Genesis

Red.

     My eyes were fixed on the pool of blood oozing from the corpse's head, barely visible if not for the sparks of starlight that bounced off of the surface of the thick liquid. That is, until my attention was caught by the mysterious figure. He walked towards the body and crouched next to it, hesitantly outstretching his hand to its neck. He waited, before hanging his head for a few moments. 

     Even though his identity was hidden by the darkness, in those moments, I found myself obsessing over his every detail highlighted by the pale moonlight, which weren't many. I saw dark hair, and when my vision stopped spinning, I noticed that it was curly hair, kept short. I was snapped out of my trance when his gaze shifted straight at me.

     "Are you okay?" he asked. His voice was gruff, guttural, yet his tone was surprisingly soft. I didn't recognize any of those things. 

     I was so engrossed in figuring out his identity that I didn't notice him stand up and step over the body, taking his first step towards me. His footsteps were barely audible under the sound of my beating heart, but soon my eyes shot up to see him less than a meter away.

     My breath caught in my throat, and as soon as he saw me jump up to get away from him, he stopped dead in his tracks. I didn't have the chance to bolt as I felt my legs turn to jello, falling to the floor just as quickly as I had sprung to my feet. I told myself to stand up, and my body responded with a weak shuffle of my legs, pushing my back closer to the bark of the tree I was leaning on for support. 

     Before I could try again, my focus was shifted back to the figure in front of me, who was now slowly crouching down and raising his hands in front of him, palms turned to face me.

     "It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you."

     The tone of his voice comforted me, but I knew couldn't take his word for truth.

     We stayed frozen like this, not taking our gazes off of each other for several minutes. My breathing had finally calmed down before he made the first move, slowly positioning himself in a seated position on the ground.

     When he finally did speak again, I was surprised by the sheer volume of his voice not suppressed by my heartbeat in the silence of the night.

     "You're Quinn, right?"

     I held my breath for a moment.

     "How do you know who I am?" I questioned, my voice sounding stronger than I had expected.

     If he knows me, then I must know him.

     I focused again on the new details uncovered by the moonlight. A strong brow. A roman nose. I searched my mind for faces.

     He took a breath in, about to answer my question, before both our heads whipped towards the distant sound of a broken twig. Then there was another, and another, and again another, each snap sounding closer than the last before there was a troublesome rustling that became louder with each passing second, before finally, it died out to silence.

     We stayed down, eyes wide, searching for any visual clue as to what kind of threat this was. We waited for what seemed like forever, but nothing came. Eventually, the figure in front of me stood up, waited some more, and then turned back to me.

     "There's nothing there--," he was abruptly cut off by a rustling sound right beside him. 

     THUD!

     Before he had the time to turn around, he was tackled to the ground. He landed on the body behind him, struggling to keep his attacker from locking his open jaw into his flesh. The attacker's movements were desperate, accompanied by such unnatural and rapid breaths that they could only belong to one of them. 

     It was a rager.

     Before I knew what I was doing, I stood up with all my strength, grabbed the rager under the arms, and pulled back as hard as my muscles would allow. Not a second later, the attacker was stumbling backward, tumbling down on top of me. I saw the figure grabbing a large rock just before the rager turned to face me. It let out a cackling growl, its humid breath clinging to my face with a smell so putrid that I felt my throat gag. My heart was jumping as if trying to break out of my chest when it lunged its face towards mine, feeling it's teeth touch my skin as--,

     CRACK!

     The figure slammed the rock on the side of the ghoulish attacker's face, sending him flying sideways. He jumped over me and onto the rager, the large rock locked in his white-knuckled fist. He pummeled it down into its face relentlessly, for what seemed like an eternity of thumps and cracks, until I wasn't sure what was the attacker's skull and what was his neck.

     CRUNCH!

     He slammed the rock down yet again, breathing so heavily that even in all the darkness, I could see his chest rising and falling. Eventually, his arm dropped heavily down to his side and the rock fell from his grasp, drops of runny liquid dripping from his hands to his fingers and into the ground.

     My breath hitched in my throat when I turned to look at the stinging heat on my arm, only to discover deep, bleeding nail marks dug into my skin that weren't there before. 

     I stared at them, hoping that, with another blink of my eyes, they would just disappear. I hoped that all of this was just one big hallucination, trying to convince myself of anything. Anything except the undeniable truth.

     The rager had scratched me, and I was going to die.

     I couldn't bring myself to breathe until my chest suddenly collapsed upon itself, then inflated again so forcefully that my heart ached, but no matter how much my chest began to heave, I wasn't getting enough air. I tried to control my breaths but my heart was beating too fast. I felt my face flush as a pair of invisible hands pushed down on my chest, constricting my lungs. I couldn't breathe. 

     With the next hitch in my breath, my throat released a desperate yelp, to which the figure's head snapped upwards, then turning around to see my eyes flickering from the darkness to the glistening blood dripping out from the marks on my arms. My head was spinning as my gaze then landed on where I thought his eyes might be, before it flickered back out of control again. 

     I squeezed my eyelids shut and crushed my teeth together, trying to stop my eyes from tearing up.

     "Is that a scratch ?" he asked with a hint of graveness, which prompted another hitch in my breath. I raised my hands to rub my neck as I felt my throat constricting. My heart hammered in my chest and the pressure in my head created a ringing in my ears. As my trembling hands clawed at my neck and I hugged my knees to my chest, I almost didn't notice the screaming squeak for help that escaped my throat.

     My body was so encompassed by cold chills and numbness that barely registered the figure rushing to my side and -- much to my surprise -- wrapping his arms around the ball I was curled up into.

     I pushed against his tight embrace as images flashed in my mind of Jax's bloody face. My eyes shot open to get that image out of my mind, dashing to the red pools seeping from the corpses, then back to the red spreading towards my little shoes, staining the white tiles of the kitchen floor.

     All I could see was a blood-red cape and my thoughts charged towards it at an uncontrollable pace, as I suddenly realized that I was screaming.