I ran up closer to the crowd, wanting to see what was happening in more clarity. I could hear a guy's voice yelling several very loud curses that I'd remembered shouting out myself a few minutes ago back in the café.
Stretching up and balancing on the tips of my converse I peered over the heads of the mob, only to see a tall dark haired guy diving around the knives that the juggler was dropping in a wild panic, clearly a perilous mistake on his part. It was almost comical, but the cold precision of reality kind of burned out any amusement that I might have had over the situation.
The guy fell over onto his back and scrambled away, but not before one of the blades fell down right next to him. He swore and jumped away, slamming his index finger in his mouth.
It must have hurt him; I mentally gasped and watched as the last knife slammed to the pavement, the biting orange flame extinguished as the unfortunate juggler threw a bottle of water over it. Part of it landed on the tall, dark haired guy who'd been cut by one of them.
Barely thinking, I rushed forward, pushing my way through the crowds and knelt down next to him, resting my hand on his shoulder.
Dan's POV:
Near Death Experiences seem to occur way too often in my life. One moment I was walking past the guy juggling the knives – actually no, they weren't just knives, they were fucking burning machetes – like Ipad sized knives on fire – but anyway, the guy juggling these burning lumps of metal…
Well he dropped them.
More importantly, he dropped them on me.
If you're going to go through London throwing around massive – okay freaking enormous – slices of steel that are on fire, you should at least be able to catch them, without throwing them at unfortunate passers-by, such as me, for example.
I was now breathing heavily on the floor, my finger cut and bleeding, looking like a total twat in the middle of a busy day in London.
Today was going great.
I put my finger in my mouth, wishing the mob of people that were surrounding the juggler – who I was now officially going to murder – would stop eyeballing me like I was some zoo-experiment creature from Mars.
I wouldn't have minded so much if they'd actually bothered to help me up – they just stood and stared as if I had an extra head or two. Maybe I did.
What had just happened had confused me enough to believe it. Blood was flowing openly into my mouth and I wrinkled my nose, it tasted like metal and sugar in a horrible slippery, thin way. It reminded me of Twilight – Phil and I had gone to watch Breaking Dawn Part 1 at the cinema and Bella had been drinking blood out of that takeaway-carton to feed the growing vampire-foetus inside her.
Shuddering, I pushed the image from my mind. Before I could will myself to my feet, a girl's hands found my shoulders. I could already feel my sensible mind jamming into a mess. That always seemed to happen when I was around a girl who was even vaguely attractive – it was like someone had a inserted a girl-radar into my brain and poured melted Vaseline into my thoughts and voice-box whenever one ventured near. After all, I was the twat who firstly got his head stuck in train doors, fell up an escalator and then had somehow got in the way of several flaming machetes falling to the ground.
'Are you okay?' she asked. Her long strawberry blonde hair momentarily blocked the view of the crowd that was still somehow finding interest (and amusement in some weird cases) in my bizarre predicament.
'Yep, couldn't be better,' I said sarcastically, laughing shakily. I felt a little lightheaded, and I let her help me to my feet, feeling her softly waved hair bounce against my cheek as we knocked awkwardly into one another. She blushed slightly and I smiled. It was only as I got a closer look at her milky smooth complexion that I recognised her.
It was Everlin Blue – the practically world famous girl I'd subscribed to on YouTube.
Coincidences could be a little too random sometimes.