CHAPTER TWO - THE LADY LEFT HER SKIRT OFF

Anrhu was roughly turned.

          Fingers of one hand grabbed at his shirt as a bright light was aimed directly at his eyes.  The sudden brilliance blinded him.

          “Who are you?” the rough angry voice asked.  Without seeing, he knew it was the man he had been following.  He felt the fingers pull on his shirt upwards.  He had to grab on the muscled wrist of his captor with both his hands to stay firmly on the ground.  Otherwise he would have lost his balance.  The man was much taller than he was.  And strong.

          “An…Anrhu,” he grunted.

          Silence. Except for the excited barking of the dog that thankfully stayed away.  But he felt the agitation of the animal.  He imagined the sharp canine teeth that could pierce his skin with one bite.

The man was looking intently at him.  The glare of the flashlight was intense.  Painful even.  Everything else around him was dark.  Even the glow from the window a few feet behind him failed to give him the barest light to see who held him.

“Why have you been following me?” the gruff voice came again after a time.

“I don’t know.  I…I don’t know where I am”

Anrhu saw the man’s shape behind the flashlight conk his head as if in question. 

“What do you mean you don’t know where you are?”

“I…I woke up and found myself �" here”

A pause.

The light that was aimed at his face suddenly sputtered to darkness. 

“Darn,” the man muttered.  But at that instant, the light coming from behind him was enough for Anrhu to see the face of the man that held him.  It was not angry but confused.  A face of someone that was not ready to kill as he feared when he was blinded by the intensity of the flashlight.  He heaved a sigh.  More in hopefulness.

“Come inside both of you,” came from behind Anrhu.  It was female.  Gentle and was welcomed by the youth’s fear filled heart.  The hand that gripped at his shirt somewhat eased and instead guided him, if roughly, limping towards the shelter of the house.  The dog’s upset barking changed into excited yelps.

 

The inside of the shelter was a rough rectangle; a collection of salvaged pieces.  Even the walls were makeshift creations made of discarded used wood and parts of ruined buildings.  One side made entirely of doors placed horizontally one on top of the other.  Braces were nailed from the inside to hold everything together.

There was an improvised bed on one side, obviously stacks of beer and soda cases tied together by wire and rope, it was separated from the rest of the room by a piece of cloth hung like a curtain. From what he could see, a thin spoiled mattress and several pillows were on top.  A crude table and a few chairs completed the picture.  A half-melted candle was giving off a faint illumination.  Pieces of clothing were strung on one side.  A bicycle, presumably the one the man rode earlier was leaning on one of the walls.

The woman, was sitting on one of the mismatched chairs.  She was young.  Probably a few years older than Anrhu was, and very pretty.  Long black hair parted in the middle was neatly tied into a long braid.  There was a smile on her face.  A welcoming smile.

“Sit,” her voice was strong.  She might have looked young but she was not weak.  He continued to stand.

“Sit,” the man following him ordered.  He sat.  And looked.

He knew the man was tall.  But he did not realize that the man was filled in with muscles.  He should have expected it when he felt the hands that gripped him a few moments ago.  But, his first sight almost made him gasp.

The man was nearly six feet tall of solid muscles.  About half a foot taller than Anrhu was.  His left arm, what showed from his sleeved shirt was inked with symbols that looked vaguely familiar.  The right arm scarred with the remains of what could only have been a bad case of burn.  The face was handsome, of indeterminate age though it was obviously older than the female.  It was the eyes that held him.  There was a glint that spoke of a million questions, and worse, a million answers.

The man strode to sit beside the woman. Sat and held his hands clasped in front of him on top of the table and looked at Anrhu. 

“What do you mean you don’t know where you are? Where did you come from?”

The couple shared a look and glanced back at the boy and waited for him to answer.

“I…,” hesitating, he looked towards his feet and decided that he wanted to trust these people.  There was something about them that made him feel safe.

“I…I woke up to discover that everything is nothing that I remember.  What is this place?  Where am I?  Who are you?” without stopping for an answer, he continued. “I was pinned to the ground.  Half covered with debris.  When I woke up, I walked aimlessly.  Going towards any direction until I saw something that was hard to believe.  I remembered where I was the last time I was conscious.  But this place is not it.  It’s like… this is a reflection of what is real.”

“But this is reality,” the woman injected, reaching out her hand to clasp her partner’s that were placed on the table.

“No, this is not,” Anrhu cried out.  Desperation coming back to his voice.  Suddenly feeling the confusion again.

“I remember the people.  There were people!”  he implored.  Tears suddenly leaping out of his eyes.  In embarrassment, he covered his face and sobbed, kept silent until he felt the woman’s touch on his shoulders.

A pause.

Unable to stop himself, he leaned on her and noticed the bulge of her stomach.  She was pregnant.  Very much so.  He wanted to let go but her gentle hands only made him cling to her more and sobbed.  Her condition, her becoming a mother pushed him to remember his own; a mother that he has somehow forgotten.

“It’s alright.  You are safe now!”

From outside, the dog howled.  And a cloyingly sweet scent of rotting wafted into the room through the cracks.

“Shhhhh, quiet.”

Looking up, Anrhu saw the man jumped from his seat, one finger pressed on his lip in a sign that meant silence.  He was alert.  Tensed and eyes aimed towards the window.  Observing. 

The woman was equally tensed.  Their fear was palpable. Like a fourth heartbeat.  Anrhu loosened his hold on her and looked around, not knowing what to look for but alerted by the tension that grabbed both of his companions.  Apart from the growling of the dog, a sound that sounded from deep within its throat, the outside has become eerily quiet; like every littlest insect and animal lurking in the darkness felt the fear that gripped all of them. 

The man inched towards a small haphazard cabinet leaning at the back of the room and from behind brought forth something that resembled a thin stick with some sort of thorns at the end.  It was stiff but did not look like it was made from any wood that the boy has seen before. 

He forgot his desperate desolation.  The raw, unthinking fear took over all his senses.

The woman has moved to the center of the room.  Near the unstable table but further away from Anrhu when suddenly she gave a cry of pain.

What happened next was too fast for the boy to understand.  The man, used the stick like a whip and striked at the air right above the woman who has dropped to the ground in pain, toppling the rickety table when she leaned with her weight. A thin, pink thread-like something fell on the ground right beside the woman, one end attached to her swollen, child-filled stomach.  It was a thing alive.  It lay twitching on the ground as the boy stared.

From right on top of their heads, outside, an animal-like screech rent the still air and the sound of a great rush of wind shook the make-shift hut.  In a flash, the man pushed the window open and through it, Anrhu saw the faint shape of gigantic wings of flying beasts fleeing towards the darkness. Curious shapes of bat women without skirts, only because there was nothing there underneath their waists.