"Much has happened since you joined my club," Mr. Mallard began, regarding me with his large eyes. "And I know most of it you do not yet fully understand. Let me first begin by offering up my sincerest apologies for putting you through those past tortures. I did not enjoy doing it, but you must know that it is what I had to do."
"Stallion kind of gave me a sense you'd say something like that," I said.
I clenched my jaw. It was so hard not to get up from the chair and do what I had been waiting to do for so long. I might have done so if it wasn't for the overwhelming weakness still plaguing my body. "So let me first say that I don't forgive you. I will never forgive you. You are a monster and I will hate you until the day you kill me."
"I assure you, I never had any intentions to kill you," Mr. Mallard said, his voice still weak, as he straightened up. "Nor do I now."
"Well I'm in no shape to be anyone's slave, if that's your intention." I wanted to shout it, but I was too weak. My words came out in strangled gasps. "If you aren't trying to kill me you're doing a piss poor job at preventing it."
"You are in your current state because you refused to take orders. You have only yourself to blame for that. I have apologized for what I did, but I do not regret doing it. I would do it again, if I had to."
"Like hell I would let you!" I tried to reach out for him then, but my body resisted and something burned so painfully on my back that I almost passed out.
"I have said what I wanted to say on this subject," Mr. Mallard said, looking at me with no reaction to my suffering. "You see, just as well as I, that there are more pressing matters to be concerned with now."
"I don't care about any of this," I insisted through gritted teeth. "I'm done with you guys. You can torture me, threaten me, refuse to feed me, whatever. I'm done with all of this. You can't make me do anything for you anymore."
"You have already done more than enough for me, for the time being. That is not the issue. Let me rephrase what I had said; the matter of your obedience is not what you should be most concerned with, at present."
I only glared at him. He looked back at me, calm and unconcerned. Did he really think I was going to work with him still? Bastard.
"I know-"
"No, Foxy you don't know," Mr. Mallard interrupted, a flash of something coming across his big blue eyes. "You are a target now, just like the rest of us--perhaps even more so. Mutt told us all of the encounter you had with Fawn. She knows you are one of us, whether you believe it yourself or not, and she will hunt you down until you are no more--or perhaps worse."
I heard the sincerity in his words with a chill down my burning back. Fawn was just like those lost students, but worse, in a way. Like if a rabid wolf could talk. And the things she did with that stick...
"What the hell is she?" I asked - pressed. I had to separate the truth and the mystery. Now that it was back, the uncertainty was tearing apart my sanity. "The students who go lost...does she..."
"Make them lost?" he finished. I nodded, another chill racing through my body. "Yes, Foxy. Fawn is in the possession of an item, a staff with Knowledge. Knowledge enough to control the dark and twisted forces of nature."
"What are you...Are you saying she uses..." I struggled to find the right word. When I found it, I struggled to even say it. "Magic?"
"Magic?" Mr. Mallard asked back, a surprised look and then a smile. "Well, yes, dear child, I suppose it could be called as such, at least by those who do not fully understand it. Those who do understand it, well, we are aware there is no real word, or definition, that can truly capture all the things that those few with the Knowledge can create. It is as unique and varied as the ones who wield it. And with no origin, no true source, we have long given up trying to understand where it all comes from. We accept that it just is." Mr. Mallard took a breath and sat back in his chair.
YOU ARE READING
Unfamiliar Territory [Book One]
Paranormal"It all began in a blanketing fog, between a young boy and a strange dog." There is something strange about Alex's new school. Something really wrong with it's students. They whisper about him, make fun of him, and harass him before they ever try to...