Tiptoe Through The Tulips

Ten

Ace's P.O.V

The water pushed down on me from all sides, I could feel the air being dragged from my gasping lungs. The more I struggled the more disoriented I became. As my throat began to burn, I began to think; is this it? All this time I've been ready to face death, and here it is? This is how I'm going to go? No, this can't be it. I mustered together all of my remaining strengh and forced my head to resurface above the water, taking a huge gasp of air I could feel my lungs filling with water suffocating any bit of oxygen that remained. "Fuck sake Ace, you didn't win an 100 metres swimming certificate for nothing". With that being said I pushed upwards once more with all my remaining energy, and managed to resurface above the merciless waters.

Expecting to see Robin standing at the edge waiting for me; with a scared to death look on his face, I was disappointed to find that I was somewhere else entirely, nowhere near my brother or the highway from which we had just came. This new area was a wasteland; debris and rocks strewn recklessly across burnt coloured sand as if it had been freshly destroyed by a raging forest fire. A mysterious and eerie feeling tempted to creep into the crevasses of my mind but I shook it off, and found that as I stomped carelessly across the ground in my black heavy boots the sand would crack and break off revealing a marble stone underneath. Surveying and observing the whole strip of land, I discovered that this wasn't a foreign occourance, underneath me, everywhere around me was a hard stone, I believed it to be marble but I wasn't so sure. Out of nowhere I was hit by a forceful gust of wind that caused my lungs to cough up any remaining lake water, salty, but not as salty as Aunt Josephine is going to be if she's still alive. Damn the bitch would literally resurrect just to whip us both one last time, I bet that was her only regret. 'I'm just sorry I didn't get to crucify those rotten boys before I went', her always disappointed voice rang like a drone in my ears.

Finally gathering all my senses together I opened my eyes once again wide and alert to see that my immediate surroundings had completely changed, the sand beneath my feet had almost...dissolved and completely revealed that the stone that was once concealed underneath bore some strange markings...A cult maybe? If that's true I know that I want to be anywhere else but here right now, suddenly aware of where I could be I grew paranoid, my beating heart was the only thing that I could hear and the blood rushing to my head was all that I could feel. However, I had a right to be concered, for all around me red tulips were sprouting out of the ground, one by one they emerged from the obscure markings that the stone held. Then and there I knew it was my queue to get the hell away, but then pausing to pick up a tulip a chill tiptoed across my skin, a distorted image of a man in a suit and a blood covered flower invaded my mind. What does this mean...