Hello, chimers, and welcome back to Diary of a Bipolar Pixie, where I still have some motivation to write! That’s good news for me, and depending on how much you’re enjoying my story, it could be good new for you too.
Welcome to chapter three of the book that still doesn’t have a good title, hope you enjoy.
I awoke to a loud bang against my head. I felt groggy from a night of poor sleeping, so it took me a second too long to register that I was on the ferris wheel. Another loud bang caught my attention, I was suddenly very aware of the fact that my cart was a lot closer to the water than it should have been. I scanned the dark water for any clues, and spotted a flash of movement. It was too far away and too distorted to make out properly, so I took a deep breath and leaned down to stick my face in the water.
I saw a pale, amphibious looking creature with fins and webbed fingers and toes, floated near the bottom of the ferris wheel, pulling on something, a lever maybe. Each time it pulled the lever object, the ferris wheel rattled with a loud bang, and sunk closer to the water. I pulled up for air before sticking my head back under water, and I saw the creature staring at me with solid black eyes. It opened its mouth to show hideously sharp teeth, similar to sharks. With a quick jerk of its feet and hands, it propelled towards me faster than anything I’d ever seen. I threw myself backwards just as it broke the surface, clawing over the edge at me, but it couldn’t reach me, and I realized it couldn’t get out of the water.
I stood quickly and reached for the slanted bars of the cart above me. My heart raced as I heard splashing behind me and I climbed onto the bar. As I slid towards the center to reach the next bar, I heard the splashes in front of me. Then as I climbed onto the bar to the very top cart, I heard the splashes more rapidly underneath me. I almost couldn’t breathe for all the climbing I was doing, but thankfully, I managed to crawl into the cart away from the creature.
It screamed at me. I didn’t know it could make noise until I looked down to see where it was, and it opened its hideous mouth to let out a blood curdling scream halfway between a dying woman and crazy cougar. It was the sound of primal rage and it absolutely terrified me.
“AHHH! Somebody, help me!” I screeched to the sky, bawling my eyes out. “Please, somebody! Anybody!”
The ferris wheel rattled again and I almost fell out of my cart. I screamed as I flung myself back into the cart, shaking and crying. The cart was sinking lower to the water at an alarming rate and I tried to calm myself enough to climb to the next cart up. The cart, however, was moving faster than I could climb. As I was dragging myself upward, white knuckles gripping the metal bars with all my might as the rattling frame threatened to shake me loose, I felt the cold touch of water on my feet, and looked down to see I was barely hovering about the water line. I scramble faster up the frame, the other cart almost in reach, but I was still sinking so fast, first up to my calves, then my thighs. I started crying, realizing there was no way I was going to make it completely out of the water at this rate.
The frame suddenly stilled and my heart raced as I realized what that meant. I tried to jump into the next cart, but before I could, something gripped my ankle so tightly I was worried it would snap. The force at which it pulled me under water gave me no chance at getting a breath in, and my chest tightened painfully.
I looked down toward my ankle and saw the creature swimming rapidly towards the bottom of the lake. I tried kicking and hitting it, but it never even flinched, and my strength was quickly leaving my body as my lungs burned and my vision blurred. I could hear my heart pounding in my head. I tried one last time to break free of its grip but I was too weak. I couldn’t hold my breath any longer. I wasn’t going to make it..
Involuntarily, my hold body forced me to inhale in the hopes of finding oxygen, but it was only met with water. However, it didn’t burn, like it had when I was younger. I remember falling into the river when I was child and struggling to keep my head above water. Every time it got in my nose and slid down my throat, I tried to cough it up and it burned the whole way. My dad had jumped in to save me and I’d spent the remainder of the day coughing and throwing up.
Something had obviously changed since then. Every breath felt like I was truly breathing for the first time in my life. It was refreshing and energizing as the headache and spots disappeared from me.
I was able to regain focus, throwing this new development to the back of my mind to deal with later, and tried to find some way to break free from the death grip. The creature had slowed down, probably assuming I’d lost consciousness, and it swam towards some openings in the rocks. I knew I couldn’t fight on my own strength so I waited to see what would happen. Maybe it was like a crocodile and it drowned its victims before it ate them.
If that’s the case, I thought, I’ll wait till it lets me go, then I’ll find somewhere to hide from it.
