WP New Stories' One-Shot Story Contest

Pair 7: Romance + Adventure (Escaping Realm)

Story 1: Escaping Realm

The ‘foretell’ said that in order to go back in my own world, I needed to slay a dreadful monster. But how could I kill something like him when he was the very reason why I was still breathing?

All I ever wanted was to escape my world and to find a place that I truly belonged. But I was stuck in a eccentric house, wondering if how I could get back home, and thinking how to get out from this chaos.

I wanted to have an adventure but not this type of escapade.

Never in my entire life would I think that someone could draw me in another dimension, another world, and another time.

“Don’t come closer,” I screeched with a demanding tone at a horrible monster in front of me. Half-frightened and half-bewildered, I couldn’t stop myself from staring at him. I swallowed hard before I could even take a glimpse unto his atrocious figure.

He was huge and untamed. He seemed like a big animal but then, he could talk. His black fur was all over his enormous body. His face was covered with hairs as well that even made him seem creepier. He had claws that could rip anything to pieces and huge fangs that reminded me of a large wolf. Through his eyes, I was just a fragile girl who had no power against him. He appeared to be like some sort of a hybrid type of animal just came out after an experiment.  He was daunting but at the same time he looked something unusual.  Something baffling. Something that I couldn’t understand.

Hissing in pain, I tried to compose myself after seeing how many bloods were coming out from my bleeding foot. It was been a day since I came in this uncanny place. All I knew was that I was lost in a world where magic, illusions, monsters, and kingdom existed. At first, it seemed like I was only hallucinating and the next thing I remembered, I was in a gorgeous prince’s embrace.  I’d dreamt of this place too many times that I could almost remember every little bit of it—except this monster.

And this very instant, I was with him, the one that I needed to slay of so that I could go back to the place where I lived. According to the prince, it was the only way to get back home—slaying the monster in front of me.

“I told you; don’t go out in the Forbidden Woods without me!” I almost jumped with his terrifying voice. And yet he gently tended my wound and put something in there. It felt so warm and comforting, “Now, don’t move.”

A tremor of fear thrums throughout my body. Yet for all the danger, some part of me wasn’t afraid. Something in my gut told me that he wouldn’t hurt me.

But I should not deceive with this strange benevolence. “I already told you before, I am here for one mission, and that is to kill you.”

He went silent. Still, he put some herbs on my foot without even bothering what I just said to him. I realized that that the hemorrhage already stopped. He was definitely out of his mind. I almost killed him this morning but instead of cursing me, he was here curing my wounded foot, “What’s the difference that it makes? I am almost dead. People treat me like a rotten corpse whenever they see me. And even if you kill me now, you can’t go back in your world, trust me.”

Trust? How could I trust a monster? And what was he saying that I couldn’t go back in my world even if I killed him?

“You’ve said that you are here in our world to kill the monster who wants nothing but destruction to the kingdom. You can kill me now if you want to. I don’t really care. Maybe death for me is my way to end up these utmost misery and anguish. So kill me now. I’ll be better-off.”