Eyes of the Lioness

Eyes of the Lioness

Look, before I start up this story; be prepared for a lot of details. I mean, I know people aren’t going to believe me. Then again, no one really ever believes what I say regardless. If anyone else has had a similar encounter, please let me know. I feel like I’m going crazy, I need some closure on what I witnessed.

~Sydney

Look, I like reading, especially fantasy and horror. I always go to read in this little forest about a mile away from my house; enhances the effect of the story. Now, on the way there, there's this little playground. Every now and then, there’ll be this girl there. Around my age, looks like movie Luna Lovegood. I mean, yeah, she’s kooky, always in people’s business. Yet, she had never spoken to me, she would always just do weird things; I’d try to explain it, but I don’t know how to. She must have just had a weird vibe to her or something. I mean, I don’t know why I’m writing in present tense, I haven’t gone to that forest in 3 months. This happened in late March. Now it’s July, and I got an odd package just yesterday, but we’ll get to that later. Now, back to late March. I specifically remember this girl saying to me,

“Sydney, you need to be purified.”

I must have looked startled, because then she said,

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Sorry, I just didn’t know you could talk.”

“You need to be purified, Sydney.”

“How come?”

“Look at what you read. Look at what you wear. Look at how you talk. Look at your attitude.” For further context, I had been wearing a black dress that day. With black tights. And a ruby necklace and ruby earrings. I was being VERY modest, so this confused me. Yet, I didn’t think she could do any harm, I was having fun with this. I wanted to see where it would go. Now, I cannot stress enough, if something like this ever happens to you, RUN AWAY. It’s not as safe as it seems. 

“Now. Let me purify you. You will be in great danger if you don’t get purified.”

“What weird religion do you follow?”

“It’s not a religion. It’s life or death.”

“Okaaaay, then. Go ahead, purify me.”

All of a sudden I was in this weird dome. I wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t tiny. Maybe a bit bigger than a master bedroom. It had gold metal rod sort of things. (I don’t know the word, but they were like curved rods supporting it all.) Yet, it wasn’t fabric. It was metal. A sturdy metal that had been painted a deep red. Now, these rods went from seemingly underneath the ground (which was COMPLETELY dry dirt) to the ceiling of the odd dome. There would be a rod, and then a weird straight rod with a sort of lioness head on top. Now, these heads weren’t 3D. They were maybe as thick as a quarter. These were the same golden colour as the supporting rods. They had sort of designs in them, both empty (like holes) and raised and engraved. Then there were these eyes, which looked like fake rubies with some black paint stuffed inside to make a pupil. Then, after this weird lioness thing, there would be another supporting rod. I also want to point out that the lioness rods were maybe 6 feet tall, so roughly 6 inches taller than me. Now, in one spot, there was a bigger gap between the supporting rods. Here lied a gold door, again, the same colour as all the rods. It had a ruby handle. On either side of the door was a lioness rod. Although I expected the door to either be locked or extremely heavy, it wasn’t. Now, I must warn you, the part which I am about to explain gets worse once I got out of that world.

When I opened the door, I arrived in a room, sort of an entryway to a kitchen. There was a girl beside me, a girl I had never seen before. 

“I’m afraid I never asked for your name, I’m Susan. I surely hope you’re alright.”

“I’m Samantha,” I heard myself say. 

“Well Samantha, why don’t you join me to the kitchen, and we can figure this all out.”

Then, her mom, walked in,

“Why hello darling, Suzie, called to let me know about you. Now, do you have a phone you could use to text your mother?”

“Yes,” with that I pulled out a flip-phone. I do NOT own a flip-phone. 

“Well then text your mom that you’ll be on your way home. Suzie and Charlie will bring you home. It’s not a good idea to go on your own.”

Before I knew it, her brother had rushed down the stairs and we were headed out the back door. We began strolling next to each other on this sidewalk in this sort of forest-prairie place. Then, we got to this sort of circle part of the path. A round-a-bout. Yet, there didn’t seem to be a way out. I had expected us to then continue forward on our journey to where we were going, but we didn’t. The second time, the place where we had entered had disappeared and we weren’t next to each other anymore. Suzie was in front, then Charlie, and then me. We had also begun to skip, fairly slowly. The fourth time, we began skipping at a normal pace, and Suzie had disappeared.

“Just follow me,” Charlie directed in an overly joyful voice. So, I did.

We kept skipping, faster and faster, each time we went around. The eighth time, Charlie disappeared. Yet, I couldn’t stop skipping. I couldn’t stop smiling. I couldn’t stop laughing. All of a sudden, on most likely the sixteenth time, I felt a tug on my arm. I turned my head. It was the Luna Lovegood girl. Standing in the shadows of the long grass. She wasn’t smiling. And all of a sudden, a lightning bolt hit the middle of the grassy, little floral-prairie place in the middle of the path. As the place began to fade away, I heard the Luna Lovegood girl say,

“You’ll need it,” as I felt a rod be stuffed into my hand. 

I was now back in the dome. It was dark, It was filled with water. It wasn’t larger or taller, yet I still couldn’t touch the ground no matter how hard I tried. I leapt back up into the air again to try to get to the bottom, I could see I was holding one of the lioness rods. This time, I decided, I was going to open my eyes under water, try and investigate. I mean, it was dark, but sort of storm cloud dark. Although specks of dirt were flying everywhere, I could see that the lioness rods could now go higher, and had wires wrapped around them, well not mine. I went back up for air, I had to turn around to see if I could find a door underwater. I went underwater again, with my eyes open, and saw a red light, yet I couldn’t see what it was. Yet, it seemed to be going upward from the middle of the dome. I went back up, only to see that it was a lioness rod, eyes glowing. All of a sudden, the eyes of all the lioness rods in the dome, except for mine, began to glow red. They all began to circle around me. But before they could do anything; I felt hands yank on my ankles and pull me underwater. 

Before I knew it, I awoke on my kitchen floor to the doorbell ringing. At first, I just thought that I had tripped and passed out. But, as I was walking to go get the door, I remembered leaving my house, and that I’m not clumsy. When I opened the door, a small, boxed package lay on the ‘welcome’ mat. I grabbed it, went to the kitchen to get scissors, and then went up into my room to open it. I sat down in my bed, tore the tape to open it, only for there to see a single red, electronic eye, with the lightbulb flickering in and out. In and out. The same kind of eye that I had seen earlier. That’s when I saw in the corner of my eye bruises on my ankles. Which could only mean one thing...