Where This World Ends, Another Begins

Chapter 10: Charlie and Kian

Charlie:

My mom wanted me to stay at home, while she went to my uncle's house. I don't really know why. I was walking around the house, eating and watching Netflix. Then, something happened. I opened the pantry and guess who was inside. Trixie. At first, I thought I was hallucinating, but once I realized I wasn't, I ran. Of course, she followed me. For some reason, I was really dizzy. I tried to go up the stairs, but I stumbled and rolled down. I slowly stood up. When my head stopped spinning, I bolted up the stairs. This time, I made it to the top. I quickly grabbed my phone and opened my texts. The first person on it was Liana. I started to text her, but then some invisible force slammed into me and I stumbled to the ground. My phone landed a few feet away. I reached for it. The text said, "Trizuwbgrda". I ignored that part and just typed in "help". I barely got the chance to hit send before I was hit again. This time, I landed face down. When I pulled myself up, I saw the blood drip from my nose. I looked down the stairs. Trixie was hovering at the bottom. She waved her hand and I was hit again. This time, I was done. I just stayed there as she flew up to me. She didn't say anything. Or maybe she did. I couldn't hear her over the ringing in my ears.

~

I woke up lying down on, nothing? My vision was pretty blurry. I blinked a few times. I sat up slowly. I looked around. It looked like I was in a huge room, floating. I looked down at whatever I was sitting on. There was like some kind of glass or something that was like completely invisible. Then I saw what was actually under me. Spiders and scorpions. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them, crawling around. I quickly looked up.

"Charlie!" I whirled around to see Sophie curled up in a ball with her head sticking out. Underneath her "glass box" was water, tons of it.

"What happened?" I asked.

"We're the bait, to lure Liana here."

"Where? Wait, where are we?"

"I think it's the place that Liana disappeared to."

"Oh."

"You looked really beat up when you got here."

"I tried to text for help."

"Oh, I should have done that. My mom probably thinks I wrecked the house and ran." Then suddenly, a scorpion jumped up to right in front of my face. Since when can they jump?! I shrieked and jumped back. Sophie started snickering. She looked like she was trying to hide it, but was epically failing.

"Hey!"

"Sorry," she said between laughs. I looked back down at the water. Spiders and scorpions are my worst fear. Is water Sophie's worst fear? She seemed to read my mind. "I know. It's stupid."

"W-what?"

"I'm scared of water. Go ahead and laugh. I laughed at you." She looked away. I didn't really feel like laughing or trying to make her feel better, because, as I said before, emotions. They should have filled the tank thing with a ton of people crying, and I had to make them feel better. We just sort of stayed quiet until, finally, she broke the tension. "What do we do? We can't just sit here."

"And what exactly do you want me to do? Jump into a tank of bugs?"

"Well...I don't know. But I feel like we have to do something." Then a pixie flew in. She looked like Trixie. No, wait! She was that pixie that healed Liana.

"I brought you food," she whispered. She quickly darted to Sophie and gave her a plate of food and a fork. Then she came to me and gave me a plate and a fork, too. Then she darted away before I could thank her. Sophie immediately started eating, as if she'd eaten it before. How long had she been here? It could have only been a few hours. Maybe time here is different. I looked at the food. It looked like normal food, except the color were all wrong. It was a plate of what looked like pasta, except the pasta was blue, the sauce was neon yellow. I looked over at Sophie again.