Jounrey's: Chapter One: Fear

Chapter 1: Fear

The young man hiding for his life, or so he thought, felt the wetness of the sweat of fear on his palms and back. He had always heard people did this when they were in terrible stress. He never thought he would experience it himself. Also, he never thought he could have ever have felt so terrible, frightened, and homesick.

"JONAS!" came the angry bellow of a predator looking for an outlet of his rage, echoing into Jonas' small corner he was hiding in. He cringed as the bellows continued, and they were coming closer.

"GET OUT HERE YOU MAGGOT!" Each word was a loud, angry sentence.
Jonas pulled his knees to his head, closing his eyes and trying to shut out the world in the small dark place he was hiding in. He tried to stop his hands from shaking, then his knees started trembling.The yells stalked up and down the hall. Then they began to enter the rooms around the one Jonas was hiding in.

Jonas tried to shut his ears to the noise. He tried to think back to his home. He tried to remember the texture of his bed, the taste of his mom's cooked potatoes, or the smell of fresh cut grass in the yard. Small rivlets of warm tears ran down his cheeks, on their way they wetted long dark brown bangs before soaking into the coarse earthy-green of his pants. His chest seemed to burn with desire to be back in his little bedroom, with all its comfort and security. His shoulder shook as a larger stream ran down his cheeks. He didn't want to keep on crying. He was too damn old to be balling like a kid, but He couldn't stop his silent sobbing. "I just want to go home" he silently mouthed to himself.

He couldn’t tell how long he huddled there letting the tears roll from his eyes, but suddenly the door burst in and a large figure filled the frame. Jonas could see the huge shadow in the door frame, blocking the light from the hall. He took his eye away from the opening between the closet doors he was hiding and leaned back. Jonas squeezed his eyes tight, willing, as hard as he could, for the figure to walk back out the door

"I know your in here, you little fungus." came the loud, low, grumbling voice, something like a mixture of distant thunder rumbling toward you and the roots of ancient an tree snapping as it comes crashing to the ground. Jonas hugged his knees tighter and squeezed his eyes closer as he heard tables over turning and the papers and books fluttering as they went scattering to the floor. The he heard the bed being lifted and sheets sliding off and then jumped as the wooden posts slammed back down into the wooden floor.

Suddenly the walking stopped, then he heard the squeaking of boots, as if someone was turning around in a circle. When he tried to remember back he could not tell if he had felt the light on his eyes first as the closet doors were wrenched open or the rough and callous hands the size of dinner plates grabbing at his neck and shirt collar. Jonas could feel his body being jerked harshly up from its crouched position and into the air and his feet leave the ground

Jonas timidly opened his eyelids to squint at the eyes of dark jagged ice staring at him more fiercely than he thought he could bear. He could also feel the dry warm air coming out of the flaring nostrils and hitting his cheeks. Jonas quickly whipped his eyes shut and did not open them till he was jerked around by his collar and had "Open your eyes" bellowed in his face. He quickly whipped his eyes back open and dared not use a back of a hand to wipe away the spit that now freckled his rather freckle-less face. He also did not dare and try and look away from the large, bearded face.

He took in the cold and glassy eyes that seemed to stabbing into him. Large and greying eyebrows leaned in on each other, accentuating the menacing glare of those blue eyes that were broken with jagged shards of darker blue. A jagged and a many-a-times broken nose jutted out between the eyes and a large scar starting at the bridge of the nose and ending at the middle of the cheekbone. When the enormous man began yelling at him again he gave a start and then faintly noticed that a warm and wet spot had formed in his pants between his legs. He prayed that the man holding him didn't notice it either.

"You make me want to hurl you around for acting like some Berjan pup that’s lost its mother and wants to suck on its mom's teat!" Jonas was so stiff he couldn't gulp, and could do nothing but stare back in fear and be glad that the man had not been in the room earlier to read his thoughts "Now you're going to come with me, you pathetic excuse for a rat dropping and you're going to learn your lesson... publicly" The man said with a psychotic satisfaction that made Jonas' flesh crawl.

The large man turned around and walked to the door, dragging Jonas' stumbling form behind him. Jonas tried to keep what little composure he could scrape together as he half-walked half stumbled behind the overshadowing figure. He also tried not to even imagine what punishment this monster could think of. Instead he tried to think of how this, at one time, had seemed a dream, something he had always wanted. Now he could only hope to wake up from this nightmare and forget this whole ordeal. He could hardly remember back to how it had all started before he had come to this strange land of magic and war.