C1 The Bargain

Martina's POV

"I am Martina Lopez, at 18, I was a force to be reckoned with.A huge force,I was a pain in the neck.

You wanna know me?

Stubborn? Check. Careless? Double check. Wayward? Oh, you better believe it- Triple check.

My parents , trying to be the perfect parents any teenager in Santa Pack would ever ask for used to say I had a mind of my own.

But ,Nah

I preferred to call it independence. Sweet independence.

Rules were meant to be broken,not to be kept or stored in the fridge .

Yeah,you guessed right and nd I made sure to break as many as I could at any given opportunity.

Responsibilities felt like chains,traps,more like a prison and I was determined to break free.

To be as free as a bird .

That night, despite the warnings and threats of been grounded,I was ignited by rebellion and a thirst for adventure,I wasn't a caged bird,I needed to explore ,to have fun.

I found myself in the heart of party,the most awaited party the seniors at school had talked about.

It was a party against my parents' wishes but to me it was just another day in the life of Martina Lopez

But as the night wore on,the smell of beer ,sweat and cigarettes,the tensions began to boil beneath the surface.

A look, a word, a touch—small slights that remained stubbornly and grew until they could no longer be ignored.

It all began with a whispered insult,a mocking laughter in,It was a spark that dug out the glimmer of emotion that had been building all night.

And then, like when a match was thrown into gasoline, the fight erupted.

It started small, nothing really much or worth been watching.

At first a shove here, a punch there, but it quickly escalated into a full-blown brawl,like as if a book had been thrown in a wildfire .

Fists flew from different directions, curses filled the air as the party descended into chaos. Each party challenging someone into a fight.

It was a whirlwind of chaos, nonsense and scattered words.

But as quickly as the fight had begun, it was over.

Suddenly the sound of sirens laced the night, sending warnings about the piercing arrival of the police.

Panic surged through the fear gripped crowd of teenagers like wildfire.

I stumbled out into the night with the others blindly,with no sense of direction.

The echoes of the party fading into the distance

And then, like a fire to gasoline ,without warning the world and everything in it exploded into chaos.

Gunshots rang out immediately,filling and surging through the still night air like a blade.

It was instantly followed by a heart wrenching pain that tore through me like a volcano like I was been operated on while still conscious.

I fell to the ground, the world spinning around me and I at the centre ,confused,in a dizzying blur.

Blood pooled beneath me, staining the pavement crimson as the darkness crawled in.

I was dying slowly with no one to hold my hand,no last goodbyes ,just running feets that didn't give a hoot about me

As the world faded into shadows, confusion and fear lay it's icy finger on me.

I felt myself drifting, floating down into nothingness and out like I was a puppet.

My body became weightless as if I was a kite, floating ,been controlled by the wind, floating above it all.

Colours swirled around me blindly , dragging me into a dizzying whirlpool, and for a moment, I felt like I was being pulled into another realm.

And then, as if from nowhere, a very great light shone,I lifted my hands to protect myself but it was all futile ,there it was ,a portal appeared before me—an unexplained rip in the fabric of reality that defied imagination and explanation.

I stumbled back in shock, my heart pounding with fear and disbelief.It can't be happening,it only happened in movies.

"No," I whispered, my voice barely more than a desperate plea, inaudible that I wondered if I even said anything in the first place.

"This can't be happening."I said in a small voice looking around me wildly.

But the thing that emerged from the darkness , slowly like the devil himself paid no heed to my protests.

His gaze was cold and casting thousand pieces of fear into ne.

When he spoke,his voice sent ripples of echo through me cutting through the air like a sword.

"It is time," he bellowed, his words echoing in the emptiness around us.

I shook my head.

"Who are you?" I asked trying to push out the air of fear out of my lungs."Why I'm I out of my body ? What is going on here ?"

"Easy child." It said in a slow drawling tone,it's towering bony height made me look like a Barbie doll.

It was clad in black clothes that looked like they had once been shreds of fabric sewn quickly together but looked kind of neat.

He held a long croaked bony staff and a hat making him look like Khonsus,the Egyptian god of the moon.

"You are dead." He said suddenly not even giving me the privilege to ask further questions or relay the bad news to me sweetly.

"No,that's can't be." I yelled ,denial rising like bile in my throat looking around me wildly ."No, I refuse to believe it. I refuse to die!" The words coming out in chocked whispers as tears stung my eyes.

"Stephanie......Deon.....Mallory.....Dwane....."

"They can't hear you." He intoned after watching me for some silent minutes.

Then the figure regarded me with a gaze as cold and unyielding as death itself.

"You have defied the natural order," he intoned, his voice echoing , sending vibrations through the mist of emptiness around us.

Fear clawed at my chest, squeezing it,almost making me choke and cough out my insides as I struggled to make sense of his words.

How could this be ?