Peril on the mountain top
Michael Loftus
The night was dark, like a thick blanket of empty space wrapped neatly around a gathering of ever watchful stars; their gaze was like a hypnotic reflection of how beautiful they really were; each one in equal value as that one that preceded it. The air was thick; you could almost taste the sickly fumes from the nearby reactor which continued churning out its waste in sea of sickly, slimy slithering liquid green that crept slowly through the cracks in the rocks like a snake. The fog enveloped the mountain pass with a tint of silvery mist circling, devoid of direction and lost, like a baby in the woods. In the centre of this blanket of empty space, the jem that lit the night sky beamed in all its glory, lighting the mountain path; It shone a magnificent virgin white, like it had been woven from the fabrics of the most expensive silk, by the most delicate of hands. It had a strange sense of personality, like it held its own persona; its face never moving, yet the gentle feeling that it had a soul always remained keeping an ever watchful eye on the mountain. The mountains on the other hand tightly held a sense of coldness and evil as they sat perched on high, towering above the sky. Its murky grey sides completely devoid of emotion. The winding rock paths crunched under the feet of the five children as they hastily walked across the treacherous paths. Thunder rumbled inside the belly of the heavens, as any minute they appeared to shower the onlookers with shower of violent rain.
The youngest of the group tried to reason with the leading female. "Wait up, wait up, it's dangerous up ahead remember what our parents said, they said never ever to go past our village ... Sarah!"
The girl, Sarah, had just recently lost her mother. Due to the overwhelming flood of sadness, she ran out of the house and decided to head for the mountains.
The sea of crystal like tears and echoing sadness blanked out the cries of reason from her concerned friends. The calm breeze swiftly turned into a biting wind that whistled violently with a penetrating chill throughout the area wrapping itself around them like a wet towel. The group consisted of a girl named Sarah and several other children from the village. The village sat peacefully at the foot of the mountain, blissfully unaware of what was happening. Due to the locality of the village, it was rather poor and relied heavily upon passing tourism for commerce. Sarah held much higher standards than the rest of the children. Her long black hair glistened brightly as it danced alongside the wind with the help of the glowing moon. She wore a luxurious sparkling dress, a beautiful turquoise colour that seemed to wrap neatly around her. The high heels she wore made her look taller than she really was. Looking into her eyes was like looking into a well of tears erupting from the ground.
Back at the village one boy had just received word of what had happened and ran off to catch her. John. He was the boy who was always left out of everything the other children did. He was never invited into the group, always watching and hoping that one day he might just once be asked to join in. But these feelings always turned out to be false hopes, and deep down he knew that. Growing up with these feelings had contributed in making him an angry child, always picking fights whenever and wherever he could. Sometimes for absolutely no reason he would just attack without warning, this of course, didn't help his social status. He had always admired Sarah from afar, but she had never really noticed him that much. He ran as fast as he could to get to the mountains. His crisp golden hair followed slowly behind as the wind forced it back. His hair was wrapped into a ponytail; it lay swinging back and forth like a pendulum with no purpose. His shabby white t-shirt seemed as though a hundred angry moths had feasted upon it in starvation. And his tatty blue jeans covered in rips and patches of dirt.
He continued to run as fast as he could, the cold night air circulating around his lungs making it harder for him to breathe, but that didn't let that stop him. His blue eyes intensified with concern as he focused upon getting Sarah back safely. He ran towards the back of the village and eventually past it towards the mountains.
John bellowed shouting her name is it echoed back and forth, only to be greeted with his own voice in the stale midnight air. As he progressed further, he could see several Silhouettes in the distance. As he began running towards them, he noticed one of the figures was infact a wild wolf. A child lay helplessly underneath the beast like a piece of meat. Yellow fangs protruded from its mouth like hanging rocks from the entrance of a cave. Its gums seemed to leak a sticky fluid that dripped onto a pale terrified face. The eyes of the wolf narrowed, which seemed to possess an evil red that held a thirst for hunger, as it took determined bites at the child.
His heart rate rapidly began to rise, and droplets of sweat slid nervously down his forehead. His internal conflicts seemed be waging war inside him. It was like being given multiple orders simultaneously; being told to go back and help the child and being told to carry on. The wolf bore its snarling teeth at the child snapping and growling like a possessed madman. Its razor sharp claws were digging violently into the soft pale skin of his arms. The child's head quickly turned at John, his quivering voice pleading for help, his eyes filling up with tears.
John wasn't sure what to do, should he risk his own life to save someone he didn't really care about? He thought to himself "No matter which way I look at it … it's in my way"
He bent down slowly as to not attract unwanted attention. A rock lay upon the ground. John picked it up and began to playfully throw it up and down in the palm of his hand like a child with a tennis ball.
John threw the rock; it ripped through the cold air, screaming as it impacted the beast with a resounding blow. It yelped and flew itself backwards. It bore its sharp teeth wider as it snapped and snarled running towards John as if it had been starved for several days.