I waited patiently, trying to let my body relax so the creature wouldn’t notice I was still conscious. It slipped into one of the larger openings, revealing a cave with a strange collection of trinkets and toys in it. It reminded me of a mermaid movie where the main character had an obsession with human objects, except that movie was for kids and some of the objects in this creature’s cave were definitely not for children to know anything about. I saw a broken fairy figurine sitting next to an object that looked like something from the male anatomy. Okay, it was dildo. The thing had a fucking dildo sitting on a rocky protrusion like it was one of its prized possessions. I wondered for only a second about where it could have gotten the object, before telling myself I absolutely didn’t want to know.
Then I saw something else. A glint caught my eye and turned to see a hint of light reflecting off a silvery surface and realized it was a pocket knife. The creature passed within a foot of the knife, and I tried to carefully and stealthy reach for it, but I was pulled past it too fast to get a grip. The creature finally released its hold on my leg, but I waited to see if it would go away. I needed some space from it if I stood any shot of surviving this.
Still believing I was unconscious, the thing drifted against the opposite wall of the cave, it’s back to me. I made small movements, kicking my legs softly to drift nearer to the knife. I kept glancing at the creature, freezing if I saw it turning one way or another, desperately hoping it wouldn’t pay me any mind. I stretched out my hand, just within reach of my goal.
A hand gripped my ankle once more and jerked me back, but it was too late. I had it, the knife, it was in my hand! I swung it around towards the thing and grabbed its arm, swinging the knife down as hard as I could. I didn’t want to lose my only weapon, so I ripped it out. The creature screeched, a sound I didn’t know could be made under water, and it released me to grab the wound. I took the chance and swam with all my might out of the cave and back to ther Ferris wheel. I didn’t look back, knowing without a doubt that if it grabbed me again, I would do everything in my power to fight it.
I broke the surface and scrambled out of the water once more. I was breathing heavily, short and ragged breaths, but I was still surprised that it wasn’t the kind of breathing that typicaly accompanied swimming of that extent. The sun was just beginning to sink past the rocky protrusions around me, but I was too frightened to sleep. I wasn’t sure if that thing would try to drag me into the water again. I quickly rose to my feet and hurried to climb to the highest cart. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but I knew if i got too tired, I wouldn’t stand a chance of staying out of the water, and the highest cart gave me the best vantage point to move from should it come down to it.
I stayed awake the entire night, too afraid to close my eyes, waiting with baited breath for the structure to rattle and move once more, but it never did.
Maybe it’s waiting for me to relax, I speculated, gripping the knife tighter. If I fall asleep, I’ll be a sitting duck up here.
Whenever I felt myself slipping, I’d pound the blunt end of the knife against my leg to jolt me out of my sleepy daze. When that stopped working, I hung my head over the edge of the cart, hoping the blood rush would do something useful. At bare minimum, it reminded me of why I had to stay awake, the blackness of the cold water taunting me. I kept scanning my surroundings trying to make out the slightest of differences in the ripples in the water or the noises around me. I couldn’t hear any animals, but I could hear the roar of every small waterfall crashing at the same time. Any noise outside of that roaring left me scrambling to see where it might have come from.
Around dawn, as the darkness of the night sky gave way to the pale oranges and pinks of the sun’s rays, I heard a much more distinct, louder splash of something falling into water. I spun in circles, trying desperately to find the origin of the noise. Then, I saw a slightly darker shape moving quickly towards the Ferris wheel in the water. I was frozen watching it, terrified of what it might possibly be, but when it broke the surface of the water, my terror shifted.
It was a dark skinned woman in blue clothes similar to the ones I still wore. She stared up at me with chocolate colored eyes, a smile at the corner of her mouth.
“Get out of the water!” I yelled down to her before she could speak.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to be scared. I’m here to help you, if you’ll just come down to talk to me,” she tried to reason.
I realized she must have thought I was afraid of the water itself.
“No! You don’t understand! There’s something in the water!” I shouted, trying desperately to make her hear me. “It tried to kill me! You have to get out of there before it comes back!”
“It’s okay, I promise. Aquatic critters aren’t a threat to you anymore. You can come down.”
I sighed heavily, then saw the pale outline slowly approaching the woman. I ran through every possibility I could think of, but none of them would get her out of the water without her arguing with me. I only had a split second before I settled on a plan and I quickly jumped as far out as I could into the water, the knife still in my hand. I didn’t quite reach the woman, but the sudden splash caught the creatures attention and it turned back towards me.
