they were my old ghost buddies. Sugar seemed strangely... solid, almost like I could reach out and touch her. Not to mention, she was much larger than I'd remembered her to be - she was only supposed to be the size of a small dog, but now, she was about as big as a timber wolf. We stared at each each other, face to face as I sat on my bed, her on the floor in front of me. She smiled at me, but it felt off. I had a bad feeling that the spirits had done something to her. "That's not possible." I thought to myself. "She's MY character, she's not real, so they couldn't have done anything... could they?" A shadow pointed at Sugar, and she proceeded to speak.

"Hello, princess! Your friends here told me that you've been having some trouble at school making friends..." Although she was cheery at first, and even called me by my nickname she gave me, her sweet smile curled into an exaggerated pout, almost in a sarcastic way. This was DEFINITELY not the normal Sugar I knew...

"Now, princess, I have seen this for myself, and I began wondering something... I began wondering, why would my friend want anyone else to be with when she has me?"

My heart began to beat faster, although I tried my best to keep calm. I very hesitantly tried to ease a reply off my lips. "Well.. I was told that I need to get some friends. You know... real ones? Like, my parents said-"

"REAL friends? " Sugar abruptly cut me off, her expression seemed cold. "Why, my princess... Am I not your real friend?" I was getting rather uncomfortable now. The tension between us was thick enough to cut with a knife. Sugar's face suggested to be edging very close to breaking into a snarl...

"Yes. Well, no... I-I mean-..." I struggled for a good way to put it. "It's like... You know, how I can touch this?" I patted my bed. "That's real. I can't touch you. Y-You're still a real friend, though!"

"... But my princess..." She looked at me, her eyes glistening. "You can." She stepped up to me, stood on her hind legs, making her tower over me, and gave me a hug. I could feel the softness of her fur, I could feel the warmth of her body... I know I should've felt comforted, but it just felt so.... wrong.

I felt like I was losing my mind. She actually touched me. I don't know how that's even possible, but things only got weirder from that day forth. I eventually told her I had to go to bed, since I had my first day back to school the next morning. Not to mention, but it was high school. She asked to lay down with me, and I ended up letting her sleep with me under the covers. I was hoping when I would wake, I'd find that I'd been hallucinating or dreaming, and she'd be gone.

That wasn't the case....

Early the next morning, I woke up for school, and was relieved to see that my bed was empty. I showered, got dressed, ate breakfast, and went to the bus stop where I'd soon be off to school.

She was there.

I looked around to see if anyone was watching, which luckily nobody was, and I raced to my bus stop where I greeted her. I asked her why she was still here, and she simply scoffed and asked "Why wouldn't I be?" As my bus rolled around the corner and down the street, she disappeared, seeming to fade away. I was relieved, and got on the bus, and had the same old boring, awkward first day back to school.

After school, when I was dropped off at my stop, I saw a faded ghost of a large dog waiting at the stop. It was Sugar.

I got off the bus, and as soon as it drove away, she seemed to become clear, and solid as she was that morning and previous night. We continued on down the street, talking to each other as we used to. It was nice, and for the first time since the night before, I had a normal conversation with her all the way home. This routine continued throughout the school year, until a few days before Valentine's day. I went to the stop as usual that day, and even expected her to be there.

She wasn't.

At first, I thought nothing of it, and continued my day until the end of school. I eagerly got off the bus, expecting to see her bright, smiley face awaiting to welcome me back.

She still wasn't there.

It was that weekend, I remember going out to my backyard to call for her, since I thought maybe since she was a fox, she'd be in the woods. I called for her, and within a few moments, somebody screamed for help within the woods. Scared half to death, I ran inside and called the police for help. They showed up a few minutes later, and began to search the woods.

They found the mangled body of one of my classmates. It was all over the news - a 15 year old girl, found with dog bites and 17 knife wounds from what was suspected to be a 6 inch knife.

From that day, everyone was told to be on watch of their kids and not to go out by themselves, and not to be out past 10:00PM. I couldn't help but feel that Sugar had something to do with this - this classmate was a friend of mine, and she was found with BITE WOUNDS from a CANINE. On a side note, while I mourned for her the rest of that month, Sugar didn't bat an eye. It seemed like she'd never even heard about the news, despite me telling her countless times how terrible it was.

For the rest of the school year, more and more of people I met the same gruesome fate as the first girl - stab wounds and bite marks. The police were baffled, because they never found fingerprints, footprints, or even paw prints that lead anywhere to or from the scene. It was like someone was being attacked by a ghost.

