14. Scream

Continued...

"Seraphina..." A mere haunting whisper of a name that didn't even belong to her made her throw all cautious questions and dangerous possibilities to air and just begin to run.

All the time hoping she was running away from this man instead of towards him.

"You can run... But you can't hide." A sinister sounding chuckle made Rose pick up her pace in sprinting. 

Where is this voice even coming from. And is it just her or the more he speaks the closer he sounds? 

Taking that fact into consideration, Rose pulled a break and began sprinting in the other direction but no matter where she went, this dark endless abyss kept stretching out further and further.

Her heart was practically pounding in her throat as the words kept resonating in her panicking mind. She can't hide.

She can't hide. 

She can run but she can not hide from him.

I can not hide from him, kept repeating on her tongue as fast as her feet were working to get away from this place... and that haunting voice.

Finally, her sprinting proved not all worthless, a small light began to form far far ahead of her path. Rose ran faster with hope.

Faster and faster she ran. But she didn't know she could run this fast.

Wait, was it her running faster than humanly possible or was this light coming closer to her at an alarming rate.

Realizing she didn't even know whether this light meant a good thing for her or infinitely bad, Rose tried to come to a halt. But the light that grew faster and faster suddenly came and consumed all her senses.

Blinding it was. A shriek left Rose's lips and hands instinctively flew over her own eyes to shield from the burning sensation of the light.

She turned to save herself from it and lost her footing as her knees met with the ground beneath her.

Rose's hands now automatically fell forward to break her fall on the ground and her eyes opened up once more.

Though this time, thankfully the assault of the blinding light didn't attack her open eyes and Rose decided to stay in the position she was for a few more second in order to catch her racing breath and pounding heart.

Slowly her eyes adjusted and so did her hearing. Her senses came down as all the adrenaline pumping in her nerves slowly flushed away with the heaviness in her breath.

Creaking, tweaking, simpering, and all kinds of sounds came to register in her reeling mind as she began to notice how she could now finally see the ground beneath her palms.

And it wasn't just black nothingness. It was green, brown, rustic and beautiful. Her fingers curled into a fist feeling the crackling of the dried leaves and twigs and soil she was seeing and feeling.

Jerking her head up, Rose finally acknowledge the beautiful and majestic sight of tall trees and undergrowth and shrubs and shrouds growing all around her. 

The crickets singing their eerie song of the night rang like music in her ears as she was finally seeing and hearing things.

Thank god she didn't turn blind and deaf! She could see, she could hear.

Rejoicing for Rose unfortunately lastly only as brief as quickly as it came. The creaking and rustling was heard from around her, making her realize that even if she was no longer in an abyss of pure darkness, she still wasn't waking up in her bed from a bad dream. 

Rose didn't have a clue where she was.

She looked around the dark tall forest surrounding her with nothing in her sight but shrubs and old trees for miles.

Was she still dreaming? Has to be it. She remembered going to sleep in her bed, then it means she was still having a nightmare.

A rustle from her left made her jump up. She looked but didn't see anyone there. Then her eyes fell upon her arms when she realized she had small scratches adorning them.

How did she get them?

Rose raised her fingers and touched a particularly raw scratch on her arm and hissed as it throbbed. 

It hurt! 

Wait, then it means... she is not sleeping.

If she isn't dreaming than it means...

Her fingers than reached her hair and found crinkling of old dried leaves stuck in the strands of her locks. 

What the hell is going on? Her dress was all dusty and small specks of shrubs stuck at places. 

Rose didn't want to dare think that when she felt uncomfortable in her sleep, did it mean she was actually sleeping here? On the ground in the middle of this horrifyingly scary looking forest?

How did she get here?

An unmistaken sound of rustling and fast crunching of leaves indicated an arrival of someone from behind her, making Rose ready to see a beast emerge out from behind the tree and maul her to death.

Her mouth- though already dried up from tongue to throat for obvious reasons- it still fell open and she let loose a loud, absolutely unhinged scream as the figure emerged out from between two trees, without even waiting to see what it was first.