Sonic X Fan Fiction ❯ Lucky 13 ❯ Just One ( Chapter 3 )

“Lucky 13” Chapter 3: “Just One”

 

As soon as my eyes met the cat's green-yellow, piercing irises, an intense, freaky feeling gripped me. It was nothing I could describe, nothing. Even in it's vastness, the English language simply doesn't hold enough accuracy for me to possibly articulate it vocally… Even now.

 

It was sort of a mixture of horror… Intimidation, and bewilderment. For some odd reason, this obsidian feline had the presence of a god. It was as if it held ownership over everything it looked at, everything it touched… they belonged to it, and it alone. And it was looking right at me…

 

I felt like its eyes were absorbing my essence as I peered into them, unable to rip them from my view. It was almost as if they were tugging at my very soul…

 

…It wasn't a nice experience, nor was it bad, it was just plain odd... But…

 

I lost a part of myself that day, looking into those eyes…

 

A part I never thought I'd recover.

 

The cat said nothing, did nothing, and visibly portrayed no emotion, but those eyes… They called to me, like a siren of the sea, leading me to my demise, it seemed… And yet I could not resist… nor did I want to.

 

The eyes enthralled, yet terrified me; I felt as if the creature owned me already. I felt that if I didn't obey its every whim, I'd meet a horrible, painful, utterly gruesome fate. It scratched at the window once more, its eyes relaying something I identified as impatience. Frantic and hasty, I hopped up from my chair and ran to the window, never taking my eyes off its keen orbs, and the thin slits of their pupils.

 

It looked up at the clasp that sealed my window from the world outside, beckoning me to open it. Quickly, as not to anger it, I released the clasp, and lifted the accursed glass up. I almost winced as I looked down into its eyes, flashing with a sudden sense of purpose. Now there was nothing separating the godly critter and myself, save a few empty feet of air. I gulped audibly.

 

Against my expectations, the cat turned about, showing me its back, before leaping out of the windowsill, and onto the dirt path outside. It scampered nonchalantly across the worn road, only about 3 yards before it turned around, and looked at me again, with those controlling, bewitching eyes…

 

…I felt compelled to follow it. It was like no instinct I'd ever before experienced, so powerful, so primal and promiscuous. Not giving a second thought to my family, friends, or anything that gave relevance to my life, I stuck one leg out the window, awkwardly.

 

It was a bit of a tight fit, seeing as I was nearly 18, and the window was only about a 2 by 4 foot opening. Rather ungracefully, I stumbled out of the window, and ran after the black cat. I was glad I already had some shoes on… The road outside of my house was just a tad rocky.

 

The cat almost seemed to smirk, seeming pleased that I was following. Turning about again, it ran, quite fast, down the road, it's shiny raven pelt gleaming in the afternoon sunlight.

 

Dingle-ling.

 

“…?”

 

I thought I heard a bell, though I did not know it's origin. It's possible it was only in my head, but… It was such a lovely sound. I wasn't even sure if I'd heard anything at all… but I wanted to hear it again.

 

I snapped back to attention when I saw how far ahead of me the cat was, and mentally scolded myself, sprinting as quickly as I could to catch up. It was very fast, as most of the feline class are, so I had to really put everything I had into my legs just to keep up with it. There was no traffic present in the rural, foliage-abundant area in which I resided; there never was. All the traffic clogged up in Station Square, and prevented any but a car or two every now and then from seeping down past our little house.

 

The cat didn't run in the direction of the city, though… It turned right, through a rickety little fence that had long been broken. I hopped over it, but I tripped, not able to jump quite high enough. As a reflex I tucked my arms and my head into my stomach, and as a result, I didn't hit the ground that hard, but rolled harmlessly across the soft grass, which danced in the gentle May breeze.

 

I got up, distressed, looking left and right for the cat, only to find the thing directly in front of me, looking at me with those inviting eyes. It was almost as if it was laughing at my clumsiness… How vindictive, I thought.

