The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves (20 page)

…
Yes! She had loved it
too!

I’m ready, my dear, my
heart, and I am coming. I’m coming to save you, I promise. I will
be there shortly…

Yes, he will - very
shortly.

He turns to face his desk
and the chair standing before it. Upon the back of the chair, he
had placed a pair of black jeans, a black, long-sleeved turtleneck,
a black beanie, and a pair of black socks and gloves. A pair of
black tennis shoes, he’d strewn nearby.

…
I just need to change, my
one true love. I just need to change… a little bit, a tiny bit. It
won’t be much, I promise. A small change, a little alteration, but
I will be just as loving, I promise…

He is about walk toward
the chair piled high with his new outfit when he sees it glimmer in
the semi-darkness of the room. He sees it lying there upon his bed.
The last thing he’d brought up from the kitchen. Immediately, he’s
confused.

Why would he need
that?

He stares at it,
unsure.

A butcher knife? Why would
I need a knife?

He cannot answer, the
memories return, flooding him, filling him. His blood is pounding
at his temples. His eyes are bulging from the strain. She is
everywhere, everything – thoughts, impressions. Images of her
overwhelm him and, where he should’ve been struck immobile, he has
a moment of perfect clarity.

He smells her scent
against his flesh, feeling her with his hands, tasting her neck
with his tongue, seeing her undress before his eyes, hearing her
whisper his name upon her lips as her clothes fall away. She is
magnificent before him. He is as firm as stone. She is so soft,
feminine… young. He can almost hear her calling to him, for him,
right now…

She wants me to do it, so
bad… so hard.

…
and, in that thought, he
is lost forever.

Robotic and emotionless,
he begins to undress until he is stark naked, his most private
parts free and rigid in the cold air of his bedroom.

I will do as you desire,
my love!

He dresses without putting
on underwear. He won’t need them this night. No, they’ll just get
in the way. Besides, he’ll be naked soon… and so will
she.

I will make love to you
all night long, my Sophie.

In an economy of motion,
he reaches for his bag of tools. He opens the window of his bedroom
with the plastic bag tucked under his arm. Ice cold air buffets his
face. He doesn’t feel its icy grip seep into his body. He can’t
feel it. He can only feel her. He eases his way under the bottom
rail of the window and steps into the night. With all the quiet he
can summon, he walks across the roof of his parents’ house and
swiftly shimmies down a tree whose branches reach up and over the
domicile. In less than a minute, he’s on the ground. He has
practiced this many times.

A minute later, he is
jogging. Her house is only a few blocks away, on the opposite side
of Figueroa Street. He can get there easily once he reaches
Yosemite Drive. He will run the entire way. It’s time now. Time for
him and her to be together, the way they were destined to be
together - Boyfriend and Girlfriend, lovers. They are to be a
couple for all time.

He has just finished the
right hand turn from Saginaw Street, his feet quietly jogging down
Wiota Street. Yosemite Drive is just a few blocks down the
way.

It is here, he sees her
for the first time.

Not his beloved Sophie
Reed.

No, she is much smaller
than his lover-to-be. She is wearing a white, knee-length dress.
Around her waist is a matching blue ribbon. Her hair is
bleach-blonde. Not the usual golden blonde-haired sort, so often
seen around town. Rather, it’s many hues lighter and rail straight,
cut just below her ears with a slight outward curl at very ends.
She wears no bangs; instead, she wears her hair parted in the
middle, showing her broad, smooth forehead. She has delicate
features with over-sized eyes, the color he can’t discern in the
poor light provided.

She is directly in his
path upon the sidewalk. He is forced to slow down, and then stop
entirely, when she moves to block his way past. She doesn’t wait
for him to say anything. She merely smiles broadly.

It takes him a few seconds
to realize her mouth is too big for her face. It’s almost splitting
it in half. He turns his head slightly to one side in
bewilderment.

Without preamble, she
hikes up her dress above her waist with one hand. He is astounded
to see she is nude below. He can see her tiny sex, pale-white and
bare. She smiles at him cruelly. “Is this what you’re about
tonight, young man?” she asks in a high-pitched, melodic voice.
Its’ tones are so child-like; they don’t match the crudeness of her
gesture.

“
Wh-what?” he mumbles,
finding he can’t take his gaze from her little vagina.

She giggles, but says
nothing. She begins to rock her hips back and forth, twice as slow
as the ponderous sway of a Grandfather clocks’ pendulum.

His eyes flash to hers.
Then back to her nether regions. His breathing labored, though not
from his short run. He takes a step closer to her and she
reciprocates. She pulls her dress up higher. Her other hand begins
to trace along her half-formed abdominal muscles.

He has been erect since
leaving his house. He grows even larger. It is almost hurting. He
chances a glance at her face once more, unable to see the child
below her lustful sneer. Her hand drops lower and lower still.
Until, it brushes the upper edge of her pubis.

He sees the bite marks
then, jerking back his head in outrage. This is no virgin he’s
looking upon! This child has known a man, many times.

“
What’s wrong, young man?”
Her voice is musical, so sweet upon the ear, and yet…

…
Her hand touches her
little folds.

He can’t look
away.

One finger
disappears.

