Chapter 5
1889 Words
5
My new captor sped across lawns and streets, never slowing or looking left or right. I twisted around as best I could considering his strong hand on my waist pinned me to his shoulder. He had us aimed at the high-riser buildings in the distance, the commercial district which would afford me fewer witnesses should he have his way with me.
Damn my horrible thoughts.
“Let me go!” I shouted as I beat his back with my fists. “Let me down right now or I’m going to scream!”
“Scream then,” came the curt reply. His voice was slightly gravelly and hoarse, as though he didn’t have much practice speaking. Dressed as he was, like a fashionable punk-rock funeral director, I wouldn’t have been surprised if nobody had talked to him in years.
“I will!” I snapped as I opened my mouth big and wide.
The man, who until now had shot straight forward over fences and bushes, darted to one side. The motion jerked me to one side, though he kept a tight hold on my person. I tried again to scream, but he did the same, this time dodging a car that had hardly been in our path.
“You’re doing that on purpose!”
He replied with another jerk around a tricycle. My face drooped and I let my arms hang limply on either side of my head. Screaming was now off the table.
“Could you at least tell me why you’re kidnapping me?” I questioned him. Silence, but I wasn’t going to accept that as an answer. I grasped his back and raised myself high enough to catch a look at his bandaged face. The yellow eye stared ahead without blinking. I tapped him on the head. “Hello? Damsel wanting to know why you’re distressing her.”
The eyelid flickered for a moment. “To save you.”
I jerked my thumb in the direction we’d come. “To save me from the walking corpse and the three little pigs? Why are they even after me? Did I fry up their mother?” I detected a faint hint of humor in that yellow orb, but there was no reply.
However, there was an answer from my stomach as the motion began to take its toll on my strained body. A gut-wrenching pain struck me that made me double over atop him.
“What’s wrong?” he questioned me.
“Stomach,” I groaned through clenched teeth.
By this time his prodigious speed meant we’d reached the outskirts of the steel and glass metropolis. Streetlights illuminated the roads, but the chasms between the buildings were drenched in shadows. Few people wandered the sidewalks, though some stumbled along the roads singing to themselves.
The storm that had threatened to burst all afternoon still rumbled above our heads. Occasionally lightning would streak across the sky and light up the voids that man called alleys, but only for a split second. Just long enough for the mind to play tricks on the eyes.
The stranger stopped us in one of these dingy alleys and gently set me on my feet. My stomach lurched again and I stumbled over to a nearby wall to empty its contents. A bile of blood and food spilled onto the pavement, the sight of which made me throw up even more of the muck. Even in my spasm of vomiting I noticed a change come over me. With each puking the light that emanated from my body faded until the glow vanished. I raised my hand and watched the light dim to nothing.
“I have to be dead. . .” I murmured as I dropped my arm to my side and let it swing there. My stomach tumbled again, but the contents were already splattered in front of me. “And this is hell.”
“Can you move on your own?” the man asked me.
I flipped around and leaned my back against the brick. My face must have been ghastly pale in the dim light. I certainly felt like a sheet over a corpse. “Do I have to?”
He looked up at the sky and frowned when lightning shot across. “Yes.”
“Why?” I questioned him as I took a few deep breaths. “Why is any of this happening? Who were those guys? Who are you?”
The stranger grabbed my arm and tugged me down the alley. “There’s no time for questions. We have to reach the studio.”
I blinked at him. “What studio?”
“One that isn’t far, but the storm may pass at any time,” he warned me.
A droplet of cold water hit my nose. “I think it’s about to get worse.”
Then came the rain and all the miserable dampness that followed. My flimsy clothes soon became soaked and clung to my skin like I’d worn them through a washing machine. I kind of felt bounced around as the stranger with the yellow eye dragged me through the wet, puddle-filled streets, and wondered if that eye was more than just show. He navigated the trash can-strewn streets like he could see in the dark.
“Can you see in the dark?” I asked him between breaths, such was our pace. He barely missed hitting a car with his hip. I wasn’t so lucky and received a war wound in the shape of a forming bruise. “Can you see anything out of that eye?”
“Yes,” he replied as he skidded to a stop. I crashed into his backside, but he was as sturdy as a rock and I merely slumped against him. “Trouble.”
I leaned to one side to look around him and my breath caught in my throat. The Pale Man, as I’d come to know him, stood in front of us. The torrential downpour forced his dark hair against his scalp and his clothes pressed against his thin frame, accenting his terrible skeletal appearance. He didn’t heed any of the cold droplets, not even those that slipped into his eyes and drained down his face.