 

It turned about, lifting its tail in an astute, somewhat disdainful manner, and bounded off, perfectly balanced with every step, like it was teaching me a lesson in posture, and feline grace. I picked myself up, and attempted to duplicate its whimsical, yet masterful aptitude for frolicking, but I'm sure I still had a lot of work to do, as I certainly didn't feel nearly as smooth in movement as the charming feline.

 

The cat never got too far ahead, nor did it let me catch up too much, it only kept running, turning its head every now and then to check and see if I was still on its tail. I was surprised to find that I was enjoying myself; I'd never admired nature so much as I did right now, chasing my feline guide across the boundless, vast meadows that stretched out for miles beyond my house. The grass came to my ankles, and swayed this way and that, in sync with its companions, its trillions of kin, side by side, to and frau; a ritual of bowing to the mighty winds that cut across them.

 

The cat just kept running, and before long, I realized that its stamina was clearly outlasting my own, as I grew weary; my legs would push me no further. Exhausted completely, I fell to my knees, panting heavily, a faint attempt to catch my second wind. After an exasperated moment of regaining a small portion of my fleeting vigor, I raised my head to look around, sure I'd have lost the mysterious ebony mammal by now.

 

My eyes grew wide at what I saw.

 

There was no cat, no sign of it anywhere, but a forest. A huge, wicked-looking forest, the kind you read about in scary stories. The mangled branches of the old, miserable trees tangled with one another viciously, the wind blowing them, giving them the appearance of life. It was… Creepy.

 

The trees looked like they were trying to strangle one another, in an endless vacuum of violence, hate, misery…enmity at its purest. The noise they made as they wrestled endlessly with the unforgiving breeze was nothing short of spine-tingling.

 

My heart clawed its way into my throat as I witnessed nature at it's ugliest.

 

What scared me even more was… For some unexplainable reason, I wanted to go in there. I shook my head, berating myself for such utter foolishness. What would lie within such a repugnant place that would be of any interest to me? What value could exploring such a hideous jungle bring?

 

Jingle Jangle…

 

“…!?”

 

I heard it again… the bell. This time it was louder, and I could discern its direction…. It was coming straight from within that forest… Just my luck.

 

My mind wanted to go home. My mind also wanted to go into the woods, and find out what it was that seemed to be drawing me in to it… What it was that led me here, what it was that made that lovely jingling sound. I had to hear it again.

 

There was something magical about the sound, something melodious, something ominously alluring. I couldn't begin to question why I wanted such a simple pleasure as hearing a bell ring THIS badly, all I could do was want it; trying to do anything else with my mind, or motives only made me want it more.

 

So strange…

 

Was it some sort of supernatural force driving my instincts wild with these odd symbols? Was it some higher power calling out to me, some unknown onlooker pushing me toward my destiny?

 

I didn't care. I needed to hear it again.

 

My fears were evaporated, and in a fit of impatient desire, I became the very embodiment of something I'd never been before, and something I'd never be again… dauntless.

 

Superfluous to my fatigue, I ran into the thick of the hideous woods. The trees groaned with the wind, moving about, their branches swatting at me, scratching me, as if to stop me from making a horrible mistake. The way their bark almost formed a deformed, mutated, sad sort of face almost made me pity them.

 

But their plight fell on deaf ears. I didn't listen to them, just pressed onward, my heart beating faster as I neared the central-most part of the forest.

 

My eyes served only to catch a swift flurry of gray, before clenching shut against the sharp pain of being whipped by the tree's thorny scourges, so I closed them, and made my way through on determination alone. I heard lots of things, mostly the nightmares of the damned willows that haunted this place, but also the latent thoughts in the back of my mind… Thoughts like some of the things my mom told me when I was younger.

 

I remembered what she told me after I explained to her why I went out to see `the big toy' in the first place. I told her I was curious. She frowned at me, and looked at me with those firm, maternal eyes.

 

“Curious? Curiosity killed the cat, Joshua.”

 

Curiosity killed the cat. Was I braving these briars because of curiosity? Was I playing the cat of the metaphor? Would it really… kill me?

