Left Behind – Episode 8

Left Behind – Episode 8

© Happy William

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Ewan’s POV

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Sitting alone outside, under the cool night sky wasn’t a very good idea for me, considering the things I had to undergo in the hands of The Master.

Painful things that I hated thinking about.

But I needed to think, and the clear night sky was ay okay for that.

Harriet.

She was indeed a package.

She was beautiful, I had admitted that.

But she was also dangerous.

I had forgotten about the past. I had put it where it belongs: in the past.

But why….how come that just her mere presence made me remember all of it, and more, made me feel things I’ve never felt before?

Whenever I’m near her, my heart does this funny klipperty_flip dance in my chest (great, so now I’m poetic and romantic… argh!). And there are those times when I just feel like grabbing her and kissing that smart mouth of hers senseless. I always ended up doing the opposite. Being cruel to her was the only way I could keep her away, until I find out who she is, why I’m drawn to her, why I see her in my dreams before I met her….

And why I can’t stop thinking about her.

I felt movement behind me.

I was immediately alert.

My relaxed pose became rigid, and I rolled my eyes to the side to catch a glimpse of the intruder.

It was Zoe.

I relaxed again.

“What are you doing here?” I asked her softly as she sat on the garden wall beside me.

Zoe and I had been together for as long as I can remember, and I mean a platonic relationship. She knew me almost as much as I knew her, and she also knew about my experience with the Master, though we rarely talked about that since I came out.

And I’ve noticed; she rarely hangs out with guys and shuns most of them. I’ll have to ask her.

“It’s beautiful,” she said with a smile, staring at the roses in the garden.

I nodded. “It sure is.” There was a moment’s pause in which I felt she was going to tell me something, but all was quiet.

I decided to ask, “Zoe, can I ask something?”

“Sure, anything.”

“Okay, not that I’m trying to snoop in your private life, but I noticed you don’t have anybody, I mean a guy around you.”

“Oh, that.”

“Yes, that. Why?”

She shrugged and stared into space. “Ewan I have somebody in my mind. Someone that I….” she shook her head. “It’s not that I don’t want to have a boyfriend or something. There’s someone else,” she ended and looked at me.

“I can’t wait to know who he is,” I replied with a smile too.

Zoe in love… then I’ll make sure that whoever the guy is, she gets him.

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We sat there for a while, each in our thoughts, when I spotted Harriet passing by. And there went all my attention.

She stopped, leaned on a tree and gazed at the stars. But she seemed to look beyond them.

Seeing her reminded me that she spent the whole afternoon with Rex.

My blood boiled at that, and I forced my face away.

When I turned back, she sat with Jean.

Harriet’s POV

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I laughed at a crazy thing Jean said. Who knew the girl could be so funny? Back in school we always saw her like the scared girl, the baby.

But by just being left with her, I found out that there’s more to her.

“So you mean Jack sent you away from the campfire that evening?” I asked.

“Yeah. Sometimes I wonder why. he has to be so hard on me. I rarely do anything to offend him.”

I smiled.

I knew Jack was trying so hard to hide his feelings for Jean, but I didn’t know that she felt the same way.

Aww….

“Jean, sometimes guys act all grumpy to a girl they like but don’t want to.”

Instead of her getting the message I subtly tried to send her, she giggled.

“Like you and Ewan, right?”

“What? No!” I quickly defended. “Ewan and I, we despise each other.”

“Too cliché, eh?” she waggled her eyebrows.

I laughed and patted her shoulder.

“Jean, no way.”

She sighed. “I forgot. You have a boyfriend at home.”

At the mention of that, my carefreeness ceased, and I got up.

“Jean, I’m cold. I’ll go in now.”

She stood up too. “Harriet what’s wrong? Something I said?”

“No, just tired. You don’t need to follow me in. I’ll be in my room.”

I left before she could ask me anymore question.

Why did I have to be reminded of that good for nothing traitor? I was doing just fine before Jean had to bring it up!

It’s not her, Harriet. She doesn’t know.

Tears fell down my cheeks as I recalled the pains, the betrayal…..

I paused in opening the door to my room when I heard Ewan’s voice behind me.

“Had a lovely afternoon?” he asked sarcastically.

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, no thanks to you.”

He leaned on the wall. “So in just a day, you’ve may a boyfriend.”

“Rex is not my boyfriend– I don’t even know him and— just mind your business.”

I turned to open the door again, but he caught my wrist and pulled me towards him, turning around such that I was between the wall and him, without any escape.

I began to tremble at the close proximity.

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#Amazon

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Harriet’s POV

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I wasn’t trembling because of the way he held me, although that was a plus. I shook because I still wasn’t over my fear of men trying to get intimate with me.

You can recall what I told you about the man who tried to rape me one night as I returned from a late night party alone. He didn’t exactly rape me, but he touched me allover.

Funny thing was that, with Ewan holding me now, I didn’t feel the fears.

All I thought about was him kissing me.

Ewan’s face was inches away from mine when he stopped.

I wondered why he did.

Maybe the prospect of kissing me wasn’t too enticing?

“What are you doing to me?” he whispered, his breath fanning my face.

That’s when the spell got broken; the moment I heard what he said.

I placed my hands on his chest and pushed him.

As expected, he didn’t move an inch.

“Whoa there, I’m not doing anything to you, OK?”

He raised his eyebrows in confusion for a second, and then it was replaced with a frown.

