---
"You've taken me... where?" I asked, looking around. There were practically miles and miles of grassland around me, the tall reeds moving slowly in the wind. It would have been breathtakingly beautiful if I had known where in the world I was. Amy grinned at me and motioned for me to move forward.
"If I tell you, it would ruin the surprise," she replied, winking at me. I couldn't place exactly why I was almost entirely distrustful of that wink - oh wait, perhaps it had something to do with the time during which we had to aid in the assassination of President Lincoln, or the time that I saw my terrible excuse for a brother murder someone, or maybe it was simply because Amy wasn't the most trustworthy person in the world.
"Excuse me if I don't trust you," I snipped, giving her a glare. "You shouldn't make a habit of taking people along on trips without letting them know what's going on. It's not very polite."
"Sorry," Amy said in a completely unapologetic voice. "But we had to get out of there."
"Why?" I asked, getting frustrated with the fact that I couldn't get any viable information.
"Because, we had to."
"Are you kidding?" I shouted, getting angry. "You have to explain things to me! There's no way that I will ever trust you if you don't explain everything to me right now."
I could see her face change, the emotions shifting from one of relatively careless abandon to one of recognition.
"You're not normally assertive."
"How would you know that?! You've got no idea what I'm like!" This was definitely not the way I had wanted to spend my last day as a single man.
"Yeah, I do. But this takes way more time than we have right now. I have to get us out of here."
"No way!" I protested, sitting down in the reeds. "You need to tell me now, or I'm not going anywhere." Defiance was never a strong point of mine, but I was determined not to let this girl drag me around who knows where without some sort of explanation.
"If you come with me, I promise I'll explain it all to you," she said, the fun and innocent excitement gone from her voice. I was kind of surprised - I had never been that effective at convincing someone of anything.
"Let's go then," I said, reaching for her hand to help pull me up. She reached and grasped my hand, pulling me up with ease. "You better keep good on your promise, or otherwise I'm going to be exceedingly angry."
She snorted and laughed in what seemed to be rampant disbelief. "Even your angry voice isn't terrifying. I've totally seen worse." I laughed and begrudgingly agreed. When it came to angry, I generally failed.
And then, as quickly as I stood up, it turned dark. Not like naturally going darker with the falling of night, but like unnatural, pitch black darkness. I couldn't see Amy who couldn't have been more than a few feet from me at the most, let alone what was around us.
"Amy?!" I cried out, legitimately freaked out. "What the heck is going on?!"
"Uhm, don't freak out. It may be a Baharian Cover of Darkness."
"For goodness sake, if you're going to be ridiculous, do it in a language I'm going to understand instead of Klingon, alright?"
"Is ancient Mayan better?" she asked sarcastically. "It's a military defense, cloaking assassins in the cover of darkness."
"What?!" My voice cracked and I wasn't even embarrassed. Assassins? What the hell had this girl gotten me into?
"That, or the sun randomly decided to disappear from the sky."
"What's the most likely option?"
"Seriously?" she asked, the tone of her voice telling me everything I needed to know about what she thought about my question. "The assassins."
"Oh, excellent," I said, my voice higher than average. "So, basically, we’re going to die!” I cried, the terror that I felt most likely extremely evident in my voice.
“No, we’re not,” Amy retorted, and I could practically see her rolling her eyes. “Stop being so dramatic. The defense doesn't work for that long, and considering the fact that I haven't picked up any anomalies...” a beep came from a device that I had noticed early clipped to her belt. "Well, look at that, an anomaly."
"What does that mean?!" I asked, completely panicked. An arm shot out of the darkness and grabbed my forearm, pulling me.
"It means, Matthew Hallenbrooke, that we're running. Fast."
She pulled me quickly, and without the use of sight it seemed that I could feel every brush of the reeds against my skin, giving me major goosebumps. Amy's hand gripped mine tightly, pulling me along as if she knew where she was going, which was utterly ridiculous since there was absolutely no way that anyone could see in this state of pitch-black nothingness.
"How the hell do you know where you're going?" I asked her.
"Oh, the darkness doesn't affect me near as much it affects you."
Of course not.
"What?"
"Well, instead of being completely blind, it's like I've got really dark sunglasses on," she replied, continuing her never-ending assault on my forearm.
"Why's that happen?" I asked, almost scared to hear the answer. "Don't tell me you have secret superpowers too."
