Irene, My dead best friend [Wattys 2015]

Chapter 15: Centaurs or Minotaurs?

Chapter 15: Centaurs or Minataurs?

“Valkyrie patted Fletcher’s arm. “Don’t worry,” she said. “If the bad man comes, I’ll protect you.”

“If the bad man comes,” Fletcher responded, “I’ll bravely give out a high-pitched scream to distract him. I may even bravely faint, to give him a false sense of security. That will be your signal to strike.”

“We make a great team.”

“Just don’t forget to stand in front of me the whole time,” he said.” 

― Death Bringer by Derek Landy

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I tried to gulp but my mouth had gone dry. Instinctually, I inched myself closer to Irene and watched closely as she dipped the stick into the puddle of dirty blood-like liquid. There was no way of being certain if it was blood at all but I wasn’t stupid, I took biology in school. I could see that the blood had a thick consistency and there was something floating around in it, I squinted my eyes to see better, floating beetles. They were huge, dead, black beetles floating around bringing only one word to my mind, death.

“Irene….” I couldn’t say anything further but my calling out to her got her attention. She turned around slowly to look at me and I realized she had tears in her eyes, but she wasn’t crying. It hit me like a bullet train then because I remembered her crying like that back home and the visions I had seem from her. The vision in which I had very much seen a man lying down on the floor surrounded by rivers of blood but most of all what I remembered was his screams of agony because of his missing left leg. The sudden flash back made me look back at the blood-puddle on the floor, looking exactly like the pattern that man had made on the floor.

I stepped back in horror, my eyes going wide and my hands jumping to my face to cover my open, shocked mouth. Fear reflected in Irene’s and my eyes causing our eyes to lock in place. There was no knowing who was more afraid but we didn’t have time to think of that. Before I could even process how a vision reminiscent of the mid 90’s had similar looking, not-that-old-looking blood here in my forest, there was a loud roar/screech that came from East of the woods.

 Both of our heads jerked in the direction of the sound but before I could ask about it, Irene was running towards me, grabbing my hands, “Jason, we have to get out of here, NOW!”

And then we were running. Irene was dragging me by the hand, me vaguely aware that I could not feel her hand but there was a pull coming from her and I could not fight it, not that I was trying.  I could feel my heart jumping into my mouth and Irene and I ran for our lives,

“What is that, Irene?!” I asked her between puffy breaths. Irene had chosen to run through the woods instead of taking the path which lead us to being slapped in the face with low lying branches and leaves wrecking havoc. I could feel the skin on my face and arms getting scratched up by the branches slapping me but there was no stopping us.

“What we saw yesterday,” it was all she had to say to make me run faster with her. If those cannibals/vampires/whatever-they-were were out there and could smell us, we were both screwed. At this point I was secretly regretting the fact that I had never done any physical activity in my life because stitches were starting to form in my sides and I was running out of breath.

“Irene…I can’t…run..” I couldn’t even get an entire sentence out as I got slapped again with a branch full of leaves but Irene was having none of that. We were running as fast as our legs could carry us and at this point and I was losing sense of direction. I knew the south of the woods, that faced my house quite well but I had never ventured so deep into them, ever. On this end, the trees were older and bigger, standing tall and cutting off any sun with the canopy of giant, green leaves that stood above us. The ground had lesser sand and more greenery with little bushes, grass and leaves covering most of it, looking a lot like a forest.

It was when I could breathe no longer than I yanked Irene to a stop and pulled her amongst a thick cluster of trees up ahead. There was a small hollowing at the root of one of the trees and I pushed Irene in and went in after her, protecting her (in my own way) and block the entrance.

“Why’d you stop?!” Irene hissed at me, anger fully taking over her face when which looked absolutely perfect except for the crown of windswept hair on her head meanwhile I was drenching in sweat which left my shirt all wet and perspiration dripped down the sides of my face while I tried to take in forced deep breaths to stop my lungs from collapsing.

“Because…I couldn’t…run…anymore,” it caused me pain to get that sentence out but before I could say anything, we heard footsteps approaching us. Clearly, Irene hadn’t heard them because I could see her open her mouth to give me a mouthful but I had my hand covering her mouth in a flash, watching her eyes open wide in bewilderment. It took all my strength to calm my harshly loud breathing and signaling Irene with my other finger to my mouth to keep quite. I then pointed at my ears, indicating to her that she had to listen. I was vaguely aware that the hand that covered her face felt as though I was pushing against air but I ignored that and focused on the footsteps coming from outside.

They were heavy footsteps, as though coming from an adult but what had me sweating even worse was that the footsteps were approaching us. I shuffled into the hollow root, pushing Irene along the way, as much as I could while trying to be silent, hoping they wouldn’t notice my blue shirt at the entrance.  It was when they footsteps came close enough, that the blood drained from my face and I could feel Irene fidgeting around, clearly freaking out under my palm. I covered her mouth tighter and hugged her to me, my heart beating at the speed of light, me almost being able to hear it. The footsteps approached hallow entrance and then we saw them.

They weren’t really “foot” steps per say, more like hoove steps.  What stood in front of me, just outside the hollow root, was a pair of toned, human legs that lead down to hooves that replaced feet. They were giant, fairy hooves and they were pointed in our direction.

I swallowed audibly, something I had been doing quite a lot lately.

©Hafsa T.M (aka HTMwrites)

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A/N: I love the Skullduggery presents series and read a few while growing up. I just thought the conversation between Valkyrie and Fletcher seemed a lot like how Jason and Irene are at the moment :)