Panic Room

Part one; the fourth

I'm just saying, but I am DEATHLY afraid of snakes! When I was really young, we were doing swimming lessons in the school pool and then they rushed us out and these guys came and pulled a snake as long as me out of there! It had just been chilling there for like an hour. EEK!

Sorry, I'm rambling a bit. On with the chapter!

Thursday; 1998; Luna; Brasil road; 15:46 pm

On the way back from school, Luna was still mourning over her destroyed glasses, when she heard an odd sound coming out from somewhere to her left. She stopped walking abruptly and looked down. Luna saw a small bush sitting where the noise was coming from. She was not certain that she wanted to look inside and was still considering whether to, when she heard an odd hissing sound coming from the shrub. She quickly moved backward and slipped, teetered on the edge of the sidewalk as a huge truck droned past. Luna had reeled backward at the sound of the hiss, because this was not like any hiss that she had ever heard before. This was something different. Something almost human. She heard the hiss again and thought that she heard, in a very low undertone, her name.

She knew that it was absurd that she could hear her name in a hiss, but she was sure, almost positive, that she had. It had been very quiet, but Luna was absolutely confident that she had heard it.

She was becoming more afraid now but her curiosity was also beginning to overtake her. It seemed to settle over her. To wrap around her. To suck her deeper and deeper into its cocoon of wanting to know. It was like drinking something that sprang around in her stomach like Mexican jumping beans. She had the feeling that the bush was pulling her forward, causing her to move closer to whatever lurked behind the oranging leaves.

Luna was giving into the lure of whatever was inside of the bush and with a sinking feeling in her stomach she gave into the call. She stepped forward, sticking her head between the slick leaves and staring down at a long brown snake.

Luna leaped back, her eyes wide and let out a cry of fright. Her breath caught in her throat and she let out a slow, rattling way, that seemed to shake her very heart. She turned to run but found that she could not move her legs. They were frozen in shock.

As Luna looked, the thing she thought was a snake moved toward her in a slow, fluid movement, its eyes on her the whole time. Watching her. Examining her as if it were a doctor and she was a patient, vulnerable to whatever horrible things it had in store. The snake moved closer and closer and now, when it was less than thirty centimetres away, Luna could see an odd marking on its head, like a coffee stain. The world seemed to slow and with a sudden flair of panic, she broke out of her trance and screamed. Her scream cut through the day like a knife, and now Luna was running. She ran and ran. She ran down the street as quickly as her feet would take her. She ran as though she was running from the devil. Luna looked back, expecting to see the snake, but instead she saw a shadow. Not the small shadow that she would expect from a snake, but a tall shadow. The shadow of a man and in a way, this was even worse. Luna did not know who that shadow belonged to but Luna did know that she definitely did not want to meet the caster. And with a terrifying finality Luna looked back in front of her and ran.