The Wanted

1. Incinerate

The bone chilling gusts of frosty wind bite harshly into the tender flesh of my skin. Shivering, my teeth chattering faster than they can clack together, I trip on the ancient tree branch buried deep into the ground. The impact of my muscled body collapsing into the damp moss that covered the forest floor was disturbingly loud in the dead silent forest and the resounding thump echoes deep beyond the mountain range with the weight of my heavy, ragged breaths. I get back up shakily, my frazzled nerves causing my limbs to tremble violently against my will. Where was I and how do I get out of here?

"Hello?" I shout loudly and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up like prickly needles when the entire forest rumbles unhappily. There is a booming roar that emanates deep from the snow capped mountains. Even the indiscernible critters that surround me hiss like snakes and I jump startled, when there's an audible splashing sound that fills the disturbed silence. I exhale, the fog of my warm breathe momentarily fogging my blurry eye sight, when I realize that it was only me who had stepped in a puddle that had accumulated during the day's storm.

"You shouldn't be here," A melodic soprano voice whispers harshly into my ear and I whirl around, my heart beating like a drum out of my chest and the owner of the charming voice grips my wrist, the fingernails of her smooth hand pushing right into my pulse point, as I come face to face with fearful lime green eyes that glowed in the dark like fluorescent antifreeze. "You've woken up the forest, they'll be coming soon. They're after us, until we all burn at the stakes or torches lit by their clumsy human hands. Don't they realize we're the only things that protect them?"

"What are you talking about?" I ask her anxiously, my heart twisting in my chest as I saw this mystery beauty that had crept up on me in such palpable distress.

"Oh no," She sighs audibly looking deep into my panic stricken eyes. "You're not from here. This is just that same damned memory again," She laments, agonized, as sudden awareness fills her every delicate feature. "Do me a favor okay?" She breathes sensually right into me as I lean forward to hear her faint whispers better.

"Anything," I mumble, my hungry eyes reverently caressing her ethereal face.

"When you wake up, I want you to put a dream catcher on your bed or else you'll keep getting caught in this blasted projection," She tells me, frowning into my dazed, unfocused eyes. "Aw, I did it again," She mumbles dejectedly, snapping her fingers and I feel as if a bucket of ice cold water has been dumped on me as I suddenly feel awake and alert.

"What the hell was that?" I wheeze, still affected by the aftershocks of the bizarre trance I was under.

"An unfortunate side effect of the gift I was born with," She sighs before dragging me by my wrist while I try to decipher the deeper meaning behind her enigmatic words. I notice that her mahogany locks of glossy hair cascaded down her back, dragging on the forest's mossy floor like the train on a queen's wedding dress.

"You're like a real life Rapunzel," I breathe to myself, drunk of her heady presence and her tinkling laugh seems to soothe the angry forest life because the frightening hissing stops abruptly when she wags her finger disapprovingly at something in the shadows.

"No one knows who Rapunzel is in this day and age, she hasn't been created yet, the author isn't even born yet," She tells me humorously. "But trust me Derek I'm not a princess. I think you'd identify me as someone a little more supernatural from your story books," She says with a feral smile and her pearly white teeth glinting in the full moon sent tremors done my spinal cord.

"I never told you my name," I state and I felt like my head was spinning at the night got more and more confusing.

"You're right, you didn't. That certainly didn't stop me from knowing it though now did it," She says coyly.