The Witness

Amanda's lungs blistered with the crisp night air as she hurtled through the woods. Shrubs switched her arms and lashed her thighs, coercing grunts from her dry lips as she loped deep into the brush. Her foot snagged on a root the size of a jump rope and she went flying.

She tumbled like a rag doll down a grassy decline until she landed with her hands braced out in front of her. Amanda gathered herself to her knees with a laboring heart and spinning eyes. Her head thundered with rushing water as fire scorched her breast. She swallowed a sharp breath and glanced up to see she was kneeling before a riverbank. Her hands filled her vision, they stung, covered with dirt caked scratches. Amanda struggled to wipe them clean on her dress. But, the dirty blood only smeared and streaked all over the white gown.

She clambered to her feet while fixing the veil round her head. Amanda watched the river flowing steadily through the forest. The crystal clear water trickled with a song as it splashed around the boulders in its path. She flung out her hands and dove towards the wild stream with her dress snagging along the rocks.

Amanda tugged the train of her dress free of a young thorn bush. Turning back to the river, she squatted down on shifting rocks at its banks. Her ivory skin tinged in seashell pinks gazed back at her with Stygian eyes.

A hoot from an owl screeched across the rapids and Amanda jerked up from her reflection to discover a speckled owl perched on a dead tree embedded into the river. It dug yellow claws into the wet wood and watched her with orange orbs. The blinking bird unfolded its wings wide as it launched itself into the night with three silent beats.

Amanda followed the owl until it vanished behind tree tops towards the moon. A feather drifted down towards her like a giant snowflake and landed with a gentle kiss on her lips. She plucked it off, realizing the feather was a note penned with maroon ink in tight, tall cursive:

There's no choices to be chosen

gross mistakes are often tokens

stoke the flame or stake the broken

what you do is take a leap

slip a slippery leaf open

and plunge it deep, your head

everything said, was simply you

misspoken.

A gust of wind stole the paper away from the delicate grip of her thumb and forefinger, tumbling the poem in loops down the stream. Amanda remembered the filth staining her digits and anxiously returned her attention to the river again. There was no way she could let him see how dirty her fingers were, she was desperate to rinse them before he found her again.

Amanda gulped as she plunged her hands into the flowing crystal. The speeding glass felt abnormally warm around her wriggling hands. She rubbed her fingers together under the water until a chain of pricks, like submerged thorns, scraped across her palms.

With a shriek, she retracted her hands to find them dripping crimson down her forearms. Her eyes widened as she discovered the river was a sultry rush of pumping blood. A pink foam sprayed against rocks expelling a red mist into the wind.

Amanda panicked as the stream swelled, sending heat gushing between her toes. She scrambled to stand but a woman's hand with obsidian daggers for nails seized her ankle. Amanda crashed to her ass and skidded down the rocks of the river bank.

The pretty head of a woman with skin the color of snow and eyes like new moons surfaced in the flowing scarlet. The stream dweller smiled fangs as blood washed down her face and dripped from the tips of her eyelashes.

"You're needed," she informed Amanda without speaking.

The woman dragged Amanda by her ankle into the crimson canal. Amanda clawed the rocks and dirt as she slipped beneath the surface of the river. Burning iron flooded her nose and throat as the woman drew her under. The pure white train of her dress followed after her like a ream of virgin vellum.

Amanda choked awake into a flash of artificial brightness with drool smeared down her chin and across her jaw. She straightened up in her desk, wiped her face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt, and massaged the outer bones of her elbows. A projector screen squealed at the front of the room as it retracted with a tremble back into the ceiling.

"Did you fall asleep?"

Amanda swiveled to see a girl who looked like a starved chipmunk sitting in the desk on her left.

"Have you been up all night reading again?" Her friend asked.

"I found this new book and I can't seem to put it down," Amanda said, "it really gets stuck in your head. I feel like there's someone in my dreams-"

"Well, you better still be my plus one tonight," her friend said, dumping a notebook into her bag, "it's my chance to get closer to David."

"Do I really have to be your plus one, Sandy?" Amanda asked, "you know I don't like parties."

"You'll be wearing a costume," Sandy said, slinging her blue bag over her shoulder, "you can hide behind that."

"I dunno," Amanda said, closing the wet pages of a smudged composition book, "I'm not a party person."

"Just do it for me, please," Sandy said, "meet me behind Rosethorn Hall, near the drop-off circle out back."

