Love Bites 1 (Austin Mahone Oneshot)

Chapter 25: A Dead Body

~Carmen Silver's P.O.V~

Every night for the rest of the week I’ve had nightmares. I’ve woken up to Lily shaking me furiously and my own blood curling screams. I was exhausted from the lack of sleep and the large amounts of crying I’ve been doing.

For some reason, the nightmares keep coming back. They’re different though; sometimes I’m in the forest like during the treasure hunt, other times I’m in the cave. Sometimes that man is there, sometimes he isn’t. One time he wasn’t there, but I was chained to the wall and couldn’t get free no matter how hard I yanked against the mental cuffs.

One thing I was sure about though, was that every night they got worse and worse. I don’t know why, but I have a gut feeling that they’re warnings.

So, today was Friday. It was early morning….again. I was used to waking up early in the morning because of nightmares, but today I had had enough. I woke up feeling exhausted but restless, so I decided I’d go jogging today again.

I pulled on a pair of sweats, a tank top and a sweater. I didn’t grab my I-Pod because not being able to hear what was going on around me scared me to death.

I slipped out of the house silently and took off jogging down the street. It was five thirty in the morning, but I didn’t care. Maybe exercising would make me so exhausted that I’ll just pass out later on tonight without nightmares.

I jogged for almost two hours, and I felt even more exhausted than I had during the week. My limbs were heavy and my lungs felt like they were going to explode. I slid to a stop and bent over, hands on my knees as I tried to catch my breath.

A wave of unease washed over me and a familiar prickling feeling made the hair on my neck stand on end. I straightened up and looked around, and noted that I had stopped right next to the forest. The early morning light, it didn’t seem so bad. But looking deeper into the forest, I could see the darkness inside it.

I sniffed the air cautiously, and there was that metallic scent again, which I now recognized as blood, except it was stale.

I stared at the forest for a moment before looking up and down the street; there was no one. So I took a deep breath and stepped into the forest.

I was sick and tired of being afraid of something that most probably was just my imagination. So, that’s why I swallowed hard and kept again into the inky blackness. I followed the scent of blood and hoped I could find the scent of the thing that wasn’t quite animal and wasn’t quite human either.

I walked cautiously for a long time, just sniffing the air. I had already made it to the darker, creepier part of the forest where everything was dead…where I had found the blood on the rock.

I shuddered and continued walking around, trying to calm my pounding heart, as the scent of stale blood seemed to grow stronger.

I heard a twig snap, and I stopped, my head whipping around to follow the sound. But there was nothing and no one around, so I kept moving as silently through the forest as a shadow.

I finally found the rock with blood, except the blood was dried now. I sniffed it, trying to figure out who it belonged to. The scent was somehow familiar to me, but I just couldn’t place it.

I sat there for a while; crouched next to the rock, just thinking about whose blood it was….until I heard it.

Death.

I stiffened and my eyes widened. I knew it couldn’t have been a nightmare, it was just wishful thinking.

I heard it again and again, and my fear seemed to slowly creep up and tried to swallow me whole.