The Sprout

Burning Embers: Part Six

Posted by Sambow from Cardiff - Published on 29/11/2010 at 13:22
3 comments » - Tagged as Creative Writing

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Well shucks, I didn’t expect that response.

“Fire...?” I repeated with an uneasy curiosity. His eyes began to twitch and that was when I first noticed the blood in them.
Wait, blood?
“Flint! Your eyes!” I screamed, unable to keep the horror from my voice. He wiped them as if it was no big deal and grasped a bead of macabre scarlet. I felt like throwing up. With an enormous effort I bit back my tears and forced myself to speak again. “Flint! We have to get you to someone, now!” He didn’t move. Unlike he was a mere minute ago, frantic and distraught; he was now hollow and vacant. I shook him and he grabbed my hand. “Flint...” My lip trembled as a salty tear ran down my face. It burned like the fire that escaped my mouth. He looked at me slowly with a broken gaze, detached from the world.

“No... Please...” His words echoed through the room and gradually submerged us in bleak defiance as Flint closed his eyes and passed out. Fear told me not to do anything, and as if the room had been watching us the whole time a brisk wind blew through the space and made me shiver violently. As it left it took with it the light I had used to see Flint in the first place and silently told me to go back to sleep, despite my throbbing and tormenting anxiety.

********************

Flint woke me up in the morning.

He had brown smears across his face. Dried blood. I instinctively opened my mouth to ask him what the hell had happened but his expression told me not to. He stared with the same isolate expression he had on last night. I closed my mouth and felt the burning sensation of worry tears return. Surprisingly, however, through my growing grief I could feel new-found energy. Sleep had helped. A lot. I noticed that Flint was actually standing up, towering above me like a daunting master. I struggled to my feet.

“We should go find Ash.” He stated matter-of- factly. I nodded and forced a weak smile on my face, trying to pretend like nothing had happened the previous night. As he moved to leave the cave like room we were in, I gently grabbed his should for support to begin walking. He shot me a dagger glare and pushed my hand off immediately. “Don’t lag.” He spat and walked forward, leaving me behind him.

That’s when I noticed his black eyes. They were like coal, harsh, broken, surreal and deathly. They hadn’t been black before. I wanted to tell him. That his eyes were wrong. That he was wrong. I wanted to scream at what he had just done, but I didn’t. I just let him walk away, apparently proud and disgustingly mighty as he left to find Ash. I stared in shock. That wasn’t Flint. It took me a moment to resurface back on Earth. I took a deep breath and followed after Flint, hoping that at the least I had imagined the sombre colour of his eyes.

Weirdly enough, it was a wet walk through the tunnel that exited our previous room. The walls dripped with a damp serum and it felt extremely uncomfortable in the humid cramped conditions of the never-ending path. How had Flint gotten through it so fast? I picked up the pace until I came to an abrupt door to my left, hesitantly I opened it. My pupils constricted immediately as I walked into the grand room on the other side of the door. It was illuminated in glorious yellow; it fell down on us in a waterfall of florid amber - a complete contrast from the dingy and bleak corridor I had just been in. Four figures sat across the room next to an extremely long table, like the sort you would find in a gothic castle. I shuddered, why did they have such a big table - what purpose did it serve?

And how did they get it in here, through a forest and whatnot?

A few more questions began weaselling their way through the cramped quarters of my aching head before the oh-so-wonderful Ash appeared in front of me. “Curious of the room, are we?” She asked, peering up at me from her lower place. I held back my frown, she was so weird. “I was looking for Flint.” I said hesitantly. Ash nodded over to the four figures I could just make out at the back of the room - there he sat with Brande, Blaze and Aiden. I couldn’t stop the frown furrowing its way down my pale skin this time. Last night he had had a fit over Brande for her strangeness and now he sat like best buddies next to her. I looked at Ash and back at the group. “I’m just gonna...” I trailed off as I nodded to the majority group in the corner. Ash smiled “Be my guest.”

I hurried over to them, without looking back at Ash; it was so awkward and ominous in her presence. As I approached the group Flint stopped midway through his conversation with them and shot me a glare. “What?” I asked, exasperated at his behaviour. Aiden and Blaze flickered their gaze towards me. “What!?” I repeated. Aiden turned his gaze back to Flint.

“Your friend is strange.” I narrowed my eyes in shock, what? Was this kid unaware that I was standing right there?
Flint grunted.What!? He should have disagreed!
“Flint...” I said stepping forward with a worried look and placing my hand on his arm. He shook it off aggressively like he had done earlier and made Aiden and Blaze chuckle at my rejection. Brande however remained silent. “Wha-” I began but he put his hand up and cut me off.
“Ember,” He began standing up, Aiden and Blaze copied him. “If you wouldn’t mind not touching me, that’d be great. I’m going to talk to Ash.” He turned without another word and walked to the other side of the room where Ash was standing with Aiden and Blaze close in toe. I stood, gutted like a fish, with an aching sensation that a hole had just been ripped out of my stomach. Losing some control over my legs, I collapsed unintentionally next to Brande on one of the seats the other three had been sitting on.

Brande then showed some sign of her consciousness and turned to look at me. I felt her gaze tickling the side of my cheek so turned to look at her. I wasn’t really in the mood for weirdness as well. “Yeah?” I said hopelessly. She peered at me for a long moment with a slight crease in her brow, concentration obvious on her tanned face.

It was an agonising wait before she finally spoke.

“Believe me when I say Ash is bad. Flint may have been lost like the others but you, like me, have a chance of escaping this hell hole. Follow me tyro or succumb to that pathetic way of living.” She nodded to Ash and her surroundings before getting up and briskly leaving the room - leaving me torn between my aching curiosity at her words and my loyalty and confusion for my friend.

Slowly I skulked out of the room, unseen, to find her.

Burning Embers: Part Seven

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IMAGE: Embers by Shearwater