To be perfectly honest, you love this story. It is now newly edited and the next chapter will be added soon in the same thread.

___________

‘I can breath under water.’

‘No.’ Raymond said it with finality, but with a touch of annoyance and sarcasm mixed in. ‘You really, really can’t.’ The sarcasm turned into something resembling a laugh; it was slightly infectious.

‘Yes, actually, I can. I fell asleep in the bathtub yesterday and I dreamed that I couldn’t drown. When I woke up I was under water, but still breathing. See, I told you I could.’ Grey and orange light mixed in Hellie’s smile; infinity settled in her voice.

‘You dreamt you couldn’t drown. All a dream, stupid.’

‘I can breath under water.’

Raymond gritted his teeth and ran hand through her odd hair a little rougher than was necessary. How could someone who had, technically, lived fifteen entire years still be so silly?

Light didn’t fall gently on the children sharing a park bench. It took shadows and imperfections and made them resemble dirt and nastiness; stuff that wasn’t there at all. It added something foreign to something dirty.

Raymond was imposing in a subtle way; his chin always thrust out and his eyes never bothering to open all the way. That is, unless they saw something truly extraordinary: Hellie, for instance. His clothes were tasteless and yet, on him, tasteless meant something surprising and unusual rather than just stupid. There was something decidedly gregarious about him and yet he never acknowledged it as a part of himself. He thought of it as a separate entity entirely and called it ‘the presence’. He supposed it was someone else’s sociability that followed him. At least that’s what he let on. Hellie suspected that he had stolen it to get her.

Hellie was blasphemous. Her head rested in Raymond’s lap and her eyes focused intently on the small amount of his face that she could see; neither of these things were wrong or even out of the ordinary, and yet when she did them, they seemed absolutely inappropriate. Perhaps it came from having parents that named her after a place of torment and eternal suffering, but that cannot be confirmed. She never wore much and yet what she did wear always seemed like too much. Her t-shirts were always too small, revealing her white stomach, and her skirts were always too short, revealing legs covered in orange-spotted tights. Somehow, despite the fact that she really was not wearing enough, she ended up looking like a snake in pantaloons.

‘I rode a snake once.’

‘You‘re kind of a pathetic freak that looks a little like a snake.’ He groaned and seemed bored; Hellie greatly enjoyed provoking him.

‘So?’

‘God! That‘s disgusting and you need to shut up - right now.’ Raymond took a deep breath, forcing away the mirth that threatened to become known.

‘You’re going to laugh. I can tell; even from down here.’ Hellie brought her hands up to her mouth and waited in suspense.

‘There‘s nothing to laugh at because you‘re stupid.’

‘You might. You definitely would if you weren’t trying so damn hard not to.’ Before Hellie was able to annoy Raymond into giving up his fight against conviviality a car turned onto the nearly deserted street and ruined all the fun. Cars did not make a habit of gracing this particular asphalt and that is one of the many reasons that Hellie and Raymond graced it instead.

‘Look, a car.’ Raymond leaned back and ignored her completely. ‘What do you think it wants?’

‘Shut up.’ He pulled a gray bouncy ball from behind his ear and threw it over his head in an infuriating fashion; who he meant to infuriate was beyond Hellie; she was entirely impervious to attempt.

‘Maybe it wants a snake.’

This time Hellie did get the better of the strange boy - albeit entirely accidentally - and he burst out laughing, his angular features becoming almost soft. She sat up abruptly and kissed him on his laughing mouth. His body continued to shake as he kissed her and, without warning, she cuffed him on the side of the head and hopped off the bench to get a better look at the car.

‘What the hell? Dammit, Hellie! What is the point of kissing me if you’re going to hit me right in the middle of it?’ He jumped off the bench, licking her taste off his mouth.

‘I don’t know. Why would you think I would know?’ Raymond wasn’t always too fond of her irregularities but this time he was too distracted by the odd car to do much.

The car was rolling very slowly down the street and Hellie stood on the curb, her small hands clasped behind her back. Its paint was a chipped red and on its wheels seemed to spin faster than it moved. Them being at the very end of the dead-end street, it seemed natural to assume themselves to be the end the car was searching for. Some things are averted to assumptions, and this car was one of them. Raymond came up behind her and pulled on her miniscule shirt, trying to force it down over her back. When he realized how fruitless this attempt was he began going in the opposite direction.

‘Stupid, silly, Raymond. Stop it. Look, the car wants us.’ She grabbed his hands from behind and wrapped them around her waist.

‘We aren‘t the only thing -.’

‘But we’re at the end of the street.’

‘God…there are loads of other things -’

‘No, there isn’t anything else for it to want - ‘cept the trees, I suppose. But I’m the only one that likes them.’ She stared up, catching dying leaves and silver scraps of sunlight in her eyes.

