Okay, well, THAT was interesting wasn't it? WASN'T IT! Anyway, thank you for reviewing Madman! Remember, please R&R and no flames! Reviews make the author happy. Wow, I haven't posted in a LONG time. Wahhh… I'm so lazy… Boohoo.
Disclaimer: Nope, I still don't own anything.
The air was acrid and humid, always bringing back memories of harsh rains that often caused much trouble to many people. It was a gray day today, the pregnant clouds overhead beginning to show the promise of a shower most likely later on in the afternoon. Several cottages loomed on both sides of the dirt road, looking like speechless sentinels, their open windows gazing out at me, as I made my way back into town.
"Ye ran away again, din't you boy?" said the man I knew as Bord, upon passing. His words were tinted with cranberry cider, which he so covetously loved. His face was thin with poverty, stringy white hair scrawling from an otherwise bald head. Eyes that always seemed as though they saw through you and into the distance met my own, sharp stare. I opened my mouth to speak. Bord didn't even await my answer, clumsily staggering away, a jug hanging from a limp arm. Most people thought he was pathetic, I merely considered him as an arcane, old drunkard who liked to meddle in the affairs of others without actually caring.
It seemed as though I was walking through a suspended glob of viscid liquid the closer I got to the cottage in which I lived. I glanced right, left, noting all the familiar straw houses and busy shops, averting my eyes whenever someone cared to glance my way. I knew that my house of stone would loom up just further ahead, nestled against the backdrop of another forest.
"Where have you been, boy?" I heard my father say, who came from around the side of the house. "I been looking all over 'fer ya." His large, rotund form filled my vision. His graying beard and balding head outlined his face. He smelled of fire and hard work, his hands rough and impure from his profession.
It felt as though I sank before his image. "I was out in the forest," I said simply.
"What you doing out there son?" he grumbled, clearly upset. This was his way of showing he was worried.
"I uh, was walking yesterday and I… fell asleep… somehow…" I lied, not wanting my father to know I'd been beaten by Bugg, Bain, and Baldan again. I tried to hide my face from his discerning gaze which seemed to bore into my skull with the force of a great hammer. Yet somehow, I saw that my lie had failed and that my adoptive father knew; it gleamed well in his eyes. He put a rough hand on my head and ruffled my hair brusquely, a small smile creeping across his face. I cringed at first, then dared to look up. I saw that his anger had boiled away mostly, his countenance reflecting only paternal concern.
"You just be careful boy. Okay?"
"Y-yes sir," I stuttered and that was the end of it. He let me go and I reluctantly sighed as if I'd been holding my breath, which was exactly the case. I was afraid he'd punish me somehow or worse, go over to my torturers' house and have a 'talk' with them. But I could see my father knew well enough to let them alone which I was entirely grateful for. My hair now a ruffled mess and my lungs replenishing it's supply of air, I made my way out of the cottage.
That was when the smiling Audrey made her way towards me from the floral shop down the street with unvoiced words waiting to be spilled into my mind. Words that would change my life forever. 'Come with me…' she said. The dark clouds overhead only got darker.
I came with her that night, upon her request, despite constant internal warning, despite the terrible storm that was sure to sweep the town clean with the ferocity of Mother Nature in a bad mood. It was somewhere we weren't supposed to go, a place that screamed 'Do Not Enter'. But I went anyway for the sake of both beautiful and rebellious Audrey. The bar, 'The Wolf's Den' they called it, loomed ahead in the darkness, it's windows glowing like fiery eyes in the stilled darkness. Violent voices rang out into the night, coming from the bar's rickety doors. The ever-present smell of alcohol caught in my lungs, that sweetly pungent odor that you could never forget. I couldn't believe I'd be stupid enough to follow her here. But I did.
My life changed, all because she wanted to sneak a few ounces of alcohol into her system. Silly women and their fantasies. Silly Audrey and her fantasy to grow up faster than time would allow her to.
At first, I had been foolish enough to believe that she'd finally tell me something that I'd been anticipating to hear; to finally acknowledge that she had feelings for me. But I was wrong again. She didn't know how much I loved her any more than a mule knew how to fly.
Audrey crouched defiantly in the bushes beside me, harsh winds beginning to pick up speed. Her hair flushed about in the bush and she nodded at me as the hungry grumbles of thunder from the black sky growled their warnings. Apparently I was waiting to make a rush for the bar doors with her on her signal. Her intense, bright eyes scanned the dark street before the bar, wary for her father who was surely out looking for her even in such imminent storm conditions. I felt so defenseless out there in that bush, the open, black Unknown encasing me in it's infinite bosom.
"I can't believe you're dragging me into this," I sighed, my hair tangling in the finger-like twigs of the bush. Tiny ants, invisible in the shroud of darkness, crawled on little voyages over my hands, biting warily into my thumb and fore finger. I stifled back my cries of discomfort and pain, as I could not remove my hands lest I topple over clumsily.
"Oh I'm not dragging you into this. You're the one who agreed on coming with me," she retaliated, a smug, self-satisfied look on her face, hidden mostly in shadow. "Besides, you didn't have to come." Like I had choice.
"Wait, did you see that?" I had thought I'd seen something move farther down the street. It was tall and shifted unsteadily as far as I could tell in the few seconds I held it in my vision. But it could've been my imagination. I do have the craziest one. I found I'd been holding my breath again.
"See what?"
"Nothing."
Suddenly, it was apparent Audrey had made up her mind as she bolted for the door, my right arm clasped in her hand. Awkwardly I was dragged from the bush, spindly, bony twigs snatching at my clothes and I had to pull my feet under myself to gain balance. I didn't know Audrey was just going to dart like that without giving me any forewarning. The street beneath my feet sped by, the moist wind pushing past my face as if it were doing so under my father's orders. If getting beaten by local bullies and lost in a forest didn't tip off my father's anger, I was quite sure this would.
As we bounded away, I could've sworn I saw the bushes doing something they shouldn't have been doing; they had been moving somehow as if an unknown thing writhed within the heart of the foliage. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end…