Petrol Wonderland

Six | Lucid Madness

Blake froze. So did her heart.

The thing was far more uncanny-looking up close.

From the new proximity, she could see the true extent of the suit's damage. Some patches of fur suspiciously didn't match the rest, like they'd been taken from other sources and frankensteined together in disjointed patterns. The frayed tendrils of tangled, black wool hung from the areas in which the mismatched pieces had been sewn together like ragged chunks of off-cut flesh. Just how old and worn was this suit, exactly?

Her heart roared in her ears as the rabbit-man drove his gloved knuckles into the glass once more. Again and again. His fingers were coated with a thick layer of dirt, so dark it was almost black. Like he'd been digging a grave with his bare hands.

THUD. THUD.

Every pounding he delivered to the glass left it with a dirty, black-brown imprint. He raised his arm above his head to strike it again. God, his hands were huge. So was he - looming a full head or more above her.

THUD.

The entire sheet of reinforced glass seemed to shudder with every knock and she wondered if it was possible for him to shatter through with just brute strength. She swallowed. Certainly not, right?

The unnervingly large gap between his odd, button-eyes looked so much larger to her now. One was far higher on his 'face' than the other. Blake stared on as he knocked, hypnotized by the unlikely scene. There was a skittering from sound behind her but her flustered brain barely registered it. It had too many questions and confused signals bumping around inside of it to satisfy any other function than to just stand there: gawking. A living, breathing statue.

She dragged her dry eyes further across his form. A tangled mess of something thin and wiry had been sellotaped to the side of his cheeks. From the dainty way it drifted in the breeze, Blake had to wonder if it was human hair-

-THUD.

The skittering sound returned.

Suddenly, Blake was snapped from reality as something smashed into her shoulder.

She recoiled and gasped, slapping a startled Cleo in the face with her hair, however, the other girl luckily didn't complain. She'd almost elbowed Cleo in the stomach from fright, too, and was rather glad she hadn't or she might've ended up dead.

Looking pale as a ghost, the brunette released Blake's shoulder reluctantly from her grasp. It appeared as if the small amount of human contact was the only thing keeping her rooted from drifting into madness.

"I locked the doors," she whispered.

Blake's tongue fumbled in her mouth but seemed to have forgotten how to speak, so she just nodded. After a few moments spent clutching at her shivering chest cavity, she seemed to regain the ability.

"I never thought I was the type to freeze," she blurted out.

"What?" said Cleo, still whispering.

Blake shook her head and tried to ignore the incessant knocking of the rabbit man behind her. His strikes seemed to have increased in pace but lost some of their vigor. She didn't know why. She wanted to know, desperately. But she had her back to him now and didn't want to turn around for anything.

"I mean. It's fight or flight, right? But some people just freeze. I never thought I was the type to freeze," she continued, the words tumbling out of her. "I don't know. It feels kind of stupid. I just ..."

Cleo looked ready to slap her. "It doesn't matter."

"Yes, it does. What if he rushed the door? And I just stood there-"