Deianeira

Chapter 1

For years she had been following him... The one who had caught Chamal in her web and left him aching for freedom. She always stared him down like a hawk. Her narrow, reptile eyes always tracking her prey. He could never escape them. The hellish enchantress was always one step ahead. His mind was a toy to her. She always let him flee. She always let him suffer. She never let him escape.

∞

The summer glare illuminated Chamal's bedroom, waking him from his dream and into the repetitive nightmare of life. His hand rose to the scar across the side of his neck scratching. The door at his feet swung open sending him under the covers of his cotton sheets.

"Chamal breakfa- what are you doing?"

His mother spoke in a confused tone. A sigh of relief escaped from him.

After eating the food his mother prepared the air around him turned frigid. The hairs on his neck raised. Goosebumps appeared on his arms. He retreated out of the dining room, glancing over his bruised shoulder and out of windows. A lock of onyx black hair drifted past the oncoming doorway moving swiftly into the room. His room. A sole knock against the wall beckoned him to enter its realm of torment and misery. Reverting into the wall of the dismal hallway bumping into the display of glass vases behind him. His breathing became increasingly heavier. His heart pumped rapidly as he became petrified. His ebony eye's pupils became dilated. He moved his hands against the wall desperate to find an item that could cause laceration to the creature. Deianeira had returned...

A monotone rumble filled his ears. She never delivered a word. If the corruption responded, it was through animal-like sounds or her flintlock grey lips mouthed the words. Her hand extended past the cover of the Australian Buloke door. Her cinereal skin cracked like bone-dry dirt in the Sahara Desert. Her talons dug into the treated wood destroying the polish lily white protecting it. Splinters emerged from the door as she gouged her nails into the wood. Her blue veins protruded from her scrawny wrist. She eventually removed her unguis from the entryway. Wood chips pierced her fingertips causing her cardinal blood to exude from the wounds as she laughed like a jackal.

A wave of paralysis fell over him as a sick feeling overcame his gut. He collapsed on to his knees allowing the shattered glass to penetrate his knees as his weak chin was conscripted up, making him watch his extermination edge further and further out of her cover.

'.... --- .-- / .-.. --- -. --. / .-.. . ..-. - ..--..'

The clicks made him cower. He tried to talk but his words or any vocalisation for that matter were muffled. The witch had taken complete control over him. Her cymophane eyes pierced his soul, the torn opulent black dress she wore grazed the floor as she sluggishly strode to his side. She growled as she arched to his eye-level. Baring her snake-like fangs she enunciated words Chamal could not make out as she directed her rancid breath on to him. She punctured his scar with her claws forcing a scream of agony out of his benumbed body and his eyes to lock shut. Deianeira then made a ferocity shriek into his ears making him shudder. Finally, the pain and volume decreased slowly into silence and a lingering burn.

Opening his eyes, the last of her terminal hand disintegrated into ash as it motioned a wave goodbye. She had spared him, the torture of her eyes following his every move would continue.

Eventually, he could move once more. He flung his hand to the wound pressuring it as he whimpered from the excruciating pain. After what felt like hours of kneeling, the pain finally subsided temporarily and transformed into numbness. Although he had the power to get to his feet, the hysteria still compelled him on to the oak floor.