Name: kay_brooke
Story: Unusual Florida
Colors: Arsenic #3 (carbon monoxide), Baby Pink #20 (Well, that's two and half hours of my life I'll never get back)
Styles/Supplies: Graffiti (October Bingo: horror)
Word Count: 918
Rating/Warnings: PG-13; no standard warnings apply.
Summary: Charlie has a frightening night.
Note: A scene from the novel, never posted here, lightly rewritten. Happy Halloween! Constructive criticism is welcome, either through comments or PM.


Leaves slapped his face and thorny branches dug into his legs as he stumbled through the woods, the only light that of the moon shining in silver patches through the trees. He stubbed his toe on a root and tripped, hitting the ground face-first. He heard the crack as his nose broke and felt hot, sticky blood run down his face. But he hauled himself back up and kept going.

He had seen the girl. Stumbling into the woods, disappearing into the trees, forever running from something terrible and it made no sense that he was out here chasing after her, but he felt compelled to keep moving, aches and pains and tiny wounds increasing with every step, blisters tearing open as his sweat-soaked feet slid around in his shoes.

Then he was in the clearing and standing before the abandoned shed, its busted door hanging open and crooked on its hinges, pointing toward the pitch blackness inside. The girl was inside. He could hear her crying, a long sustained wail that suddenly cut off.

One foot in front of the other, heart pounding in panic but his feet stuck in quicksand, the step up to the cabin was almost insurmountable. He was terrified but he wasn't afraid, and his feet kept moving even though he wasn't moving them, even though he was trying his best to flee in the other direction.

Inside, he couldn't see anything, only a shadow, and the girl, and when he looked closer her face was just a skull.

Charlie woke up gasping, his nightmare flitting away into the dark room. Also cold. Had someone turned the air conditioning up? He groped for his glasses, his hand automatically going for the end table next to the sofa bed, but there was something wrong. Consciousness came slowly, the room took shape as his eyes adjusted to the meager bit of light, and where was his pillow? His hand hit something hard, concrete, not the wooden table. His glasses were nowhere to be found. His back hurt and the surface he was laying on was hard. Wind whistled through the busted door.

Charlie sat up straight, his heart pounding so hard in his chest that it hurt.

He was in the shed. On the bare concrete floor, t-shirt and pajama pants, no shoes. No sign of his glasses, and the world was a vague blur but he knew exactly where he was. His nightmare supplied the image that he couldn't see clearly while he was awake.

"No," he whispered, closing his eyes tight. "No, I'm still dreaming. This is still just a dream."

Nothing happened. He laid back down. All he had to do was go back to sleep, and then he would wake up in the real world, in his bed, and this would be nothing but an extended nightmare.

Something made a sound in the brush outside, and Charlie sprang up again, this time all the way to his feet. He backed into the corner, wrapping his arms around himself, still muttering, "wake up wake up," under his breath. Pain blossomed in his foot as he stepped down hard on a stick, and that was when he realized he was already awake, that he really was out in that creepy shed in the middle of the night in his pajamas.

"Oh my god," he moaned. His back hit the wall and he stayed there, his brain frozen on that one thought.

He had no idea what to do. No idea how he had gotten out there. He had never gone sleepwalking before. How had he managed to get out of his room, out of Palladino, and several miles out into the woods to this exact spot while sleepwalking, anyway?

"Please," he said, closing his eyes. "Please." He didn't even know what he was asking for, or who he was talking to.

The rustling came again. "It's just the wind," he whispered. There was indeed quite a breeze going on out there, a sure harbinger of a thunderstorm. Charlie forced himself to the door, terrified of what he might see beyond it, but it was just woods. Dark woods, where the trees swayed fuzzily in the heavy breeze and there was no light except for what came from the moon.

Just like in his dream.

Charlie gripped the door hard.

He would have to go out there. He would have to walk back, all the way to Palladino, with no shoes and no glasses. He couldn't hope someone would come along to help him. He still wasn't even sure if he was on resort property.

"Just take it slow," he told himself, stepping out onto the dirt-packed ground around the shed. The knowledge of the journey he had to undertake, stretching out forever before him, made him pause.

It had taken him about an hour and a half the last time he made the trek, but that had been with his glasses as well as a pair of sandals. He still had a bandaid on his toe from that excursion.

So, longer than that with no shoes. Charlie took a deep breath and told himself it would be okay. Even if it took twice as long, that still wasn't very long. He had no idea what time it was, but it didn't look like the sun was about to come up any time soon.

Which meant he might be able to get back before his mom woke up and discovered him gone.