Running Hopeful (NewtxReader)

Chapter 5: In Memory

George hissed in pain. "Its too tight!"

"Shut up. This is for your own good." I snapped back.

"You trying to squeeze my head off woman?" I felt like I should be angry at him, but the way he said it sent strange shivers down my spine and I felt a familiar heat rise to my face.

Curly finished tying the bandage off and we let George stand again. Floofy lent him a shoulder to lean on and looked down the three pathways. "We'll split up." The Asian boy said. "George and I will go this way. You keep going ahead. Longlocks, you take the left path."

I nodded, trying to hide the distinct fear I felt of wandering through the maze alone.

"Only make three turns." George instructed. "Remember your path, if you don't find anything, come back here and wait for the others. We're not going to lose each other, you hear?"

"Right." Curly nodded. "I don't see anyway for this to go wrong." He said it so casually, it took me a moment to realize it was sarcasm.

I smirked and punched him on the arm. "Sassy, coming from the kid who dropped the map in the first place."

"Yeah, everyone knows being sassy is my thing." Floofy looked indignant.

"Since when?" I scoffed.

"Look," Floofy sighed looking me in the eye. "Just because you have the awareness and observational skills of a crowbar-"

"Are you two done?" George interjected, looking irritable. "How bout less insults, more maze solving?" Floofy flicked hair, imbued with every atom of sassiness in his body, then shifted George to bear less of the weight and the two of them started off down the rightside path.

Curly laughed through a sigh. "I don't know whether to be impressed or amused."

"Neither." I shook my head. "That boy is trying way too hard."

"What's wrong with trying hard?" Curly watched me for a response, the hint of a smile on his face.

"Well... Nothing... I suppose..." I met his eyes for an awkwardly long time before I turned abruptly and started down the left path.

"Be careful!" Curly called after me before turning and heading down the center path. I could hear his footsteps echo away. And I was suddenly alone.

I felt my legs slowly turning into jelly as I walked. I rested my hand on the corner of the wall as I came to an intersection. My hand was shaking. I pulled it against my body to steady it. I wasn't scared. I wasn't.

It was the silence, I think, that got to me. The air has always been this stifling, the pathways just as dark. But now it was quiet, save for the unearthly echo of my feet on the stone, my breathing which came heavier despite the fact that I was standing still.

Then I began to notice the stench. The foul sent of bile. The iron tang of blood.

I looked around the corner.

A viserated mass of carnage was splayed across the floor and up the far wall. The red of blood looked black in the dim. I could make out vauge shapes. An arm here, a leg, a kidney. A mass of blood covered Dreadlocks.

I sank to the ground, unable to move. I could feel my brain shutting down, as I stared numbly at the gore in front of me. How? How did this happen? How... Who...

Bile rose in my throat. Something must've done this to him. Something else was in here.

The faintest of breezes began to blow, wafting the foul scent down the path towards me. I threw up water and bile as my stomach tried to empty an already foodless stomach.