Don't own anything but Alex and the other random characters that aren't mention in the books/movies. J.R.R. Tolkien owns the rest. Duh.
I would like to thank Kylnnjen, Podlasianka1 for adding my story to their alerts, thank ya darlin's and also thanks to Blackrose and Labyrinth Lover for the reviews. I'm glad you both liked the first chapter, and I hope this one meets your expectations. I know I quite like it. Alex is a feisty little ginger and pretty fun to write!
Chapter 2 The incident with the Loon
It was like swimming, Alex decided. Death was something akin to floating around in a swimming pool. The water held you up and swirled in patterns around you, but never disrupted the serenity. It was actually quite nice.
"I could do this forever." She said, shutting her eyes and splaying her limbs contentedly. She was astonished that she could move at all. Wiggling her toes, Alex was shocked at the lack of pain. Surely it should hurt, even if she was dead, she did get hit by a truck after all. But there was no pain. There was only bliss.
"Get up." A deep voice echoed through the darkness.
"Nah, don't think I will." Alex replied, stretching even further.
"Get. Up." The voice didn't sound too thrilled. Alex glared through the darkness.
"What the hell part of 'no' didn't you understand?" she snarled, looking around for the owner of the voice. He had no idea who he was messin' wi-.
Pain blossomed on her right cheek, forcing Alex to clench her eyes shut. A bright light built under them and tears flowed like rivers from her eyes.
"Open your eyes, you pathetic girl." The voice commanded. It was no longer echoing or far away. In fact, it almost seemed right next to her. 'Strange,' Alex thought, 'I thought I was dead. Or maybe I'm in Heaven? Or maybe Hell?"
She cracked open her eyes and swore angrily at the bright light that was causing her eyes to water in pain. Alex blinked furiously trying to clear her eyes of the tears. Once she could open her eyes with drowning in her tears, she did so.
Alex was lying on a hard stone floor that gleamed black. She was curled against a tall pillar that seemed to be a table. She forced herself to sit up and she could see on top of the table was an oversized marble. Her lip curled slightly in amusement and she shook her head. A marble, really? She glanced around, observing the room she was in.
It was circular and also constructed of the same black stone material that the floor was and the walls never seemed to end. There was no ceiling, Alex could see only darkness and rising walls. Creepy, gloomy, spiked walls that made goose bumps pop up on Alex's pale flesh. There weren't any windows, but somehow there was light in the room making the black stone shine. There were several large doors that led to a different room or hallway. One she could see had a desk and a mountain of old papers scattered all over. Alex was going to wager Hell over Heaven. Unless God had hired Satan as a decorator.
"This is not what I had in mind." She said drily.
"Oh? And where did you expect to land, little witch?" Alex jumped and scrambled to her feet, whirling around to find the owner of the voice.
It was a man, incredibly tall, sitting on a stone throne that was obsidian black. He apparently had a thing for white because everything he had was the color, from his stringy beard to his dorky robes. His eyes gleamed, evil sparking through and his mouth crooked up in a smirk just as sinister.
"I'm not a witch, old man." All the warning signs of a wacko still couldn't make Alex keep her mouth shut. A furry and unkempt white eyebrow rose skeptically.
"Not a witch? Do not lie to me, girl. You appeared in my tower in a flash of light, clearly this is witchcraft. Tell me, who sent you?"
Alex could only stare with her mouth open. 'What the hell has this bro been smoking?' She scoffed.
"Look, dude, I don't know what you're talking about-"
"My name is not dude. I am Saruman the White." If possible, his ego seemed to inflate larger than it was previously, as if his named meant something.
"Are you sure it's not Saruman the Loon? I'm not a witch and therefore nobody sent me! I don't even know where I am!"
Fury flashed across Saruman's face, his eyes burning, but then it was replaced with an amused, smug look.
"Do not know where you are? I doubt that, but believe me if that's true, if you survive, you will never forget this place. This is Isengard." He looked to the left and, as if on cue, two slouching, discolored creatures hobbled and limped from another room.
"Yessss, my lord?" the one on the far right rasped. Alex fought down the urge to scream and she mutilated the instinct to whimper. She would not look like a pansy in front of these things. Just her luck, they probably could smell fear and her bravado would go to waste.
"Take our guest to a room in the far section." Saruman then strode into an adjoining room and slammed the door behind him.
"He should be named Saruman the Dramatic." Alex snickered to herself.
A clammy hand clamped over her bicep, while she was distracted. The skin was slimy, similar to a rubber suit with grease smeared over it. Nausea rose in Alex's stomach and roiled around in her organs.
"Thisss way." The creature rasped at her. Its skin was a mottled green with filth spread unevenly like bad makeup on his (she assumed it was a he) body. Piercings littered his face, puncturing his crooked, pig nose, the skin where his eyebrows should have been and then linked together with a chain to his notched pointed ear. He wore a rusty chainmail garment under a large, scratched (once) silver chest plate and large leather pants. It was his eyes, however, that really frightened Alex.
