Her next attacker came quickly, holding a wooden cross that look like it was old. At least, older than she was. Well, she didn’t know how old she was. But she was sure that this antique and faded wooden item was older. There was no question about that.
The girl looked mid-twenties, strong, sort of like Kahente’s elementary school teacher. The eyes looked the same, though there was this anger and resentment decorating the visage of the girl in front of her that provided a distinction between the two. Her teacher’s classic friendly smile was missing, but the way her hair draped on her shoulders was the same.
By the time Kahente was done studying her, she was almost within fighting distance, and Kahente was ready for what she thought was about to happen.
But instead of attacking her, the girl stopped and looked at Kahente with this fear in her eyes, fear that Kahente wasn’t clear as to why it was present. The girl’s eyes seemed focused on Kahente’s hands, on the pink leaves covering her body.
She took the opportunity to look down at herself and saw the red stains on her skin, the pink leaves that were just barely covering her body, the ends of her hair that were stuck together. She reminded herself of the monsters in her nightmares, the ones that kept her up at night and forced her to sleep at the foot of her dad’s bed, the ones full of older kids with bloodstained skin and worn out weapons coming for attack her and take her away from her family.
These dreams didn’t make sense to her in the moment, but the fact that she had become the very thing that she feared made her upset. Where was she? Why was she acting like this?
The girl in front of her, covered in a fair amount of blood herself now that she was paying attention to it, narrowed her eyebrows, as if this was a fight that she would not allow herself to lose.
As she began to attack Kahente, Kahente prepared herself to defend, grabbing at the other girl’s wrists in an attempt to stop her fist and the cross from making contact with Kahente’s face.
“Why are you attacking me?” Kahente asked, as she struggled with the girl’s arms. “What is this for? Just let me go,” she said through strained teeth, as she managed to force the girl to drop the wooden cross to the floor.
“Because,” the girl responded, wrestling Kahente to the ground and laying on top of her, very similarly to the way that Kahente had done to the man mere moments before. “Only one of us is getting out of here, and it’s going to be me.”
Kahente attempted to wiggle under the pressure of the girl on top of her, trying to free herself. This girl’s words were scary, like they were taken straight from the dreams Kahente had remembered mere moments ago. “What do you mean?” she responded, continuing to squirm.
The girl continued speaking, beginning to dig her fingernails into Kahente’s arm as she did. “You must have hurt someone real bad to be covered in that much blood,” she spoke, as she began to drag her nails down Kahente’s arm. Kahente cried out in pain as she did, the girl seeming to enjoy the sound of her scream.
“If you’re a threat,” the girl began, taking her nails out and beginning the process again, managing to dig her nails in deeper this time. It was as if they were genetically engineered for this, like someone had shaped them specifically to cause other people pain. She continued, “then I simply can’t let you continue to roam around this arena, now can I?”
The girl was distracted by the pain she was causing, Kahente realized this, and she managed to inch her hand towards the wooden cross lying on the ground next to them as the girl continued to speak. “Don’t worry, I’ll make it as painless as possible, in fact, I-.”
Kahente raised her hand and hit the girl in the head, watching as she fell over and made impact with the ground, the blood pooling around her.
Was she as monstrous as the girl was?
She did not want to stick around to kill a third person, so she let the cross drop to the ground and began to scramble away from the scene of the crime, barely getting up on her feet before running as fast as she could in the other direction.