"What time?" Amanda sighed, clutching her notebook.

"Nine sharp," Sandy smiled as she spun to leave, "don't flake on me."

Amanda watched her chestnut-haired friend stroll out the classroom. The door latched and she noticed, by how quiet it was, that she was the only one in the room. She tucked her notebook next to a dusky hard back in her bag. Her fingers grazed across the blushing pages of the musty book before she zipped the tote shut.

-

The night air was sweet with chilly notes of rustling leaves as Amanda rounded the corner of a brick building. She spotted a slutty girl shivering in spandex cow print with a red collar and bell jangling round her neck.

"There you are!" The bovine skank exclaimed with crossed arms and a shake that agitated a clang from her cowbell.

"What the hell are you supposed to be?" Amanda asked as she approached.

"I'm a cow," Sandy said, holding out her arms under the lamp post at the edge of the street.

Amanda snickered, "really? A cow? Where's your udder?"

"My what? David's going to be a cowboy," Sandy said, "so I'm going to be his cow."

"That sounds so dumb," Amanda said, entering the spotlight with Sandy. A breeze swirled by and buffeted the squid banners at the top of the light post.

"Well if I'm lucky," Sandy said, biting the tip of a long nail, "maybe I can get him to tie me up tonight," she flicked the miniature cowbell at her neck, "and the rattling of this little thing will stick in his head for weeks to come."

Amanda rolled her eyes, "keep that to yourself."

"And what are you?" Sandy said, stepping back two steps to scrutinize Amanda, "a dead bride?"

"Dracula's bride," Amanda said defensively, tugging the polyester cloak around her slender frame, "I knew it was stupid, I'm going home."

"Wait, wait, no, it's nice," Sandy said, "spooky, really. And smart too, it's so fucking chilly tonight."

Amanda crossed her arms, "I'm only doing this because you begged me, you know."

"I know," Sandy said, rubbing the goosebumps on her arms, "I'll make it up to you I promise."

"I don't understand why you need a plus one," Amanda said, "why not just go to the party yourself? Wouldn't that be better even? To be alone with David?"

"The invitation only allows you to enter if you bring someone else along with you," Sandy said.

"Why can't you and David just go together?" Amanda asked.

"Because of Melissa," Sandy said, "if I asked to be his plus one it would be too obvious."

"Wait, David has a girlfriend?" Amanda asked.

"I told you he did," Sandy said, "do you listen to me at all? Maybe if I was a book you'd pay more attention. Melissa's not technically his girlfriend, but if I don't act soon, she will be. This party's my chance to get between them."

"Uh what?" Amanda asked, "why do you want a guy who's already fooling around with some slut? If it's the Melissa I remember, she had photos of a teacher she jerked off in the parking lot of Mistbury High, remember?"

"First of all, that was a rumor, it never happened, and after we get to the party, I can call you a cab or something so you can go home," Sandy said, "you can read your vampire book or whatever it is you're hooked on lately. I just need your help to initially get into the party. David is my life right now, okay?"

Amanda went quiet before replying, "it's not necessary to call a cab, I plan on taking the train, it's cheaper and there's a station right next to the party. I already looked it up." She smiled.

Sandy grinned before hugging her and stepping back again.

"Thank you," Sandy said, then with a twirl, "now be honest, not sarcastic, how do I really look?"

"You look Sexy," Amanda said with a smirk.

"I thought so," Sandy said. She flicked her brass bell with an index finger, "moooooo."

They both giggled as dingy headlights whirled into the loop. Sandy clasped Amanda's hand and tugged her over to the car that screeched to a halt at the curb next to them.

"Hey David," Sandy said, bending into the window with a clang, clang.

"Hey Sands," a fit young man, bulging in a cowboy costume, said from behind the wheel, "you ready?"

Sandy popped the door and hopped in the front seat. Amanda scooped up the cheap synthetic train of her dress as she snuck into the shadows of the back seat. She barely shut the door when David pulled off at a quick clip. Amanda fumbled to find her seat belt. She pressed a finger through a hole and yanked it down across her breasts, plugging it in next to her waist, by touch.

As the seat belt latched with a click, a street light poured into the car and cast the backseat in an amber glow. To Amanda's shock, there existed another person in the murk of the backseat with her.

Amanda froze.

