Writing for Fun
July 2016
Help! - Vivian Burdon
Sam couldn’t control her breathing. Her rib cage heaved as her lungs gulped for air in rapid, rasping gasps. Loud! She was breathing too loud, and her pounding heart, high on adrenalin, slammed in her chest so hard it hurt. So hard her blood roared in her ears. She was being too loud, her body was too loud. She couldn’t control it. This is terror, real terror. Not some crummy ‘48 Hours Later’ living dead move-type terror. She was terrified. She was so afraid she was struck helpless, panting and pissing her pants in a bramble thicket under a huge oak tree.
The man was too close, cursing and bitching. Swinging out with a branch at the undergrowth on forest floor. Swearing to Almighty God what he was going to do to Sam when he caught her. And he was going to find her, Sam knew this and the man was going to kill her. He was going to finish the despicable things he was doing to her and then kill her. Slowly, painfully.
Her adrenalin started to desert her. Her body got ready to sob in despair. She could feel the scream welling up deep in her belly. She had held the words for a long time in her head, the pleading. ‘Please Help me. Please, please someone help me.’ The sob reached her throat and collided with her cry for help. The roar shook the very ground Sam was crouched on. She was rigid with fear, the man was going to get her now. She could hear the man crashing through the forest towards her, the noise getting ridiculously loud. God why is everything so loud. Then she heard her name. Someone was calling her name softly and urgently. She turned to see ludicrously bright headlights. ‘Sam, Sam . . . over here, quickly.’ She could just make out a mouth smiling broadly beneath a mop of red hair stuck out of a car window. No ordinary car. There, in this wood was the Weasley’s feral Ford Anglia hovering above a clearing. ‘Come on Sam, before this blasted car decides you’re not worth saving and heads back into the forbidden forest.’
Yes, yes of course, that’s what happens. You get saved. Somehow, Sam scrambled, or was dragged, to the clearing. The man’s breathing was now so loud he should be on top of her like he had been in that stinky cabin. There was a strong smell of unwashed, stale sweat. She knew that smell. Instinctively she reached up and caught the outstretched arm of one of the Weasley twins and was hoisted with ease into the car. Ron Weasley activated the invisibility booster and the car lurched from side to side as the inexperienced young wizard struggled with his dad’s wild, modified Ford Anglia. Sam shook violently. Her body wasn’t ready to relinquish control. Probably just as well. The car had begun an anarchic decent and the other twin was shouting something about being sorry old chap they had an urgent message that Harry needed saving from ‘he who should not be named’. The door opened and Sam was thrown to the ground. She groaned, winded and gasping even more for air. Her wrists hurt from being dragged about. Maybe, this place was safe though. It must be, its quiet, just a rustling and faint whiff of stale soil and damp wood.
Control, it was all about control. Sam needed to engage her head. The first wild flight of escape had been instinctive, but now she needed to think. To think what to do next. How she could gain control of her limbs, her breathing. Focus her eyes. Her nose kept on smelling on its own. A familiar smell, faint but familiar enough to trigger her anxiety. She needed to think. ‘Yes indeed you do young madam,’ whispered a soft voice.
‘Listen to me carefully. I the great Prince Husain, have brought you my magic carpet, the one I travelled all the long way to Bisnagar to purchase. It is here for your service for as you know ‘whoever sitteth on this carpet and willeth in thought to be taken up and set down upon another site will, in the twinkling of an eye, be borne thither, be that place near hand or a distant many a day’s journey and difficult to reach.’’ Sam screwed his eyes shut. If she couldn’t control her body she could focus her mind on that one thing her terror was chanting in her head. ‘Please please let me be far away. Please, please take me there, take me far away from this monster’. She could feel her body being raised up and hover for a few seconds. Then the whoosh as she was sped forward. She felt a swell of elation. The floating, the distance being put between her and her terror. She let go of her mind and the carpet faltered. The lapse was followed by the crash and her body slammed into the wall her neglect had overlooked. Shocked and winded she groaned. She had no voice to cry out. There was that smell. The stale sweaty smell. The smell that coaxed back the fear.
Laying back on that soiled bed she toiled for answers. To resist? To fight? To just die? The man would never just let her go. She called to ‘adrenalin’ like it was some ancient god for some hope of resistance. The man’s snorting, heavy breath was in her face and the grunting and the pounding and the pain began again. The breath on her face grew stronger as if from snorting nostrils. Pegasus! Pegasus, the bearer of the most famous slayer of monsters, Belleraphon, was here to help Sam. The white winged stallion who had borne Belleraphon so high that he could place lead into the Chimera’s throat so the monster suffocated. The chimera’s hot breath her downfall. The onslaught stopped, the man was moaning, with long deep hot gasps. His grip loosening. Now! Now! Grab the monster’s scarf. Sam found control, her breathing was calm, her heart cold and steady, her limbs strong, her rage freed. ‘That’s right,’ Bellaraphon cried out, ‘strangle the monster. Slay him. Kill the bastard!’