Immortal's Bind

Chapter 1

The sweltering heat accompanied by the all-too-overpowering feeling of an unwelcome presence made me certain of one thing. He was here. My eyelids fluttered open to confirm what I knew to be true and sure enough, he was here.

Standing off to the side of my bed, crouched over me, was the dangerously beautiful man who’d been haunting me in my dreams. With his head cocked to the side, he flashed me a crooked smile that sent unpleasant shivers dancing up and down my spine.

As I gazed at him, I couldn’t help but think that this was the strangest man I’d ever seen. He had hair the color of night which fell freely unto his face, partially obscuring his onyx eyes. What sort of human had hair or eyes of such an exotic color? His skin was another topic entirely. It was a harsh contrast with his hair and it was inhumanly pale. The strangest part of it was that it didn’t look unhealthy or ghastly. In fact, it suited him quite nicely, as if any other color on him would’ve been plain wrong. He was beautiful.

His beauty, however, did not draw me in to him. If anything, I was repelled by the man. No matter what angle I looked at him from, all I ever saw was danger. He was like a bad omen to me. Something along the lines of black birds circling overhead.

“Get ready Karen,” his eerie voice paralyzed me. “It is time to go.”

I readied myself for a response, hoping that this time I would be allowed one. But as expected, I was jerked forcefully into consciousness before a single word could escape me.

                                                            *****

My mornings usually start off crappy. That’s understandable since my nights are even crappier – they've been so for the past two weeks, at least. I’ve been waking up with a start, as if some troublemaker had found its way into my unconscious and emptied a bucket of chilly water on me. Looking at my sweat-covered body after waking up, I could almost believe that I’d indeed been doused with water. The bottom line is that my mornings are really, really crappy.

They were not always so bad. In fact, my current night and morning predicament only began two weeks ago. Just randomly. It always started with that dream – nightmare, rather. I can’t see how encountering the same extraordinary-looking man who said the same creepy thing to me every single night in my dreams could be anything but a nightmare. It was a bad omen. He was a bad omen. And he’d done a brilliant job of ruining the rest of my day, again. Especially since last night his usual ominous warning had taken a slight change.

He’d always said, “Get ready, Karen.” But last night, he added, “it is time to go.”

If that didn’t spell creepy, then I couldn’t possibly fathom what did.

As I rolled off my tornado-stricken bed, I groaned when I saw that the time on my alarm clock read 5:23 a.m. It was much too early for me to be up. I didn’t have to be in school till 8:00 a.m. and I lived only about a twenty minutes walking distance from school. So I decided to take the liberty of having a very long shower. That usually helped with my mornings.

About two hours later I was greeted by the scent of newly made toast as I sauntered into my kitchen. My mom was setting down breakfast. Only for my dad though, as always.

“Morning, mom,” I mumbled as I stole a toast from my dad’s loaded plate. Seeing as he wasn’t anywhere in the kitchen, I assumed he was still getting ready. I stole another toast.

“Sometimes I wonder if you know what the word manners means,” my mom glared at me through her impossibly long lashes. It was really hard to take her seriously with her ash brown hair flying in all different directions. Someone must’ve just gotten out of bed. I stifled a laugh.