Echoes (The Pria Chronicles)

By the end of the day, I would meet two creatures with life-altering demands. The first, a gruesome wretch who didn't know me but wanted answers to questions I had no way of understanding for months to come. The other, a firey red-headed stranger who knew me too well and wanted me to express in writing my deepest, darkest secrets. And it all began with something as mundane as a walk to the park. I felt an echo, a coolness that enveloped my body and vibrations that buzzed in my legs, which made me shiver. I turned to watch, peripherally, the approach of a woman. Well, at least, I think she was a 'woman'. I was too frightened to look but too curious to take my eyes off her. In one word, creepy horror film quality. I know, I know, that's more than one word, but there is not a word that could describe with certainty how creeped out I was as I watched her jerk and flinch her way to the fountain. Her hair was spindly, black and twisted like a sapling's branches. Her skin was rough, grey the colour of a headstone and the deep grooves looked more like cracks in desert earth rather than that of an old woman's wrinkles. Her eyes were dark, the colour of ink and they narrowed upon seeing me, as if she were seeing something interesting. I am not that interesting. Her body made clicking sounds as she moved, and the shaking, convulsing-like movement made her seem like an apparition. Her mouth moved as if she were trying to crack her jaw, the gnashing sounded loud as her teeth slammed against each other. Sometimes her jaw seemed to lock open and she used her hand to move it to the side to unlock it. Then she made a snorting sound as she cleared her sinuses, and the sounds of her teeth grinding made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. She breathed heavily, as if it were difficult to take a deep enough breath. Her lungs wheezed as if her esophagus were a whistle, loud and shrill. She came around the fountain, wobbling and jerking, almost throwing herself off balance by the movement, but the drag of her left leg seemed to help ground her. This creature was called a Gibbering. My life changed forever with this one meeting. I shouldn't have gone out that day.