Theron of Evil

Aires’s POV

The penetrating blue of the sky, consistently with me since we arrived, appeared to pull me vertical, and I felt it contact my cheek and quiet my face like Mom’s hand on me when I was more youthful. Groups of green and yellow parakeets, rising above our heads as we got out of the transport consistently.

“At last, a whole new place to relieve me of homework which seemed to be a good source of headaches to me,” I thought.

Clapping her hands to signal us to pay attention, Mrs. Conrad began to give a beautiful description of the place which we currently were for the purpose of ‘Physical Geography.’

“Attention everyone,” she began. “I am certain that most of you, or all of you have not been to this part of the town. It’s a very rocky place, as you can see, and I am very sure that most types of rocks will be found here. You can roam around all you want, but do not go too far. Take pictures and make notes because you will need them.” With that, she entered the bus, and we were left to do as we please.

I reached into my bag for my camera to take some pictures.

“Where are you going?” a voice asked from behind, causing me to give a sharp turn through the right to face him, Jason.

“What is wrong with you? You scared me!” I said. “I’m just taking some pictures.”

“Well, don’t go far because we’re still new here. You can miss your way back,” Elena cautioned.

“OK, ‘mother’ and ‘father,’ I will not go that far, do not worry,” I joked, as I continued to take photos of an umbrella rock nearby. “How was this formed?” I asked myself.

My attention was quickly drawn to Jason, who was struggling with a piece of paper in hand. Upon closer look, “A map?” I whispered. “What’s that?” I asked curiously to confirm my suspicion.

“A map, can you not see?” he replied, without looking in my direction.

“Where does it lead to? Please tell me there are more beautifully shaped rocks here and this holds the directions,” I inquired, more curious.

“Homer,” he answered.

“What? Home run? Seriously? Are you sick?” I asked unbelievably.

“This is the last question I’m answering from you. Homer is a Greek word meaning ‘Hostage.’ Got it?” he asked in an unfriendly tone. Jason is not a rude person, but he has this mood swing thing which comes mostly when he’s left alone, but this time he wanted to concentrate on whatever he was looking for and wanted privacy which I wasn’t planning to let him have.

“Yup. You’re captain planet now, going for people in hostage right? How did you get that anyway, and how is that related to this excursion?” I asked yet again.

“Look!” he exclaimed, pointing to a gamayun which laid beneath the umbrella rock. How did I not see it before? “Do not make any noise,” he ordered, snatching my camera as he started to make a move towards our discovery.

After five steps towards the rock, he positioned himself to take a shot which I thought was a horrible idea. “Stop, it’ll wake up!” I mistakenly shouted, causing the sleeping animal to be woken.

“We have to get a shot no matter what. Follow it, come on,” Jason commanded. It was a little awkward, but I understood him, these animals were rare.

We kept chasing the gamayun for almost fifteen minutes into the deep until we realized we were nowhere close to our colleagues.

“This is unbelievable,” Jason marveled. “It’s Homer. Look, the one on the map. Jeez, we were led directly to our destination.”

“Woah, woah, woah, hold on, are you kidding me? Your destination not ‘our destination.’ I can’t believe I followed you all the way here to the middle of nowhere just to see this godforsaken place. How can I be so stupid?” I complained in disbelief.

“Are you coming? Or…” he asked, as he made his way to the door.

“What? Do you think I have come all the way here just to go back? Of course not. How do I find my way back alone? We’re going in.” I said, not certain if it was the right thing to do.

The broken door handle laid on the floor rusted, so I gave a gentle push to the door, thinking it was going to open, but it didn’t. Jason began to kick it with his feet but to avail.

“We’re not going back without going in first,” I whispered to myself and gave a couple of girl pushes, which were still not helpful.

“Open!” Jason barked after getting fed up.

The door began to open, slowly, which made no sense because no one forced it. We stared at each other for a few seconds as the inside was much darker than a night. I reached into my bag pack for a torchlight and turned it on. The door went shut behind us immediately entered.

“I’m scared Jason. Maybe we shouldn’t be here.” I broke the silence, handing over the torchlight to him and grabbing hold of his hand tightly.

“It’s OK” he said, “Don’t be scared.”

We found a staircase and climbed up to the top in awkward silence. Once we reached the top, Jason picked another map from his bag, which I figured was to guide us around. I kept following without giving a comment, but in mind I was planning to kill this guy once we got out alive, for bringing me to hell like that.

After a few minutes, we came to a part in the underground of the building, which looked like a real prison. It had eight cells, each of about ten feet wide and twelve with dried blood stains on their walls and rubbish on floors. The only thing that looked unusual was the eighth cell. It was neat and had no blood stains or dirt, not to talk of dust.

“How is this possible?” I asked.

“What? The cell? That is how it is supposed to be.” my companion replied calmly.

