Twisted Fate

Chapter 7: Winning

He stared, obviously astonished that I was in here.

“What… Kelly… why are your eyes open?”

When he said this, I instantly became confused.  How did he know that my eyes were supposed to be closed?  And if he did know that, then did that mean he had known I was in here all along?  If that was true then… it meant that he didn’t want to unlock me, since I was guessing it had been at least an hour.  And that would only mean one thing: Hunter didn’t like me.

Hunter took a step closer to me, and in return, I tried to take a step back before I remembered that I was up against a wall.  I quickly stepped to the right, and Hunter mimicked my move, coming just a tiny bit closer to me in doing so.  My heart was now throbbing throughout my body: my neck, my chest, my stomach.

“Hunter…” I continued hesitantly and slowly, “why- why are you here?”

He looked at me, his brown eyes burning into mine intensely.  I could quite literally feel the heat boiling up in me, my cheeks flushing.  I kept getting these waves of extreme heat, then shivers.  I figured it was the nerves acting up.  I was allowed to be nervous in this situation, right?

Hunter opened his mouth, took a breath, and then decided not to answer my question.  Pursing his lips and shaking his head, he moved warily towards me, as if not to disturb me and send me into hysteria.

“Listen, Kelly, I can’t you what’s going on.  Nothing can come out of me.  It’s not good for you.  But listen to everyone.  Hear their words, and take them in.  They have meaning, and that is how you can find the answers you’re so desperately searching for.”

Although the situation certainly didn’t call for it, I had to.  I laughed.

I remembered the time in Mrs. Uri’s class where the class hamster had gotten stuck in a test tube, and while everyone was freaking out about it, I omitted a little giggle.  I also recall the time when Melanie fell from my garage rooftop when we were trying to spy on some hot boys next door, and I had a few spurts of laughter interspersed with my cries for help.

It happens in life; those moments where something terrible happens, and you have to make it even worse by producing a couple of laughs.  This was a kind of habit of mine that I could not control, and that earned me a very strange look from Hunter at the moment. 

“You okay there, Frett?”

I couldn't help but snort and chuckle once more, this time out of the irony of it all.  Here I was, completely freaking out about murder and being locked up in some janitor jail cell, and there Hunter was, asking if I was alright.

“Of course, I’m just peachy, ya know.  I’m totally fine with me being held captive with a bunch of cleaning supplies, and it’s customary for me to be told that I’m going to die soon.  Thanks for asking.”

He sighed.  Obviously, he didn’t exactly appreciate my sarcasm.

“Kelly, honestly, this is not a time for you to be joking around.  This is serious, and you know it.” He paused for a moment, contemplating his own words. “Or at least, I hope you do.”

God, I’m, pretty sure that once you’re locked up in some weird strange closet you can piece together that this is something serious. And also immensely confuzzling.

This led to me thinking about just how confusing this whole situation was.  Now, I’m starting to rethink everything I believed in, and have two sides of me that are becoming more and more opposing, and trust me when I say that these two opposites do not attract.  Think of those little wooden trains with the magnets on either end.  If you connect them the right way, everything goes smoothly and it goes around and around and around and around…. Well, you get the point.  But if you put the wrong ends together, then you get these two forces pushing out from each other with all their strength, resisting touching one another.  Imagine that a whole lot worse crammed into one 5’ 3”, 100 lbs. 16 year old.