Soul Thought

Death.Doom.Destruction.

Death. Doom. Destruction.

WARNING - STRONG SCENE AHEAD! 

The car was eerily silent.

I had a feeling everyone expected something different when we pulled up to the school, and either their expectations were met or they weren’t. It wasn’t my place to hold their hands or tell them what they were getting themselves into – by now they should know, they were getting themselves into death, doom and destruction – probably their own.

I was already out of the car before it had stopped – running up to the gate were the guard waiting, sitting on a plain black stool reading yesterdays newspaper. He barely glanced up when I approached the bullet-proof glass; his thick framed reading glasses glued to the story in front of him.

Closing my eyes I concentrated, making an apparition of myself appear behind him, tapping him on the shoulder before disappearing. The guard looked behind him, only to find there was nothing there. I took his moment of distraction to tap on the glass, a sweet smile plastered on my face even though I was aching to get inside to find Karter.

“Ello Miss” He nodded his head with respect, a slight southern accent coating his words.

“Hello, has Karter been by?” I asked, cutting straight to the chase, I didn’t know if we had time for pleasantries, and I wasn’t willing to find out.

The guard frowned, taking in my appearance and I straightened my spine, making me look taller and more sophisticated – like someone who had the authority to be asking about a runaway student.

“No Ma’am. Karter Harris hasn’t been seen in over a week.” The guard supplied and I huffed – this was the only place I knew Karter could come.

“Do you have him home address?” I hedged, and the guard took another look at me before using one the many keys to pull out a thin manila file.

“Yes Ma’am, he lives a few blocks away.”

I nodded my thanks, jotting down the address in the corner of my notepad and jogging back the car. I told the address to Celeste, who in seeing my face had already started the car and was ready to go. I braced myself in the car, my hand wrapping around the hand hold on the door, knuckles turning white.

We pulled up to a grand estate a few blocks from the school – it made sense that Karter went here considering half of the schools population was rich. There was a line of trees on either side of the road leading up to the house, and we took out time, all looking at different aspects of the house and gardens we could see. From my prime vantage point I had the ability to see the most, including the marble fountain of a beautiful mermaid her hands raised, as though she was commanding the water.

“Can you do that?” Dolly asked quietly of Celeste, and in my peripheral vision I saw her smile smugly, as though saying ‘darling, I can do better.’

Something on the other side of one of the trees gave my pause, and I put my hand on Celeste’s arm, in that moment I was glad I didn’t need words to convey the fact that I needed her to stop the car. The brakes screeched and I opened the door before it had rolled to a stop.

I was running faster than I had ever run in my life – I didn’t try half this much during the running tests at school, or even when I was miserably late for class. But I ran for the life of me, not for one second taking my eyes off of the scene in front of me.

Karter was attached to the tree, a plain brown rope attached to a low hanging branch, he was only a few millimetres of the ground, his eyes were closed and I wondered if he had struggled at all.  I quickly conjured a knife and cut through the rope, his body falling like dead weight onto mine, pushing me to the ground.