Excerpt: Absence of Life

Ragged breathes escape dried and cracked lips in raspy intonations. Wild blue eyes rolling wildly from left to right, searching the darkness of the forest. Long blonde hair hangs wet with sweat and matted in unrestrained heavy curls to the sides of her cheeks and jawline as the girl holds a weary pose against a thin oak. Her chest raises and falls sporadically with the exhaustion of arduous labored breathing. Heart racing in dominant pounding rhythms.
A rustle of leaves to her left has a glassy gaze darting quickly that direction. They flit from left to right in the obsessed malaise of a drug abuser. Scanning the darkness for something, anything at all. Nothing greets her, no more sounds to abuse the senses. Maybe she lost them? Again the rustle sounds and she finally takes note that it is not a physical action; rather frail gusts of wind that, on occasion, break through the clutter of trees and force dead leaves to move and scratch on top of one another. A brief sigh of relief escapes shivering lips.
"I Los-" She started; something grabbing the back of her head and yanking her backwards. The force of the pull causes her to gasp, choking on the words caught in her throat. She could feel the long talons of nails digging into the back of her scalp before the release and the reel backwards. She hits the ground with a solid thump, sliding across the forest floor until her left hip rams the side of a tree. Leaves and dirt litter a floral pattern dress and the wet cascade of unkempt curly blonde hair. A thick mask of soil covers the right side of her face as she tries to push back to her feet. A weak groan of pain immediately escaping full lips in the attempt.
She does not make it far in her attempt before a shadow riddled hand reaches down and grasps the dress at her chest. A quick jerk upwards has her suspended within the air, and staring down at the shadow strewn visage. Features indiscernible amidst a constantly wavering veil of ebon that seems to compose it. She wants to ask what it wants from her, but she chokes on the words, only a frail squeak finalizing her voice.
A dry chortle escapes the inumbrated figures hidden lips and without a further wasted moment, it shoves that taloned hand forwards tearing through the woman's flesh and hooking nails between ribs and around her sternum. Another scream from the woman is locked behind the wide-mouthed soundless retort of pain. Eyes excruciatingly wide as they tremble upon the vision before her. Sight going black, until finally nothing but the sickening sound of flesh being rendered from bone echoes through the dark forest.

Chapter 1

He snaps forward in bed, his mouth opened wide as the residual scream teases his senses. His body completely covered in beads of sweat that drool along the curvature of taught muscle. He is not built like a champion, but he has kept his body in shape for a few years now. Ever since the threat of cancer had his family in shambles.
"Vince...?" The trembling voice of his wife; questioning, and as Vincent turns his green gaze her way, obviously concerned.
"Just a dream Anna." He states through labored breathing. It seemed so real however, and the girl he watched. He could swear he had met her before. "just a dream." He reassures as he lays back in bed again. His head touching the pillow and that gaze scanning the ceiling aimlessly. Who was the girl? He has had dreams like this before, but never having felt so intensely connected to them to wake him from the nightmares embrace....