Tanya's Story (Pre-Embrace)

You've seen the type before. The cute and sexy blonde in the skimpy clothes, all smiles and sweetness, with just that little bit of uninhibited sass that tells you she's one of the rich and popular. She makes the other girls jealous, and she wraps the boys around her finger like her favorite ring. She's the highschool dream girl's highschool dream girl, and if you don't know who she is, you ask as soon as you see her.
This girl in particular? Her name was Tanya, and on the outside, she was everything you could ask for and more. But underneath that popular-girl glamour and rich-bitch charisma, she was anything but a dream, and her life was no different. Out of school, away from the one place where she had the utmost attention and control of nearly everything she saw, her personal life was constantly hounded by conflicts, drama and unreasonable demands courtesy of her parents. She was the only child of two wealthy and successful individuals, and it simply wouldn't do for her not to live up to their expectations. Mommy wanted her to be the girl who was as academic as she was attractive, refusing to let any daughter of hers become the next dumb blonde. Daddy wanted athleticism to go with her beauty, pushing her into gymnastics classes on top of the cheerleading activities he'd already expected of her.
She had her own interests, of course. Every girl does. But hers were a bit different from what other most other girls take to in their youth. As she was growing up, she'd developed a love of rock music, crafts, cartoons and especially comic books. Wild, unconventional ideas were her meat and drink, and the special kind of joy she got from reading a well-drawn comic or listening to a good Alice In Chains, Faith No More or Queens of the Stone Age record. But as she got older, her parents grew intolerant of her more unusual hobbies and began strongarming her into activities they deemed more beneficial to her growth. Over time, she was forced to give up the things she enjoyed, because as much as those things meant to her, her parents' acceptance and approval meant more.
Their insistence upon grooming her into their ideal girl yielded the results they were looking for. She scored straight As for most of her school years, and she excelled in her cheerleading and gymnastic activities, becoming the head cheerleader as well as the top gymnast in her school. But over time, her parents' browbeating attitudes took root in the girl's own personality. She sought to control people the same way she had been controlled throughout her childhood, and as such she began to remodel herself into the type of girl who made everyone jealous and struck everyone else in awe. And for a while, it worked. She became the most popular and envied girl in the school, and she used her status to play with everyone's emotions and make them do what she wanted. She made boys dance and made
other girls cry, and it was the most satisfying thing in the world to her.
But by then, Tanya was faced with a new problem. As she had grown older, she had become increasingly aware that something was wrong with the way her moods changed. She was never happy for too long, and when she was, it was almost always at the expense of someone else. She started falling into depression more and more as she approached her late teens, and soon enough, she began having these awful moments where she felt like there was some unseen pressure building inside her, waiting for the right moment to explode on something or someone or somewhere. She gradually lost her patience with others and their failings, growing tired of the many disingenuous people she had surrounded herself with, and as a result she began taking out her feelings on many of those she had made friends with. Slowly but surely, she was losing control of herself, and it was all she could do to last until graduation without snapping completely.
But it was on that very fateful Graduation Day that everything spiraled out of control. There was an after-party at one of the students' houses, and naturally, she was invited there by everyone who could get close enough to her to ask. She didn't want to go, but she couldn't refuse. It could turn out to be the most boring party in history, and the girl everyone had gone out of their way to invite would still be obligated to show up. She'd never live it down if she didn't.
Her boyfriend, the one boy she'd ever really cared about in the school, was there. She'd expected that much. He'd even been one of the ones to invite her. What she hadn't wanted was to run into him during one of her episodes...And what she hadn't expected was to catch him cheating with one of her best friends.
The two of them tried to explain themselves away, but none of it registered. Blind with fury and manic rage, she grabbed the closest thing she could find and swung as hard as she could.
And then the sound of her friend's body hitting the floor brought her crashing back to reality. She looked down to find the other girl's body sprawled awkwardly on the bedroom carpet, her head twisted sideways, face frozen in permanent shock. Realization came slowly, but it came nonetheless. She was dead.
By the time the rest of the freshly-graduated students at the party had become aware that something was wrong, she was already running. She sprinted out of the house, scared and overwhelmed, and nobody was quick enough to stop her...