When The Storm Ends Chapter 2

After that, her things started to get tampered with. An apple she’d left on her desk was found with sewing needles stuffed inside the flesh. Her backpack—opened to find cockroaches crawling out from its hidden compartment. Someone even planted a blood-stained sanitary napkin in her lunchbox. And every so often, she’d find notes in red pen, covered in vile, hateful words.

Eventually, Vivian couldn’t take it anymore and completely broke down. Her teacher, outraged upon discovering this, immediately halted classes to investigate. But the class remained silent; nobody spoke up, and the investigation reached a dead end.

The class monitor, Tyson Carden, suggested an anonymous vote. Maybe then, someone would reveal the culprit. And sure enough, when the votes came in, nearly every one of them pointed to Jacob Thorn. Right there in class, the teacher searched Jacob’s pencil case and found a whole pack of needles, a container full of cockroaches, two unopened sanitary pads, and several adult magazines.

With Jacob condemned, the stories about his “other dirty habits” started to circulate. Someone claimed he’d sneak back to the classroom during morning exercises to lick Vivian’s cup. Another said he would linger around her desk after school, sniffing her chair. Someone else swore they’d seen him staring at her while she slept, drooling, and rubbing himself.

Hearing this, Vivian ran to the bathroom, retching for what felt like hours. She refused to leave home for a month, too traumatized to return to school. Her homeroom teacher, Ms. Loretta Banks, along with a few other class leaders, came to visit her, promising that Jacob had been “handled.” His parents had taken him out of school, and he wouldn’t ever be coming back.

With enough reassurance, Vivian finally returned to school. Jacob was gone, and things seemed normal again. But the psychological scars he left on her would never heal.

Vivian started having recurring nightmares. She’d describe to us in detail how, in her dreams, she’d be trapped in a dark tunnel with a pair of eyes staring relentlessly at her. No matter how hard she ran, there was no end, no escape from that gaze. Because of these nightmares, Vivian stopped wearing bright clothes, refused to go out after dark, and began to fear even the presence of boys.

But, as fate would have it, one day during high school, everything changed.

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