“End of the line, pet.”

The witch stood, a demonic look on her face. She began to trek after Lila, her nostrils contracting.

Genevieve gasped. “Oh no.”

Meanwhile, Lila wheeled around the corner, pelted across the yard and burst inside the house.

In the kitchen, she got to her knees and threw cupboards open, dragging their contents out with sweeping movements of her arms, hunting for the weapon. Pots and pans clamoured to the ground. “Shit.” She stood on tippytoes next to search the top cabinets. “Please be here, please be here, please be here…”

Then she heard the creaking of the door. She froze.

The witch called menacingly into the house. “My dear…”

Lila dropped the pot she’d been holding with a clatter.

The witch called again. “I can smell you. I’m coming for you.”

Lila ran further into the dwelling, reaching a room full of barrels and bookshelves lined with cobwebs. There were no windows. A steel door loomed ahead.

Lila reached it and began struggling with the bolt.

“My pet…” The witch’s voice was suddenly a lot closer.

The bolt, then the door slid with a rusty groan. Lila slipped through the gap and slammed it home, with an echoing bang and a sob.

Ice banked against the walls. Animal carcasses hung from the ceiling in the industrial-looking space. Lines of metal shelves were bolted to the concrete, packed with red, pink and purple cuts of flesh, ribs and other bones exposed to the freezing air of the witch’s cool room.

Lila hastened into the eerie silence, faced with a long aisle. She hesitated before she sped around a dark corner, and almost lost her mind.

*’s frost-covered cadaver dangled upside down from a meat hook, arms swinging hauntingly toward the floor.

Lila edged past her dead friend and continued deeper into the freezer, before reaching the back wall – a solid, impenetrable dead-end.

Then there was the sound of steel runners behind her.

Lila dropped and rolled beneath a shelf. There was slick ice along the ground and she started shivering. Terror and claustrophobia threatened to overtake her.

Across the room, the witch sniffed the air. “End of the line, pet.”

Lila forced her limbs still, because shivering led to teeth chattering and she needed to be as silent as a tomb.

The witch treaded the last corner. Lila could see feet emerge from her enemy’s petticoats, hairy with clawed, lumpy toenails. They trod closer to the brunette’s hiding place before the witch shoved her face under the shelf.

The disfigured nose inhaled deeply, and the purple mouth began snarling in triumph. “Hello, my dear.”

Lila screamed.

***

#EscapingTheBloodSky - coming soon!