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Twisted Bonds pt. Two

"Izzy! Please!"

Desperately I call, waiting for her long gone reply. She was always faster than me, and God knows she tried to keep my stumbling gate right behind her. Fear gets a hold of everyone after a while though, its only human nature. I have no blame held against her for the picked up speed, I only wish that I hadn't fallen.

The ground had come up to meet my face, still Izzy moved forward. Losing me in the endless dark that spread around us, tripping and grabbing with hands of black. The curse on this land is real, and we had dared to defy its power, laughing in the face of death and not believing a word. If only we hadn't been so stupid. The ground had also met my glasses with an impact that shattered the left lens, leaving me clawing my way through the night almost blind. I had to find the road that stood only a kilometer or so before me, the difficulty of pushing forth instead of turning back to look for Izzy was immense.

My fingers claw the bark off trees, through the soft soil at the base of the roots. Whether it's a trick of my own damaged eyes, or the creatures moving towards my body I'm not sure. The dark dances away besides me, looking like a band of children happily swinging their way through the trees slowly aiming their path to cross me off in my near future. I couldn't turn around, the mere fact that these shadows dance isn't even certain, I can't even see anything but outlines anyway. And the sounds behind me seem more menacing than anything that could possibly lie ahead.

After another half hour I begin to finally see a roaming light, flickering in and out of focus between the remaining trees. Still agonizingly disoriented with only one lens fully intact, the feeling of being tiresome also brought my world to a spin that shouldn't exist. Pulling myself through Redwood had been a difficult task and left my arms spent, but after everything, after being so close, I knew I had to push on another hundred meters. Enough to finally be back under light. This took a while, id expelled all energy previously and dragging my sore body required more effort now. Almost as if something was attempting to add weight to my body.

Reaching the bleeding remains of my fingers towards a line of light broken by shadow, the pressure across my body seemed devastating. As I finally put the first millimeter of hand into the bright stream, I felt a hundred different hands grab my body and throw me half the distance I'd traveled through Redwood, where the first sign of impending black bore down upon me and Izzy. My back slammed into a particularly tall oak, leaving a dent in the bark almost as deep as the one left upon my ribs, I was raised higher still with the bark scratching at my back like a finger across an electric sander. And once id hit the halfway mark of this mighty tree, I stopped. A drop thirty or forty meters lay under my two feet, a gap of air that would bring my body to a thunderous death.

I screamed, nobody in any vicinity to hear my calls, no other young woman calling the word 'Sarah' as she saw my pained face. I was alone. Darkness followed my rise up the tree, curling its way from the ground and spiraling its way up and under the bark before the dark smoke of black came to a rest at my feet. Stopping as quickly on its climb as I had. Tendrils extended form the thickest of the mist, black as ink. At first I hoped it would disappear, vanish into the night, I knew quickly that it wasn't intending anything of the sort. It shot out like a gunshot, and came plunging into my chest right next to the heart. It pierced as if someone had shoved a hot knife through butter, no resistance met it as it crawled through my skin.

I felt my own control loosen on my body, slipping away from my own skin. Trying to twitch a finger and nothing responded, my breathing faulted and it took no effort to stay alive. I wasn't me, something else pushed up against my conscience and took the controls while leaving me in my own head to watch as events unfolded. The new company was a force against what was my flesh, moving it in ways that suggested it wasn't yet used to my body. Slowly I saw myself descend back down the tree, walking down the smoke as if it was solid. Like steps. Watching as whatever controlled me turned and looked through the dark that surrounded us. Peering for an opening in the leaves. And with a shock I was running, tirelessly sprinting at an inhuman pace in a direction unknown.

Before long the reason for the run became apparent, staggering ahead was Izzy. Bleeding from two gashes that ran down her spine like someone had crudely taken to her with a blade, leaving the trail a few meters behind her red with freshly drawn fluid. I tried to yell, say that the figure walking forwards wasn't me. Nothing escaped my lips. As the possessed body walked forward Izzy collapsed at my feet, screaming as her back bone seemed to disintegrate under an invisible pressure that I knew was caused by the same being that had moved my control to the side. The wails of Izzy's cry carried far throughout the Redwood but wouldn't be heard by any living human, only those of an undead figure.

The body of my friend lay in front of my feet, feet that had belonged to me for so long but no longer were. Seeing Izzy recognize me hurt more than watching her die, did she really believe that my being would cause her so much undeserved pain? Apparently so, because a look of hurt crossed her face and what I saw confirmed that it had more to do with watching me raise my boots then the pain this being had inflicted upon her broken body. Maybe bringing my foot down was a good thing, remove the pain from her wreak of a body one last time. She suffered no longer when my heel met her under the eye, she felt nothing for eternity.

Pain increased across a body of no control, it seemed to push back out the way it had first come in. Weariness begin to close my eyes again as my previous being hit the ground, control and feeling wrapped itself around my head once more and the darkness hung in a circle clearing once more. Tears left my eye as I looked down on the lifeless body of the true one who understood me for so long, the one who had cared so much. I had killed her.

Black rolled like waves towards the two women on the ground, one dead and the other close to. Two young girls swallowed by an ocean as dark and cold as deaths hand, a clasp upon us to never escape. Struggling through a murky smoke, dense as water but never solid nor liquid. Just a vapor. I drown in a gas that consumes all, devouring every life essence that may have existed within the two bodies that lie within. Izzy's lifeless head bumps into my back, crushed under a force put through my own limbs. Not my fault. I start to see a light within the black, like a deep corridor that follows my direct view in whatever direction I stare in. Following my eyes as if a contact lens meant to blind me, the glasses fell off my face a long time ago. The light grows and devours my field of sight, blinding white beyond anything I've ever seen. And all too soon it shuts off. Gone. And darkness devours the last seconds of life.

ful�5 o�)