Burning Up (Jacob Black)

21. Finally

I could've screamed. After all, my mouth hung open. But not a single sound emitted from me.

One heartbeat. Two.

"And to think you wouldn't even try to hide." He gibed through his teeth. "You really have the gall to not take me seriously after all of my warnings to you." He loomed forward, craning his head toward me as he half-whispered the words.

This. This was different.

His voice wasn't an unnervingly clear whisper right at my ear. His figure wasn't bizarrely shrouded in darkness. Although there was still a disturbing air around him, he seemed less dreamlike. Something seemed more grounded.

I fervently blinked my eyes. Once my eyelids pulled back, the scene was the same.

I instinctively staggered back a step.

"Oh," he pursed his lips, "It's much too late for that now." He said in a mockingly tender voice, his eyebrows pulling upwards. "It's really no use." He cocked his head to the side as he took another step towards me.

Another wave of fear rolled through me in accordance with his step, causing me to skid back many hesitant, almost stumbling steps.

His mocking face fell. It returned to the flat marble statue of a face I used to know so well. But this was different from the face I used to absentmindedly trace my fingers against, feeling the cool. That eternally frowning face was what I once called home. In my heart, it used to feel warm despite the immediate iciness. Now he looked closer to a vengeful reanimated corpse, although still uncannily smooth on all surfaces. He looked closer to the monster he described himself to be, to the monstrous identity I spent so much time denying. I spent so much time being wrong.

"Finally," the exhilarated word pushed out of him in a torrent. He seemed to relish in my horror as a regrettably familiar expression sliced his lips apart into a manic grin. "Finally." His voice suddenly settled into a calmer tone as his mouth fell back into a frown, although his eyes rolled upwards to glance at the sky as if to thank the heavens.

Then his eyes slid back down to me.

That was enough to set me running—no, bounding—away from him deeper into the endless green of the forest. I had no choice but to let my weak human legs carry me away, my hands slashing forward through the cold woodland air uselessly. My panting turned ragged within seconds before I tried my best to snuff it out. I needed to hear how close he was to me, how much time I had. I heard nothing but the sound of frantic leaves crunching underneath my every furiously thumping footstep.

I darted my head back over my pumping shoulder only to see him standing in the very same spot he had been when I took off. His head was still cocked backward from when he looked at the sky, his eyes still watching me scamper away futilely. To my credit, I'd created enough distance so that I couldn't discern his expression whatsoever.

And then, he was gone. In his place, a pale blue-black blur that only lasted a mere morsel of time. His footsteps sounded like someone trilling their fingers on a table, not even an ounce of break in between each one. My throat pulled together as I was allowed a only split-second to come to the realization.

I was allowed another millisecond before I heard the deafening sound of a tree trunk being contorted and ripped apart. It sounded like the tree itself was crying out creakily for mercy. The last clear sound I heard out of me was my unstoppable scream.

I felt the rough tree bark rip at my shins. The ground suddenly slapped me in the face, squishing my nose painfully into my own head as I crashed into the ground. I had no time to groan, to breathe, to recover. I had to keep moving forward, keep moving away from him at all costs. And yet, I could only push one shoulder off the ground before weakly wobbling and thudding back down into the soil.