They were all iris, and they were bright red with slits for pupils. They gleamed with nasty intentions and a hunger that shook Alex to her core. She couldn't tell whether Pierced Face, as she dubbed him, was looking at her with appetite hunger or another kind of hunger. His grip grew tighter until Alex's skin turned mottled purple red, and she knew that she would have a bruise.
"Come." The other hissed at her. Pierced Face yanked on her arm, forcing her to stumble slightly. Her foot hit the stone floor and she looked down, noticing she had no shoes. She hadn't even noticed that she was missing them. Another tug on her arm had her trotting after Pierced Face.
"Yeah, I'm coming Butt-Ugly." She muttered, eyes looking around as she was dragged, hoping for an escape route. She really hadn't liked the way that the Loon said 'if you survive'. She sure as hell was going to survive. After all, what was he going to do to her? Talk her to death?
The hallways all looked the same except for the lighting. In some places it seemed more natural than others and she glimpsed an open door very briefly. When she escaped, she knew now to follow the natural looking lights not the orange ones. Alex passed three doors on the left and then finally Butt Ugly and Pierced Faced stopped and yanked open a door, shoving her roughly inside.
Alex tripped on the doorway and fell inside. As her knees hit the rough, stone floor, her jeans ripped and her skin tore from her flesh. She let out a small yelp and threw her hands out in front of her to stop her fall. Her palms were shredded as well. Blood rose to the wounds then spilled down to drip on the floor.
"Oh, look how the young one bleedssss." Pierced Face cooed mockingly at her. Butt Ugly laughed and inhaled deeply.
"Ah such fear, such delicious blood, can we not just have a taste?" he asked his partner. To Alex's horror Pierced Face pondered the question heavily, before shaking his head, his bling rattling against each other.
"Perhaps later, if Saruman permits, but for now he wants her as unharmed as possible." Butt Ugly sighed unhappily, while Pierced Face stared at her from the door way. Slowly he shut the iron door and whispered "For now," as a last taunt before the door crashed closed.
Alex shivered and pulled herself to her feet staring at her bleeding hands. By now the blood covered all of her hand and stared to slide down her forearm.
"Ouch, stupid Pierced Face." She grumbled pressing her palms to her jeans to slow the bleeding. She glanced around at the small room she was in with a disgusted look on her face. The room seemed smaller than her apartment bedroom and it didn't have a bed in it. The floor and walls were made of rough, gray rock and the ceiling of rotting wood. There was no furniture in the rooms at all. It was just a plain room, like a prison cell.
"Where the hell am I supposed to go if I have to pee or something?" Alex asked the walls, looking around for something. On the first sweep of the room there was nothing, but on the second look around she noticed a good sized pail.
"Oh hell no, they've got to be joking." She exclaimed, walking over awkwardly, her hands still pressed to her legs. Sure enough, the bucket was the toilet, complete with excretions already in it.
"Ew, that's so nasty! Ugh, I'm gonna be sick!" she yelled hobbling backwards to get away from the smell and sight in the bucket. She stepped on something slightly squishy on her way back and she screamed. Her hands flew from her pants as she jumped a foot in the air. Alex whirled around; her two hands coming in front of her in karate chop style to fight off the vicious…blanket.
She sighed and let her still bleeding hands drop. It was only a blanket spread out in a corner of the room. She observed her palms and sighed when she saw that the blood was starting to clot already. Satisfied, or perhaps bored, with her hands, she contemplated the new evil that was the gray blanket laid out on the floor.
"Gee, I wonder if I got the small pox contaminated and lice infested model." She rolled her eyes sarcastically and nudged the blanket with her big toe. Nothing sprang up out of the fabric and attacked her, so Alex figured that she was safe. For the moment anyway.
She dropped to the blanket and buried her throbbing hands into her mass of curling ginger hair with a sigh, not realizing she was matting the strands with her blood. The situation she was in was disconcerting to say the least. What the hell happened to her after she died? Maybe she wasn't dead? Maybe what had happened was that she went into a coma after that truck made road kill of her and she was just dreaming.
She snorted, yeah because that's so what would happen to her. Based on her luck so far, this would be real. One-hundred percent real.
Alex leaned her back against the wall and her mind wandered back to life before she was…hit by a truck.
Laughter burst its way from her mouth at the ridiculousness of that statement. She couldn't stop laughing and tears rolled down her cheeks. Then the laughter turned into sobs, hysterical and body shaking. She couldn't make herself stop, the sobs just kept coming. She let the sobs rack her frame for ten minutes before the helplessness and the tears subsided. Alex was exhausted. Her body slipped from the wall to rest against the blanket, her body resting sideways. Her eyes closed and, drawing one last, shaky breath, Alex slipped off into sleep.
A/N
Well? Good? Bad? Ugly? Feed back is welcomed but not demanded, I understand you guys probably have better things to do that you're procrastinating on. Well, assuming that you're a procrastinator. I just assume everyone is because I am. Is that egotistical or what? But anyway, let me know your opinions if you have time.