My breath shortened, and my sweats were cascading down to my temples. I took long strides as I jogged by the park over the luminous grass that was drenched with morning rain. Crisp wind swept on my skin, diminishing the heat that arose in my body. Aside from the song blaring from my earphones, I heard my heavy pants as I was reaching the border of the park. Though my heart was hammering in my chest as if it was about to fall out, my legs couldn’t stop running. Energy had overflown inside of me, neglecting the twinge in my chest. My heart was begging me to stop, but since I didn’t want to have another attack, I kept moving.
Jogs had made me overcome my illness along with my medication, and it helped overcome the worry or panic I would always have. This activity had helped me cope up with the anxiety which also gave me more strength to fight the battle in my head. It wasn’t rare to have mental suffering; everybody would have this attack at least once in their life. But sometimes, I couldn’t help but think of how I brought it up to this day when twenty years had already passed by. It wasn’t a rare case, but the agony and trauma failing to subside throughout those span of times though I was taking my medications were bizarre. The people in my therapy session had already overcome their issues, but here I was, still living with it and it never once went away.
I halted when I jogged past the huge tree and hunched my back to rest. Grasping my thighs just above my knees, I looked down on the ground as the sweats fell on the grass. I unplugged the earphones from my ears, and all I could hear now was the thumping of my heart. My skin was already glimmering with sweat when the sunlight hit me, as I grimace from the heat. Glancing at my wristwatch, I checked the time, realizing that I would be late for work, only if I had one.
The mortifying event last night had appeared in my head so vividly. I remembered the moment when the manager fired me because of my irresponsibility and bad temper. All I could do was curse myself for arguing with a customer yesterday because I was disrespected. That old woman had tested my patience, provoking me into speaking up and practically getting myself fired right after the misunderstanding. How I wish I could go back to that time and resign myself because that job had given me a hard time that I almost degraded myself. I hadn’t really enjoyed being in that awful restaurant where the crews were as nasty as that place because I wasn’t getting enough salary for working hard as a waitress. But though I badly wanted to quit that monstrosity, I had to pay for my bills and support Aunt Odessa because she was getting old.
Now that I had no job or anything to support us financially, I was embarrassed by myself for letting this unfortunate thing happen. I wasn’t moping over losing my job, but the fact that I wouldn’t have something to fund me and my aunt.
Sighing in frustration when these nagging thoughts had crept into my head, I proceeded to walk further to deviate my attention from the problem that I was currently facing. I strolled along the pavement, ignoring the little kids that would gawk at me for being so drenched with sweat. I had this abnormality rooted in my anxiety that caused me to sweat uncontrollably when I suppressed my agitation. This was the oddest flaw I had that I wished would go away because it was part of my insecurity. It made me look like I just came out of the water and forgot to dry myself down.
I stopped on my track when I noticed a poster attached to a brick wall on my right side. Averting my attention to it, my brows lifted as soon as I read ‘hiring’ text on the uppermost part of the poster. It was written in bold and emphasized by a red color so it wasn’t too hard to catch attention. Realizing that I lost my job yesterday and there was this hiring signage that suddenly popped up, I highly doubt this was just a coincidence. Nevertheless, I trailed my eyes across the texts, reading every bit of it, as my mouth almost gaped when I realized what this job was all about. It made me disconcerted, a bit skeptical, and the last thing I knew, it triggered my anxiety in just a blink of an eye.
My heart thumped rapidly and my head went on a spiral. Biting my bottom lip, I forced myself to keep calm and steadied my breathing. I shut my eyes closed and pretended like I saw nothing. But when I felt a cold surface touching against my bare legs, I immediately jolted and flicked my eyes down. I would’ve screamed if I hadn’t realized right away that it was just a husky that was sniffing my legs. Sighing in relief, I crouched in front of it and rubbed its head.
“Hey there, buddy,” I said with a playful tone and noticed the dog’s leash hanging loose on the ground. “Where’s your owner?”
“Athena,” someone called near our area as I flitted my eyes up.
The dog immediately walked away from me, running towards the guy who was now approaching my area.
At that point, I thought my anxiety worsen because sweat oozed out of my hands and my heart skipped a beat at the sight of the guy. And I concluded, it was probably because I was smitten in less than a second.
