I'm Not From Earth - 15. Fifteen

Rover just stared, completely mummified from confusion. He ignored the earnest tone of Slade's voice and concluded that he was suffering from some mental illness. They stood under the moonlight, river running alongside of them, looking at each other. Rover struggling to keep his expression blank and Slade's face twisted in heart breaking pain, full of hope and desperation. A minute passed. Two minutes.

"Okay," Rover finally said, his voice cracking, "so, uh, where's your baseball bat?"

"This isn't a joke."

Rover swallowed. "Okay. Then, I can't help you, but like, doctors can though. Uhm, Somerset has the number of a shrink..."

Slade blinked twice before regaining his composure. The torment in his face vanished, replaced instead by his cruel mask. In the cold white light of the stars and moon, he was a nocturnal predator; a glowering angel of death; a beautiful but hostile alien that had descended from the heavens.

In other words, Slade looked ready to kill.

And hell, if he wanted to, there was no questioning what those muscles and that hidden, supernatural reservoir of strength could do. He wouldn't need a knife or a wooden stick -- he could tear Rover apart with his bare hands. There in his eyes, was the fiery hatred and madness. Madness that could crush Rover's skull with a well placed swing and a fatal bruise to the stomach. Hatred that could shred his ribs with a flick of his foot. Just like how father had done it.

Rover found himself trembling all over, a cold film of dew forming over his forehead. Slade's intense expression faded, seemingly at this.

"Forget it," he said, very quietly, and turned to walk away. "I'm sorry for scaring you, sir. Won't let a psycho like me terrorize random victims."

In moments, he was swallowed by the shadows of the trees.

Rover sat down, numb. His mind was a buzzing whirlwind of jumbled up emotions. Fear, anger, confusion, lust, wonder, fear.

Fear.

Slade had left him standing stupid in the middle of the forest, at night. Rover turned once around, could not recognize where he came from or how far he had gone off track, and cursed. Stranded, alone and filled with fear. And anger.

"Slade!" Rover shouted into the darkness. "What is with you? How the hell do you expect someone to react when you pull your best horror face and tell them you're an alien in the middle of the night, in the middle of a forest? I'm sorry if I didn't help, but you can't just like, leave me here in the middle of nowhere."

The only answers were the soft echoes of his own voice.

"Hello?"

A minute passed. Five minutes.

"Slade!"

Pausing for only two more seconds, he screamed his curses for the world to hear.

"Fuck you!"

The fear of darkness began to squeeze at Rover's chest now that Slade was gone, but he was angry enough to not call for his help again. He reached into his pocket for his cellphone to call Somerset... and it wasn't there. He cursed again, his panic rising. He checked all his pockets and bent down to the forest floor, searching in the meagre moonlight and feeling with his fingers. Nothing but dead leaves and rocks.

Rover stood up and ran in the direction to where he thought he had come from. He didn't know for sure, but he couldn't just sit doing nothing. He had to try to get out. He had to run.

His footsteps matched his heartbeat, adrenaline pumping through his veins. The elevation of the forest floor climbed and climbed, but Rover was too freaked out to notice.

That is, until he made the mistake of running into the nearest patch of what seemed like a clearing in the forest.

The elevation was cut off abruptly, a cliff revealing a sea of jagged boulders that glowed like bones in a dinosaur graveyard.

"Hell!"

Rover whirled, but he was going to fast to come to a full stop. His fingernails dug into the soil and his knees skidded on gravel, his body twisting and turning out of control.

Too late. There was a slight pause, his heart fluttering like butterflies drowning in acid, a gentle burst of cool wind as he flipped over...

And he fell.

*