 

I pushed my way through the woods, not wanting the efforts I'd already contributed to have been a waste. I'd never been in so much physical pain in my life. The trees were all scratching me, and I felt the hot, oozing warmth of fresh blood leaking from the nastier cuts. It seemed that some of the briars had been honed like a razor, because they seemed to eat through my denim jeans like they were thinner than a tissue. My scalp was in the most tremendous pain of all; the branches and thorns were all grabbing me by the hair, my precious, lengthy locks being pulled, tangled, ripped from my head as I blindly struggled my way through.

 

After what seemed like an eternity of the torment, I suddenly tripped on a stray root, not entirely submerged in the dusty soil. I landed smack on my face, and for a second I swear I saw stars. But then I realized… Open ground! I was at the center… I had to be. All the other trees were so bunched together, so clumped and tightly woven that it was impossible not to touch any of them. And now I didn't have to be in pain anymore. At least not until I left…

 

I just lay there on the ground a moment, resting, panting, bleeding a little. I had no serious wounds, but some of them were deep enough to leave a small scar… and I didn't even want to think about what my hair must've looked like.

 

After a few moments, I heard it again… but this time it wasn't so pleasant…

 

Tinkle.

 

I looked up, my eyes easily relaying my weariness and misery.

 

I saw them again, but this time… This time they were horrifying. No more intrigue, no more respectful sense of power… Just pure, unbridled fear.

 

I could do nothing but shiver under the gaze of the coal-black cat.

 

It's eyes narrowed sadistically, and it's tail flicked about impatiently, as if it were about to pounce upon an unfortunate victim… one which I prayed wouldn't be me.

 

Though the feline was not even a fifteenth of my size… it was as if I was not pitted against a housecat… but a panther.

 

The bell around the cat's neck jingled as it looked up behind me… What was it looking at….?

 

I turned my head, and felt my heart sink. Up in the trees… stuck amongst the branches was a ladder. I'd come in that way… and walked under it in the process. What was it doing here!?

 

I felt my skin crawl with nervousness. I'd never before been truly intimidated by bad luck… I worshipped it up until this point.

 

I heard a voice… a faint voice, but one that echoed from all directions.

 

“…So you don't believe in luck, huh…? What is it with you mortals and thinking you're smarter than fate? So much bad luck… and you've somehow managed to survive? Heh. Now I really don't know if you're really lucky or really unlucky. Sometimes it's hard for even me to tell the difference… Hmm… So what to do with you? Hmmm…”

 

“…Oh my God…” I uttered helplessly, as I came to a horrible realization.

 

I'd screwed up big time.

 

…The bad luck… up until now, I played with it, spiteful and mocking of its so-called power. I didn't really believe… It was just something I did to insult a concept I didn't believe in. I thought that bad luck didn't exist... But now I saw nothing but misery and misfortune… I had deceived myself into making an undoable mistake!

 

And now, it seemed like some kind of god, or rather goddess was about to pass judgement on me.

 

“…Ahhhhh!!!!!” I shouted, sheer fear etched into my face as I pried the snakeskin from my pocket, and threw it on the ground before me, backing away, as if it were a bomb. I had to get away from all the bad luck!

 

“Hehehe! Well aren't you a cute mortal? There's no escaping it now! So-rry!” The voice came again. Were I not in the state I was in, I might have mistaken the voice to be a little girl, but I could tell the gods were just fooling with me.

 

I looked at the face of the cat, and it bared its fangs. I backed away some more, scared for my life. The cat did not run at me, nor did it walk straight toward me… but… it zigzagged.

 

I was confused for a moment, but then I realized exactly what it was doing. My knees buckled as the evil cat crossed my path precisely 13 times.

 

I shook my head, and backed away from the cat, wishing I'd never come to this place… wondering how I could've been so foolish. I jumped about a foot into the air and gasped as I backed into something that certainly wasn't a tree… Then I heard a shattering noise.

 

I slowly turned my head, and… when I saw it, I almost felt like screaming.

 

I'd backed into a mirror, and knocked it down… breaking it into exactly 13 shards of glass. I saw my own horrified expression in all of them, and it scared me even more. I'd never been so scared… I honestly thought I was about to die from pure bad luck.

