Emma:
Year: 2018 (16 years later)
Do you know the feeling of being chased by a beast?
I do.
A furious, giant, blurry monster has been always after me. I can smell the stench of his mouth, and feel the heat from his husky body. Scared, but familiar. Every time when he swoops down on me as usual in the misty forest, baring his fangs and red eyes --
“Grrrrrr!”
I wake up and spill my breakfast smoothie onto the table. Again.
I sigh and see a cute dog barking at me. She’s my dog Zoey, annoyingly replacing the beast in my constant nightmare, who’s never stopped showing her hostility to me since I turned 18. I am never able to figure out the reasons, just like I don’t know why the nightmare is haunting me.
“Em, we are late, I’m leaving now!” mum yells from outside.
I roll my eyes and clean up the smoothie. Without glancing at the clock, I know we still have 20 minutes left. It’s only according to mum’s internal clock that we’ll be late. But it’s fine. She just doesn’t want me to miss my final exam.
I rush out and jump into Mum’s car.
“Are you ready for the
final paper?” mum asks as she turns onto the highway.“Yes, I’m hoping for another distinction in this one.” The perfect last paper to end the second semester, Personality Theories, it’s a psych module. I want to be a criminal profiler so it is a must.
“So what is the plan for your summer?”
“Find an internship for my future career.”
“Honey, you’re just 18. You’d better spend your spare time on...”
“Mom.” I keep staring at her until she turns towards me, “Don’t worry about my social life, OK? I have Lei.”
Mum smiled reluctantly, “She staying over then?”
“Of course, she just broke up with Tyler cause he is a deush-bag.” Lei is my best friend. She and Tyler
have been on-again and off-again since high school and it is just tradition for her to stay over by me during the off-again.After mum drops me at campus, I find a quiet place on the bleachers and get back to my old friend Sigmund Freud, that sick man and his psychosexual theory. But I catch the word “investigation camp” from some girls nearby -- my classmates are talking so excitedly over a flyer.
“Hey guys, can I have a copy?”
“This was the last one. but you can take a picture of it.”
“Thanks!” I take out my phone while I scan the flyer. How damn good, it’s an internship camp administrated by Protection & Security Agency (PSA) for junior and senior students of Trinity University and Bloomer University. The PSA associates with a private university, which is located in a forest...
Wait. The forest...?
I rub my chest. It suddenly hurts so much.
“Are you alright?
We’ve gotta go’cause the camp starts tomorrow and we have to pack the luggage.”“Sure.”
I gathered my wits together and message the picture to Lei.'Here’s a place I must go on this summer holiday.
Pack your suitcase, we’ll leave tomorrow.Also, a perfect way to get over Tyler ;) xoxo Em'Without waiting for her message, I just calm my palpitation and rush to finish my final paper. Yes, I must get a good score, and also the internship.
“But convince me. Why do I have to go to the camp with you?” Lei glances at me with a skeptical look while I sign up online for the camp sitting beside her in her car.
“Don’t ask me to imagine any hot guys there. Your version of hot guys are just geeks with glasses. And they’re definitely not hotter than my terrible boyfriend.”I think for a while. “Because I’ve never been so excited and expectant for anything?”
“More like you want to get away from your little beast.”
“See, now you are thinking more like me, love!” I say in a British accent to amuse her.
“You wanker. You’re hiding something. I can tell.”
Yes. But what can I say about the forest in my nightmare? I’ve never seen it clearly actually. The one on the flyer just feels like it. Lei wouldn’t understand it.
Lei drives me home and calls her mother to get the permission for the intern camp. However, my mother is not that easy to deal with.
“TOMMOROW?! You’ll leave me tomorrow, and leave for three months?!”
“Mum, I’ll be back, OK? It’s just an internship.”
“Yeah. Your father said the same thing to me.”
“I’m not sure he was doing an internship -- ” I stop my awkward joke because my dear mum starts to sob.
“I will have to go and see the outside world sooner or later.” I murmur to her.
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll take care of her. Trust us.”
I cast a grateful look toward Lei.
Mum wipes her tears away. “OK then. Tell me exactly what the whole camp is. How do you pay for accommodation?”
I let out a sigh of relief, knowing this means “yes”.
“Our earnings from the internship will cover that.” Money is a constant problem for us. So I have used to take part-time job on holidays to help out with the family expenses. Mum’s salary alone is never enough to pay for any additional expenditure.
“And I’ve just searched for all the information. You’ll know it’s absolutely not a big deal.”
Sorry, Mum, I’m not telling the whole truth. It IS a big deal.
Because the forest is calling me.
