The Other Side - A Jamilton Fanfiction

Chapter Eight

Finally, it stopped and settled itself down on a log.

"Hey, uhh, bird? This isn't Thomas," I said as I stared up the large, ragged, stony side of the cliff. "This is a big lump of rock."

Can birds roll their eyes? Because if they can, then this tiny Satan did.

It hopped off the log it was sitting on and hobbled over to the cliff side. It turned to look at me in an almost taunting way, turned back, and suddenly disappeared into the cliff.

"Nope. Nope. Not today," I said, turning around and getting ready to head back to the path, but some inner voice pulled at me and begged me to stop.

I sighed and returned to face the cliff where the bird had gone.

"This is such a terrible idea," I muttered under my breath as I walked into the stone.

~•~

The forest was alive with chittering from unseen birds in the trees above. I felt extremely lightheaded and dazed as I opened my eyes to take in the sight of the world around me.

Memories came flooding back and I jumped to my feet, earning myself a moment of dizziness as the blood rushed to my brain.

Where was I?! What was this place, and how did I get here?!

I glanced around me, looking for clues that would answer my questions, only to no avail.

It seemed like an ordinary forest, almost parallel to the one I had just been in. Strange flowers grew along the ground, not too different from those that Thomas grew in our apartment. The leaves almost blocked out the blue of the sky, but beams of sun managed to stream through the canopy in certain spots and illuminate the ground like spotlights.

I risked a look over my shoulder to see nothing but the rocky slope of a cliff stretching up into the sky.

"Oh, Alex. How do you get yourself into these situations?" Pause. "I guess the only way to go is forward," I whispered to myself. Gathering up all my courage, I began to walk into the forest, which, in hindsight, was perhaps not my best decision. "Hello?" My calls echoed through the trees as I hiked along the forest. "Is anybody there? I'm kinda looking for my friend, Thomas. I think he came by this way?" I realized I was talking to air and fell quiet. I was quiet for a while, stepping on the crunchy fallen leaves. "Belletra?" I tried, hopelessly.

The strange forest yielded no response except for a gentle breeze that tussled my hair and reduced me to cursing out this stupid place, the stupid bird, and the stupid person I had for a roommate.

There was nothing overly weird about this place at first glance. It seemed like any ordinary forest, and even walking through it proved no different. It had ordinary flowers, ordinary trees, ordinary birds, ordinary plants, ordinary horrible creatures that try to rip your face off, ordinary weather.

But there was something more about this place that just totally creeped me out.

It may have to do with the horrible creature that tried to rip my face off.

I had been walking along for a while, trying not to panic at the prospect that I might be totally lost and I might never see my home again. My throat burned with the tears I was trying to hold back and hoarse with the calls I had yelled out. I stumbled into a clearing when I saw the thing.

It was wolfing down some poor animal carcass when I saw it first. It was tall and thin and had pale white skin with dark spots circling around its beady eyes. It walked on all fours, had a row of massive fangs and a long, lolling tongue, and was perhaps the most terrifying thing I had ever seen.