Tormented Eyes

Chapter 1:

Break The Barrier

The dark forms of trees and bushes rushed past in the night's stillness, becoming mere blurs in the vision of the boy. Cold sweat trickled down his face in panic. Alex was running. He didn't know exactly where he was running to, but still he was running. And he was frightened. Very frightened.

As Alex ran, a cramp started creeping up his right leg. It quickly ran up to his side, and shot up through his ribs. He let out an agonized scream as he fell to his knees in the dead leaves covering the ground. Alex grabbed his side, his arm clenched with tension and fear. As the pain started to fade, he put his right arm on a tree trunk next to him for support. Alex clumsily pushed himself up, by support of the tree, onto his feet again. Yet again, the overwhelming sense of fright and the urge to run came over him.

Alex's head began to spin, as if he had stood up too fast. Whispers began to accumulate around him. He waited for them to fade out, but they only became more distinct. The voices sounded threatening, speaking to Alex in tongues. They were all around him.

He couldn't stand the urges anymore. Alex began to run again, his adrenaline and fright reaching towards their limits. His short legs carried him as fast as they could through the dense forested imprisonment. As he ran, the whispers seemed spurred on by his efforts to escape them. The cramp began to return, faster now, than it had the first time. Alex couldn't take it. He let himself fall. He let his body hit the hard ground. He waited for the fear, and the voices to devour his every being. But they didn't.

Instead, there was an overwhelming rage building up inside of Alex. Rage for all the people that should have been there for him but weren't. Rage for everyone who was letting this happen to him. And rage for himself, for letting it happen. And as his rage began to hit its peak, and his teeth were fully clenched, and his muscles fully tensed, everything fell silent. The voices were gone, the rage was gone, and so was the fright.

Alex opened his eyes to find that he wasn't in the forest anymore. In fact, he couldn't see a single tree in sight. The ground was hard and bare. It was still night, but something seemed different about the sky. The world around him was illuminated in a tint of red light, and there was cool breeze that sifted through his jaw-length hair like the chilly hand of someone just inside from walking home on a cold night. Alex's shadow was cast abnormally long across the desolate plains that lay before him. Why would his shadow go that far? Why was this strange land covered in such a eerie red luminescence?

And then Alex had the peculiar feeling that he wasn't alone. That someone besides himself was near. He pushed his body up off the ground, struggling a little to regain balance. He pivoted his right leg to view behind him. As he did so, his eyes narrowed on what would give him answers to all of his inquiries. A black silhouetted figure stood just at the edge of a cliff in front of what seemed to be the sun in Alex's readjusting eyes. As his vision cleared, Alex could see that he was dead wrong. A motionless, blood-red circle of light seemed to balance at the edge of the cliff. It looked exactly like the moon. But how could it be? It was much to close to the Earth, and granted, Alex had seen the moon become colors such as orange, yellow, even blue once, but never red. Then the figure spoke.

"I've dreamed of this moment, Alexander," a venomous melody hung in the baritone voice, "but how can one trust dreams? They are only a trick of the mind, right?" There was evident sarcasm that rang out in an almost sadistic manner. Now Alexander was face to face with the silhouetted man. He knew not how he got there, but without moving Alexander now had his back to the abnormal moon, standing inches away from both the cliff, and the unknown figure. Yet, even though Alexander had never before thought this possible, he couldn't bring himself to wonder about it. Instead, all his thoughts went to the tall figure before him, now very well detailed in Alexander's eyes.

His skin was noticeably pale despite the fact that the red light shone across his face. His nose jutted out at an angle that Alexander thought would feel ever so sensual upon his cheek. His lips were such an unusual crimson compared to his pale skin, but their lush vibrance silenced that thought at once. Chocolate brown tresses veiled the man's eyes, but a sudden throw of the breeze cast the strands of hair away revealing stunning and almost inhumanly ice-blue eyes. For that fleeting moment when the wind blew aside this beautiful stranger's hair, Alexander could have sworn that he was ready to die at the very will of those hypnotic eyes. But the moment ended, and Alexander resumed looking at the rest of the man. His dark brown hair was loose and flowed with the cool breeze like dark waters on a calm summer's night. It reached to his mid-waist where separate strands looked like miniscule threads. Looking at the body stature of the man, Alexander found him to be quite lean, but wearing odd clothes that engulfed his thin stature with ease, and creating great folds in the material. The clothing seemed to come from a time long ago, from a culture Alexander must know very little of. Then the figure spoke again.

"So many things for you to learn, dear Alexander, yet it is you who must make the decision on whether or not you dare learn them." With that, the unknown man leaned into Alexander's face and with soft force, pulled Alexander from the back of his head, thus planting an inevitable kiss upon his lips. And upon completion of this intimate intrusion, the man simply watched as Alexander's frail and small body fell through the seemingly endless rush of air.

And so it came to pass that Alexander's dreams were no longer disconnected from reality…