The Mist

The fog above the marsh was getting too thick. My throat and lungs were clogging up with enough muck to drown a frog. But I couldn't stop. I knew the village was a few hundred yards away, and I'm a good runner. But the marshland was mushed with the rain of what seemed to be an endless week prior. My heels sank with each step.

The moon was just overhead. My heart was thumping. Little bits of light sprinkled through the giant willow trees that surrounded me. Their branches hung low around me, as if they were shielding me from what I wasn't nurtured to face. I was managing a jog. I thought the creature, whatever it was, had lost me for the time being.

As I crept around the clumps of spongy land that separated the bases of the willows from the lagoon water, I felt an eerie chill crawl from my left hip up to my breast. I slowly turn to my shoulder. In my peripheral vision, I see the light blue aura of a being hovering just next to me. It was wispy and nearly transparent. It had the shape of a woman, but that shape shifted like the leaves of a tree, making it almost impossible to discern anything definite about its appearance.

Considering that I wasn't already dead, I figured the being was either harmless or toying with me before it attacked. Either way, I knew it would be unwise to act abruptly. So, I walked as slowly as possible to a nearby willow and brushed my left side against the bark.

The being caught against the mass of the tree, unlatching its ghostly aura from my hip. I circled the tree until the last of my goosebumps disappeared. Then I ran as fast as I could towards the village. A shrieking scream sounded from behind me. I figured it could have only come from the creature. I leaped from clump to clump, dodging dead roots and splitting branches until I saw a small beam of light coming from the outline of a hut.

I made it past the last of the willows and found myself in the clearing just before the village. Against my better judgment, I looked over my shoulder to see, not the misty aura of the creature I had seen before, but a naked woman running to me with her arm extended, sobbing maniacally. I stood still, staring at her as she closed in on me.

I thought, could that screaming have come from a woman who was running away from the beast like I was?

When she reached about 10 yards ahead of me, she slowed to a jog. Joy and relief filtered through her sobs.

An arrow flew over my shoulder and pierced her skull. It landed directly between her eyes. I watched the light fade from them as she fell backward into the grass.

I screamed. I couldn't help it. I just watched a woman be murdered. I ran to grab her body. I knelt beside her and held her head on my knee. An ooze flooded onto the ground beneath her. I stared at the color of it. It was the same blue I saw before

"Get back!" a man yelled from the village. He ran toward me with an iron axe drawn from his hip.

I looked back down at the woman to see a wide smile and empty eye sockets. Glaring back at me. I jumped and crawled backward on my rear and elbows. The woman's body snapped upward and contorted itself to crawl toward me with her head and back bent backward.

The blade of the axe came down on her neck, slicing her head off. It rolled down toward the man, who stomped it into a thousand bits. He panted and held his hand out to me.

"You okay?" he said.

"Absolutely not."

I raised myself against his weight. I looked at the headless body of the woman. In moments, it started to decay. More of that blue ooze eased out of the opened neck. I shuddered and walked toward the village.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"And, that's how I ended up here," Amara said.

The warmly lit room of teens groveled at her words.

"So Samson cut her head off," said one of the smaller, sickly looking boys. The statement was rhetorical. Of course, it was Samson. No one in the village possessed the strength necessary to do such a thing.

"Wow," said one of the girls with braided hair. The others were her sisters. They sat with their chins propped on their palms.

"You're lucky you didn't die," said a fit boy who sat on a bucket near the barn doors.

"I am," Amara said.

"You're lucky we didn't die," said a more rotund boy standing next to him.

"You're point, Brutus?" Amara asked.

"He means, you could've led that thing into the village where it probably would have gone door to door and snatched every child it could," said the boy on the bucket.

"Oh, give me a break, Geralt," said Amara. "What was I supposed to do? Die in the marsh?"

Geralt did not reply; he merely side-eyed her.

"Don't even answer," Amara said, rolling her eyes.

"I think you did the right thing," one of the girls with braided hair said.

"Thank you, Cynthia. That's very kind," Amara replied.

Cynthia, who was obviously much younger than Amara, blushed at her gratitude.

The doors to the barn slid open. In walked Samson. He was bigger than three of Brutus. His shoulders swayed with each step. His brown eyes caught the warmth of the torches in the barn, turning them amber.

"Amara," he boomed.

The group of teens gawked at Amara, all but Geralt, who was picking his fingernails. She looked around hesitantly.

"The council needs to see you."

She swallowed hard and rose from the bundle of hay she was sitting. She wiped her thighs and followed Samson through the barn doors.