There were cursed patterns painting itself on its middle, illuminating in the color of the fiery assault; however, the liquid inside seemed unperturbed by the chaos. It was still, its existence barely visible.“Wow!” She put her hands on her lips, her irises reflecting the perfect-looking web the connecting flames had crafted. It resembled the becoming of the potion when knitted between her fingers, only more luminous. Unshaped flames fired from every other side of it as if to burn anything that came closer to their circle.Cursed patterns, weird shapes, blinding lights. All these things reminded her of a ritual of some sort. And since Soyet, the brewer of such a potion that seemed to have triggered this occurrence, was a shaman, rituals probably were a domain of his. As such, he must have been the one to scheme this magnificent show.“That old man,” she whispered with a grin.Before the rank of fire could get a meter closer, the bottle exploded. The barely visible liquid inside splat
Laura thought her wishes would come to fruition should she be able to walk right through the entrance of the vampire’s realm. But, she had been dragging her feet on a solid, unseeable ground for who knew how long, and yet, there seemed to have been no end in this narrow, dimly lit alleyway. Other than the bejeweled pebbles placed gently on each side of the pitch-black ground, there is an arching block of sand-made wall surrounding the place, almost like it did not want anyone outside to get a glimpse of what it had in store and vice versa. The first time she saw it, she thought she’d fallen bait to a black hole or something. For unknown reasons, though, she could step on it, making it look as though she were floating.Relief came through the form of a small orangish light not from afar. She still could not see what was beyond the overly shadowed path, but the warm air was enough to compensate for the chilling embrace of her current standing.“I’m close. I’m close,” she said under her
Laura gasped as if she just surfaced from the deepest ocean. She was out of breath. Unlike the other times, her waking up from the nightmare was a lot different today. For one, there was a wild throbbing in her head and her heart seemed to be clenched by an invisible pair of rotting hands. She felt like anytime soon she would croak. Shivers crawled deeper to her flesh at the thought.Only after she tried to stand did she realize how chains wrapped about her wrist. At first glance, she already knew it was something out of the ordinary. Not only was it twirled about by the same pitch-black vines covering the ground earlier, but there were also metallic thorns moving up and down to its every corner. And she couldn’t even feel the way to which it pierced right through her skin. She could certainly sense a prick. It alone wouldn’t have made her feel deathly afraid, but it had been paired to the fact that her blood was gushing out of the barely visible slit as if it was a cut made by a knif
It had been three long agonizing days since Laura slipped through the entrance of the vampire’s realm. She’d never truly anticipated the scope of what she was trying to fit her mold into and, clearly, she underestimated the danger by which she was drawing in for herself. All for her fucked-up dreams. And now, if luck could have it, she had turned into a wife of the creature of the night. She admitted to have wished to become like them, but nowhere was she ready to enter matrimony to someone who she only knew by face and certainly not to the person who had held her captive. Worst of all, she’d been cleaned off of her dress, so he was basically able to see everything bout her.Although he didn’t have the lustful look in his face nor did he show the slightest of interest to her womanly beings, she still felt so vulnerable and small. She had pride, which was now shattered about in the feet of her own weakness. Should she have been strong and merely inclined to normal, achievable and not l
In the small village of Little Hangleton dwelled the infamous Gaunts. Their generations were defined by treasures and wealth passed on from one to the other, but it was not to this that their names were known. The villagers had long since inferred they were beyond their understanding and sympathy; ever since the world began, they had not, even once, interacted with them. They had thought then that this was their way of saying they weren’t on their level. Bitter resentment swelling from an unsaid insult, the villagers witnessed the scandal which the Gaunts had to bring into their graves. The Gaunt’s manor stood atop the hill overlooking the village, its features quite resembling that of a man who couldn’t recover from being sick. Despite themselves, the Gaunts had lost their financial stability over the years, and the villagers found glory in the fact that the once fine-looking manor ended up being unchecked, though it remained to be the grandest building for miles around. Not too lon
Laura had a dream. She was standing in the middle of a deserted meadow, long ruined by something more of a storm. Everywhere she looked, petals savagely sliced in half loitered, the red of their features painted by thick, smelling blood, a lot darker than its usual glow. But next to the trees lying helplessly in rows, it became rather trivial. From the way it looked, it seemed to have been ravaged by a cursive blow, as the branches hosting its supposedly fresh fruit had been burnt, still puffing grayish smoke. The wind danced purposelessly with it until it reached the scope of the starless dome-like horizon extending out of nowhere. Taking a deep breath, she wrapped her arms around her shoulders, shivering a little when the cold wind picked up. It whispered such an ominous rhythm that pushed deeper into her eardrums. As though she knew what was going to happen, she looked up at the brightest of moon. Its celestial light wasn’t a helping matter either, for the moment the pair of her o
Time Square never failed to amaze Laura. She had come across its name a lot of times in her books, but she never had the chance to pay it a visit, especially since she was completing her fine art major then. Seeing it in its pure glory made her think she missed half of her life for nothing. It was indeed a rich commercial street, a place where you’d feel it was a miracle to be alive. The rows of gigantic buildings almost seemed to be calling Laura, its glint in the nearly covered sun daunting. Whenever she peered at the car window, no matter how hard she tried to look up, she couldn’t have even just a single glimpse of the dome-like horizon, almost as though they were never there to begin with. The crown of the different infrastructures, its rows in the corners of the street that far surpassed that of a tree, had this sense of both permanence and ephemeral quality. Something about it intrigued her more than she thought it would. It gave her that kind of desire to unravel how these ing
Laura had never met someone who could bluntly say she resembled someone they knew. Then again, she wasn’t the type to have a stranger stop and casually hang with her for a second or two. She was, after all, that weird newbie in the neighborhood whose name was branded with the curse of the Gaunts. Perhaps, her grandmother knew things would be this way, which was why she had decided to enroll her not in their village but in the neighboring city. What she might have overlooked, however, was the fact that news had wings. No rumor was ever safe for the ears of gossipers who were more than satisfied to feast on other’s despair. She was all over those. Bearing those kinds of treatment for almost fourteen years, she found that these strange and curious things about her were more like a conjoined twin tied to her for merely being one of the elusive Gaunts. All the same, she couldn’t quite resist a smile knowing that somewhere out there, someone didn’t look at her as this strange kind of exist