‘It needs directions.’

‘Well, it is driving very slowly down a dead-end street. That must mean that it needs directions. I always have problems when I try to turn around and go in another direction. It must be having the same problem.’ Anyone who didn’t know Hellie would have thought she was kidding, or mocking Raymond. But no, she was entirely genuine; quite a sacrilege nowadays.

‘Changed your mind again…’ He sighed loudly in her ear and played with the hem of her skirt.

‘No, you changed my mind. God, you are such a dunce all the time. You act like me changing my own mind is something normal; but since its never happened before it couldn’t possibly be normal.’ Contentiously, she broke from his arms and hopped back onto the bench, her ridiculous hair mingling with the hair of the trees.

‘Oh, I thought your mind was one of the things I could never change. ‘Spose since it‘s so easy I‘ll do it more often.’ He spun around and grinned at her; his smile said that he was kidding but he definitely was not.

‘Easy?…that is terribly stupid…’ But she wasn’t listening. The car was now only yards away and she craned her neck - making an attempt that seemed to carry no luck - to see into the car. The windows were impossibly tinted. Neither of them found it curious that even the windshield was tinted; something that is completely against the law. Perhaps that is why they didn’t notice it.

There was actually something fantastically eerie in the slow progression of the mysterious car. A car that betrayed no driver and wheels that feigned another speed and no destination that was possible to deduce. If the two extremely odd children would have been even in the least bit more ordinary they might have been terrified. But the sometimes unnerving thing about strange people is that they quite often are unable to judge the possibly dangerous strangeness in another. The good part of this oddity is that they do not judge other people based only on their strangeness. It can sometimes be very amusing how quickly people connect odd with bad and normal with good; dangerously amusing in itself.

It was only when the car was feet from being directly in front of them that they felt some vague amount of sinister apprehension. Raymond turned to look at the car; a flicker of confusion in his eyes. Without realizing it, he backed behind the bench and shoved his hands into his pockets.

Things grew still and a hesitant breeze slipped under Hellie’s shirt. The dilapidated houses that lined the street seemed to lean over, wanting to get a better look at the scene. When the door didn’t open and the cars engine quite obviously switched off Raymond let out a breath and grabbed Hellie, pulling her off the bench and then farther into the wooded park.

‘What are you doing? I want to see who it is!’ Hellie struggled but Raymond held her tightly.

‘No. You really don‘t.’ Raymond’s eyes were slightly glassy; a memory floating in a grey abyss. What had he remembered that had so suddenly turned his curiosity into fear?

‘What’s wrong with you? Of course I do!’ She paused and stopped struggling. ‘Oh, I get it. You’re practicing trying to change my mind. Well, if you would have been listening I laughed at you when you said it was easy. It isn’t easy and I shan’t allow you to ruin my fun. Now, before I turn into the snake that the weird car is looking for, let me go.’ She started to pry his fingers off her arm like a child untying a shoe.

‘No, Hellie. We need to run until - until it's too late.'

‘When do you think that might be? I’m hungry and I don’t know how long I’ll be able to sprint.’ Hellie was looking up at the boy holding her, a sparkle of mischief in her eyes.

Raymond swallowed and shook the memory out of his eyes. ‘I think this is actually a really serious situation.’ He laughed nervously. ‘And I think it’s laughing at how un-seriously you are taking it. But for some reason I have this… feeling it’s enjoying our stupidity.’ With a certain amount of reckless idiocy, Raymond was absolutely sure of himself.

‘What does that mean?’

‘Probably that running won‘t help much. Unless we can run in a funny way and not move out of its sight while we’re escaping. Which, of course, would totally destroy the point of running.’ Apparently, Raymond was deciding it was all a game. The monster definitely considered it a game; but it is doubtful as to whether or not Raymond was wise in agreeing.

Hellie began to laugh but was suddenly cut short; her laugh died an awful death. She blinked a few times before the tears started to come. ‘R - Raymond…this isn’t a - a game.’ Before her terror was strong enough to root her to the spot she spun around and started to drag Raymond further into the park.

‘Dammit, Ray! We need to go now! Right now, right now, right now! C’mon, run!’ She never called him Ray and, however inadvertently it might have been, she hoped that the nickname would shock him into following her directions.

It was only pure terror that guided them. Trees snatched at their dreams of escape as they raced to the back of the park. Hellie and Raymond were not accustomed to being afraid and yet their reaction ended up being more prudent than seemed natural. Only a wall stood in their way when they reached the back of the park.

‘My - my tears got my hands wet.’ Hellie stared at her hands.

‘Dammit, Hellie! Climb the -’ But he didn’t finish and grabbed her arm, yanking her roughly over the wall and out of sight. It was at this same moment that the door to the car opened quite slowly.