Two Breaths Walking

Wake up, Ares. . .

Ares woke up with beads of sweat trickling down his face like before. His eyes were wide as he touched his ear. It was like someone had brought his or her lips near his ear and whispered. It almost felt real but inside, he knew it wasn't. His eyes scanned his room as if to make sure there wasn't anyone inside his room until his eyes landed on the chest in the corner of his room. He noticed something different. He leaned a little bit and squinted at the chest.

It wasn't closed anymore. It was open.

Ares got out of the covers and slowly made his way to the chest until he was a few feet away from it then he stopped. His face was coated with pure disbelief. For the past few days, he did everything he could think of to open the chest: like trying to open it with a crowbar, smashing the lock and dropping it from the second floor of his house. But none of his methods worked.

Suddenly, there was a low rumbling noise. The chest opened wide and a bony hand came out. It was pale white, paler than white actually, and it was as thin as a stick. You could almost see the bones if only the skin was removed. Ares fell backwards, his mouth gaping in surprise and his eyes wide with disbelief.

The bony hand opened its palm and right in the middle of it was an eye. It opened and it seemed to search for something in his room until the eye landed upon him. It didn't blink at all and then there was this cracking noise coming from the hand. The hand was growing a mouth. It started twitching until a thin line appeared under the eye. The thin line moved until it split and became a mouth with thin lips. It was open wide and yellow rotten teeth started to appear one by one. A gurgling noise was heard and a tongue came out of the mouth. The eye still didn't blink. Another gurgling noise was heard. It closed its mouth and moments later, it started puff up as if it was ready to release something. It was almost like a canon in the cartoon when it's about to fire the cannonball into the air. The mouth spat something out. The thing hit Ares directly in the face. With his eyes closed, he took the thing out of his face and when he opened his eyes it was paper. Surprisingly it wasn't wet with saliva at all. He flipped the paper to the other side. He looked at the bony hand incredulously and the bony hand grinned;and what he saw on the paper chilled him to the bone.

It said, 'Help me.' in big dark red letters. It had some ink splotches and finger prints after the word 'me'. He touched the ink splotches with his index finger and saw that it was still wet. Ares looked back at the hand and when it saw him looking, it licked its thin lips. Ares looked back to his finger again. He suddenly had the urge to taste it.

Taste it. . .

A voice whispered in his ear. It was hard to distinguish whether it was a girl's voice or a boy's voice but Ares followed its advice. He brought his finger to his mouth and tasted it. He tasted iron but it had some sweetness in it. Then he realized one thing.

It wasn't ink. It was blood.