Onision Self Insert (Reaper's Creek)

Chapter 8: Shook

"Daniel" a voice came from the side of my head. "Daniel! Hey!" the voice moved outward, I could hear it more clearly now. "Daniel, wake up dude!" the voice rang again. One side of my face feels cold, my arm is covering my eyes. My head is on my desk. I'm in class again and David?

"Hi David." I said slowly pulling my head up from my slumber. "Why are you sleeping instead of playing on the playground?" David asked. I smiled sleepily and replied "I haven't been sleeping much at home, I've had a lot of bad dreams... I think my house is haunted or something." David frowned slightly and said "It's the creek." I shook my head and smiled, "No, it's a lot more than that. The heater, the washer, the dryer, the water heater, the flat roof making it easy for abductions..." David made a weird face. I wasn't sure if he was about to start laughing or "Psssh haha ha haha!" he burst out, yep, he was laughing. Immediately I began laughing too, not because I was trying to be funny, but because he had. No idea I was serious.

David's laughter wound down and he said "Come on, let's go outside." and I nodded, following him happily.

After we played on the swings and the monkey bars a bit, I noticed a small glow down a hill by the playground that lead to the soccer field. I slowly made my way down there but was somewhat afraid that it would lead me to the same thing I suspected I'd see the other night. "David, wanna play kick ball?" I asked. David replied "Yeah, but we have no friends." I giggled and said "We have plenty of friends to play with, I have two and you have two, see?" Then I wiggled my legs in front of him as if they were separate people. David shouted "You're so weird! I hate you! Hahah!" and we ran down the hill to get into the bag of balls the teacher set on the field for us.

Whenever David kicked the ball to me, I would move slowly toward the other end of the field, where there was a metal fence surrounding the school property. It allowed me to get closer to the red glow. Every time he would kick the soccer ball past me, unwittingly allowing me to approach the read glow to see what it is, and also did not tip David off that anything was different about me.

"Alright! Here comes my biggest kick ever! You're probably going to die if you get in the way!" David yelled.I hollered back "Try me!" David ran up and kicked the ball extremely hard, normally his aim is really bad, but this time he got lucky and it smacked me right in the middle of my face.

Immediately my nose began to bleed before I even hit the ground. David screamed "Oh my god Daniel!" as he began to run toward me.

As I rolled to my knees I grabbed my shirt and pressed it to my nose trying to stop the blood flow out of my face. Right in front of my eyes, the red glow burned as I found myself forgetting about my injury and lost myself to curiosity.

Slowly standing I walked forward to the glow. David slowed his run behind me, wondering why I was acting so strange. I wasn't crying, I wasn't saying anything, I was just silently walking away from him, toward the woods for what I'm sure he imaging had no reason for it.

"Daniel, want me to get the nurse?" David said. I replied "I'm fine, come here." David said nervously, "Uh, I'm gonna get the nurse!" and ran off in the opposite direction. I don't think the old David would have done that, but I think he was getting the same weird feeling he got before, when we found the dead bodies in the creek. He wasn't wrong to run away. About 10 meters into the shadows of the woods, I could see a deer with everything below the ribs ripped clean away. That was the glow. Just like I saw in the creek, the glow was death.

The bell rang off in the distance, but I didn't really care much about the rules anymore. The glow of the remains of this deer faded in my eyes, as if my mere presence had put the deer's soul to rest. Or maybe I just had some god-given gift that helped me locate the dead, and it only lasted till I could confirm each location to identify those fallen.

"Daniel! I have the nurse!" I hear a desperate David screaming behind me. I turned and smiled with blood gushing down my face. I could feel the blood seeping through my teeth, it was as if I zoned out entirely on the deer, grinning the entire time.

I felt a cold metal smack against my head, I had lost consciousness & fallen against the fence that separated the kids from the woods.

I woke up to the sound of crying. It was David and I was now in the nurses room. David was talking to my mom, he was saying he was sorry for knocking me out with a soccer ball but I could hear my mom trying to reassure him, letting David know I had a history of passing out and it wasn't him.

Fact is, I had a heart condition, or so I thought I did, but every doctor I went to couldn't identify the problem was or if there even was a problem. Whenever the doctors tested me, I wouldn't pass out or have heart pains or anything, so of course on paper I'm perfectly healthy. For all I know it could have been the mere sight of blood on my own shirt. I couldn't handle a half-human half-dinosaur, why would I be able to cope with my face gushing blood.

"I'm so sorry David!" I yelped trying to get him to stop crying "Oh! Daniel! You're not dead!" David said sounding like he was full of joy. My mom stood up and said "How many times do I have to tell you to put pressure on your nose the moment you start bleeding?" I replied "Thanks mom! I'm fine! Can we go home?" My mom shook her head and held up my back pack. "You know I have to go back to work after I drop you off right? Now I have to work late." She said. I replied "I'll try not to bleed my self unconscious next time." My mom sighed, hopefully getting my implied point, and drove me home.

As I stood in my door and watch my mom drive back over our little creek bridge to go to work, I realized it was only 1pm, and I still had around 3 hours before my sister or anyone else got home.

I don't know what got into me, but I had the overwhelming urge to get a closer look at the red glowing shapes I saw in the creek before. I ran half way toward the water before I remembered I was highly prone to passing out, and should probably get some calories in my body for energy.

Running back inside I grabbed a bag of marshmallows and sprinted down the hill to begin m investigation. The first glow I found was a fish that was smashed under a rock. It had clearly been dead for some time. Walking up the side of the creek I found another dead animal, it was a rabbit that had most of it's body eaten, clearly by both insects and probably coyotes.

Finding these dead creatures felt a lot like easter egg hunting, only the eggs didn't glow like these bodies did, it was easier than any hunt I had experienced before, and nowhere near as lighthearted.

For about 30 minutes I kept finding small animals, I even found a cat, only it was just the skeleton. I was surprised that the bones would still glow after all that time being dead, but they did.

Clouds started gathering overhead and rain began to fall. I decided I would search just a little bit more, the go home. My goal was to clear out everything around my house. I didn't want to be able to see any glowing from where I lived. It would be a constant reminder of death, and sometimes you just don't want to think about that.

The bodies were so repetitious as a result of the carnivorous animals in the area we lived. We didn't get bears much, or really any large predators so the body I approached last, the size, it didn't make sense.

Back in the woods at my school, where I saw the deer, that was miles from my home and was directly connected to a far deeper forrest than what surrounded my home. Railroad tracks, a race track, a busy road, all neighboring this little canyon that my whole family lived in. So what was a large dead body doing here? No coyote could kill something that big.

As I approached I saw antlers, it was a male deer. I went through that entire preliminary thought process pointlessly. Maybe a bear did cross over, or maybe this deer died of a disease.

Looking more closely at the deer I began to see a wiggling in it's neck. I wasn't touching it, nor was I doing anything to go outside running away in horror. The read glow faded on the deer and that was good enough.

Slipping across the rocks and sometimes sliding in the water, I eventually made it home, covered in mud and feeling 100% done with the creek for the time being.