“Hello! Are you talking from your head? How long has this place lasted? And you’re telling me shit like ‘that’s how it’s supposed to be? Look Jason, I have tried to keep my composure but…get me out of here. I know I followed out of curiosity, but please, I’m begging you, I wanna get out of here…”

“Calm down, don’t let fear drown you.” He said. “You always talked of real adventures, remember? This is our chance to have a real adventure.”

“Shut up! What are you talking about? You seem to be calm here. How long have you known about this place? Why is it neat? What the hell is this place? Why did you lure me into following you? What did I ever do to you Jase, we were friends…”

“shut up Aires,” he commanded. “I don’t have answers to your questions right now, but trust me, I’m here to protect you should something happen…” He quickly stopped as the falling of a blue butterfly wing caught our attention.

My fingers began to shiver as the temperature in the building dropped suddenly. I held Jason’s hand very tightly, not wanting to let go no matter what was about to happen. We stood and watched steadily as it landed right in the middle of the cell and the fear within me could no longer hide.

“I’m having a bad feeling about this. Maybe we should leave.” I said, pinching Jason’s palm. His curious eyes however, gave no turn in my direction. I felt my left palm grow cold, which caused me to realize the presence of a paper in my palm. I brought it over to the light to read what it was, but the words were not English words, so Jason took it to read

“Onstryian onbregdan!” He read. Just at once the cell broke open and strong winds of dust blew out, followed by a blue winged butterfly, flapping its wings in quick succession towards the window and out of sight.

“What the hell was that?” Jason screamed.

“That ungratefully winged creature did this. So this was what you were trying to hide from me? Dark forces dwell or dwelt here for sure. You think am dumb? No sir, you thought wrong. Why the hell am I here, huh? To be sacrificed? Well go ahead, nobody is here to stop you,” I chickened out, stretching my hands in a surrender. “Nobody will find out either Jason, I’m tired of surprises, just do it!”

“Whom do you call ungrateful?” A feminine voice summoned our attention, causing my body to grow cold instantly and my fingers to shiver.

“Who…is…there?” Jason stuttered when suddenly a thick cloud of shadow began to hover towards our direction.

Without thinking twice, “Run!” I shouted, wasting no time to take to my heels, but before I could cover five feet’s distance, I felt a strong push on my back, making me land on my stomach and covering my body with dust. “H…H-hel…p,” I stammered, not being able to complete my sentence as the darkness thickened and I lost my sight, eventually becoming motionless.

After a while, an hour maybe, “Aires! Aires! Aires!” someone called out my name rapidly.

“Please let me go, I’m begging you, we only came for sightseeing, I swear I have no idea how my friend and I ended up here. Please let us go, and we will never come back.” I rapped, before my eyelids even unlocked themselves to give me my sight.

“It’s me dumbo. It’s Jason. Calm down. Whatever it was, it’s gone now. I’m getting us out of here” he said, trying to sound like a hero.

“Calm down? Really? That is what I should do huh, you almost got me killed and am here. Can’t see a thing in this darkness and you’re saying calm down?” I yelled at the sound of his voice as my cheeks flooded with tears.

“I’m sorry A, it was out of curiosity that I led us here. It won’t happen again. Do you have a flashlight? We need to go now,” he said.

I reached into my bag, searched for my phone, and finally turned on its flashlight. He held my hand tight, turned on his flashlight, and we started the search for a way out.

We wandered around in the dark for ten or eleven minutes until finally, we came to the bottom of the stairs, and continued silently making our way to the door. My feet, hands or easy to say, whole body was hurting so badly that I was limping as we approached the door. I began to imagine what we were going to do if there were no handles on this side as well.

“How will we get out?” I whispered, holding his hand very tightly, and resting on my left leg to avoid feeling the pain in the right as we approached the door.

“I have not thought of that,” he said, “but do you remember how we entered? Because there were no handles on the other side, all I said was open and it did.”

“Oh Jason, please. You speak as if the door obeyed you. Have you forgotten the millions of kicks you gave? Probably, it became weaker after those kicks. Whatever! We are still in here, start kicking already.” I blustered.

“Door open!” he yelled loudly.

At once we began to hear creaks from the almost fifty year old door as it opened slowly. Once out of the belly of darkness, I took to my heels, forgetting the pains my body was going through, but before I could cover five meters, my right leg gave a quick reminder that I wasn’t a hundred percent by failing to step firmly and caused me to slip but Jason grabbed me by the arm to prevent me from falling.

“What is wrong with you?” he whispered in anger. “Do you want to get hurt?”

“You, you, you”

“I what?” he shouted.

“You are a sorcerer, Jason, a wizard… No one speaks to doors. It isn’t some fucken AI. Let go of me, and do not come any closer.” I retorted, as my body started shivering, and I began to feel cold.

“I am not a wizard. If I were you, I would not be here by now. It was common sense, the first time we spoke, and it obeyed and let us through, but you refused to accept the truth.” he replied, a bit harshly. I must have pissed him off, because Jason does not speak this way, especially to me.