Interval 3

After nearly drowning Jezebel saves our main charactor

I woke up, but It wasn’t in a bed. I was on the road I fell off of. My lungs burned. I looked to the side and I saw the girl soaking wet. She was breathing, hard. I was still alive! I had never survived the repeat. She stared at me in annoyance, of course she was. “God I hate water,” she said. She gave me a look that said “I ran several miles and saved you from drowning for a reason, you’re paying me back big time.” I wanted to pay back the favor but she freaked me out for some reason. I got up, deciding not to run but to at least hear her out, she had just saved my life.

I stared at her, she was soaking wet and her white shirt was not doing very well to cover her up. I looked away, I respected her even if she scared me. She looked at me unfazed. “You’re not going to run again are you,” she asked. “It feels like I owe you something,” I say. “You do, you really owe me.” I didn’t like how she put so much emphasis on “really”. “Follow me,” she said sounding like she had done this before. Before I had a choice to decide, I had already made the choice. I was going to follow her.

She walked the road at a steady pace I walked behind her matching her pace. It was hard, she walked fast, like she was holding back from hauling off and sprinting. “I can run you know,” I said. “Now is not the time to run,” she said. We had entered the city again, at least the bigger part of the outer city. “Hey! Where are we going,” I asked. I ran in front of her and something started to crawl down my back. I froze. “What the hell is on my back?!”. She looked at me quizzically. “Your hair is growing, of course,” she said. As if it was normal to have your hair grow fast enough to feel. She didn’t stop walking. “Stop,” I said. “I cannot for I am time, if only for a moment,” she said.

My brow furrowed. She is time? What does that mean? Is that a metaphor? It felt like silence was needed most right now, so I stayed silent. I had walked in silence until I felt like my feet would become dead weight. Then I asked her, “How long is this going to take?” She stared at me with no expression in her face or eyes. She looked like a zombie. “We are nearly there,” she deadpanned. Around fifteen minutes later we had arrived at an apartment in the city. It had graffiti all over it’s walls. “This door,” she said, pointing to the one door closest to the biggest of the green and purple spray painted beasts on the wall.

“Okay,” I said in angst. The door behind the spray paint was a dark gray, nearly bordering black. I opened the door slowly. The smell of cigarette smoke, ash and alcohol drifted out of the doorway. It stung my eyes. I was blinded but I kept walking forward despite my gut feeling to turn back. “I’m assuming you’ve never been to this part of town before,” she said. She was right, I wondered how she knew, I wondered about a lot of things. She was terrifyingly mysterious, maybe I’d accepted the loop as my curse, but she didn’t and somehow, that gave me enough hope to walk through that door.