They Call Me Daring

Chapter 10

"WHOA!" The shriek jerked me awake. Angrily, I blinked red spots out of my eyes while I squinted into the crevice of light.
    "Who is it...?" I mumbled sleepily.
    "More like why are you in the cabinet?!"
    "What cabin...." I blinked rapidly until my vision cleared, and I realized I was lying on something soft. Sheets and quilts... the air was musty and oddly wooden smelling. "Whoa!"
    I rolled off the shelf, where I had been curled up in a ball, hidden away in the darkness. Too late I realized it was the top shelf.
    I swore loudly as I hit the ground hard on my back. The wind was knocked out of me for a while, and even then I forgot to breath for a while. Then I inhaled deeply and grabbed the hand that helped to hoist me back up.
    "Dude," The red-haired girl shook her head. "What is wrong with you?"
    I sighed. If only they knew. Of course, if they did know, they would lock me up in a glass box for the rest of my days, or they would copter me out to some empty, rotting forest in the middle of nowhere. Great ways to live the remainder of your life, even when you could count the number of days you had left on one hand.
    "And how did you even get up there!?" She stepped back to look at the top shelf, six feet off the ground, with no chair or stool in sight.
    "I-I don't know," I stammered, trying to remember. What had I been doing sleeping in a cabinet? I racked my brains, and felt a start when I realized the last thing I remembered was leaving the kitchen downstairs.
    "I don't know!" I shouted suddenly, grabbing my head in my hands, running my hands nervously through my hair... Then I discovered another missing piece of the puzzle.    "Where did... oh..."
    Wordlessly I picked my paper bag mask up off the ground, then looked dejectedly up at the girl, a lock of my now pure white hair falling in front of my eye, and I tried to smile innocently... and only succeeded in baring my fangs.
    "Oh, god." She breathed shakily, closing her eyes to block me out, her entire body shivering. Suddenly the sound of footsteps came from the stair case. Someone was coming upstairs.
    Our eyes met for a second, green to brown. I swallowed, my shoulders slumping. It was over; the gig was up. In that millisecond, a thousand thoughts and emotions passed between us like particles of electricity. I could hear her heart pounding, smell the fear on her... she was scared of me. And she was going to scream.
    "Don't!" I yelped just as she opened her lips. I clamped my hand over her mouth, started at the heat of her skin, and I felt her jerk away at my freezing touch... it burned me, but I pulled her down the hall and into one of the many junky storage rooms, bolting the door behind us.
    I pressed my back against the door in the dark room just in case someone tried to break an entry, and I let her go. She backed away into a corner, as far away from me as possible. I watched her wild eyes, bigger than usual, almost luminous in the darkness, darting about the room in a frenzy, searching for a barrier between her and the monster.
    The monster was me.
    Silently I pleaded with her, trying to make eye contact. I didn't care if she found it creepy that I didn't need to blink, and that I wasn't even breathing for the moment. I just needed her to understand.
    Painfully slowly, I heard the creaking footsteps come down the hall, ever closer to the doorway. Whoever it was, they were taking their sweet time, while I was silently fighting for my life.
    The floorboards right outside creaked beneath their weight, as they slowly transferred from one foot to another- then, abruptly, the creaking stopped, as they paused right outside the door.
    The girl met my eyes. I was just as scared as she was, my heart pounding so hard I wondered if whoever it was on the other side of the door could hear it, and I was sure my chest would be rising and falling rapidly... if I had been breathing at all. I tried to stare meaningfully into those abnormally large brown eyes, convey a million messages in one second; and then the doorknob began to turn.
    Slowly, with the sharp sound of metal grinding against metal, I felt the knob turn without catching, and my heart skipped several beats. I closed my eyes, willing my heart not to be so loud, and for the girl to keep silent.
    I waited for the scream. She was trapped in a dark room with a loser half-zombie, and here was someone right there, not ten feet away, who could easily summon a rifle and a crow bar and shoot me to a bloody pulp.
    All she had to do was scream.
    The knob clicked and caught, and I held my breath. Or, at least, I would have. I waited with my eyes closed, reveling in my last few moments of comfortable darkness, because soon it would all go away.
    Soon Liam Trackerson would be no more.
    I felt the person on the other side straining against the lock, throwing their weight into the handle, every nerve in my body on a razor edge, tensed and prepared for the scream-
    Then, as suddenly as it all began, the person grunted, gave up, and turned away.
    My eyes snapped open, and I couldn't look at the girl, terrified one look at me would shake her into action. I stared unblinkingly up at the ceiling, not daring to believe my luck, listening as the footsteps receded down the hall. There was no way in heck that Liam Trackerson could ever be that lucky.
    Then I heard a door slam further down the hall, and I slumped to the ground, realizing my entire body was shaking.
    I remembered to breath, as unneeded as it was, and I took one, long deep breath before I could force myself to look at the girl.
    She stared back at me from the other end of the room, wide eyed and... confused.
    "Please. Don't eat me." She managed, looking shaken. I couldn't tell if she was serious or not, so I took it literally.
    "I'm not..." Suddenly a headache surged into my brain, throbbing madly, a nanosecond of crippling pain- before I even had time to react, it vanished, and when I opened my eyes red spots danced on my vision. Not good. "I'm not going to... to eat you...."
    "Are you sure?" She said, and again I couldn't tell if it was a joke.
    "Yeah, yeah, I'm sure," I muttered, rubbing my temples where the headache had hit. What had that been? Was the poison beginning to penetrate my brain?
    "Good. 'Cause I swear, you touch me, and I'll freakin' kill you."
    "That's good with me." I rubbed my eyelids, trying to clear the red spots. It was silent for an uncomfortably long moment.
    "Aren't... aren't you scared?" I finally asked. I was scared.
    "Yes." She replied simply.
    "Then why... why didn't you scream?" I frowned, confounded.
    "Because of giving up."
    "What?" I raised an eyebrow, confused even further.
    "It-" She began, but then shook her head. "No, it's kind of a long story. Mom's expecting me back at noon, and I'd better get going."
    I nodded slowly, taking this in. So she was going to explain something to me... and now she wasn't... and I was still confused out of my mind.
    She started towards the door, and I picked myself off the ground and stood aside as she reached for the handle. She was about to go, when I realized I didn't even know her name.
    "Wait-" I put my hand on the door to keep her from opening it, which startled her. "I mean-no-" I took my hand back off and shoved it into my pocket. Great way of not acting creepy, Liam. "I mean- you never told me your name."
    "Meggie." She attempted a shaky smile, but she looked so deeply troubled it was almost sad to see. "Call me Meg. Maybe I'll be back tomorrow."
    "I just hope I have that long." I muttered under my breath, holding open the door for her. "And please... just... don't-"
    "Shh." She shook her head. "I know. Don't worry, I can keep a secret." She smiled meekly and whipped around, and I watched the red pony tail bob briskly down the hall and disappear around the corner.
    Just before the red hair whirled out of sight, she poked back around into the hall. "And you might want to put that mask on."