Challenge 29
Genre: fantasy-romance
Rating: T
Likes: something totally unexpected, otherworldly, completely out there! creative is the key!! lol
Dislikes: the same romantic cliché of badass guy meets shy, reserved girl... gets on your nerves when you see the same thing again and again, however well-written the stories might be. You can have those kind of characters, as long as its...unexpected circumstances, or something.
3 Quotes/Phrases: "See that (fill in with whatever) over there? That, my friend, is your destiny." Words - obsidian, gyrate (its a verb, so you can change its form or whatever).

Rapture.

I.

Suscitatio

Jacob ran.

The exhilarated shrieks of the other kids filled his ears as they spotted him from across the field. Jacob sprinted as fast as he could, loving how adrenaline pumped through his ten year old body as he ran toward a small dirt path that would lead him to the safety of the nearby lake. There are plenty of places to hide there, he thought.

I just have to make it there first and they won’t be able to find me. I’ll win the game for sure this time.

He kept running, he was only a hundred feet from the perimeter of the woods, and he knew that the others would lose him in there. They were no match for him in the woods; his father had made sure on their annual hunting trips that Jacob was able to run silently. The grass was taller here, almost to his shoulders, and it was filled with wheat and thickets- the kind that clung to his clothes like balls of velcro.

The footing became uneven and full of trash from stupid teenagers that hung out and burned things (at least that was what Ford had told him). Old rocks from the nearby quarry, discarded over the years, could be found in the grass as he neared the forest. The junk and old stones soon became invisible in the tall grass, perilous like the razor edged rocks in the surf. Obstacles to jump over, he mused.

Jacob’s foot grazed the tip of a rock as he jumped over one of the wide hunk of rock, turning his world horizontal as he fell spiraling (rather ungracefully) to the ground in the long dead grass, his face landing in the dirt, centimeters from another chunk of granite that issued out of the earth like a giant iceberg.

“Over there!” Jacob could hear Kim nearing him as she yelled in a frenzied shrill to the others. Jacob could feel their excitement growing as thought they spotted him.

“Where?!” another voice, more distant this time, yelled back.

“Shhhh!” Kim urged, casting a dark look at her companion. “He’s around here somewhere, I saw him near the woods.”

Another voice sounded from next to Kim.

“He’s going to the lake. I know he is, let’s go around. I know how to sneak up on him.” Josh’s deeper whisper replied.

Jacob could see their small silhouettes retreating toward the woods, along the very path he himself had intended upon going only moments before. Jacob crawled on his hands and knees as quietly as he could in the long, dead grass. He inched forward slowly to the edge of where the field ended and the gravel road leading back to the town started. I just need to get back home before they catch me and I’ll win. He prayed to himself. He inched forward slowly and carefully, keeping a lookout for any rocks that were frequently present in the old abandoned field. A fact he stupidly overlooked during his first attempt across the field.

At the snapping sound of a grass and leaves crunching underfoot, Jacob ceased crawling and listened. He kept his head up and eyes closed as he concentrated trying to hear the noise again. He carefully moved forward, scanning the field, desperate not to make noise. No sound came. His hand fell in a depression in the root filled dirt. Jacob recoiled and pulled his hand out of the hole. It came back wet and slimy. Whatever was on his hand, he could feel it dripping off his fingers and back on to the ground. He glanced down at his hand to wipe it in the surrounding weeds, and stopped.

Blood.

It was everywhere, along the long shafts of dead wheat and grass, and in small pools like the one he had put his hand into. Jacob was astonished he hadn’t noticed before, but he was too busy concentrating on not tripping on stones or making noise. Along with the blood were small downy feathers. He wondered if animals had caused this or perhaps a hunter had lost his quarry. He swallowed the burning need to vomit and tried to calm down; because he knew whatever had caused this was big. Bigger than him, big, which scared him a lot.

The field sloped downward and Jacob saw that a small section of the field had been obliterated. It was only a few feet around, but it looked as if it were hit by an asteroid. A crater-like hole in the center exposed the red clay dirt underneath the dying blades of grass, and the surrounded grasses had been flattened as if they lost a battle to a tractor or a stampede of horses. Whichever.

Next to a rock he found more feathers, most covered in perfectly round droplets of crimson. Jacob briefly remembered his brother telling him how many birds had waterproofing stuff on their wings. That’s why he could see how the feathers were once an opalescent white. The contrast between the white and red was perversely beautiful in his eyes, yet he couldn’t help but be repulsed that animals could kill each other so violently.

Something moved at the other end of the flattened area. He couldn’t tell what it was so he scuttled closer, perfectly aware of the possibility that whatever it was, it could possibly eat him. It wasn’t a bird, that was for sure. He thought, as he edged towards the middle of the upturned dirt and crumpled stalks of grass. Jacob was only a foot away when he realized what lay in the flattened grass.

The girl was covered in blood, and by the blooming bruises on her limbs and the abnormal position of her body, she had to be dead. She was facedown, and her arms and legs were spiraled at awkward angles. Her long dark hair was matted in a bloody mess across the majority of her back, neck and face creating a haunting obsidian veil. An image that Jacob was sure he wouldn't forget in the recent future. As he looked closer, concentrating, Jacob could see that the mangled flesh that was her back slowly rose and fell in a shallow but constant rhythm.

“Ar-are y-you okay?” he choked out as he stared shocked over his discovery.

Jacob crouched beside her and peeled back the bloody curls that veiled her face, placing them on her right shoulder, carefully, to avoid contact with her back, where he could see brutal lacerations and a sickening amount of blood. He put his fingertips near her nose and mouth checking that air was going in and out and asked again if she were alright. She made no acknowledgement of his presence, but slowly her eyes moved behind her lids in quick flickers of movement they way they move when you’re having a nightmare. They stopped and her eyes slowly flickered open, revealing eyes the color of the grass around them, before it became a dead wasteland. They were the color of the field when he was little and everything was new and alive. They focused on him; locking on to his own as whoever she was, realized she was alive. To Jacob, she looked disorientated, obviously in pain, and (he realized with a blush) naked.

Jacob was surprised and alarmed that she was actually still alive.

“Wait here.” He said as he ran back to town. Mentally reprimanding himself as he sprinted toward home, realizing that she didn’t have much choice, because it wasn’t likely she would be able to actually move at all any time soon.

It wasn't likely she was going to be alive much longer, either. He thought as he ran.