Silent Chaos - chapter 2

This is chapter 2 of Silent Chaos, and it needs a lot of work! Critiques are welcome

The air felt cold on my skin, and the slight breeze that rushed past me ever so often felt like a hurricane as soon as it hit my body.

Every part of me, my brain, my heart, my soul, was telling me that something wasn’t right. Just, simply, not… normal. Maybe it was the way that it felt like I’d swallowed a thousand knives, or maybe just how I didn’t have any recollection of where I’d been when I went to sleep, or why wherever I’d woken up, it was so cold. An uncanny silence surrounded me, making me feel disturbed. As curious as I was to open my eyes, my fear halted me. What if I found myself lost, or somewhere I didn’t want to be?

Suddenly, a picture clouded my eyelids, making me gasp.

Sparks, fires, a desk cracked in two parts.

At first, I couldn’t make any sense out of it. But then more pictures came, each rushing faster than the previous, bombarding my eyes with images until it all became real again. Until I was left struggling for breath, feeling the pain, and, once again, hearing the blood-curdling screams…

Burning , things falling, people wailing, the sight of smoke, coming, coming, killing… Dryness in my throat, my body on fire, my arm, senseless.

I relived everything… from the beginning to the end, not missing one tiny detail. It was so confusing, so horrible. It had started off as a usual school day, but had ended up as a screaming, deafening, explosion.

But where had I ended up?

I couldn’t escape the truth by keeping my eyes tight shut forever. And, besides, I didn’t feel like I was in the average hospital…

As soon as I opened my eyes, however, I wished that I hadn’t.

Because I wasn’t in a hospital.

Nor was I still in the classroom – the place of destruction.

No, I was somewhere completely foreign. Unknown.

I was in the middle of a dense forest.

Alone.

My worst nightmare come true… It was all I could do not to scream there and then. Fear clawed onto my gut, scouring through my body like a deadly poison. What was I doing here?

Where was I?

Nature was only companion, but even that was making me feel uneasy.

The trees where like nothing I’d ever seen before. They were… unworldly. Their trunks were wet, dripping with some kind of orange liquid. When I put my finger to one of the them, the liquid ran onto my finger, its consistency thick and warm. Gradually, it became hotter and hotter, until I had to rub it off on my trousers in the fear of being burnt. Horrified, I saw the jean material slowly melting to the now bubbling orange. Just as it was about to burn my skin, however, the strange liquid suddenly vanished. Evaporated. Leaving only the slightest stain… What was that stuff? My hands began trembling, and so, to distract myself, I looked at the treetops, not quite sure what I expected to find.

The leaves on the trees, too, were foreign. They were large and perfectly heart-shaped, their colour the deepest shade of green I’d ever seen. There were about thirty large leaves to each tree, and underneath them hid smaller leaves, each as perfect as the last. They were unnerving, making my head swim. Quickly, I looked away.

Looking at the ground, I saw the dark orange liquid and leaves spread everywhere, but, scraping them aside, I was shocked to find concrete. Simple concrete. All those bizarre trees, seemingly growing from cement?

It seemed too strange.

Maybe I was already dead, and this was where I’d spend the rest of eternity…

The thought made me gasp, making me finally realize that I could, actually, be dead. After all the bangs, the fire, the ash in my throat, I might not have been as invincible as I’d originally thought.

Could I really, truly, be dead?

But then why would I still be in so much pain? Why was I hurting so much, and why was there still a numb feeling in my right arm?

Surely, a dead person couldn’t feel the pain I was feeling in my throat right now.

Carefully, I examined my body. My legs, my burnt jeans, my arms, my hands - they were all still there. I was still there. There were even bright pink blistered patches on my left wrist where I’d obviously been burnt. Surely, I couldn’t be dead.

So then where was I?

I began to stand up, ignoring the various pains crawling through my body. Gingerly, I began to brush myself down. I noticed a large, smouldered hole in my top, which exposed a raw burn on my chest. Putting my hand to it, I felt pain so insistent that I had to pull my hand away.

Nothing was making sense… I had just been through a massive explosion, why it had happened a total mystery. At least half of my class would have been killed, the other half carrying burns for life. My heart skipped a beat when I thought of all my friends who could have died today. A great numbness flew into my mind, blocking their faces out from my memory.

I couldn’t deal with them now. The grief would have to come later.

Whoever had made the explosion had no reason to plant it… unless they had aimed to kill some harmless fifteen year olds.

And instead of ending up in a hospital like any normal girl who’d just survived the biggest explosion in the history of the universe, trust me to find myself here, lost, in a forest that looked… well, extra terrestrial.

What on earth was going on? Slowly, I took a few steps forward, wondering if I’d ever find my way out of here. Looking up, I saw the sky was colourless, a blank kind of grey that spoke for England. At least something was normal. And it was still day time, which was an advantage. I shuddered, trying not to think about what would happen come the night. The thought of being all alone in this strange forest gave me goose-bumps enough, but the thought of me being alone here in the dark gave me shudders so big that I was sure there was an earthquake inside of me.

Trying to erase my fear, I distracted myself by raking my fingers through my impossibly tousled hair. However, being thick and wild, it refused to be tamed. Several muddy brown strands got caught on my fingers, so I pulled my hand away, bracing myself for the task of un-entwining them.

But, before I could even move, a rustling sound distracted me.

A rustling sound that was coming closer, and closer, and closer. I looked up at the trees, hoping with all my heart that it was just the wind making the leaves rustle, but knowing, even before I noticed that the leaves weren’t even moving at all, that it was something else that was approaching.

And suddenly, a small figure emerged from behind a tree about fifty meters away, walking my way.

It wasn’t something else. No, it was someone else.

If it was physically possible to be more confused than I was already, I would have felt very confused on seeing the figure. For, judging by its height, it could have been no more than a six year old child.

But as they came closer, it became clear that it wasn’t a child at all.

With shock, I realised that it was a very, very tiny lady.

Her features were very defined and proportional. She had wide, brown eyes that showed nothing but control and great severity. Eyes that frightened me. Her nose was sharp, her lips plump and painted a soulless black. Her blonde hair was thin but very long – stopping at her hips in a straight cut line. She walked with great posture, her feet lifting and falling in a constant march - yet, apart from the occasional rustling leaf she kicked, her footsteps made no noise whatsoever. They were soundless.

Her black boots had high heels, making me wonder how small she could possibly be without them. She wore a plain white long-sleeved shirt with a collar covering her dainty neck. The shirt was tucked into a shocking red skirt that reached her knees, the rest of her legs covered in black tights that merged into her tall boots. She looked unbelievably smart. Looking down at my burnt t-shirt and jeans, and my many burns and cuts, I felt like a homeless beggar.

The woman stopped about a meter away from me. Suddenly, my heart stated thudding. Now, I was going to have to face reality - whatever that might be. Whoever this woman was, and whether she knew it or not, my bizarre fate was resting in her hands.