Dominions

Chapter 13: Jayden

Jayden let his parents go into the house before he got out of the car. It was going to be a long night of arguing and trying to calm his father down. He walked up to the porch and sat down on the steps of his family's home. He could hear the loud talking of his parents.

"You can't baby him forever, Lorraine!" screamed his father.

"You can't expect him to be perfect in everything, Paul!" responded his mother.

Jayden closed his eyes. He wished that it could just all stop.

The loud hoot of an owl alerted Jayden. His eyes snapped open, but he was no longer at his family's home. He was sitting in the middle of a graveyard. An eyrie smoke was wistfully spinning over the grass, and sitting before him was a giant stone angel. It looked strong and was holding a sword up in the air.

"Where the hell am I?!" Jayden gasped, looking around the graveyard.

He recognized this place. He had visited this graveyard multiple times in his dreams, but this time it was different. Jayden could smell the scent of death in the air. He could feel the mugginess of the weather. It was as if someone put a grey filter on reality before Jayden got here. Everything looked dead and rotted.

Trees surrounded the cemetery, and sounds made Jayden's heart quicken with each strained branch and creepy sound. He got up and backed away quickly from the cemetery. He ran in between the tombstones, desperately searching for a way out of the dark maze. He got to the edge of the forest clearing, and before he could take a step toward it, a hand reached up from the ground and gripped his ankle.

"Aiken," he heard a creepy voice whisper. "Prince of the dead. We've waited a long time for you to return."

Jayden screamed as he tried to kick off the hand that grabbed him, but the grip was ironclad. He kicked his foot over and over again, but there was no budge. "Let go of me!" he screamed. He fell to the ground and watched as multiple hands reached up from the buried graves. Slowly, bodies started to emerge from the ground, and Jayden stared into the eyes of a corpse as it wiggled its way up to the surface.

"Hello, Lord of death," whispered the corpse with a sick grin.

"I-," Jayden gasped. He could hear the blood filling up in his head as his adrenaline started to flow. The pulsing of his heart almost drowned out his frightened voice. "I, please! Let me go!"

"This is who holds the dominions over us?!" laughed one of the corpses. "The baby is screaming for mercy! Isn't he supposed to bestow that on us?!"

A chorus of dark laughter filled the air, and Jayden felt shivers to his core.

Shit, shit, shit. Jayden thought to himself, frozen in fear. Calm down, Jayden. You can find a way out here.

But as the grip remained on his ankle, he began to realize that he was not going to get out of this situation by just kicking and begging to be let go.

A dark cloud traveled over the graveyard as multiple corpses stalked toward Jayden. He finally kicked his leg free and turned to run, but dead beings surrounded all sides of him. He placed his hands over his ears and screamed as they put their boney hands on him.

"STOP!" screamed Jayden.

He pushed their hands off. He felt the rough patches of skin and cried out in terror as pieces of dead flesh fell on him from the walking corpses that surrounded him. He curled himself into a ball and tucked his head into his lap when a bright white light shot out through the sky. The corpses retreated as a white flame trickled down to the center where Jayden was curled up. He heard the screams of the dead as they fleed from around him, but he was too scared to open his eyes.