Her Wendigo

One Step Too Close

Walking down the corridor, headed to our school's gym, I can feel Emo's eyes on my back. Searching me up and down the same way a doctor does when he doesn't believe what his patient said. We have passed a good number of classes and he is still walking behind me, leaving around a meter of distance between us as if I was a prisoner and he a policemen. Getting annoyed I stop walking and turn to him so suddenly that he almost falls on me.

Making a startled yelp and taking a step back, looking at me confused. His cheeks red, holding his hands in front of him and his head slightly bowed. His eyes trained on mine with a questionable look. My annoyance disappears and a playful mood takes its place, giving me the strong urge of whether to tease him or not. A smirk that I don't let him see crosses my face and I decide to go with the former. "Come here Emo" I say, my voice completely emotionless.

Looking worried he hesitantly takes a small step closer, bowing a bit more, tightening the grip his hands have on one another. With my finger I motion him to take one more and he does so without thinking about it, just focusing on my words. I nod approvingly once he has reached the desired distance. With him being a head taller than me he is basically towering over me with his strong body and broad shoulders.

I place one finger under his chin and force his head up in an attempt to stop him from bowing. Like a doll at the hands of its master he simply let's me reposition him as I like. I take his hands with no resistance coming from him and let them rest at his sides. After that I walk behind him placing my right hand in the middle of his back, feeling him stiff under my touch, holding his breath even. "Breath" I whisper to his ear making his blush an even deeper shade of red. Sure enough though I hear his breathing start again, fast at first, slowly getting to a normal pace. "Good boy" I whisper again in a teasing but loving way as he gaspes but says nothing, trying to keep his breathing as even as he can. I ruffle his beautiful black hair as I move in front of him again.

I inspect the way he looks now, a bit stressed but better than before. "Cia I-" He begins to say something but I cut him off simply by touching his lips with my finger and then bringing it to my own lips, silently telling him to not say another word. Immediately stopping, he searches for any kind of anger or irritation on my face, a small shaking sight escaping his soft lips when he sees me smile at him. For some reason that even I don't know I like this. The trust that he shows me, letting me do what I want even though he isn't sure of what I am doing or the reason behind it, even if it is something as small as this.

"No need to get all nervous. You just raised your voice back there a bit nothing else" When he had returned he caught a glimpse of the the state that I was in and got really worried, saying things like what happened to your eyes and why I was up from bed. I told him that it was nothing and he was probably just seeing things. When I tried to get up I stumbled and almost fell, to which he responded by saying that I should for once let someone help me a bit too loud. I was shocked for a moment because Emo is always calm and easy-going, never raising his voice. After realizing that he started spewing out apologies like crazy not daring to even look me in the eyes while helping me get out of the school's pharmacy which leads us to where we are now.

"I am sorry Duchess... I never meant to yell at you. Please forgive me.." he says looking down once again. I couldn't help but sight resting my forehead against my hand. What part of no need to get nervous did he not get? It's not like he tried to hit me or something. I also am not someone that he needs to act so...subservient around. I am not his mother, nor his girlfriend to treat me that way for fuck's sake, I am his friend. I move closer to him as he bows even more trying to make up for our height difference I guess. I cup his cheeks with both my hands and force him to look at me. "Such beautiful eyes should not be looking at the floor" his hazel eyes widen and the blush from before returns. He tries to nod, a task rather difficult given the way I am holding him.

Taking a step back I let go of him and continue walking down the hallway to the gym. I knew that he was walking behind me again so I simply told him come next to me as we were walking and I took his hand in my considerably smaller one. He turned to me with the cutest face. Mixed emotions in his eyes, like nervousness, surprise, shock but most of all I could see that he was happy. After we reached the gym and entered we realized that the place was packed. There is no way we would find a place to sit so I just searched for my class with my eyes and went to stand at the back near them, Emo close behind me. Sandra's class wasn't here yet so the announcer couldn't start.

I tried to lean back at the wall since there was no other place to support myself but instead I landed on something warm and soft. Looking above my shoulder I saw that my head was on Emo's chest while the rest of my body was resting on his. He wanted me to be comfortable. I can't help but smile at the thought and lean back even more as he hugs me from behind, placing his head on mine so that his chin was a bit before my forehead. With his warmth and smell surrounding me in his arms I felt so safe that I could easily fall asleep right there and then. We spent at least 3 minutes like this when suddenly we heard someone yelling and moments after both me and Emo where on the floor with me still on top of him. He holding me tight against his chest to protect me from the fall. "Are you alright Joseph?" I ask him worried as the fall was quite harsh and with me on top of him must have hurt. "Yhea I am fine, what about you? Did you get hurt?" I shake my head as I get up and help him on his feet.

I remembered that we fell because someone pushed us and turn around to see an unfamiliar face. A man in his mid thirties pissed to say the least was looking at us like he was ready to attack us. Anger started to boil inside me as I took a step closer to him raising my voice "May I know the reason you hit us sir?" He looks me in the eyes and casually answers "You were in my way and I am busy man. You should have moved to the side once you saw that I was approaching" like it was the most natural thing to say. "WHAT?!" I couldn't control my voice and ended up yelling at him. Taking a step closer to me he raised his hand like he was ready to slap me when Emo suddenly appeared looking ready to kill someone. He grabbed the man's hand and stopped him like it was nothing while I was now practically hiding behind him. "You are a step too close sir and I would appreciate it if you could back off". His voice was steady and calm but you could sense the threat behind it.

At that moment everything around me turned white. I was shocked from the unexpected change. I look down and notice that I am standing on water, nothing around me but foggy white water at my feet and white emptiness. I sense a presence behind me and when I turn I see the deer from my dreams. "The countdown begins now" it says and sinks into the lake leaving me all alone with endless questions and a profound excitement.