A few years later I peered through the oven before grabbing the potholder and pulled it open. The smoke and the aroma of the freshly cooked chicken made its way through the kitchen, as I laid it on the counter. I saw someone moved at the side of my eye and when an arm suddenly laced around my lower torso, I giggled and turned my back around to face Giofré. “Hey,” he said in a husky voice before leaning his face to me and placed a kiss on my lips. I curled my lips to a smile and wrapped my arms around his neck. “Hey, hun. Have you already considered my proposal?” “You’re making it sound like we’re dealing a business matter.” Giofré chuckled before pulling away from me. He moved to my side and opened the fridge, getting a glass pitcher before continuing, “I’m still not sure about it.” “Why not?” I shrugged. “I mean, we’re not leaving this town completely. There’s
It had been a few months after that tremendous crisis we had gone through in defeating the dark soul and the other supernatural creatures that dared to destroy our living. We had survived that tribulation and we managed to get back up and rebuild everything that was destroyed, especially our pack. It still hadn’t struck us that the war was over, and the crippling anxiety was still lingering around. But those circumstances taught us the biggest lesson in life: no matter how hard it gets or how unbearable life gets, you get back up and fight. It felt as though we were trained as soldiers—battle through hardships and face the biggest hurdles that came along the way, not knowing if we would survive. But we fought anyway because we had some people to protect—those people we cared about. I once thought that, perhaps, I was supposed to get rid of all the pain in order to find genuine happiness. But I figured,
The veins bulging from Elspeth’s face began to diminish and she fluttered her lids open, gasping for air as she came back to life once the knife was pulled out of her. But when she tried to move from her spot, she failed because her body seemed to froze because of the spell Aunt Odessa cast upon her. With fury building up in her eyes, she stared at Aunt who was chanting under her breath while sprinkling some salt on top of her. She screamed in torment as soon the particles touched her skin, and I could imagine how much it must’ve hurt her. It might’ve felt like there was a burning sensation on her flesh because of the smoke her skin emanated as soon as the salt landed on her. She groaned loudly, too loud that not even the rainstorm could overpower her ear-splitting voice. As Aunt Odessa continuously chanted the Latin words written on the pages, the wind became more aggressive, making me almost lose my balance. The candles were still lit and the wind didn’t swe
Agatha opened the trunk as I dropped Elspeth’s body inside, with the knife still plunged in her back. Her pale skin turned to grey and purplish veins became prominent on her skin, some even bulged in her neck and face. As soon as I got Elspeth inside, I turned to look at my right and spotted Lucas and Weston, running toward the car while Lucas lifted a body on his shoulder. I motioned them to hurry and, once they were already in front of me, Lucas dropped the body beside Elspeth. His face immediately came into my view—eyes shut close, mouth parted, and his skin was almost as pale as Elspeth. My heart clenched at the sight of him and I couldn’t help but cover my mouth in shock. I hadn’t seen him after the incident and it pained me tremendously that this was what happened to him. All of these, defeating the dark soul and the vampire, was for him and the pack. Though his loss caused me to be wretched inside, it brought out the suppressed st
We arrived at the mountain of witches, venturing through the forest with my arms wrapped around the book protectively. All of their attention averted to me as soon as we halted, so I roamed my eyes around and took a deep breath. “Aunt!” I shouted, but my voice was overpowered by the thunder. “Aunt Odessa, we have something for you!” The vigorous wind caused the leaves that had fallen from the trees to fly around us as we scooted closer to one another. And just as I thought that Aunt Odessa wouldn’t appear immediately, I heard her voice from behind me saying, “Portia.” I turned my back to face her and when she noticed the book in my grasp, there was a sudden spark in her eyes. She tugged her thin lips to a half-smile and slowly approached our vicinity. “We got the grimoire you were looking for.” I
Our clothes were soaking wet because of the rainstorm and we had to drop by in Giofré’s house to find some clothes to wear. And since almost all of our stuff were stuck there, we managed to change our clothes so we could head to our destination which was the library. Library of Hillford was the oldest library in this town and was the main library of this city. It was one of the largest libraries in this country, containing the oldest—ancient—books that only the Hillford was authorized to have. I remembered, during high school, I had been there once. It was for a research and when we got the chance to use the computers, we found some skeptical files in there that the librarian was quick to notice. As soon as they thought we were snooping around—like what usual highschoolers do—we were kicked out. That was the only memory I had in that place, never had I thought that the grimoire would lead us to that lib