Beguile

Chapter 14

Twigs broke beneath me.

Shoes burned off my skin.

And there's heavy moss attached in my lungs. I cant breath.

Yet I ran, and ran, and ran. Whenever I look, there are just trees which seems to alter every second. Each step makes everything foreign, the sky, the trees, even the dead leaves that falls like dark snow. Im lost, and the silent forest made it seem like Im alone. For a moment, a thought cross my mind: Maybe everyone had died.

But thats nonsense. I can still hear the host's voice like a nightmare that sleeps in my brain, everyone are criminals, and so far, two are murderers.

I have met them as prey but I still lived. I lack the strength yet I somehow defend myself.... No... Im just... its just luck. A little luck that will someday drain.

I shake the thought. It will exhaust me more. At this moment, I dont want to think of my classmates, especially my friends whom now might be shivering from fear. More so with Elisse who trips from a single dust. A sad smile broke out from my lips. My friends- I feel bad for only remembering them now.

The surrounding is still unfamiliar, and so far there are no buildings but thats better, from my experience buildings are bad news.

I kept running still, not knowing where to go.

Running and running and running but I didnt plan ahead. Until suddenly, my feet didnt hit the ground.

An uneven patch had caught my foot. My shoes slid through the pebbles, and I ended up rolling down a downhill. I felt branches poke my head, leaves in my hair, and sharp rocks cut through my skin till I landed on a heavy thud.

My back stings, swollen from the ceaseless friction against marbled floor and now from dirt bedeck with tiny splinters. I slowly stood, ignoring how my once black cotton pants is now sprinkled with white dusts. I had to look around while supporting my back incased my spine did break.

The surrounding is utterly unfamiliar. I havent been in the woods a lot till the horror-of-a-celebration, but as I go back and forth when everything's in chaos I saw nothing that hints an incline.

I look up, but it only made me admit defeat. I couldn't go back up, not with my body bruised and internally aching. Maybe a broken rib really isn't just drama.

I became alerted when dead leaves crunch near me.

I stood still on my feet. Maybe a twig fell, or a squirrel leaping away for acorns but I couldn't be too sure, my eyes trembles as it wanders around.

I move forward, my knees trembles from the cold.

Another crunch

The trees around seem to become bigger, and the air like a blur. I rub my eyes, then I rub them again but it didn't disappear. I can barely see the sky with the large leaves covering them, but I can see that the sun is gone. The air became filled with a calm fog.

Crunch

What if that boy had caught up?

Crunch

The sound is getting nearer. In a panic I called out "Hello?"

"Hello"

I bolted. I'm sure that it wasn't an echo.

My knees still haven't heal, and my shoes is biting the back of my feet -flesh squishing against each other. But I didn't stop, I can hear another pair of feet rustles on the ground behind me.

I ran faster. Hoping this one wouldn't bother to catch up.

"Wait, stop" a girly voice cut through the wind. She made herself known, but Im not one to yield. I have enough of meeting murderers. I'd rather be alone, than with someone who would scheme against me.

My feet felt like it was flying, but its not a good thing. I couldn't ran well with shoes too small for me, I couldn't feel my knees. And I couldn't stop running. When I saw the edge of the ground, I fear that I might fall.

I have to stop myself somehow. I was going down on a curve, and when I saw rocks the size of a skull, I knew I have to trip myself.

Thud

I swam over a pool of sticky crimson, cold from the vast view. 1 inch and I could've fall onto the pit and break my bones into splintering bits.

I felt dust caught my eye, but it was a mistake to rub it with hands as if dip into barbecue sauce. Im now left with 1 eye, bleeding  knees, and a silhouette trembling down the curve.

"Wait". She caught up, leaning onto her knees. "Im wheezing  -OHMYGOD, you lost your eye!"

Her voice was familiar. The mannerism, that extremely high pitch, that expression. I almost cried when I call out her name. "Elise?"

"Yes! Why you run like that? If you did that in P.E class, our team could've won." She asked, dramatically wheezing and rubbing her chest. "And now you lost an eye."

"Why did you creep onto me like that? If I had a gun, I could've shoot you!"

"Now now." She kneel to grab my shoulders. "Tell me, why are you bleeding like that?"

I looked at myself. Gluey dark red covered both of my hands, with streaks of now dry crimson run across my white baggy shirt which bears a resemblance of a hidden abrasion. I lifted my shirt, there's a forming bruise when I landed stomach first, but no signs of wound. I did scrape my knee -multiple times- and my feet is sore, but this much...

"It's not mine" I finally said, only when I looked on my shoes when I realized that the sticky liquid had stretch so far. It's a ledge, and where Im sitting is a pool of dried blood.

"I think.... I think I know where this is. There was a dead body here." El cut my thoughts off.

"A body? Whose?"

"If I remember correctly. Let me see, hmmm..." She stood in front of me, pointing to the top. "From there... Ehhh, Ken I think you should get up from there" She forcefully lifted me up. Elise is taller than me, but I didn't know she'd be this strong.

"Why, whats wrong?"

"I don't know if I should be glad that it isn't your blood or not."

A sudden nausea had reached Elise, she gag as she grimly wipe her palms against the soil. "You should roll around the dirt, you're full of the-" she swallowed it, but the sour taste in her mouth made her retch in disgust.

I dont know what's wrong but I copied her anyway, wiping dried blood off of my palm.

"What's wrong?" I asked again.

"I think that's where Femi fell. No offense to her but she died a looonggg time ago. I swear, I saw tiny twiggly's swimming in there somewhere. What if it's already on me? What if maggots burrow through my skin and lay eggs on my intestines? Do they do that? They probably do that." She whined incessantly, still rubbing her hand on the dirt. Then she stopped. Her gaze towards the empty bloody ledge as if she just noticed something. "Her body is missing"

I wasnt surprised. I had been kept in a room with a melting corpse, and I remember what Karl said when he tried to kill me.

Femi is a fucking drab.