A man, white as snow, draped in a thick black cape, and dressed in a tuxedo, sat like a marble statue across from her. The cape collared up high around his ears and the interior was a deep crimson that flowed around him like a cushion of silky blood. His eyes were in shadow, but the bottom half of his chiseled face wore the blankness of a man done with the world. He had an inch long white scar trailing from the left side of his bottom lip like a comet. Amanda gazed into the shadows where his eyes should be and spotted two white disks flashing in the void like a wild animal.

"That's Damen, or I mean Dameon," David called back from the driver's seat, Amanda looked at him through the rear view mirror, "he's my plus one tonight."

"Nice to meet you Dameon," Sandy said cheerfully, turning round from the passenger seat with the smile of a girlfriend meeting her boyfriend's friend for the first time.

Amanda shot Sandy a petrified look. Sandy glared back with a look that said, "don't ruin this for me."

"You two are a match," Sandy laughed, "Dracula and his bride." She spun back around to David, "I thought you were bringing Michael?" David shrugged.

Amanda tried her hardest to wedge herself into the car door. She gazed up at the silent man.

"I'm Amanda," she said, "nice... to meet you..." Her voice wavered.

Dameon didn't stir. Amanda wasn't sure he was alive. She turned and gripped her seat belt as she stared out the window. A gleaming sign flew by, "Greymore City 45.4 miles."

"Let's put some music on!" Sandy exclaimed as she plugged her phone into David's stereo. David spun the volume up as a vocal trance track throbbed through the bass in the back of the car and bounced through Amanda's chest.

"...take a leap...a slippery leaf..."

The hour or so drive to the party passed in an instant to Amanda. She studied the man coyly in the reflection of her window every time a street lamp passed overhead. Dameon was the abyss in the guise of a man, Amanda wasn't even sure he was breathing, but his eyes... Amanda shivered. His eyes were terrifying the way they shone in the dark like a wolf in the woods.

They parked a block away and followed the line of costumes marching down the street towards muffled pounding. Amanda had her arm in Sandy's as they walked behind the guys. She watched Dameon glide silently next to David and fretted with the edges of her robe. Amanda finally saw the beautiful top of his head. His eyes were a pair of Lucifer's torches raging beneath tidal waves of black lashes. An unruly lock dangled down his forehead from the rest of his slick backed hair. He looked eighteen and thirty eight at the same time.

"What're you doing?" Sandy stopped.

"What?" Amanda asked.

"You're squeezing my arm, it hurts," Sandy said.

"Oh, sorry," Amanda said.

"It's just a party, don't be so tense," Sandy said.

At the entrance of the early Halloween bash, the hired bouncer dutifully checked each invite and made sure everyone had a plus one. Amanda watched Sandy hand a pale green card to the bouncer who might've been a swollen molehill in a tight polo. He waved them in after David and Dameon.

Sandy was smiling devilishly. It was a smile Amanda was familiar with since middle school. She knew whenever Sandy wore that smile, she was close to getting something she wanted, usually some boy she had her eyes set on.

They ambled up a long path into the town house in which the party took place. Skeletons hung in the yard from neon green ropes. Bolts of fake spider webs drooped in glowing blobs all along the porch and windows. Inside, the walls convulsed with flashes of flickering UV tubes, and the music undulated a continual wave of bass that battered the entire body.

Before the first song was over, which was hard to tell since every song had the same beat that blared repetitively, Amanda had lost Sandy and David. Which surprised her because she thought she was tracking them better than even Artemis could. They had disappeared through the darkness of the kitchen cloaked in thick mist pumping out from two fog machines. Amanda waved the boozy smog away from her face, she hated parties, they were so fucking stupid.

Soon, drunk shouts struggled to be heard over the music as more sweaty costumes crowded into the party. Amanda also looked for Dameon, she hadn't found a single other vampire in the entire party, which felt impossible. Dameon had disappeared before they even entered the house.

After completing numerous circuits of the first floor, she gave up. She fingered the lace of her veil and, with a deep breath, ventured upstairs. Amanda checked her phone, it was seven minutes past eleven and she was ready to leave. She was going to take the midnight train back to Mistbury, but she wanted to check on Sandy before she left. Amanda licked her lips as she put her phone back in her purse and thought about settling into bed with her book.

The strobing lights threatened to give her a migraine as she trudged up the curling set of stairs. The music dropped off a bit as she climbed higher into the house. An alligator and an eggplant lurched down the stairs with sloppy kisses, nearly tripping past Amanda. She shook her head as she arrived at the landing to the second floor.

