Behind The Locks || ONC 2024

Chapter 11: Supernatural

Arielline’s face flickered with a touch of panic, doubting how simple finding answers could be.

Jeepers Creepers strode towards the garbage containers, slowly like he was a bridegroom in his own wedding, his giant boots leaving a heavy impact on the innocent cobblestone.

Arielline hesitated, pending to see the miracle happen; the wall turning into a path, an elevator appearing from underneath the ground, or the garbage containers turning into a car, but neither of that happened.

The man dived into the garbage container on his left, head first then the body followed.

First, Arielline thought that it was some kind of secret entryway, but the crazy man did not disappear into the container, instead he began rummaging through trash bags.

Might she have crashed into another mad man in town and was up to taking part with him to seek half-bitten hotdogs from trash bags?

But no mad man would be acquainted with her quest for seeking answers.

Reluctantly, she took the first step. Earning her trust was not as easy as telling her what her ears wanted to hear.

The other foot followed, her eyes meticulously glaring at Jeepers Creepers. Any unpredicted movement and she would have to put her heels into work.

Getting to the border of the chain, she felt a strong plunge of a wave that rammed her and sent her flying unceremoniously across the air and eventually landing on the ground, rolling severally like a loose car tire before being hitched by a wall at the far end.

Agonizing pain struck her like a meteorite from space. She couldn't brake the dead-awakening scream that came out next.

Excruciating pain would be nothing but an understatement. Say being torn from limb to limb and that too would not be fit to define the kind of pain that settled upon her body.

What had just happened was supernatural, like the chain held some kind of external force that thrust her to the ends of the alley.

Regaining composure was the hardest part, with every organ in her body threatening to breakdown.

Propping her back against a wall, she tucked her left sleeve, her hands shaking like a leaf and tears of anguish tumbling down her cheeks.

Her grounds were shaken by the fresh wound on her elbow. She knew she had been hit but not so bad. Equal to her right elbow, the effect seared more than it should have.

She had protected her face with both her forearms, instinctively, but feeling a warm metallic-smelling liquid fall out of her nose, she was bewildered.

She grazed her fingers to her forehead and there was another fresh wound. Surprising, at the exact same spot she had been hit during the fall in the library. 

The idea that all the wounds from the library's crash had boomeranged befell her and sure enough they had.

Below her right chest cavity was the bruise that denied her the right to walk that day, flooding with a crimson color. 

Even though she could not tuck her slinky sweatpants to the knees, the pain could tell that there were damages done. The appearing reddish smear of color reinforced her statement.

Whatever had just happened returned her injuries back and more pain, but not for long. From her right elbow, pain begun reseeding.

She couldn't notice out of sheer panic but as soon as she did she was mesmerized.

A bluish effect invading like a smoldering piece of paper ate up the wound so gently that she felt not a thing. It came with small floating sparks of the same color, just by the area of the wound, that ebbed to nothing but thin air.

It fixed her tissues and restored her hand up and running.

Everything like a damaged tissue in it was fixed, like nothing had happened.

Her other hand went through the same effect, her eyes mesmerized and confused in the same magnitude. 

Since when did she know so little about her own body?

It went on in the speed of light that she was left to balance the seesaw between whether what had just happened was a piece of her own imagination or it was real and had just happened in front of her eyes.

"I knew it was you."

The voice called her off from the reverie, an axe angled towards her head. Jeepers Creepers was all but in a friendly look.