.:ShOrT StOrY:.

I like to write, a lot. Mostly short stories, so I thought I'd share one with you.

"I'm sorry!" she screamed, gripping the desk in front of her so hard her knuckles turned white. Tears streamed from teal-colored eyes, but the panel of judges in front of her remained unmoved.

The room was pure white- it was the same classroom she was forced to sit in day in and day out. There was no color to the room beyond what she and the judges brought. As if color would somehow distract from learning and not open the mind, as it was often wont to do.

Before her stood a long, gray table behind which the judges sat. As if their stern but cool expressions weren't enough to terrify the girl, the child, they were present on the faces of the ones she loved the most. The ones she'd always feared to disappoint. They sat at that table- her mother, her father, her two dearest friends, and at the very center, her sister. Before her sister was a small but ominous red button.

As soon as she had been led into the room and shown to her desk, the questions had stared. All manner of questions about all kinds of subjects. Geography, maths, English, her thoughts, her feelings, science, history, her views. She'd answered every one right, to her own amazement. But then they asked her one she didn't know. She'd stare at them in blank terror. They waited and waited until finally her father asked: "Well?"

"I-I-I-" she stuttered, voice cracking as her eyes started to burn and then shine with unshed tears. "I don't know," she whispered finally.

There was a quiet murmur between the judges. But not her sister. All she could see was disapprovement and that cut through her heart like the sharpest knife. The others feel deadly silent as her sister spoke.

"That is an unacceptable answer," she said coldly. An index finger hovered over the button, just centimeters away. Fear gripped the child's heart as hard as she gripped the desk.

"I'm sorry!" she cried, tears falling freely. "I'm sorry-" she broke into sobs, unable to speak any more.

"I'm very disappointed in you," her sister said, as if they were the only two in the room. The finger closed the distance between it and the button.

Beneath the girl, the floor slowly pulled back, extreme heat rising. The desk started to tip and fall. She screamed and tried to grab onto anything possible, anything that would keep her out of the flames below. Out of Hell.

Her hands caught the edge of the pit in an effort to save herself as the desk fell into the flames and never did she stop screaming. "Sister! Sister!" she screamed, tears fizzling off her cheeks in the heat.

She heard the footsteps and looked up, into the face of her sister. The cold blue eyes bored into hers. "Yes?" she asked with no emotion.

"Save me," the child pleaded. "Please. I love you."

For a long moment their eyes locked and held. In the child's eyes, the sister saw nothing but pleading, hope and love, even in the face of death. In the sister's eyes, the child saw a perfect mask in place over the emotions of the elder, blue eyes freezing the other.

"No," the sister said, raising her foot to stomp on the fingers of the girl.

With a cry of anguish straight from her soul, the child dropped into the bowels of Hell. The last thing she saw was the unmoved expression on her beloved sister's face.