When summer began, I decided to confront her, and to ask if she knew anything of it. Of course, she laughed and replied with a no. She seemed abnormally insensitive to all of this, and I intended to catch her red handed.

I bought a shitty camera necklace from eBay that claimed it could secretly livestream through a tiny camera and mic whatever the person could see and hear as it hung on their neck. I gave it to her as a birthday present, and she wore it proudly for me. The first few nights she wore it, nothing happened, but the fourth night, as I sat on my computer and recorded the feed, I was about to turn it off when I saw something interesting that stopped me: Sugar had entered a neighborhood I knew - it was one of my new friend's neighborhoods, I met them at the pool and went over to their house one time. Sugar appeared to be holding a piece of chalk, which she wrote a message on their concrete doorstep:

"hey todd! it's bae. ^^ meet me by the woods in 5 min. thx, see u then ;)"

Then, Sugar knocked rapidly on the door, just before running off to go hide and watch.

I was shocked. Before I could make assumptions, I just continued to watch.

Todd stepped out of the house to answer the door, looked down, and smiled at the chalk message before closing the door and going back inside. The next few minutes were the longest of my life, as I sat there waiting on the computer to see what would happen next. Todd soon walked out of the house, and began heading toward the woods. Sugar went to go erase the message, and quickly followed after him.

It didn't seem like he could see her, since the camera couldn't see any parts of Sugar as she moved. Sugar was soon deep in the woods, and heard Todd call for someone named "Natalie". Sugar called back to him in a voice that sounded nothing like her own, ushering him to go to her. It was very clear what was going on when the camera moved down, though - a 6 inch dagger glinted on the ground glinted in the pale light of the moon. I wanted to call the police, but I didn't know where they were, so I quickly called the police and sent them to Todd's neighborhood was. Panicked and anxious, I couldn't help but keep watching the video stream. I had to know if Todd would make it out of this alive.

Todd could be seen through a few trees, and Sugar picked up the dagger, her hand suddenly visible to the camera. She then threw the blade at him, where it struck him right in the chest. I couldn't help but cry, although I tried to keep quiet so I wouldn't disturb my parents sleeping - as bad as I wanted to tell them what was going on, I knew they'd never believe me about Sugar, and Sugar might kill me next..

Instead, I watched as she walked to him, Todd fallen to his knees. Sugar uttered words I'd never forget.. words she spoke to him in the coldest, most psychotic tone I'd ever heard from anyone ever before:

"I guess they were all right - I'M NOT A REAL FRIEND."

I watched in horror as Sugar ripped the knife out of his chest, and plunged in back in several time, afterwards throwing it off to the side where she began viciously tearing away at his flesh, his own blood gushing out of him. It was like I was watching a real life horror movie, starring my character, and my best friend. I watched as she eventually punched right through his chest and vigorously tore out his lungs, and next thing I knew, the room spun and went black. I passed out.

The next morning, I woke up at 5am, my alarm going off as usual for school. I was still at my computer, but the screen was black: my computer times out, probably. I decided to log back in and check the cam, but... it was off. An error message displayed "Please check your connection and try again." I looked at the clock. 5:03AM. Time to get ready for school, don't wanna be late... So I took a shower, freshened up, and grabbed a waffle to take with me to my bus stop.

When I got to my bus stop, I noticed that Sugar wasn't there as she usually was. I was actually about to get on my bus when I noticed a letter in the grass of the boulevard. Thank god I turned around to get it before getting on. I opened it first thing when I found my seat on the bus.

"Dear Lyra,

''I have found that you have seen the other side of me I was hoping you wouldn't see, and have decided to go off on my own to find a place where I belong. I never intended to hurt you, nor will I ever want to. I'm sorry about your friends, I was just worried you'd like them more and forget about me. What I did was out of jealousy, but I am not opposed to doing it again. Now I will leave you. If I stay, you might get framed for my actions, and I can't do that to my best friend. You will always be my best friend, Lyra. I love you.''

'' Glitter and sparkles 4evr!!! :3 ''

~ Sugar Floss"

And that was it. I never quite saw her again after that day. The murder was all anyone and everyone talked about for weeks, until about a month later things subsided. There was still a lot of missing persons reports, but... none of them were students from my school. Things seemed to return to normal, but I couldn't help but feel it wasn't over. I had a nagging fear that I had yet to see the last of that fox... that horribly evil, murderous fox... Sugar Floss.