Forewarned (BEING REWRITTEN)

The Train to Nowhere

I was somewhere deep in the forest, the kind of dark, scary forest that grew only in Grimm fairy tales somewhere in Germany.  I knew I was running away from another foster parent. This one had too many cats. She'd have given me up anyway. I had too much energy. That's what most of them said. The ones that didn't know what I was really doing when I was out "exploring."

I had run all day and my feet were starting to get tired. Slowing to a stop, I looked around me as a strange wind rustled the leaves. A female figure, armed with a spear, stepped out of the hiding place. It was her, with her olive skin and her shocking blue eyes and long black hair. She was wearing leather like an assassin, strapped over her chest with thick black buckles and twisting behind her in sharp coattails laced with black. My mother. Or what I thought she'd look like. Except I usually imagined her with a turtleneck and slacks.

"Mom?" I thought but the words never made it out. She plunged her spear below my rib cage.

I sat up so fast that my head throbbed painfully. "Ughh," I groaned, running my hand through my hair. That's when the full moon of a face caught my attention. "Yuh!" I jumped back and pressed my body to the rumbling wall.

"Good morning Shadow Boy!" What appeared the be a morning person beamed at me behind wide-set oval glasses.

"Huh? Who-who," my eyes ran from her buggy gaze to her pigtails to her ugly multicolored lab coat, to the area around me. We were in a ridiculously small room that was actually moving. By the rhythmic clicks and bumps, I guessed we were on a train. Blinds were pulled over the windows, casting us into semi-darkness. As I looked at the bland white walls, she was scribbling something down on her lime green notepad.

Suddenly she raised a thin metallic tube and pressed a small black button on the side. What immediately followed was a burst of agony and momentary blindness. It felt like a hot griddle had been shoved in my face and had melted my eyeballs. A shockwave of pain shook me to the core of my being and I immediately shoved my face to the pillow with a shriek.

"Hmm." I could hear her scratching down notes over my whimpers. Then, a small poke to my shoulder. I flinched.

"That's a pen, silly," she sighed as if I was an absolute idiot for being freaked out by her human experimentation. "And what I just did? I shone a flashlight on you."

"You tased me!" I wheezed into the pillow.

"No. It's a flashlight. See?" She handed it over and I basically flung myself to the other side of the bed to get away from it.

Her intense gaze went to my face. She then started jotting down more notes furiously. Meanwhile, I spotted movement behind her chair, crawling up the wall. I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but what's a guy supposed to say when he sees a ghost? Duck?

"Well, that was interesting. Any strange dreams?" She leaned over and opened a slim plastic case. A needle about as long as my finger was flicked by a thick finger. A single bubble floated through the clear liquid.

"Hey. Hey. Where are you sticking tha--Ah!" I yelled as she plunged it in my bicep. I felt a cold burn rush in my veins. "Aren't you supposed to... put... rubbing alcohol on that?" I wheezed.

She yanked it out and tossed it in the container aside. "Weird dreams?" she echoed when a black creature fell from the ceiling and onto her head. I screamed. She screamed louder. The creature screamed. Someone outside our cabin screamed.

She managed to fling it off and it flew onto my lap, hitting me with a fluid thonk. She scrambled for  her notes and continued screaming all the way out of the cabin, slamming the door behind her.