He is about to lick his
lips when something gigantic hits him at the top of his right arm.
Something huge is biting his shoulder.

No, it’s biting through
his shoulder!

He is about to scream in
agony, but he is never able to release it. Something else is
coursing through his veins now. Something like inferno, lava, magma
– all at once. He can only hear at this point. His vision is
wrecked by anguish. There is blackness at the edges. He is drifting
away. He is being pulled down, farther, faster. There is only more
darkness, more velocity, until, there is nothing.

From the brink of abyss,
he hears: “You did well, my Petling, my beautiful Jätung. You may
take a morsel for yourself, but no more.”

He feels jaws reposition
themselves upon his shoulder. They bite down. He is beyond feeling.
There is only a horrible crunching now.

He can only feel his body
jerk as his arm is removed.

He is no
longer.

~~~~~~~~<<<<<<{ ☼
}>>>>>>~~~~~~~~

Arrival

Sunday, November
21
^st
,
12:01 am…

The world, where the rock
was the color of dried bones and the snow was so black it appeared
dipped in soot, melted from his vision. It vanished, was gone,
replaced by a deadened gray of nothingness disorienting him, almost
made him sick as his stomach twisted with a nauseating clench. He
clamped his jaw shut against the sensation, feeling his throat
spasm and the bile rise. His great canines refusing to budge,
vice-like, with all the force he could exert. The blood in his
temples began to pound, a strange pressure beginning to build
inside his head as if the altitude had changed dramatically. His
upright, pointy ears vibrated with the strain, his eardrums
crackling inside his elongated skull. At his sides, he balled his
gauntleted hands into giant fists, feeling the steel that bound his
individual fingers bend from his grip. He fought against the powers
working about -
and through
- his body, unwilling to show weakness in any
form. He felt his entire body stiffen, even the hairs covering his
entire frame, stood on end, charged with energy, infused with
vivacity onto themselves. He willed himself to have no further
reaction to what was happening. He couldn’t afford it, for he was
not alone. There would be witnesses to any weakness on his part.
So, instead, he remained as he was – still standing, he hoped,
though he couldn’t be certain.

He continued to hold
himself rigid and unrelenting, until he began to feel some sense of
motion through the soupy, gray murk surrounding him and his
companions.

He didn’t have long to
wait, though. The grayness began to change. In small increments, at
first, tiny twinkles and sparkles of light popped into existence
around him. Quickly, they turned into larger splotches and gribbles
of soft illuminant pieces of a greater picture. Some magician was
painting a real life landscape about him. Only, this was no
painting nor drawing nor likeness of any type he’d ever seen,
because it wasn’t a representation of any sort. This
was
a real place.
This
was
a plane
of existence - only not the one he’d been standing within moments
before.

This was a place he had
never been before, or at least, not in the flesh at least. He had
visited this place many times, through other means. He’d always
been forced to peer through another’s eyes via a brief possession.
But, he’d never had he actually
been
in this place. He had longed
for many, many centuries for the opportunity to walk upon this
world, to wreak havoc whenever and wherever he possibly could. Deep
had this wish been in his cruel and black heart.

Now, it didn’t seem all
that real to him, as if it wasn’t him who’d stepped from the verges
of the portal and onto the World of Man.

Finally - as age upon age
passed, as he had, as all of them had, waited for their master’s
plans to take seed, root, and finally bloom into reality – he was
gone from his world, his universe. He would walk among men now,
within the borders of one of their most powerful kingdoms. He would
feel their soil grind beneath the trod of his boots. He would
defile their air with every exhalation of air from lungs born in a
land of rage and anger and chaos. Any edict or law of the Light
that normally would’ve bound him, burdened him, was now gone. He
was truly loosed upon this place.

His plan would prove
simple, but audacious. It would bring him untold glory in the eyes
of his father, and hopefully, eventually, the Great Maelstrom
himself. He would rise above the churning fray, seething and
roiling for power in his world. He would become second only to the
great Lord himself!

In time… in time, for
there is still much to be done
, he
admonished himself.

Now that he was here,
after such an interminable wait, he wouldn’t destroy and desecrate
as he once dreamed he would do once in this very situation. No
matter how much he itched to do so, he wouldn’t. No, he would do
something quite the contrary. It made him smile just thinking about
it. He wouldn’t damage or pillage or possess or rape and slaughter.
Though he would’ve loved to, he couldn’t. He had a nastier scheme
in mind.

He would take. Yes, he
would only take from this World of Man. He would snatch from this
plane its’ unsuspecting Guardians and placed them elsewhere, where
they’d be alone, untrained and at his mercy. A place where he and
his companions could have some bit of the rapine fun denied to them
here. He had always wondered what it would feel like to have a
human writhe underneath him. It would be just a tiny morsel of
torture and maiming. He would do this, instead of broader damage,
because this small act of abduction alone was monumentous. It would
render the World of Man defenseless against the might of his
master.

My glorious
Metohkangmi!

He would do this in His
name, the Great Wind, the ancient Snowman – the maelstrom, the
vortex of malignancy, the overlord of the World of Storm. He would
do this, so his master could come forth and sweep the World of Man
under his iron-fisted dominion for all of time.