"Hey, remember when I told you I'd tell you everything in a bit?"
"Yeah."
"This falls under that category."
I sighed, completely frustrated, trying my hardest not to stumble over everything that I was running over.
"3..."
"What's going on?"
"2.."
"Amy! Tell me what the hell's going on!"
"1..."
"Amy!"
Without any sort of warning whatsoever, the darkness lifted as suddenly as it came about, completely tripping me up. It felt like someone had turned on the lights suddenly without any sort warning, making me completely disoriented. Amy stopped suddenly as well, making me jerk backwards as I kept running, oblivious to her actions.
"Thank goodness you stopped running!" she said, laughing slightly.
"Why?" I asked, blinking repeatedly in an attempt to reorient myself. Amy pointed a finger ahead of us, and I tried to focus my eyes. "It's just more grassland."
Amy sighed, grabbing my hand and moving slowly ahead. "Look down."
I obeyed and was horrified at what I saw. In front of us was a cliff, dropping hundreds of feet downwards, jagged rocks sticking out at odd angles. The seemingly never ending chasm of death did absolutely nothing to quell the fear I was feeling now.
"Matt, we need to jump." Amy's voice said besides me, and I turned quickly to stare at her, my eyes obviously wide.
“Are you crazy?” I shouted at her, tearing my hand from her grip. “I’m not jumping!”
“Matt, we need to jump,” she said, and the depth to which she was perfectly calm was amazing to me. “Whatever’s headed towards us is not friendly and will most likely kill us. Jumping is our only option.
“Amy, listen,” I said, pulling her towards the cliff. “Those down there are rocks, rocks that easily have the capability to kill us. Now, I don’t know about you, but death by rock is not something I want to experience.”
“Would you rather experience death by really-creepy-unknown-thing?”
I paused for a minute, looking towards whatever was coming. “Uhm…”
“You have a very pessimistic sort of view on the situation, you know.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a very pessimistic sort of person.”
She shook her head, looking behind us as the… thing that was approaching. “Well, stop, it’s really a downer. Now, we need to jump.”
“If we jump, we die,” I said, somewhat still in shock about the fact that I was even in this situation.
“Yeah, well, if we stay here, we die for real.”
“We’ll die anyway.”
Amy grunted in frustration. “God, this is the last time I take you to the African wilderness!” She moved me towards the cliff, her hand grasping mine. “Do you trust me?”
I looked at her, my eyes wild with fear. “Yes, yeah, of course.”
“Then let me ask you again,” she responded in a very calm tone. “What have you got to lose by jumping?”
“Lots!” I yelled, not getting this line of questioning at all. “Limbs! Eyes! Internal organs! I happen to be fond of all of them, Amy!”
“Matt, jump!” she cut me off, pulling my arm towards the edge. “Now!”
I looked behind me, where a giant unknown thing of death was hurtling even closer to me, while in front of me laid the giant chasm of even more death. “You better be right!”
She gave me a grin, one of those grins that I had learned to be distrustful of, and jumped off of the cliff, pulling me along. “Geronimo!” As I hurtled to my death, I couldn’t do anything but close my eyes and hope she knew what she was talking about.
-----
“I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead.”
“Matt, open your eyes. You’re very much alive.”
I opened my eyes, seeing a tree in front of me. A tree?
“What the…”
“Time travel, brought you to a field in Pennsylvania,” Amy replied, dusting off some sand that had been clinging to her shirt. “If I’m right, we’re in your time.”
“Oh,” I said, acting nonchalant. “I guess that makes sense. But I thought you needed…”
“Chronite crystals? Yeah, there’s a deposit down that cliff. I told you to listen to me.”
“Why couldn’t you tell me that?” I asked, confused. “I mean, it’s not like I would doubt you…”
“Well, you totally would,” she replied, giving me a knowing look. “After all, you are a pessimist. You would have thought that I didn’t know what I was doing, or that I didn’t know that there was a deposit down there.”
I furrowed my brow. “No I wouldn’t have…”
“Really?” she asked, genuinely surprised. I nodded. “Well, that’s good. Because I didn’t.”
“What?”
“I didn’t know. I was betting on it, but I wasn’t certain. We could have hurtled to our death.” I made a stuttering noise in disbelief. “But we didn’t!” she hurried, trying to placate me. “We managed to get out! So, good on us!”
“Good on- are you kidding me? You could have killed us!
---
Best wishes!!
-Taylor
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