Jeffie and The Lonely Boys (boyxboy)

Chapter 10: Aching Soul

----------------------Hey guys! I am so sorry for how long this has taken, but I couldn't NOT finish it. There are so many things that have happened in my life, I stopped writing altogether. But I owe it to you guys and myself to finish my books, and maybe start more! So here we go, the beginning of the end of this book. Enjoy!--------------------

----Lance's POV-----

I had to find him. The feeling had long surpassed want or desire, I simply had. To find. Jeffie. The rest of the group continually asked me if I was okay, as we walked and walked in the direction we saw that flickering image of a palace. But I was single minded and focused on one thing. There was something about Jeffie-something that made me ache somewhere deep inside, like encountering someone I never thought I would see again, and feeling like I had to tell him something, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what it was. This place, these people, were confusing me, messing me up. I could tell the others felt it too, but we all react differently.

"Lance?" Felix called, jogging to catch up with me and keeping pace with my quick strides. He and Keaton had been taking quietly this whole time, as were Elliot and Elijah. Felix's jet black hair took on a dustier, lighter tone, as we had left the edge of the jungle and were now walking across a terrain similar to the Sahara. "How far do you think we are?"

I wiped the sweat from my brow, looking ahead of us. The sun was setting when we looked out over the horizon from the trees, and was barely visible now, the dusk light painting the cloudless sky with hues of pink and purple. "We can't be far. In fact, we should be coming up on it any minute now, if I gauged the distance correctly." As I spoke I slowed my pace, glancing all around us. Looking back, the jungle was a speck on the horizon. Looking ahead, sand. Endless, rolling hills of sand.

"It's fucking hot," Keaton complained. He had tied his shirt around his head, exposing a pale chest riddled with tattoos of various art styles. "I bet it was just an illusion, and now we're all gonna die of dehydration." 

Elliot snorted. "Lovely. That's a real morale booster." 

Keaton threw his arms in the air exasperatedly. "Well? Someone's gotta say what we're all thinking. If you've got a counter argument, please, do share. I'd fucking love to be wrong."

Then, as if on cue, the ground beneath us rumbled. 

"What the hell...?" Elliot started.

"It almost feels like an earthquake, except..." Felix trailed off. 

"Except?" Prompted Keaton, the ground rumbling again and nearly taking us all off balance. "Except?"

"It's just...the sand is shifting left and right beneath us, like almost as if there were something underneath was trying to shake it...off." As Felix finished speaking we all looked at each other simultaneously. 

"Run! Move, move, move!" I shouted, and just as we all made like Olympic sprinters something burst from the ground with a deafening screech and, sending us all flying in different directions in an explosion of sand.

Coughing and spluttering a ridiculous amount of sand from my mouth, I shook myself and stood, blinking dumbfounded at the monster that just emerged from the earth-or wherever the hell we were. It was huge, like the size of a bus huge, and black, and glossy. It had hairs on the ends of it's enormous pincers, and its tail was equipped with a stinger that was easily the size of small telephone pole, and slightly curved. It had two eyes on the top of it's cephalothorax, and three more eyes on each side of it's face. 

"It's a fucking scorpion!" Keaton shrieked as he ran over to us, arms waving. "A huge, grotesque fucking scorpion! God damn it!" 

Oh, yeah. In short, it's a huge, grotesque fucking scorpion.