 

As much of it as I'd accumulated, the forest could just…. coincidentally fall on me, or… lightning could shoot out of the cloudless sky… I wouldn't be surprised if I died of old age at 17, with that much bad luck. I had so much of it shadowing me now, anything could happen, not matter how preposterous…

 

If anything, I thought I'd have a heart-attack. My heart had never beaten so fast… I was literally on the brink of being frightened to death…

 

I saw the black cat again. It grinned at me, then started to morph into something else. It got smaller, and floated up into the air. Soon it took a shape, and filled with colors.

 

So this was lady luck.

 

She wasn't what I imagined at all.

 

She wasn't a lady, or a girl, or human at all. She was some kind of bat-winged pixie. She looked human outwardly, but she was so small… and yet I could feel nothing but her power peeling off of her in not waves, but torrents.

 

The oddest little thing I'd ever seen, one could even call her cute. She had an unnatural hair color of I-don't-quite-remember, and her hair was up in an impossible way. She wore mainly black, and had pale skin, and some piercing copper eyes. She almost looked like a miniature punk rocker goth… something-or-other.

 

Did the goddess of misfortune have a sense of humor, or was she that weird?

 

Considering luck as I knew it, I wouldn't be surprised at either.

 

The little fairy looked at me in a smug grin. I felt somewhat intimidated, even though she wasn't even a tenth my size.

 

“Hello there, Josh.” She said to me.

 

“Wh-… you know…?” I breathed.

 

“Your name? Duh. I'm an immortal. I know everything about you. Or at least I've done some… research on you recently.” She told me.

 

“Erh… Where…?” I asked, realizing we were no longer in a forest. I looked around.

 

We were standing on a waterfall, on a waterfall and nothing else. The rest was endless nothingness, nonexistent to the point where it was endless black and endless white both.

 

“I'd explain it to you, but… well, you know. I don't feel like it.” She smirked and put her hands behind her head. She fluttered up close to me, and I backed off a little. “My, quite the scaredy cat, aren't you? Hehe. Cat… Hmm. Oh, that's good. I have a thing for cats you know…”

 

I backed off a bit more as she held up a doll of a humanoid black cat or something like that. I fell back, tripping on nothing. I looked up as she grinned at me in a way I deduced as maniacal.

 

“Wh- what are you doing!?” I asked. I had a horrible feeling all of the sudden, or a worse feeling than I'd been having since all of this started. I just knew something bad was going to happen.

 

“Hehehe. You'll see. I'm a very busy lady, so I'm afraid I'll just have to cut to the chase. Let's see if we can't give you a more… suiting form, eh? Hehehe. You'll make a lovely pet.” She said, teasingly.

 

But I didn't think she was teasing.

 

I didn't know what she was doing, but all of the sudden, that doll floated about, and twirled in midair. I blacked out.

 

It felt like I had woken up, but in reality, I'd woken into a dream. I was asleep. I was having a nightmare within a nightmare.

 

Neither of them were the kind where you wake up in your bed, and praise your lucky stars that it was only a dream, and couldn't hurt you. No, these were the kind of nightmares that were horrifying because they were real. Because they were really happening, could really hurt you, and permanently change everything.

 

I found myself in a sea of black felines, all meowing and scratching at me. The noise, the claws, it was all driving me insane. I ran from them, as fast as I could. The noise and the pain didn't stop, and they caught me. They covered me, and they were drowning me.

They consumed me completely.

 

I suffered a horrible death as a human. I felt it. But I came back. I came back nine times as… something else…?

 

And it was over. My life as Joshua Alan Duncan, the human, the long-haired Casanova, peace-loving jack of all trades, mentor, writer, artist, friend, son, brother… all that stuff. It was gone.

 

But I didn't know that yet. No. I was still forcing myself to believe this was all some sort of freaky dream. Heck, I might be wishing that to this day. But nightmares, dreams… they don't last this long.

 

How many people have to have the same nightmare before it's real?

 

Hah. Just one.

 

…Just one…

 

End Chapter