LotRseer3350-Thanks for the quick lesson in fanfic terms. Here's another chapter. I hope you enjoy it.
Queerquail – I'm glad you caught that line. "The game is on!" I though that was one of the best lines in the movie.
La Fille de Belleville – I'm so happy you're enjoying this. Dr. Jekyll's one of my favorite characters, too.
I'm dead, thought Tom Sawyer. I can't see anything. I can't feel or hear anything. So, this is what it's like.
Being conscious of the nothingness around him scared Sawyer. Then he soon began to feel again. He could feel a dull throbbing in his head, moving in perfect time with his pulse. He still had a pulse. That was a good sign.
Everywhere Sawyer turned, he could see nothing but complete darkness. He tried to move his arms to feel ahead of him. They were heavy. He tried to swing them back. He felt cold stone.
He was in some kind of dungeon, and his arms were chained. He let his mind do some more exploring for him. What was the last thing he could remember? Hands. About ten or twenty dry, rotting hands pulling him down. And then his head striking something. Someone had been with him. Who?
Dr. Jekyll. When Sawyer last saw him, he had been Mr. Hyde. What had happened to him? Had he been captured like Sawyer? Or worse? Was he injured? Was he dead?
Sawyer hurled himself forward in rage, but the chains constricted him, and he soon found his weight falling back into the wall. He tried again, this time with more force. This just made the returning blow more painful. Sawyer blinked back tears.
Sawyer fought back tears. He began moving his hands back and forth, trying to free his arms from their bound. The steel of the shackles just scraped against his wrists, causing more pain.
Despite Sawyer's fighting, tears of pain were starting to escape his eyes and join with the wet sweat on his face. Sawyer felt the throbbing in his head causing his brain to go numb. A strange sleepiness was overtaking him. His vision was getting fuzzy. Even with all of the fight that had ever been in Tom Sawyer, he felt the urge to stop struggling. Stop thinking. At least for now.
Sawyer willed himself back into unconsciousness.
> > > > > >
Three days later. Mina Harker paced the beach, looking out at the reflection of the full moon on the ocean around her. She didn't feel like sleeping. She was like the bat now. A creature of the night.
She was becoming anxious. She didn't need sleep. Why should her companion? She had volunteered for this mission to help people. To stop innocents from dying. She had been hiking and hiking and found nothing. She didn't see how this was helping at all. People were dying in Germany, even as her companion slept.
She walked up from the shore. Up to the place where she and Captain Nemo had made camp. She looked over at Nemo's tent. It was decorated in wreaths of garlic. How sweet. All this time with the League, and Nemo still didn't trust her. He pretended to trust her. He talked with her and worked with her, and even requested her help time from time, usually when it came to chemistry, the one type of science in which Mina was superior. She was still aware, however, that Nemo was wary of Mina's vampire instincts. The garlic was a blatant testimony to that fact.
Mina was about to crawl into her tent and try to wage battle against her insomnia when her super-sensitive ears caught something. The hair on the back of her neck stiffened. She slowly and gracefully straightened her back. She then pricked her ears in an attempt to catch the sound again. She heard it. The slight rustling of the brush.
Mina crept with all of her grace and agility towards the sound. She was careful she made no such noises, and she maintained perfect silence. As she came nearer to the brush, the rustling sound only became louder and more frequent.
The rustling reached an all-time high. Mina froze in her tracks as something emerged from the bushes. The figure was a misshapen, hulking form of flesh. The face was bent and twisted. The hands were uneven, fat, and limp. The back was bent over in a terrible arch. Wide eyes were set deep in the disfigured face, looking at Mina with a deep set fear.
The figure quickly turned and fought its way back through the bushes. Mina could see it scamper away into the night.
Nemo soon was at Mina's side.
"You heard it too?"
Nemo merely nodded. Mina could see Nemo's sword at his side. His hand was still on the handle, ready to unsheath the weapon.
"But did you see it?" asked Mina.
"What was it?" asked Nemo.
"I'm not quite sure," said Mina. "I think it was a man."
"Like the creatures we saw?" asked Nemo.
"No," said Mina. "Nothing at all like the creatures we saw."
"Do you think it poses any threat to us?" asked Nemo.
"I'm not quite sure," Mina said again.
> > > > > >
Meanwhile, the cold night air was once again nipping at Skinner's spine. He wished he could put some clothes on. He realized this was much in the way Jekyll wished he could cure himself of Hyde. He'd be human again, but he wouldn't be of much use to the League.
Skinner was on guard duty, patrolling the camp site he and Quatermian had set up, preparing for attackers. Quatermain had generously suggested that they take shifts, one guarding while the other slept. Skinner had insisted that he take full duty. After all, he was the least likely to be seen.
Being noble had its consequences. That's why Skinner tried to avoid it so often. He was cold and his eyelids felt heavy. He wanted nothing more than to be curled up in his warm sleeping bag in the comfortingly closed quarters of his simple tent.
Skinner couldn't really sleep anyway. He had dozed off a couple of times while on duty. Each time, he was awaken by the ugly teeth and discolored flesh of the strange creatures he knew were roaming the island. He had to keep himself from screaming as he realized these were merely visions of his nightmares.
Every sound, whether it was the snapping of a twig, the calling of some wild animal, or the mournfull sighing of the wind, sent additional chills down Skinner's spine and reminded him why he was trying to stay awake. He could just imagine the camp being invaded by throngs of those hideous monsters. He could imagine the tents being surrounded on all sides. He remembered what he had thought the night in Germany when he had first seen those terrible monsters. Just because they couldn't see him, didn't mean they couldn't hurt him.
Still, Skinner couldn't deny the heaviness on his eyelids. It was becoming a struggle to stay awake. It helped that Skinner wanted to stay awake as much as he had to stay awake. He didn't want to fall asleep once again only to be overcome by the nightmares. He could still see the sneering faces of the monsters all around him.
To overcome the fear, Skinner tried to think pleasant thoughts. He thought of Mina and her exotic beauty. He thought of can-can dancers in Paris. He thought of belly dancers in the Mid-East. Finally, he became home-sick as he thought of the tarts of London.
The thoughts of his women comforted him, and soon Skinner forgot all about the nightmares. He let the heaviness push down on his eyelids, and once again he began to doze.