thorned enigma ; tvd

CHAPTER II: ANIMAL ATTACK

A BODY DROPPED IN FRONT OF HER WITH A LOUD THUD.

That is what awakened Stefanie from her almost-stupor. Neither the loud thumping in her head nor the ringing in her ears mattered now. Not when the sound and grotesque sight startled her awake, hazel eyes focused and pupils widening in instant curiosity. Screams and calls around her fell upon deaf ears, she rose deliberately and took cautious steps towards the ill-fated victim. An onlooker would think that her inhibitions were lowered and made her act this way over her own self-preservation. No proper reason could be enough to stop the woman from her desire to simply know.

Blood pooled around the mangled body, painting the weathered wood a deep red and seeping into it, so much so that the metallic scent wafted and reached her. The liquid trickled between the planks and accumulated between the gaps from the thickness. The poor sod would have surely met his end from the drop if the forceful disfiguration of his own had not already done so. Arm twisted and thrown over in an awkward position as if it were drooping low and detached from his shoulder, legs surely broken with the way one hung through the gaps and the other mockingly resting above the wood. Yet, neither disarrangement were the worst of it all.

The head that once adorned the body hung by a thread, nearly detached from its previous attack. That image itself reminded Stefanie something of a movie, but this, this was all real. This was reality, and anything but a movie. It did not occur to her that her approach had been considered eerie and downright concerning, especially when she witnessed what happened next within a moment's time. The impact itself tore the last strand that the head desperately held onto the body and the appendage, like a horror, rolled down the steps, harshly stopping once hitting grass. Those lifeless eyes stared through Stefanie as if to take possession of a new body, hers.

In those moments, Stefanie could only hear and feel her breathing; her friends' calls for her temporarily muted out in the background, unaware of the situation around her. The beating in her head turned different from its previous pounding from alcohol. No, it had been the beating of her heart that steadily and surely increased in a rapid manner between those crucial seconds. It beat away like a ticking clock but with each beat becoming louder than the previous. Her eyes flitted between the mangled corpse, the blood, the head. The corpse, the blood, the head. The corpse, the blood, the head.

Reality pulled her out of her fixated state when Minnie grabbed Stefanie by the arm and yanked her away. "Stop being so white and get away from it!" It was a shrill but urgent exclamation that told Stefanie she needed to leave. Other hand quick to grab Roop's, the trio ran, mixing into the crowd of other running students. They ran and ran until they were convinced that they were out of the attacking claws of whatever beast that ruthlessly murdered the guy.

Stefanie leaned against the back wall of the dorm building with a hand on her waist as she tried to catch her breath. Her throat cooled when she took heavy breaths through her mouth. Running like this knocked the wind out of her, and despite the chilly night, sweat beads formed across her forehead. She closed her mouth, rested her head on the brick wall, and swallowed to mimic some form of hydration. The sound of her own heartbeat went away with her adrenaline rush subsiding.

The gross scene had been burned into her mind and appeared every time she closed her eyes. She couldn't complain when her curiosity overshadowed the want to forget. Stefanie wanted, no, she needed to know what she witnessed. For some reason, the victim fell in front of her of all people; a nagging voice in the back of her mind repeated itself like a broken record that this meant something, what had occurred simply was not a coincidence, but something that had been made for her to find out.

Silently, she stared at the cement ground a few feet away from her dirt covered sneakers in contemplation. Lost in thought with eyes that betrayed her blank face by overtly saying what she didn't share: fascination. That summed up her thoughts and fixation in one word.