Random Excerpts From A Book I'll Never Write

Chapter 8

All was still-- uncomfortably so. Not even the usual gentle breeze cut through the silent dead of night. No stars dotted the sky, and it was as if the new moon had turned her head away from the Earth, refusing to provide even a crescent of light to the darkness-shrouded planet below. The only source of light was the flashlight Cal held, and even that provided very little vision.

I felt on edge, and I was sure the others must've too. On multiple occasions, I thought about voicing my uneasiness to the group, suggesting that we turn back--but I held my tongue.

"Priorities," I thought to myself. I needed to focus on what we came here for.

The quiet, however, was unbearable. Suffocating. I couldn't stand it.

"Where could she be?" I finally asked, breaking the silence.

Startled, Tilly jumped. "Anywhere. At this point, it's a shot in the dark. Literally."

"Oh."

For a while after that, nobody spoke, and nothing happened. We all just continued on. At some point, Cal tripped over God knows what. Otherwise, the search, thus far, was just as unfruitful as it was uneventful. It'd felt like we'd been walking for hours.

Somehow, though, at some point, the night adopted an even higher degree of stillness. The air felt abruptly heavy, yet somehow uncomfortably thin. A strange sense of apprehension suddenly passed over me, possessing me to reach out and tug on the nearest person's arm.

I heard a squeak. It was Syl.

"Hey," my voice cracked. "Maybe we should, um, turn around and head back."

She pulled away. "Nonsense. We have to find Beck. We can't just leave her."

Swallowing, I retracted my arm. So much for that.

It was at least another half hour of pointless wandering, when I opened my mouth to speak again, but I was cut short.

I should've known. The eerie feeling in the air-- it was the calm before the storm.

A shrill, accented scream of unbelievable clarity rang out across the desert. My heart leapt into my throat, and I whipped around, almost bumping into Em.

"Hey, watch it--" she began to hiss, but Tilly incapacitated her, clamping a hand over her mouth and pulling her into a headlock.

"Hush," Tilly warned in a tone so forceful, it could've silenced a jungle-full of cicadas. Em shrank back, nodding sheepishly, as Tilly released her. Quickly, Cal switched the flashlight off. I could hear--and feel--her uneven breathing in my ear.

And there we waited. An agonizing amount of time had passed before, finally, Tilly stirred slightly, exhaling. The rest of the group followed suit, and the tense ambiance the wail had caused finally loosened.

I stepped forward, away from the group with a new-found sense of responsibility. Beck was out there, somewhere. I'd find her.

I'd only taken about twenty steps when my foot connected with something firm, sending me sprawling forward. In an instant, I knew. This was a corpse. Beck's corpse, to be exact. I felt ill. I could feel my vision swimming, which was funny, because I didn't have any vision. It was still pitch black.

In a blind attempt to scramble backwards, my hand sank into something sickeningly warm and wet. A strange, pained noise escaped my mouth, followed by a mixture of muted sobs and a hushed, repeated "no".

A blinding stream of light suddenly manifested, furthering my panic. Foolishly, I wondered if I was dying. A hand grasped my wrist, and I was yanked up.

"What the hell's'a matter with you?" Em growled.

I glanced down at my hand, now faintly illuminated by the light, which was, of course, just the flashlight.

My hand, now red, multiplied in my vision. The voices of the group swirled around me, ricocheting in my head, fading into the distance. Through the increasingly muffled voices emerged the familiar "no, no, no, no", over and over, louder and louder still.

I probably would've passed out, had Em not grabbed me by the shoulders and started shaking me vigorously. As I snapped out of it, everything became acutely in-focus, and slowly, I turned and pointed a wavering finger at Beck's dead corpse. The flashlight followed, casting light onto her body. Almost inaudibly, Cal gasped, but otherwise, all else was quiet. No one spoke.

I couldn't tear my eyes away from her lifeless body. I know it sounds bad, but I was dazed. I couldn't look away. The pool of crimson around her body grew, and oddly, her crumpled carcass looked like a doll cast to the ground by a child out of sheer boredom.

Then a profound thought occurred to me, and I felt the sick urge to laugh. For all one knows, if there is a God, we're nothing more to him than dolls--a creation to grow bored with, a creation to toss to the ground.