TARGET FOR DEMISE

47

47

"Its getting cold."

"I know."

"You should be inside."

I looked up from the ground and stared at him, "Why do you care?"

He scoffed and fell right beside me against the itchy tree trunk.

"don't make me use force," he threatened and I chuckled humorlessly.

"Why hesitate now?" I wondered, "You put me through everything else. Why take the time to warn me this time?"

"I deserve the luxury now," I snorted.

increasing little by little but I couldn't find the guts to get up and do whatever it is that they want me to do.

"Just get through it."

I looked up.

"Excuse me?" 

He can't be serious.

He sighed.

"A vessel needs to be empty to be used," He said, "It doesn't have to be wasted when they are done with it."

With those wise words he finally left me alone. I didn't understand if he was trying to comfort me and why. I didn't ask him to in the first place.

"Gosh!!! This place is filled with nut jobs!!"

As if the heavens had heard my curse, they decided to punish me. My arms were grabbed and I was forced to my feet. My shoulders were shoved into the hard chest of a man behind me. Just as my feet were about to be grabbed,

"I don't think all this is necessary." The voice of oxymoronic captor said.

"This is what he asked for," One of the man handlers said.

"And if she runs a mile away, then amputate her," He replied and my legs were released.

They trudged through the forest until we reached its center. From where we were standing you could see the moon at its peak. The stars too. Their owls in the trees hooting at our arrival. The other people that I had seen at the house were standing in a circle surrounding us. Just like how I imagined they would when they boiled in me oil. Thank the skies there was no large human sized pot sitting on hot firewood in sight.

"Hold her down." Someone said. An unfamiliar someone voiced out. Immediately I was slammed to the ground by the bulky men. My arms were restricted by their large muscles. My torso was trapped by the unwanted embrace. I coughed in discomfort. My eyes found the crescent moon and I sighed, using the last of the will that I had to live to pray.

If there was anyone even listening to the dark empty thoughts in my head, I wanted them to hear my last shred of hope cry out. Begging with the last tears that would fall down my cheeks, and shaking with protest with what little motion I had left in my body, that I didn't want to die. I didn't want this to be my fate. I didn't want to end like this.

Like it was a dream, I saw all sorts of colors swarm around me like a dancing rain bow. Each on with its own wave and rhythm swirling and skipping around like it was doing a dance. The blue moved close to me the most. It smelled of soil on a rainy day. There was a figure that blocked the view of the moon from me. With all the lights dancing, his face had become hard to make it out.

As if sensing his presence, the lights froze an started to arrange them selves in line. the colours were nothing like a rainbow anymore. They each changed to their darkest shade making them hard to make out. I could feel the heat rising from above me. My face started sweating.

With one hand the person looming above me held the lights in a bundle. They turned more defined and visible. Maybe it was the temperature rising but I saw the ages sharpen.

With a quick flick of his wrist he plunged them deep inside of me.

There was no slow moment where I could feel them tearing past my skin into my flesh, I wasn't given that luxury. I started feeling the pain when I felt them move past me and to the ground I was laying on. There was was no way I could scream because I could feel them tearing up my lungs. There was no way to cry because my eye lids were frozen in shock open as was the rest of my body.

"You are finally ready for me," The same voice spoke.

I hoped the darkness that was growing was from the shadow the strange man's body casted and not the light leaving my eyes.

"Its finally going to happen," He continued to say with conviction.

And that the lack of air entering my lungs was not going to let me suffocate and die on the ground like an animal.

"Nothing can stop me now," He added.

It felt like I was drowning in water because my ears felt submerged. The echoes of his voice were resonating inside my head like a broken stereo.

For a second I thought of my mum. How she hated taking me for swim class because of the spLashing of the water from the pool when you walk by. Would she be angry that she met me in the afterlife so early? I wondered. Maybe she would get dad and give me a scolding for not fighting harder.

I wondered if I was crying. Or if I did, who was the one seeing my tears? I wondered if I actually did scream when my chest was embedded in lights that looked too beautiful to be weapons of destruction, then did I cry out? If I did, did any one care?

Yet again, there aren't human. I shouldn't expect anything remotely close to humanity from them. I was surrounded by monsters.

Just when I thought, I would be able to live through this for a second longer. One of them was taken out in one grab. I gasped. A piece of me went with it.