Cursed III

                It only took me a moment to respond .

                You’d think that seeing a menacing face made out of smoke coming out of the ceiling would have given me pause, but sometimes you gotta be grateful for the effects of alcohol.

                “Phil!” I screamed as loudly as I could, trying to be heard over the blasting music. He didn’t hear me at all, and continued to dance with Macie, completely unaware of the peril he was in.

                I was pushing into everyone on the “dance floor” that was the living room of the frat, pushing people to the ground or into others people around me.

                “What the hell is your problem?” shouted some guy wearing Alpha Phi Delta letters around his neck, as he grabbed me by the shoulders and lifted me off the ground.

                I was wild. I thrashed in his grip, trying to see around him as the face’s glowing red eyes looked down towards Phil and Macie. ‘How is no one else seeing this?’ I thought, once again thinking that I may be going insane.

                The frat guy was looking at me, confused as I was freaking out. “Woah, are you on something?” he asked, going from cocky asshole about to punch me in the face, into some sort of creature that may actually be able to show human emotion. This made me feel a little bad as I rammed my knee between his legs to get him to drop me.

                I hit the ground, landing on my shoulder, causing me to wince. I launched myself over the frat guy grabbing his crotch as though he were a large, steroid filled hurdle. Everyone had seemed to have seen this and started to get out of my way a little easier.

                “Phil!” I screamed in a voice that didn’t sound like my own.

                Phil finally turned and looked at me. I was only a few feet away.

                The face seemed to form enormous smokey hands. Their claws were the same size as minivans.

                I threw myself at Phil and Macie, but Macie moved away quickly, seeing my approach, yelling, “Ewww!” and fell into a smokey hand behind as Phil and I fell to the floor out of the grasp of the other hand.

                Phil and I hit the ground hard, me on top of him. He looked at me with an unfamiliar anger in his eyes for only a moment before he looked past me.

                “What the f**k is that?!” he exclaimed looking over my shoulder.

                I turned over to look where he was looking and saw the face looking down at us, holding Macie in its right hand.

                I don’t know how to best describe it. It look vaguely human, but it had goat-like characteristics. It had large horns that came out from its temples that curved upward to creating twisting spirals. Its eyes burned like lava and its fangs sparkled like diamond against the dark smoke that made up its entire structure.

                “Phil!” cried Macie.

                I started to hear the screams of terror around me. I don’t know what the others in the room were seeing, if they were actually seeing the monster, but they saw something, because they started to panic, trying to get out of the building.

                Phil pushed me off of him and struggled to his feet.

                The face started to vanish into the ceiling where it had originally had come from, taking Macie with it.

                “Macie!” Phil called out, jumping over and over to try and reach her hand that slowly was rising towards the ceiling.

                Slowly the shadowy figure began to disappear entirely, eventually only leaving the hand holding Macie, until eventually it started to vanish into the shadows as well, taking Macie along with it.

                When Macie saw her feet disappear into the shadows in the ceiling, her wails got louder and she thrashed in the hand, to no avail. Tears streamed her face, causing her makeup to run.

                Phil wasn’t stopping trying. He had pulled over a table and was jumping off of it. Suddenly a leg of the table broke, and he plummeted to the ground, hitting his head on the ground. I ran over to him, yelling if he was alright as we both simultaneously looked up to see the last of Macie disappear into the ceiling with a last, terrified yelp.

                Phil screamed in rage. I wanted to try to calm him down when I heard my name.

                “Chuck!!”

                I turned my head towards the voice and saw Jewels. In all of her beauty, she was in the middle of the crazy mob that was trying to get out of the house, but had been failing due to the amount of their panic.

                I rose off the ground, leaving Phil.

                I saw something move on the ground by my feet and looked down to see a small black creature. It looked something out of a nightmare. Small and demonic, it skittered across the floor slightly like a rat, but unsettlingly unnaturally. It turned its head back at me as it scurried towards the crowd of people and shot me a vicious grin and then disappeared into the flock of people, heading, I could only guess, towards Jewels.

                I would not let anything happen to her. I did feel slightly bad for Macie, if she was truly gone forever, but Jewels was different. Not saying that Macie deserved to be possibly devoured by a demon, but let’s just say that would deserve that more than Jewels.

                I felt the sting of tears in my eyes as I ran, terrified that I might not be able to save her.

                I dove into the crowd, crawling between their legs and punching people in the face to get them out of the way. I could see Jewels about ten feet from me, her face peeking over the backs of everyone else’s faces, looking back at me as everyone else looked towards the door.

                Suddenly her face vanished into the crowd, pulled down into the mass of people.

                I grabbed the people around me with a shout and pulled myself onto their shoulders and climbed on top of everyone. I reached where Jewels had been and looked down and saw her. She was sinking into the ground. My brain wasn’t able to process what was happening.

                Only her shoulders and head were still visible as the rest of her body seemed to be in a black hole of shadows. I dropped down to the floor and reached down and she reached up. I grabbed her forearms and began to pull with all of my strength.

                Slowly I saw her chest come out of the hole and slowly but effectively, she was coming more and more out of the shadows. The small creature came out of the shadows and crawled up her body with shocking speed before taking a bite out of my arm. The pain was firey hot as I kept myself from passing out.

                Jewels and I fell to the ground and I heard a low thunder as the rooms filled with screams.

                I opened my eyes and looked around the room. It was empty. I saw Phil across the room balled up on the floor and Jewels next to me. It felt uncomfortably quiet.