InsaniKey 2

My eyes opened and instead of seeing Ashley, I stiffened my neck and pulled my face back to view a huge set of not-Ashley fangs.

I yelled out a confused sound as I scrambled to my feet from where I’d fallen asleep on the forest floor, sprinting down the path at first but turning my head to see a huge dark wolf keeping pace behind me like he was following me on my adventure instead of Ashley.

“CUT INTO THE TREES TO YOUR RIGHT!” Jinxx shouted out of nowhere suddenly.

I did as told and ran without looking back until my legs became impossibly sore and the sound of crushing dead leaves beneath my feet became dulled out by the strange groan of a low pitched bagpipe. I stopped running and looked around, trying to locate the sound with my eyes.

“Keep going.” Jinxx said quietly.

“It’s dark.” I looked around, the moon was lost somewhere in the tall trees and the low distorted bagpipe sound turned into the unending whine of an accordion. I walked toward the sound but saw nothing more than trees, dead leaves, and occasional glimpses of stars in the sky.

The leaves gave way to a hard surface beneath and I found myself walking on broken slabs of cement, the accordion groans turned into the low deep humming of a bass guitar, notes bouncing around a Drop D scale.

The sound of someone running behind me grew louder as footsteps approached, something was running so fast that when I saw a dark blur headed toward me I kneeled to the ground and covered my face with my arm as it passed. When I saw the huge dark wolf I began to follow it, my feet slipping as they briefly tapped the leaf covered stones beneath the path.

The wolf ran faster, I couldn’t keep up. I began to lose focus on the trail ahead of me as my eyes darted around to the trees surrounding me. “Wait!” I tried. My heart was pounding, body sweating, chest heaving and my vision began to blur. My foot hit the ground wrong and I was instantly airborne, flying faster than my feet could keep up with, my arms flailing ahead of me, ready to hit the ground. But I’d been running too fast and I couldn’t stop, my body jolted sideways and my leg bashed the ground, my arm scraped hard against the cement and as I finally hit the ground rolling, my ribcage pressed into something sharp. I felt the wind knocked out of me and pain searing throughout my body as I lay pressed against a dark metal gate.

Notes