It came at me with lightning speed, reaching for the hand that held the knife. I brought it down as quickly as I could, slicing at the creature once it was in range, and it screeched again. I thought it would retreat, but it circled around to get behind me faster than I could turn. I knew it was coming for me, I knew it was going to grab me again and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to fight it off. As I attempted to turn toward the creature, I caught sight of the woman from the corner of my eye. She was directly between me and that thing, and I saw her holding a blue dagger about the size of her forearm. It shimmered strangely and I instantly knew it was more dangerous than the little knife I was holding.
The creatures froze, eyeing us each in turn, before it swam away in retreat. I followed the woman to the surface and then forcefully pushed her into the cart without any argument. I crawled in next to her and flopped down on the bench seat with a huff.
“What the fuck was that?” She asked.
“That,” I panted, “was why I told you to get out of the water. It dragged me down to a cave underwater, and I was able to stab it with its own knife to get away.”
“So, you learned you can breathe underwater?” She questioned, raising her head to look at me.
“And it seems you can too, so would you mind telling me what’s going on before we die?” My voiced dripped with frustration.
“This was supposed to be a pretty straight forward test. Certain people, a very small amount of people, have such a strong connection to one of the four elements that it etches itself into their souls and gives them power. This test is meant to figure out who has that level of connection. Each path had some little trick to it that made it impossible for anyone else to get through to the end. At the end of each day, we, the coordinators, walk the paths to find if anyone is stuck or lost, and if they are, we know they don’t have the connection, so we disqualify them. Last night, we managed to round up everyone, except you. My superiors were worried, so they sent me to find you, but when you weren’t on the main path, or the false paths, I knew something had to be wrong. You were really fucking lost girlie.”
“Gee thanks,” I said sarcastically. “I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in the last 48 hours.”
The woman smirked and I knew we’d get along pretty well.
“My name is Nadia. I’m the only water coordinator available, so I really need you to do as I ask, even if it doesn’t make sense. I’m going to do everything in my power to get us out of this as safely as possible, okay?”
I nodded, knowing I didn’t have many other choices, and the ones I did have would most likely leave me stranded where I stood.
“Okay,” I responded. “Whatever you say, I’ll do. My name is Eve.”
“Nice to meet you Eve. Okay, so the main problem is that for some reason my communicator isn’t working here. We need to find some way out if we’re going to call for help,” she explained, pointing to the weird looking device attached to her pants. “I’m going under to see if I can’t find a tunnel that will lead out. I want you to take this,” she handed me her weapon, “and I’ll take your knife. I’ve had more practice with my powers so I should be okay, but if something happens and you fall into the water again, this might be your only chance at saving yourself. If I’m not back in an hour, you’ll have to find a way out on your own.”
She then handed me her communicator and before I could protest, she grabbed my knife and dove back in.
I wasn’t even sure if I could accurately figure out how long an hour was, given I didn’t have a fucking watch. Her stupid communicator didn’t even make any sense. I was expecting it to function like a phone or a radio, but when I turned it over and over in my hands, I couldn’t find any buttons, or speakers, or anything to show that it could send a message anywhere. It just looked like a piece of gray junk.
I tried to pass time by examining every aspect of the device, by counting, by watching the water, but it felt like it was going so slowly.
Eventually, I was certain that Nadia should have been back already, but I couldn’t see even the faintest shape in the water. I couldn’t take it any longer, wondering if she was hurt or lost somewhere. The fear of being all alone again was overwhelming.
I jumped into the water once more and dove down, praying I could find some sign of Nadia. I knew she’d said to make my own escape if she didn’t return, but I couldn’t even work the communicator. I needed her help, and figured at this rate, she probably needed mine.
I was so focused on finding Nadia, I didn’t even realize that the water was moving around me, not until I looked around and I found myself drifting rapidly towards one entrance specifically. I didn’t hesitate, feeling that the water was pulling me the way I needed to go. I trusted the water, I just didn’t trust everything in the water. The pull was stronger the closer I got, so I swam with the current, carefully maneuvering between rocks and threw whichever opening felt right.
Then I saw a silver pocket knife resting on the tunnel floor. My blood ran cold, but before I could react, something yanked on my leg so hard I smashed my face into the tunnel floor, a sharp pain shooting through my skull before I lost myself in darkness.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and if not, well too damn bad. I plan to continue to write this story cause I’m having way too much fun. Hopefully you remember how to find me if you do have any comments, questions, or concerns. In the mean time, I hope you all have wonderful lives. Fly high, my chime, fly high!
Diary of a Bipolar Pixie 