“Excuse me?”

“This,” I said pointing between him and me, “is not my kind of thing, hmm? I don’t go about kissing guys, especially guys whom I don’t like, and who doesn’t like me either.”

I bit my tongue immediately the words tumbled out. Great, I’ve done it again. First, I said the same thing about not liking him during our first conversation, and now?

You really need to get your lines in order, I thought to myself.

Well, it was worth it, because I saw Ewan’s lips curve into a……A SMIRK! And I thought his only facial expressions were boredom, frowns, and not-happy-to-see-you.

“Really? Did you think I was going to kiss you?” he asked.

“Uh…yeah? That’s what it seemed like to me.”

He shook his head, smirk still in place.

“I wasn’t going to, but I could reconsider if you want.” He licked his lips, and eyed mine.

Seriously, he was taunting me?

“Ha ha ha, very funny,” I replied.

“Not to me, it isn’t,” he said.

“Prove it,” I dared.

In my opinion, he wasn’t going to do so. The guy has hatred for me oozing out of his pores. Literally.

I was proven wrong when his lips swooped down, almost to mine, when Zoe’s voice sounded behind us:

“Ewan? What are you doing?”

Ewan lifted his head up and took a step away from me.

“Nothing. Was talking to Harriet.”

Zoe folded her arms and lowered her head. When she raised up her head, I could see shimmer of liquid in her eyes.

Tears she was holding back.

Instantly I felt guilty. I knew first hand how Zoe felt, because it’s exactly how I felt when I discovered Luke cheating on me.

It was obvious that Zoe loved Ewan, and it was even more obvious that Ewan didn’t know.

So why don’t she just tell him?

I shook my head.

“Juliante wants to see you,” she said to me. She gave a long look at Ewan, who didn’t notice, before walking away for me to follow.

“Um, Zoe?” I called as I walked behind her.

“What?”

“Zoe it’s obvious you’re in love with Ewan. Why don’t you tell him?”

She paused and turned to me, “If it’s that obvious, he would have known, right?”

“Sometimes things happen differently.”

She sighed. “I can’t. Because we’re like siblings. He takes me as his sister, and I can’t ruin that by telling him I think of him as something more than a brother.”

Wow, that’s…. tough.

I moved closer and held her shoulder.

“Sometimes we have to take risks,” I said.

“Look who’s talking. Weren’t you the one kissing him in the corridor?”

I crunched my eyes shut for a brief moment.

“We weren’t kissing. We were talking.”

“Yeah right, the ‘modern’ method of talking,” she scoffed. “You know what?”

“What?” I asked, surprised by her sudden friendliness.

“I saw you and Rex together earlier. I think the both of you look good together.”

She walked away.

I rolled my eyes.

Thanks Zoe for the not-so-subtle-way of telling me to stay away from Ewan.

Girls like her are indeed allover the world.

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I knocked gently on the sturdy wooden door that was the entrance to Juliante’s office or study or whatever it was called.

I opened the door and peeked in.

“May I come in?”

“Sure,” he said looking up from a huge book he was reading.

As I walked in, I first of all took in the size of the room.

I’m guessing that all rooms in this house is huge!

There were floor-to-ceiling shelves stuffed with gigantic books which seemed to have been collected from olden times and preserved.

Well, the room did smell like an old library, but it gleamed.

“You sent for me?” I asked when I got closer to his desk.

He nodded and pierced me with a look I wasn’t so comfortable with.

“What is it?”

“Tourists have visited this place for years now,” he began, “but not one had their visit accompanied by a dangerous earthquake.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at what I’d call the Blatant Beginning of Bullshit (make that BBB or B³ for short).

“Please Sir, spare me. I wasn’t planning on coming here when the earthquake happened. Purely coincidental.”

He shook his head. “I’ll accept your theory if you can answer these questions:

You heard a voice in the forest, right?”

“Yeah…?”

“You saw the creatures when your friend Jean couldn’t see it?”

“Zoe saw it,” I pointed out.

“That’s because she’s an Amazonian. But you are not.”

Ugh!

“You healed from a wound that would’ve taken three days to heal in just one night.”

“The wound wasn’t that bad!”

“And you spoke into Ewan’s head.”

“He was……” I trailed off at that one because I didn’t have a reply to that.

“Look, I don’t know what is going on here, but all I know is that—”

“You have to be careful Harriet. The Master knows you, and he wants you.”

That night, as I laid on my bed with Jean who was sleeping soundly beside me, I couldn’t help but think of what Juliante said.

The Master?

Voice in the Forest?

What kind of sh*t was this?

I tossed in bed unable to sleep.

Finally I got up from the bed, moved to the window, opened it and put my face out, letting the air blow on my face.

The air smelt sweet, courtesy of the garden.

I’m missing home, where I wouldn’t have to face all these B³s.

I want to get the hell out of here.

I spotted Ewan walking around. He seemed to be deep in thought.

I decided to try speaking into his head again:

‹You should get inside, the weather’s cold.›

Immediately he looked up to my window, and I looked down at him, waiting to see his reaction.

Minutes later, I saw him make a small smile.

‹I will soon. You have your sleep now, and don’t forget to shut the window.›

He waved a little and walked away.

My heart fluttered.

Sweet dreams all through…. Ewan is being ñíçê to me!

I laid on my bed with a smile.

But a voice invaded my dreams:

‹I’m coming for you.›

To be continued

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