Young Writers Society

I stand, my feet in the wind-swept snow, staring at the frazil that had turned the river into Mother Nature’s art project, framed by sugar-coated pine trees to the front and back of me. Shuffling closer, I could see the small, white sparkles that reflected the sun’s rays that was just peeking through the silvery clouds. A blizzard is coming tonight. The weathergirl had said that it was going to be several feet of snow. I didn’t believe the weathergirl. There hadn’t been any signs of the blizzard; there were no sudden chills, high winds, or days where I couldn’t even drive because of the visibility. No, everything was as clear and as nippy as it should have been in the winter. In fact, it quite reminded me of an autumn chill that I, as a child, got I forgot to wear socks or a coat on particularly cold days.

Turning to my right and trudging alongside of the frozen river in my black boots, I couldn’t see any sign of humanity anywhere. No ashy air that you required horrendous gas masks to breathe in; no oil and gas spewing out of cars wherever I looked; no tall city skyscrapers with their neon lights flashing about the next building’s wonderful product; no, nothing at all. Just me and Mother Nature, dressed in sweeping ivory furs and her pine tree necklaces and translucent boots; me in my olive sweater and teal jeans and crimson winter coat. I smiled at Her, hoping that She didn’t catch the too yellow-and-black teeth that I now sported ever since the government banned fluoride for its toxicity two months ago. I closed my mouth, embarrassed, and ran my somewhat swollen tongue against the backs of my teeth.

I turned a corner and a welcome sight greeted me of an awkward black-skinned boy, dressed in a colorless chiton that blew in the small breeze, and a beautiful girl with apparent bleached skin, dressed in a black, ragged cloak (I couldn’t help but notice that the cape, nor the hood, blew in the breeze, but her short white hair did). I sighed in relief—there are other humans, humans like me, who still care about the places like this—and dragged myself through the sastruga towards them. As I got closer, I realized that the ginger-haired boy’s robes were in golden patterns that seemed to change non-stop; at one moment, there were trees decorating it. Then, deer. Then, humans dancing around a golden fire. I stared at those patterns, feeling hypnotised. A crunch of snow startled me out of my trance, startling me. The strange girl had taken a step forward in her bare feet.

“I am Bella,” she said, holding out her hand. Her fingernails were like claws and colored brown, much like someone with a fungus infection. “But you can call me Donna. It’s my middle name, before you ask.” Her voice was high and wavering.

In the back of my mind, something faint told me that the names “Donna” and “Bella” somehow went together, and not in the best way. However, the girl gave me a flattering, bright white smile, so I shook her hand. “I’m-”

“And I am Vivian,” the ginger boy said in a voice not unlike his companion’s. He held out his hand, also, which had lumps riddled all over that a person would associate with an older person with arthritis. “Donna’s older brother.” He glanced at her with a smirk on his face that soon faded when she ignored him. Vivian pulled his hand away before I could shake it. I furrowed my eyebrows at him, put off by his rudeness.

“Do you like this place?” Donna asked me, rocking on her heels. “I think that it’s super pretty, with the fir trees and the snow and everything.” She gave me another flattering smile, winning me over as a whole. I glanced at her hands again. Why did I think that she had infected fingernails? They were a pristine cream color that I would see in the ads in the city. Glancing back at her face, I nodded.

Vivian stood there awkwardly, picking at a scar on his left elbow. Then, without notice, he was watching my face with interest, as if trying to see something in my soul. He all of the sudden smiled. “Hey, do you want to see something cool?” he asked me with childlike wonder. “I know something that’s super awesome over the river.”

“But I do too!” Donna shouted out of the blue. “I had forgotten until now. How about if we go on the other side? There’s something that I want you to see even more!” She shot me yet another room-brightening, becoming smile and pointed to the opposite side of where her brother had. “Let’s go there.” Donna clapped her hands and jumped up and down (her cloak moved with that action, I noticed. The contradiction worried a little part of me, but I put that in the back of my mind).

I looked between both of them. As I looked at each other, the awkward, red-headed black-skinned boy compared to the confident, beautiful, bleached-skinned girl, I knew my decision immediately. I lifted my finger and aimed it at Donna, who clapped again with glee. “Come with me!” She exclaimed. Donna turned around and began to almost glide on the snow towards the fir trees to my right. I followed posthaste, though far less graceful.

The pine smell surrounded me from all sides while I followed Donna, who was, step by step, gaining distance from me. Soon, she was running and I was attempting to get after her, but just succeeded in lunging my way through the thick forest, running into cruel branch fingers and scraping my cheek. At this point, I couldn’t even hear her over my heavy breathing and thumping heart, so I stopped and listened harder. I couldn’t hear anything, so I decided to turn back.

However, when I turned back around, there was a wall. “Keep Going,” a sign said. I shook my head. I didn’t want to. The gray wall loomed over me like a mountain, blocking my way from the right choice that I should have made an hour ago. I couldn’t climb. I worked at an office—I never ran or did anything. I just rode a taxi everywhere that I needed to go. I sighed and defeat and turned around, and then saw something that made my heart jump to my throat.

There stood an old hag, dressed in the same clothes as the girl. Her thinning white hair flowed out in all directions, even though there was no wind; her evil smile starred discolored teeth (not unlike mine); the translucent skin that she sported was falling off, showing off yellowed bones; and, worse of all, she had a skeletal hand that was held out for me to take. “It’s Donna,” the hag said in a croaky voice. “Belladonna. Don’t you recognize me?” Her face flickered to Donna’s for a split second as I stood there in shock.

A handsome man, red-headed and dark-skinned, jumped from a tree and joined the hag. With a start, I recognized his knobbled hands. “V-vivian?” I shouted, my voice rising up into a squeak. I couldn’t help but stare. Instead of a toga draped over his childish-thin body, he had chiseled muscles and a face to match. However, I looked back at Belladonna’s face and all thoughts of Vivian gave way to pure terror.

“You made the wrong choice, Mara Kennedy,” Death croaked. She lunged forward and grabbed my arm while I screamed. “Now, come with me to your new home—The Underworld.”