“Give her to me,” the Pale Man commanded.
The stranger stretched his arm out in front of me and narrowed his one eye at our foe. “She’s not yours.”
“Nor yours, Shade,” the Pale Man countered.
I looked up at the stranger and arched an eyebrow. “Shade?”
“I stole her in a fair fight,” Shade retorted.
“Give her to me,” the Pale Man insisted as he stretched out his hand. A ball of flame grew out of his palm and the light reflected off his unblinking eyes. “Or you will both die.”
“She’s too valuable to kill,” Shade countered.
“Not if she is not ours,” Pale Man argued as he drew his flaming hand back for a throw.
Shade swooped down and scooped up a handful of water from a nearby puddle. He flung the dirty liquid at the creature who stepped out of the way but couldn’t avoid the swing of Shade’s fist as the stranger slammed his hand into Pale Man’s cheek. Pale Man fell to the ground hard, but his eyes didn’t blink once as he lay there stunned.
“Come on!” Shade shouted as he grabbed my hand and tugged me past the fallen man.
We raced into another alley, but Shade turned a sharp left and slammed his shoulder into a metal door. The heavy, near-indestructible door gave way beneath his strength and we stumbled into a long, grungy hallway decorated with graffiti and filled with trash. He pulled me down the corridor and turned a sharp right into a small room that I guessed had once been a studio, what with the wide windows that now looked out on an adjoining brick building.
An easel stood in one corner, and atop its mount sat a painting. Not any painting, but the painting. The painting from Alec’s apartment.
Shade released me and slammed the door shut behind us. As he worked away at blocking the door I approached the painting. Every detail was the same, down to the bare, clinging branches on the trees and the shadow of the stump that stretched toward the foreground.
“This painting. . .” I whispered as I half-turned to Shade. “But how? How is there another one?”
“There’s no time to explain,” he warned me as he strode past me to stand beside the painting. He bit his lip and a thin line of blood slipped down his chin. “We have to go. Now.”
I stepped back and shook my head. “Go? Go where?”
A pounding at my back made me jump. I turned around and watched with a synchronized heartbeat as something strong beat against the door. My hand was snatched and I was spun around to face Shade.
“Forgive me,” he whispered.
I blinked at him. “Forgive you for-”
He drew me against him and pressed his lips against mine. My mind went into overload right up until the first bit of warm blood flowed into my mouth. My eyes widened and I tried to pull away, but he wrapped his other arm around my waist and held me closer. The thick liquid slid down my throat and I watched as another soft glow of light emanated from my body, but this was different. There was no darkness, only beautiful strands of brilliance that floated out of my body and arched back into myself.
The pounding behind us grew louder as Shade stepped back and pulled me along by my wrist. He held up his other hand and showed off a lighter. “Hold on, and don’t be afraid.”
He turned around and rushed at the portrait. I was dragged along and as we raced across the dingy floor the door broke open behind us. A ball of light flew past my cheek and struck Shade in the right shoulder, but he hardly flinched as we neared the easel. Light burst out of the painting and engulfed us in its warm brilliance. I was forced to close my eyes against the light and my foot tripped over something hard. Even Shade’s grasp couldn’t hold me as I tumbled to the soft grass.
Wait a minute. Soft grass?
My eyes shot open and I found myself lying on my back. A clear, brilliant sky hung over me. The stars twinkled as though to say hello, and a moon hung low enfolding the world in its soft light.
I sat up and swept my eyes over what appeared to be a clearing. A stump stood beside me. I’d tripped on one of its rotting roots.
My breath caught in my throat when I recognized the stump. It was that stump, the one from Alec’s painting. I raised myself up on my arms and looked around. The whole forest from Alec’s imagination surrounded us.
“H-how?” I whispered as I climbed to my feet. Shade stood close by with his eyes on a spot in front of the stump. A small fire burned the grass. “Are we trapped in the painting?”
“No,” he replied as he backed up to stand even with me. His eyes remained on the same spot. “We used the painting to travel to another world, but we have to leave now.”
“Leave?” I repeated as I looked around. “Like go to another world?”
“No, leave this meadow,” he explained as he grasped my hand and pulled me away from the trunk.
“But why?” I asked him as he tugged me toward the trees.
He quickened our pace to nearly a sprint. “Because if we can travel through the painting then so can they.”
“Then why haven’t they jumped through already?” I pointed out.
“Because I burned that painting,” he told me as we entered the trees.
I shook my head. “Then how are they-” My breath caught in my throat. “The other painting!”
- Writer
