Anthony Ainsworth & Lucas Vereline
[email protected] & [email protected]
Hollow Words
Prell Johnson stood up and immediately fell back down as his ankle twisted painfully underneath him. As Prell's body lay prone he took stock of himself; his mouth tasted of blood and dirt, his left ankle felt as though a burning rod had been shoved through it, and his head throbbed.
"Where the fuck am I," he thought, "Jesus I'm thirsty."
Prell lay on a thickly wooded hillside about six feet from the start of a large cliff which fell off to a small stream three hundred feet down. The hillside was two miles from the nearest road and ten times that distance from the nearest town but there was no path leading to the point where Prell lay bleeding and no sign of how Prell could have appeared in the desolate hillside. Two hawks slowly circled high up in the atmosphere and Prell watched them, feeling depressed and desperate.
"What do I do," he thought.
He tried to stand up again this time using a small tree to help himself up and succeeded but realized that his left ankle was completely useless, the foot curved off to the left in at and angle that should never have been possible. A torn and ripped blue jeans jacket, faded blue jeans and a red flannel shirt all of which looked as though they were new before they went through hell. Prell stood six feet some odd inches when fully healthy and rehabilitated but Prell couldn't remember the last time that he had been well; before the age of twenty he had broken thirty-six bones including his neck and lower back. The doctors couldn't figure out why his bones broke, they were perfectly strong and normal for someone his age.
"Who are you," asked a high pitched voice from nowhere that sounded as it the speaker smoked four packs a day.
Prell said his name and looked around for the speaker but couldn't see anyone, "Where are you?"
"Above you," said the voice. Prell looked up but couldn't see anything but the two hawks circling.
"This is too weird," thought Prell and then out loud he said, "Are you the Hawks?"
"Good guess. Most people don't get it the first time," said the voice of the Hawks, "our names are Forest and Fire. Why are you here Prell?"
"How the hell am I supposed to know? Where am I?"
"How did you get here," said the Hawks circling lower.
"I can't remember. My head hurts, my ankle hurts, my body aches, I can barely remember who I am much less my journey to this strange place and now I'm talking to two hawks circling overhead and I think I'm about to cry. I don't fucking cry," Prell fell to his knees on the ground just before something large, heavy and furry hit him full force in the chest. Prell gave only a short squawk before tumbling headlong over the cliff holding onto the furry animal.
As Prell fell, he had time to notice several things; that the furry thing had gained some sort of grasp directly above his broken ankle and around his knee on the other leg, that it was brown, and that it had very large, sharp teeth jutting out from its mouth. Suddenly it snapped its arms out and Prell was dangling upside down and moving rapidly in a new direction, and a large shape plunged past him, passing through the space they had just occupied. He had time to hear an angry shrill cry before hitting something very hard and losing any more awareness of circling hawks, broken ankles and 300 foot drops.
