Just One Bite

[5] Sorrow

SORROW

FIND HETTIE
FIND HETTIE
FIND HETTIE

I—more like just my body really since I had little to no control—flew inches off the ground, just a blur in the air as I neared the abandoned church where the party was held. I couldn't even take a second to think about what I was doing, I was in motion and there was no stopping this train before it reached its destination.

My head was chanting my directive so loudly I couldn't hear anything else.

My body felt so different, pulsing and vibrating with fear and adrenaline and my breaths were coming out in seething pants. My jaw was on fire as were my hands.

The doors to the church were flung open and I soared inside. The once tightly packed area was barren and empty, broken streamers hung from the rafters and columns and red cups and beer bottles littered the floor. Everything to show the evidence of a party had happened yet my friend was nowhere in sight.

I stood still but my body did not. My chest heaved. Mouth panted. Hands clenched. My eyes slid across the open space and I quickly took to scouring the area, checking behind columns and broken pews.

She had to be alive then, if she wasn't here...

I went out the back door of the church, my body trembling as it lowered itself from the state it was in. Thunder gurgled above in the murky black and the wind picked up.

Something sailed past my nose and I was only granted a second, no less than a second, to smell it. Lavender and mint. It was so achingly familiar... flashes came into my head of my friend once again. Hettie's perfume!

The primal side of me snarled and jumped into action once more, pulling the stones of the paving as I pelted forward toward the smell. I was following the scent to what looked to be an abandoned boathouse. This area of the Thames was barren and void of anything living. So, so empty. And yet, the smell was growing stronger. My heart clenched. Something was so very wrong about this.

Fear encompassing, I tried to stop but the beast was set to finish this. To take me to wherever this would end. There was no light in the boat house, but part of me knew something in there was alive.

In the middle of the floor laid a body. There was something standing over it, something hunched and snarling and just not right.

It was humanoid but the skin on it's bones was practically falling off exposing sickly red raw sinew beneath it. The floor boards of the old boat house creaked as I entered and the beast turned to face me, blood painted over it's sunken face.

It growled a warning. Stay back!

But my eyes went to the body on the floor. The one that smelt like lavender and mint. The one wearing Hettie's favourite jeans.

No. No. NO.

A moment later, I was flying again. A garbled sound left my lips, something between a scream and a snarl. My teeth ached so badly.

I pounced on the beast who shrieked and swiped for me to release itself but I growled tightening my grip on it. This thing. This... beast hurt my friend. My sister. Anger chorused and crescendoed in my blood as I plunged my hand into the soft parts of the monsters neck, grabbing on tight to something pipe-like and yanking it free with every bit of strength I had.

It came away easily and the beast fell, gurgling as it choked on its own blood. I dropped the organ and collapsed, suddenly everything pouncing on top of me like bricks. I couldn't even process what I'd just done, because Hettie was right there, and she wasn't moving.