𝐅𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐘𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐄 ❃ coraline au

018: eye of the storm

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN OF TWENTY

❝ EYE OF THE STORM ❞

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THE GARDEN SEEMED MUCH MORE DAUNTING THAN WHEN EROS HAD FIRST SHOWN IT TO HER. She opened the iron-wrought gates, the squeak echoing loudly in the garden. It seemed a lot less alive than when Eros had shown it to her. The First Wonder. A garden that, when looked overhead, looked like her face. It was a grand gesture, to say the least. Grandest she'd ever seen in her life.

There were areas of shadowed black, which clashed against the glow of the flowers. She passed the pitcher plants and the one with a blue and red, button-eyed frog in it suddenly swallowed the poor creature whole. (Name) looked at it in disgust. The Beating Heart plants, which grew on the wall near the stairs, had a distinctive, dulled glowed and there was a red liquid that had leaked against the walls. It resembled blood, to a haunting degree.

At the top of the stairs, a few, feeble yellow snapdragon plants snapped at her. (Name) glared at the hindering flowers, kicking at them and stepping on them. Behind her, a brick tree ring opened up like the mouth of a monster from a horror film, and a few stronger, vibrant blue snapdragons snook up behind her.

They attacked quickly, knocking her to the ground and spilling the contents of her bag. The stone was scattered away from the pair of garden shears. "NO!" (Name) shrieked in annoyance. The snapdragons latched onto her ankles, knees, hips and waist, and started to roll her towards the stone.

She was just able to grab her garden shears. She began to behead the mutant snapdragons' heads off, like the Queen of Hearts, with the garden shears ruthlessly. The headless stems retreated back into the brick tree ring's rock mouth, which quickly closed. A trio of loud, buzzing, button-eyed, malevolent hummingbirds closed in on (Name) when she went to collect her stuff.

They didn't hurt or attack her, only poking her with their needle-like beaks. Instead of normal hummingbirds, they resembled hummingbird-wasp hybrids. They hindered her, distracting her, whilst they collected the triangular stone from off the ground and began to fly off with it.

"NO!" (Name) yelled, beginning to chase them. They're getting away. As she's crossing the bridge, she takes her Baker Boy cap off and tosses it at the birds, flinging it like a frisbee, and hitting them like a target. The hummingbird-wasp hybrids fell to the ground, "MY HAT...can easily be replaced,".

(Name) raced to their landing spots, near the eyebrow-shaped shrubs, their corpses spilling out legions of sawdust. She picks up the triangular rock, examining it between her thumb and index finger "Why steal this?" (Name) wondered, "It's just some dumb rock my kooky neighbours gave to me...".

She glanced through the hole of the rock and she gasped. The whole world, upon being looked through the hole of the triangular rock, was cast in a dulled spectrum of black and white. Completely devoid of colour, like a pencil drawing. Like an old-fashioned film or picture. She recalled Miss Spink and Forcible's argument. It could be used to look for lost things. Or bad ones.

(Name) scanned the garden until she caught a glance of a burning red ember. The first of three ghost eyes. "That's got to be it, or Bob's your uncle," she muttered. She removed the stone from her eye. The ghost's eye is concealed as a faded shift stick knob for some sort of vehicle. Which stood right in front of her.

The vehicle came to life, revealing itself to be a praying mantis tractor with the Other Charlotte at the wheel, hands imprisoned by mechanical gloved hands. Courtesy of Eros. Headlights glared as the tractor roared to life. The mechanical hands forced the Other Charlotte to change gears as the tractor began to lurch towards (Name), its arms slashing.