Trapped

12 - NEW!!

A woman with the top half of a human and the bottom half of a fish swam through a dark tunnel before me. She had curly dark red hair that fell to her waist and a beautiful rainbow coloured tail that sparkled in the moonlight. She called my name and motioned for me to follow her into the deep dark pit of this underwater cave.

The sea leaves surrounding the narrow cave flowed with the current of the water. Some of the plants seemed to be in the shape of a hand and grabbed at me, but I dodged them left and right.

Fear crawled up my spine and made me gasp every now and then.

The woman kept swimming faster and further into the cave and I dragged myself along behind her. When we came to the very end I was surrounded by an illuminated pink room filled with pots an plants and body parts of other sea animals.

I gulped down the bile that threatened to come up my throat and looked at the woman instead.

She stirred the pot and mixed some twigs and powders in. A baby cried in a crib behind her that I didn't notice before, my insides twirled as I felt a deep emotional connection with the baby. I felt her pain, I felt her sadness.

The woman turned to the baby and picked her up out of the crib. When she did I could see an air bubble around the baby's head. The baby was human. She hushed the baby and the baby calmed down but then the woman took a needle from her pocket and used it to prick the baby's finger causing the baby to cry again. This time I felt the baby's fear, pain and shock.

She held the baby's bleeding finger over the pot letting the blood drip into the pot as puffs of neon green smoke lifted into the air. She spoke some words that sounded foreign, latin maybe:

"tecum attuleris cetum qui in mari" she whispered grimly grinding her teeth as she spat every word. The next moment the pot boiled over with lime green bubbles. One bubble grew especially large and floated back to the outside of the cave. My thoughts told me to follow it and so I did.

The bubble drifted out of the narrow tunnel and remained untouched by the plants that still tried to grab me. Once it reached the outside of the cave the bubble grew larger and larger until it was about three times my size and then, it popped revealing a gigantic monster that grew by the minute.

I immediately felt a deep unconscious bond with the beast and swam closer reaching a hand out to touch the roaring but fabulous creature. I remember seeing this creature before, but I could not place it.

The giant creature had a long neck and a wide body, it had no legs but instead, it had large fins paddling in the water. It was a very large being and had an aquamarine and blue coloured skin.

The creature was restless and it roared and swung its neck from side to side. I kept swimming closer feeling the overwhelming urge to touch the agitated beast, which is exactly what I did.

When my hands connected with its rough skin it felt like a bolt of lightning struck through my arm and down my spine. I felt like I was one with the monster and I could feel its heartbeat synchronize with my own, just like that the beast was calm.

My eyelids opened and I gasped immediately, trying to deduce what was real and what wasn't. My eyes stared up at the light blue ceiling as I tried to process the dream I just had. I replayed the dream in my mind and shivered. At that moment I realized where I knew the creature from.

It looked the same as the Loch Ness monster that knocked over our boat and chased us through the water. I held my hand on my chest as if to calm my heart that was beating viciously. It was as if my body, well more my tail, was calling out to the monster. I felt so empty and lonely without the syncing beat of Nessie's heart. I sat upright and stared out of the window at the other end of the room. I stayed there for hours, wondering how a dream could have such an intense effect on me. After a while, I got tired and went back to sleep, but this time it was an uneventful, dreamless sleep.

***

I was woken up by Adam who charged into my room, shouted my name repeatedly and shook the sleep right out of me. He said something about him hoping I wouldn't wake up at all and with that my tiredness was immediately replaced with adrenaline from the rage boiling in my veins.

Without thinking straight I shot up and spun around suspended above the rest because I forgot that I was under water. The embarrassment of the moment just fueled my rage. When I recovered from the slight dizziness of spinning around in the water I swam back down until I was almost nose to nose with Adam.

I narrowed my eyes at him and spoke -telepathically- in a very low and angered voice: "Listen, I don't know what your problem is, but ever since we got to this place you've completely changed your behaviour towards all of us and not in a good way! So either you explain to us what's up with you or you keep it to yourself and leave us be because if you continue to pester me I will lose my cool and then we'll both be sorry."

He looked shocked for a moment but then his expression changed to an icy cold glare and he replied: "You," he spat, looking me in the eye and then took a small pause and continued, "you don't get to tell me what to do." His glare was glued to my face and right then I felt a feeling that I have never felt towards Adam before, in our seven years of friendship, I felt fear. I was scared of Adam! Not because his glare was intimidating or because he ignored my warning, but because he has never been this cold before and I could not figure out why he was acting this way.

First he blamed me for us being here even though he made the decision to follow me, he has left me to die when I was attacked by the wolf, he left me alone after I saved him from the quicksand, he didn't tell us about the way out and let's not forget that he threatened to behead me. This was not the Jason that I knew and he was like a complete stranger, that is what scared me. It scared me that he was unpredictable and that he could turn against us in the blink of an eye. He was completely willing to throw us under the bus for his own gain and I didn't feel like I could trust him anymore.

Sadness swept over me when I realized that I was looking back at a stranger, he was a completely different person in this world. I wondered if it was the world that made him act this way or if he was showing his true colours for the first time because his life was in danger here. When I finally turned my attention back to the situation at hand, I saw that Angela, Zac and Jeremy had joined us. Angela was looking at Adam in the kind of look she gave people who ate her chocolate without permission, it was a seriously angered but betrayed kind of look and it showed me that she felt the same about the change in Adam's behaviour. Jeremy was shifting his gaze back and forth between me and Adam as if he was waiting in anticipation for the climax and Zac was looking at me with worry in his eyes.

Then I faced Adam again who was still giving me a black look. I sighed, unsure of how to react or what to say but I would not let him know that I was afraid of him. So I straightened my posture, lifted my head and made firm eye contact with him.

'I don't know who you are anymore,' I said.

My reply seemingly shocked him, or maybe he was just pretending, how would I know, I didn't know him well enough to tell. But Angela wasn't going to let it go so easily, which is why she quickly swam over to Adam and shoved him once and then proceeded to say some nasty things that I just blocked out. I swam out of the room and to the outside of the house, I desperately needed to be alone. It may seem as though I was overly sensitive about the subject but some other frightening thoughts came to me in the heat of the argument.

When I got outside I let those thoughts come to my mind again, so that I could think clearly about it. If a very close friend that I have known for such a long time could turn against me so easily in this world, how long will it be before the rest of my friends do the same? Back home, no one would ever be able to convince me that any of my friends would do something to harm me, but in this world, I wasn't so sure. Aside from the nightmarish creatures, this world had the ability to bring out the worst in all of us, because of our survival instincts that kick in here.

Like when I fell into the water after the boat flipped I wasn't concerned about my friends at all, the only thing that I cared about was getting out alive so I left my friends behind, I left my sister behind when we were in danger. Angela and Jeremy also left me behind when the spiders were chasing us and now I actually understood why. My falling out with Adam opened my eyes to the terrifying fact that this world could possibly tear our friendship apart.