Ordadus [2.1]

A drop of blood dripped from his palm, to his keys, to the ground, catching onto a straw of yellow-green grass. The grass was long and stiff, rattling against his shins, and acres of it tumbled across the ground, untethered, wild, finally quelling at the foothills of a mountain range.

The air was crisp and cool, but Brett was too bewildered to shiver. He felt dizzy and feverish, and he staggered around in circles, gaping. Mountains behind him. Setting sun in front of him. Wild grass all around, with not another human being in sight.

What the hell?

Oh, and there was the dog. Don’t forget about the dog.

The dog was staring intently at an invisible spot in the air in front of her, cocking her head at every sound, whining. Her tail, characteristically frantic and playful, merely brushed the tips of the grass. She was waiting for someone.

Brett asked the dog where they were, and she didn’t even bother to look up.

He squeezed the lanyard in his fist, his palm stinging, and he held onto that pain like it was his only shred of sanity. Because surely he was insane. Or surely this was the afterlife, the white dog some sort of angel. But the stinging pain, the confusion, and the soft wind, which ruffled the curtain of black hair draped over his forehead - he felt them like he was conscious and alive. He knew he wasn’t dead. That’s the kind of thing you would be sure of.

The lanyard slipped from his hand and fell onto the ground, piercing the silence that surrounded them with an alien, metallic crash. The dog whipped her head toward the keys, her ears pricked forward like a fox. But evidently she wasn’t interested in them anymore, for in a moment she turned back to the invisible spot and sat down, straw grass poking at her belly, and stared.

He turned around and looked again at the mountain range. He was practically at the foothills - just the length of a few baseball stadiums and he’d be at the terra-cotta rocks, which were scattered among the trees. The mountains looked copper from the spotlight given by the setting sun, and its creases and folds stood out starkly against the indigo sky. From across the endless plains, long shadows were creeping forward, like a flood, the grass swept away into a bitter swathing of darkness as the sun withdrew its graces.

Brett started to wander toward the mountains but ended up sticking close to the dog. He did not like the idea of being alone on this dark, cold, prairie. He hugged himself and turned around in circles, sometimes walking out further in search of a road or something, but always returned to dog. He prayed to be home again. He could still smell the sawdust of the carpentry shop on his clothes.

He missed Matt. They had developed considerable distance over the recent years, but never before had he felt so far away from his twin.

Half of the mountain range now appeared to be blanketed in black. Brett glanced toward the sun again, expecting it to be at the very cusp of the horizon, but saw that still, after so many minutes, it still hovered at the same height. If anything, it had shifted to the side.

If the shadows were moving, the sun was moving, right? Was the sun moving sideways?

Brett didn’t think too hard about it. He didn’t know where he was or what had happened to him or what the deal with the sun was, but he just wanted to be back home.

He felt like a character in one of those fantasy novels that Matt used to read. Those always had a happy ending, right? He wouldn’t know. He was never much of a reader.

As another minute crept by and it got darker the dog grew noticeably more anxious; she would glance toward the shadows, whine, stand up, sit down, growl. Finally, she stood up, glaring at Brett and curling her lips up over her gleaming white teeth, her throat rumbling in a warning growl. Then, with a flick of her tail, she bounded away, following the narrow sliver of sunlight that was left and angling herself toward the mountains.

Brett panicked and immediately followed after her. He glanced behind him as he ran, hoping whom the dog was waiting for would arrive. Even that crazy old woman with the lighter he would welcome. She was probably tied up in this whole thing, anyway.

Brett was scared, lost, confused. He sprinted after the dog, who in turn felt as if she was being pursued and ran faster, harder. She was not the same irresistibly jolly dog who had, not too long ago, made a game of tug of war out of his keys. 

Shoot - his keys!

Winded, he stopped. The dog was well ahead of him, reaching the trees, almost out of sight. He looked back. Wherever the keys were now was almost certainly draped in darkness. He watched the giant shadow roll closer and closer to where he was standing, the sun about ready to blink behind the mountains.

Standing there, catching his breath, he heard something. It was coming from the shadows, a hissing, whispering, rattling sound, growing louder and louder, as the straws of grass quivered and trembled in anticipation. It was if the giant shadow on the ground was speaking to him, tantalizing him, laughing at him.

He stepped backwards. He had a bad, bad feeling about this.

The ground trembled. The grass hummed like crickets.

“RUN!” someone screamed, suddenly, from the mountainside.

“Oh God,” Brett said, and he turned, and he ran.

-

A/N: I've been reluctant to write this chapter part because it's hard to accurately demonstrate how confused/lost/scared Brett really is at this point in the novel. How do you think I can work on showing his emotions better?