Rooms lined the walls, the house was nine stories, Amanda guessed, looking up the curling spine of stairs. She stepped around the party-goers who had already paired off and were tongues and fingers deep into each other's costumes. None of them were Sandy, though she spotted a Dalmatian she thought was her at first glance.

She lurked door to door. Amanda opened each one quietly, careful not to disturb the occupants. They were a stage beyond the couples in the hallway who waited their turns with sloppy impatience.

Amanda clicked ajar a door and peered in with a dark peeper to spy a slutty Indian, complete with dollar store headdress feathers and polyester ritual garb, bent over the edge of a bed. Amanda's eyes traveled along the shaking breasts, past the trim belly, and back to a rippling rear. The girl was gripping the sheets with mewling grunts as a familiar cowboy railed into her from behind.

Amanda closed the door, her mouth ajar. That was David, but who was the girl? She opened the door again slightly and took another eyeball full. The cattleman had pulled up his captured native by the shoulders and the girl's face was awash in ecstasy like a statue of a saint. Her breasts shook like they could fly off her chest at any moment. David's body glistened in the golden light of the bedside lamp as his steel cables of muscles flexed with some deep anger. The lamp cast their copulating forms across the room like a debauched shadow theater. Amanda spotted David's holsters around his ankles as the front of his hairy legs strained rigidly against the back of the smooth thighs of his prisoner. Amanda swallowed through the gap in the door as David gripped the girl's chin and pulled her to his lips, smearing the red warpaint from her cheeks across his. She gripped his hair as he crammed all the violence of his libido into her athletic frame. Their tongues slithered like two mating snakes eating each other.

Amanda shut the door. The moaning Indian was Melissa, she was pretty sure. She backed away from the door and almost stumbled over a maid, a nurse, and a grim reaper.

Where was Sandy? If she wasn't with David, where the hell was she? Maybe she saw the two of them too? Oh god, Amanda hoped not. Knowing Sandy, she could be in a bathroom crying, or running off drunk with a stranger.

She continued around, going from bedroom to bedroom. At the ninth door on the third floor, she opened it to find her friend sprawled out on a couch with a caped man on top of her.

Amanda pushed the door wide with a gasp. The man turned, a cow bell jangled. It was Dameon. Amanda covered her mouth when a blur of scarlet dripped from his glossy chin and down the front of his tux. She glanced at her milky-eyed friend with her neck torn to shreds, lying limp like a pile of dirty laundry.

Before she could scream, Dameon caught her gaze and the stars of his eyes entered her like a pair of freight trains.

-

Amanda wormed through a fuzzy tunnel of black sable, it was like a burrow of hairy static that ensnared her consciousness. She squirmed her way along with a struggle until she was a foot behind her eyes. Instantly, she noticed she wasn't in control of her body. She could see, feel, hear, smell, but she couldn't move any muscle, she couldn't even blink.

Through the porthole of her vision, her bare arms and fairy-like hands dangled in front of her. A hardwood floor, ancient and over-polished, shone beneath countless layers of wax. Something dug into her chest, just under her breasts above her abdomen. She puzzled together, by sensation alone, that she had been stripped nude and draped over the round arm of some antique couch. Her lower half was numb below the waist. Her mouth was bone dry as her breath passed between her lips with shallow movements of her lower belly.

Amanda wanted to scream, the sensation of being trapped in her own body horrified her. The fact that she couldn't scream made her want to scream even more. Where was she, what happened to her?

A pair of pale feet entered her vision and the memory of a dead Sandy staring at her with white eyes and an open throat reminded her. She tried another scream, but nothing came, she was only a passenger in her own body.

The feet strode back and forth and Amanda could hear the sounds of the flesh sticking to the wood floors. A cape sunk to the ground and the black flipped to a river of red in front of her.

Her heart was beating along steady like a train despite her internal fear. Something heavy and flat with grit on the bottom like a pair of shoes landed on her back and roll down into the numbness of her lower half.

The lights went out and she heard the door close.

The window of her vision was pure night. Pinching needles cascaded through her veins as her upper body also turned numb. Her chest, where the rigid cushion dug into the bottom rung of her ribs was still alive with crushing soreness. She wanted to move so badly, to take herself off the tender part of her aching muscles, but she was like a forgotten doll tossed in a closet.