Emma: The next early morning, as usual for the nightmare, I am the first one to wake up in the house, with my heart rate speeding and sweat all over my body. 宋体; font-siz
Cole: The human girl makes me dizzy. She has olive skin with a tinge of red by her cheekbones. And the freckles on the edge of her cheekbones reminds me of the stars half-hiding in the rosy-pink clouds before the sunset. The sunset I always dream of in my nightmares. “I’ve never seen a girl having such a sweet tooth. ” Avery, one of the twin boys, accosts her with a smile. “I do physical exercise every day.” Avery’s gaze runs over her beautiful body. “Yeah. You don’t have to limit your sugar intake to me. What sports do you do? Maybe I’d join you next time.” My wolf is agitated. I don’t like her, but I hate it more that Avery’s flirting with her.
Emma: After enjoying the delicious meal and tart, we go to the auditorium for orientation. Cole and his “Paradigm Royalty Group” (a nickname Lei came up with for them) are taking their seats in the center as we walk in. He and I have an eye contact when I pass him by, which sends shivers down my spine. Grrrrrr... I stop and frown. There’s a restless growl somewhere but I don’t see any animal around. And it seems like nobody notices that except me. Cole looks away. I start to suspect that I just had an illusion because of his influence on me. Liz grabs me to sit down. She and Shanny, with the other students from Paradigm University sit in the front row of this aisle; Lei and I with the students from Trinity Universi
Cole: Emma. I think deeply, trying to figure out why her name sounds so familiar to me. But Rachel’s stagy voice is so annoying. “...We have the glass broken on the door, the dishes broken on the floor, and the blood splattered on the counter. There is a note that makes it like a suicide but the hand writing is rushed with a bit of blood droplets on it. And if we take a look at the body hanging from the fan, there is no chair anywhere around. So how could the dead hang himself? Besides, there’s hair on his clothes that does not belong to him. All of these mean he was murdered by someone.” I don’t like the superior and scornful way Rachel looks at Emma. Both of them are humans, weak and mediocre. She’s no better than Emma. “Well then Emma, what’s your deduction?” Dete
Emma: Sam is a nice, well-trained pair, even though she’s one of those snobs. We went blow for blow, really having fun until the beast growl started to haunt me. I ask Sam to stop and take a water break. My mouth is dry, not only because of the training, but also for catching a glimpse of Cole’s muscular arms. His t-shirt, which has become semitransparent, practically sticks to his sculpted body. I can almost feel the droplets of sweat carrying heat running over his skin. The beast keeps growling, sometimes excitedly, sometimes irritably. I’m not sure it’s from Cole or Avery because this pair are too close. They are good fighters with graceful movements. But I find myself hard to focus on both of them because my attention is always drawn back to Cole.
Cole: The yoga pants gluing to her body perfectly shows her body shape. She’s not skinny but more curvaceous. I see a tattoo on her lower back when her t-shirt rolled up as she raised her hands to coil her black hair into a bun. Every time she moves, the tattoo ripples on her silky skin. My wolf growls. I feel dizzy again. She suddenly turns around with her fear blowing to me. I become alert and tense my body. “You shouldn’t be here now.” It’s my shift to patrol around. I realized by scent that someone was in the gym. I thought it was because of the distance that the scent was ambiguous. She must have walked along the path near the forest to the gym. And dawn is dangerous for a human girl, especially here. We have wolves everywhere; besides, God knows what those witc
Emma: "What kind of monster are you? How are you even real? And who the hell are you calling a witch? Do I look like a fucking witch to you" I try to shove his hands off my neck. He looks like a maniac. Cole looks at me with his brow furrowed. I know I am not going crazy, everything about him points to something supernatural that I have come across in books. He adds more pressure to my neck making it a bit difficult to breathe properly. "Don't play innocent here" "Maybe we should take a few steps back" Gryphon interrupts. "What the hell is going on?" some guy screams and Cole's hands on my neck relaxes and I use all my strength to shove him off me. "She is a witch Ty" Cole points towards me. "No I am not and you are a monster" I try to get as far as I can away from him but he catches me by the back of my shirt. "I can solve this" Gryphon pipes in and we all turn towa
Emma: I am running again in the forest and the beast is just behind me. The exit of the woods seems so close and just as I turn out I come across a field full of wolves fighting with other wolves. There is different colors in the air and I can see people standing there. I turn looking for someone but I can't remember who. I run to the middle and something slams into me from behind. Then I see Lei and she is on fire. I can't control the pain that radiates through me and I fall. I awake with a splitting headache. I look towards the clock and it is after 6, well I have to admit that is first time. For the past two years my nightmare always woke me at 4. Rubbing my eyes I turn towards Lei and she is sitting there staring at me. “What?” “Who are you and what have you done to my best friend?” I look at her with confusion “Huh?” “You are late for work” “Oh shit” I run into the bath room and see that I have my sport