Chapter 3)

The dark streets definitely gave off weird feelings of terror towards me, as I walked silently across the path of buildings. Every light in the area had been turned off, and no signs of people in the area could be heard or seen. It was like walking in a ghost town.

The night sky was beautiful to look at, however. I’d occasionally have my eyes drawn towards the sky, and gazed at the possibly millions of stars that covered the sky. Shining white lights that twinkle brightly.

It was strange, however, to think how stars could shine in a place like Avalon, which was stated to be a different world from Earth. It was uncertain if Avalon was a planet in our universe, or in a completely different place than I knew. I was not very familiar with the alignment of stars on Earth, but I did know that the north star, usually one of the brightest stars seen, was not found in the sky above me, or at least I thought so.

Silently, I passed the dark streets of Modena, small critters scampered across dirty holes, sometimes holding a small piece of cheese, or another dead animal. These creatures were unlike anything I had seen, the small rats had short, spiky hair, their eyes glowed red and their teeth were sharp like a claw, the squirrels that dashed past me had unorthodox patterns of fur, sometimes red, sometimes green. The owls that hoot in the trees were terrifying, their large face full of fur that held large black eyes darted at me, their long beak looked like the size of a large eagle’s talon. Even if Modena itself was beautiful, the creatures that inhabited it weren’t.

I hadn’t heard any voices from the civilians that Iris had went to gather, but I suppose that they had gone pretty far from the city. There wasn’t a spot left in the windows of buildings that had their light turned on, only the night faced me as I continued to walk.

I had been nearing the shop, only another block of buildings was left to go to, when I thought I had the sounds of crashing. It didn’t catch my attention at first, I thought it was just another one of those creepy animals trying to find food to eat, but the crashing didn’t stop, and soon enough I had to stop in my tracks to figure out what was going on.

It was in one of the alleys of the street, nothing was there except a large pile of garbage that hadn’t been cleaned up, but looking closer I saw that the trash pile occasionally tousled around, small pieces of trash flying from the pile.

“Is anybody there?”

I called out into the darkness, but I got no response. Surely it was just an animal in the pile, scavenging for scraps of food tossed by the civilians. I shrugged, wondering why this had caught my attention in the first place, and I started back my walk towards the shop.

I would have been doing that, except I heard the ever so faint sound of growling. Just like the nightmare on earth, just like the nightmare on the window. I slowly tilted my head back towards the pile, which started to rumble vigorously.

“Whatever you are, you better come out. You shouldn’t be there.”

My katana slowly assembled into my hand, I gripped the hilt firmly as I glared at the shaking trash pile, waiting for something to pop out. I felt sweat form on my forehead, my body firm.

Abruptly, the rumbling stopped, leaving only silence as I still kept my eye on the trash. I could feel my heart pound against my skin, the sound of my breath slipped past my lips.

The sound of the faint growling filled my surroundings, it had not only been from the trash pile, it came from every direction in the alley. My eyes darted around, making sure nothing was there to attack me from behind.

My eyes had finally locked onto the garbage once again, when I saw it. My breathing halted to a stop, my heartbeat still pumping, the only thing I could hear was my beat. My sweat dropped from my forehead, tickling my nose.

I could see the white, beady eyes of a nightmare slowly appear from the garbage. It’s stare stung my body, I could only watch in terror as it’s body emerged slowly, revealing it’s hideous, distorted form.