Theocriles

Chapter 4 ~ Jairus

I stared at myself in fascination. What wild hair I had. A great tide of auburn waves, though it was quite a mess given the escapades of the last few weeks. I stared into the reflection of my own deep blue eyes, riddled with slender thread veins and rimmed with a scarlet frame. It looked as if I’d been crying. I thought of my father. I looked just like him.

I squinted at the blinding brightness of the mines and like the lens on a camera; my eyes were brought into to focus on my captor’s menacing expression. Before I knew what had hit me, my head was enveloped by the man’s overshadowing hands and he pulled something tight over my head. I lashed out in a useless attempt to free myself. He had slipped a pair of goggles over my head, and it became much easier to see. They were a cold harsh metal on my fiery cheekbones, with a thick leather brace strapped tightly around my skull. I struggled again, this time breaking free, and staggered backwards. He pulled me back towards him.

I looked up into his large, overpowering eyes. I was tempted to look away from them but I held his gaze. He stared at me for a long while as if he were trying to recognize me, then a wry smile appeared on his dirty face and drew itself up to his left eye.

“Who are you?” I demanded.

 “That’s not important,” he informed me. He placed his hand on my shoulder and pushed me towards a truck. I tried to shake myself off but it was useless.

“What are you doing? Let go of me now!” I shouted kicking and hissing, tripping along the hot uneven ground. Then I heard his voice.

“Leave her alone!” He shouted.

I turned to see the boy standing with a desperate look on his face. He stared at me, lips quivering, quaking in his boots.

“Raumuo, take care of the boy. I’ll deal with the girl,” ordered the giant as he pushed me to the ground. Then the feet of an even larger man stomped passed. He looked down at me, smiling wickedly.

“Feeling man enough are you, boy?” Raumuo jested. With that he grabbed him with an iron fist and the boy writhed under the power of this giant. He threw him like a rag doll at the rock face and his limp body slumped to the ground. I looked on helplessly as the boy became sport for the mindless fiend. Pools of hot tears welled up in my eyes and my head began to bang. The numbers yet again emerged, this time soaked in blood. The blood of my friend spilled on the ground as he lay motionless. Helpless. The numbers throbbing. My head screaming. Then came the silence and it went dark.

I opened my eyes. My ears rang and I was overpowered by a blinding white light above my head. My wrists felt raw and I sat strapped to a chair. I was in a white room full of filing cabinets, disorientated and at the desk in front of me sat a man. I breathed deeply, my nostrils flaring.  Panicking, I desperately searched the room for my companion. I instantly wished I hadn’t. He was lying limp by a glass door, unconscious. One side of his face was masked with dried blood. Fresh blood from a gash on his cheekbone trickled down his face and dripped to the floor from the tip of his nose.

From behind me the Giant spoke. “Sir, we found these two by the air vent at gate four.” The man at the desk had bright ginger hair and a bored expression smothering his ruddy face. The Giant spoke again, "I suspect they were trying to get to-."

"Yes, Yes, I know Liêb," The man mumbled still seemingly uninterested. The man behind the desk wore a light grey tunic and a strange pendant hung loosely around his neck. He seemed to be in his forties.

'They must know where we're going?'  I thought to myself. The Giant, whose name was Liêb, stormed over to me and stripped the tape from around my wrists, grabbed me by my badly bruised elbow and pulled me up onto my aching feet.