The Huntress

A flash fic I wrote in creative writing class

She walks through the dark, musky forest alone. Her fingers are cramped and white from clutching onto her New York Yankees windbreaker. She pulls it close around her as she marches skittishly over roots, broken branches, and dead leaves.

She hikes in the woods near her motel room. She heard about the mysterious murders here in the news. She’s come to check out the woods for herself, by herself. She hears nothing but a few birds cawing, her feet crunching leaves, and her own steady breathing.

But then, a snap.

She stops dead in her tracks, her breathing now ragged with fright. She takes a deep breath and tugs on her raven hair. “It’s ok V,” she mumbles to herself. “It was just a deer or something.” After another deep breath she starts walking again.

Another snap.

She whirls towards the sound, her spectacular green eyes flickering about in paranoia. “Just a deer Veronica.”

Out of the corner of her eye she sees a blur pass by a speed she deemed impossible. Panic rises in her chest and carries her away. She runs as fast as she can away from that thing, hoping to lose it, but her hopes are quickly diminished as the sound of cracking twigs and crunching leaves follow her. Then there’s a low rumbling growl from behind her; the sound is almost so low that the ground beneath her shakes. She whimpers as she keeps on running.

Where is she running to? She hasn't the slightest clue.

Suddenly, a black blur appears at her feet and knocks her down. She hit the cold forest ground hard, almost knocking the breath out of her. If it weren't for the pure adrenaline and fear fueling her, she probably would have never gotten up. Scrambling to her feet, she doesn't even bother to brush off the dirt on her knees or pick leaves out of her silky hair; she just keeps running.

Slightly to her right she spots an opening in the thicket of the woods; a possible way out. She runs for it. Sunlight pours into the small clearing and almost blinds her.

The girl stands in the middle of the small sun light clearing. Her golden skin glows in the sun and her hair plays with the colors of purple and black like a raven's wing. Her silver skull earrings shine in the light and her red lipstick stands out brightly. The girl’s eyes almost look like shimmering emeralds in sunlight as they search the edges of the clearing. She spins around as noises racket around the bordering trees, her long hair whipping her in the face. Another grumble and then an earsplitting howl, but not a howl from any creature she’s ever heard. She covers her ears as it drags on leaving her ears to ring. Then twigs snap all around her like the thing is appearing in one spot at one second and then the next somewhere completely different, but it never comes into the clearing.

I don't get it, she thinks to herself. It was so eager to get me before.

A strange sort of frustration fills her. “Where are you?!” she screams into the air. She throws her arms out to her sides. “Come and get me!”

Then she hears the rustle of bushes behind her. Time seems to slow in her emerald eyes as she reaches into her windbreaker and turns towards the thing pursuing her. In the one moment after she moves, everything freezes.

The monster’s needle-like teeth are mere inches from the girl’s throat. She laughs. “Thanks for playing, but you lose.” Its sickly pale skin drips with repulsive slim and its empty eye sockets are stitched over with grimy thread. The monster’s ashen skin sizzles in the sunlight. The monster’s middle dissolves around the celestial blade thrust into its gut by the steady hand of the girl. Maybe if the monster noticed her leather suit under her windbreaker, or the scars of a Hunter crowning her angelic face it may have been able to live, but instead it crumbles to dust.

This girl is a trained Huntress, skilled in the art of luring demons to their demise; a fearless warrior among her hidden civilization. The culture she derives from worships angels and with their help kills demons haunting the Earth. This creature is no mythological monster, or really a monster for all that matter; it’s a soulless demon. “Veronica Rhodes,” she says to the flaking demon in a voice that rings like bells, “Demon Hunter extraordinaire wins again.”