1
Tonight his father had caught up, carrying all the horrors of hell with him. His mother could no longer protect him–hide him–and now his father‟s wrath would fall on him. He ran across the fields and through the forest, his bare feet carrying him as fast as they could go, aching and bleeding into the night. He could feel his father‟s eyes on him and his stinking breath filling Raven‟s nostrils as he rushed toward the only place he had ever found safe. He sobbed, choking on his grief and his frustration–the horrible guilt of carrying all the anger from his father into their house making him sick and afraid. He ran with lungs and muscles burning from strain, throwing himself through the doors of the castle when he reached them and only then chancing to look back the way he‟d come.Amanda M. Lyons
2
Rushing out the door on his way back to the street, he ran into someone with his shoulder. Turning to apologize to them, he stopped, horrified at what he saw. It was the white-eyed man he’d met a week ago. “ Watch your back.” He said standing there just long enough for Raven to take in the meat between his teeth, the milky, nearly opaque color of his eyes and the madness within them. Then, after only a few seconds, he was gone, vanished into the crowd as if he had never existed. Certain his mind was playing tricks and tired of being terrified for his sanity, he headed down the street as fast as he could in pursuit. As he rushed through the tightly packed crowd, he saw others like the man he’d just seen, and each of their white eyes gazed blankly into his. A woman here, a hunched drifter there, shapes and faces that shifted and darted all around him. “Watch your back.” They hissed, and he tried to move faster, his heart racing and the nerves of his body jangling painfully with fear as he fought to get beyond them. Hands reached out for his clothes, pulling him in different directions as they tugged and he struggled to be free. Their fingers felt like talons clasped into the folds and gaps of his clothing, ripping and popping stitches in their fervor to gain some small grasp on his flesh beneath his jacket. Along with the horror of their cold, dead eyes, he could smell some strangeness–a sickly sweet smell of rot and decay only barely closeted by preserving fluids. The smell dug into his sinuses as their fingers and hands dug at him. He gagged, his teeth clenched tight as he exerted energy he didn’t really have. He pushed away from them and on through the empty space he saw at the end of this group of pedestrians. Many of whom mingled with what he now felt must be the dead, wholly unaware of why he flailed and pushed against them. .Amanda M. Lyons
3
He came through the door howling, an axe arched high over his head. His eyes danced in madness, stuck fast on the two of them kissing, caught in their embrace and unaware of him. For a moment they went on, oblivious, untouched by the madman soon to come. It was a bright bubble of illusion on the eve of utter and complete madness. She was the first to see. The image of her stepfather captured in Mateo’s eyes, the furious glee of the Nazi’s vengeance, sharp and mirrored in their emerald beauty. Soon those eyes were wide with terror and sorrow in a moment of unbidden regret caught at the end of such happiness. .Amanda M. Lyons