Be Holden

Chapter 11: Strange

Drip! You open your eyes in a dark, musty cave. The soil on the floor is loose and somewhat wet. You crawl on your knees to a side until you touch a wall. Your lips are cracked and a warm wind blows past you in a rhythmic pattern. You touch the slimy walls and stand on your feet. Your hand glides along the wall of the cave as you move deeper into it. The terrain of the trail slowly dips and curves. The path splits into two. One path has torches sparsely lighting a rickety bridge and the other is filled with more darkness. You choose the dark path. You continue feeling along the path until you see cracks of sunlight coming from somewhere ahead. The path slowly rises as you hike up the small incline. While you approach the light of the curving pathway, you hear low chanting. Cracks of sunlight beam through the gritty, stone walls of the room. An unconscious female's body lies on a slab of stone. A skeletal body tied to nails on the wall slightly hovers over her from the wall beside her. A hand grabs your shoulder from behind you. You turn around and a man with a black, hooded garment gives you a garment identical to his. Once you accept the garment, he goes to one of the farther ends of the cave. He blends with the grit and shadows. Then you hear the chanting grow louder as he adds on to it.

You put the garment on. Your breaths hasten as you walk toward the woman. Her blonde locks are matted with blood. You pull the hood further over your face as your other hand hovers over her face. You feel faint breaths greet your palm with warmth. Black pits sit on the ground on both sides of you. Drip! You see her arm leaning off of the slab. You inspect it with your eyes, while holding it gently. A big gash is etched into her skin. Blood leaks down her arm without hesitation. What is going on here? The pits beside you bubble. You put her injured arm on the slab and turn around. Black skeletons crawl out of the pits with broken chains draped on their necks and wrists.

You dodge their lunging frames as you run back to the entrance of the room. You look back to get a better look at the scene. A nude black haired guy emerges from one of the black pits and a naked black haired female emerges from the other pit. They glance in your direction and walk toward the blonde girl. They tear her flesh off and consume it piece by piece. You are just a bystander. You cannot push yourself to fight the sharp, black nailed; pale ones that just got out of the black pits.

Once they finish devouring her flesh and muscle, her bones are taken by the black skeletons into the left pit. You watch as their naked bodies crawl all over each other until they melt into one big fleshy mush. The flesh goo crawls up the wall and engulfs the skeleton on the wall. It becomes a tall male with black hair, and black eyes with silver slits vertically going down the center of each eye. He looks at you with furrowed eyebrows and barred teeth. He yells and you step back. His naked frame shakes against the constraints and the wall. One of the hooded figures walks to him and release him from the binds. He steps toward you and you step back. A chuckle comes out of his mouth. He turns and disappears. You turn and bump into his bare chest. "You two will pay for your betrayal!" He whispers to you loudly. His sharp black nails gouge your eyes out until the pain makes you jolt out of the dream. That is not good.

You look around your dark room. For a second a shadow sits in a chair beside your bed watching you. You blink and the shadow leans toward you to unveil the black haired male from your dream. A scream is caught in your throat. You cough instead. His silver eyes narrow at you. His black eyes are gone. He just has normal human eyes that are silver. "Don't be afraid. I just like watching people sleep." He says and continues to stare at you. Your roommate comes into your room. "Why are you bothering my roommate, Vincent?" Your roommate asks him. He shrugs and jolts up out of the chair. It falls down and slams against the wooden floor. Your mouth is dry and still ajar. He leaves with your roommate following closely behind him. Chelsea needs to get her shit together. These random weird guys coming in and out of the house is getting out of control. Who the hell is Vincent?

Your thoughts push you to storm out of your bed to the living room. Chelsea is lying on the couch smoking marijuana. Where the hell is that weird guy? "Chelsea, what the fuck was that? I cannot have your weirdos pestering me with their freaking eyes in the middle of the damn night! I have work and school tomorrow! Can you be more considerate? Shit!" You yell. "You need to calm down. It's not that serious. It won't happen again but you don't have to give me hell about it. I pay to live here. So, you can't act like my parents." She says in a flat, distant voice.

"Where is he?"

"He is not here anymore. I told him to leave. Are you happy?"

"This is bullshit."

"Fuck, I cannot even get high right in my own place. Thanks for killing my high."

"Do whatever you want to do without fucking with me!"

You stomp back into your room. You throw the covers back on your body. His words from the dream are still echoing through your head. Great, I cannot go to sleep, now! You look at your bedroom window through an opening of your covers. Vincent stares at you without blinking. You stand up and close the curtains.