“Thank god they put us in the same dorm, I think I might have actually died!” Zula is yammering on nervously and attempting to brighten the mood, as we walk down the foreboding dark corridor.
I say nothing, taking note of the swiveling security cameras mounted on the solid stonewall. They had mounted the windows high on the walls, allowing no escape, or view of the outside world. The walls are approximately 20 feet high and probably very thick. There are no notches that could be a hand or foothold, but the surface is uneven so you can’t use a suction cup either. The weirdest thing is that there seems to be a… no… never mind.
“Hey Zula, sorry to rustle up memories but didn’t you tell me about an owl once? What did you say they looked like?”
She gives me a funny look but launches into another of her incredible stories about her little brother discovering an owl’s nest in their barn. She told me these owls were barn owls, and they had white faces shaped like a heart, and had brown speckled wings. Maybe that wasn’t what I saw after all…
“There are different kinds of owls though, gray owls, screech, desert, snowy, great horned, all sorts. But my dad says… said, that he had seen a different kind of owl, he had never heard of it. He was walking through the woods coming back from a hunt and then he heard this really weird call. It sounded kinda like an owl but not really ‘cause it was almost a howl than a hoot. And so he followed the call ‘till he found it. He said it was entirely black and it was REALLY big. Like, bigger than a great horned owl and he walked toward it to see if he could se what type it was. But right when he got to it, it turned it’s head all the way around and he said it had red eyes! Though my dad had a bit of steam to blow off and he usually had these outrageous stories like the time…”
My best friend’s voice trails off as the figment she is speaking of swoops down off the top of a swivel cam and lights on my arm. Now I am a pretty strong chick, if I do say so myself, but that owl was heavy. But one glance from Zula tells me how unusual this behavior is among owls, for starters they are nocturnal and judging by the faint shaft of sunlight leaking through the high windows it is day. And this bird is clearly incredibly powerful. Its feathers are an oily black and it’s malicious beak and talons had a wicked gleam about them.
“Okay, Gatt. Listen vey carefully.” Zula’s hiss is shot with terror. “We don’t want to startle it so you are going to have to keep holding it on your arm. It may be rabid as it’s out in the day, or it may have some other disease. But you may very slowly lower yourself to the floor and sit. But you must keep your arm up. And try to show as little fear as possible, they can tell when you are uneasy and that makes them more upset. I am going to run and get help.”
She started to back away cautiously, one step at a time.
“Wait.”
Our heads both whip around in unison. The owl sits as before, calm, silent and ominous.
“That wasn’t me,” I whisper. “I was trying to stay quiet, not disturb the owl.”
“I need you to wait. If you get help, you will never leave this place, which you need me to do.” The voice is coming from a shadow, and a boy a little older than me (and extremely good-looking) steps forward. He has shaggy black hair and his eyes are so dark I can’t see into them.
“Welcome to AFOMG, hell on earth for any child they happen to kidnap from the squatters who were unlucky enough to have us as children. My name is Caden, section Z for extraordinary and bizarre cases.” He bows deeply mocking us. “And you needn’t worry about the swivel cams, they are currently swiveled towards the teachers bathroom and uploading the live coverage onto the computer homepage. And what, may I ask, are two fine looking ladies such as yourselves doing with a forbidden animal?”
This kid is seriously getting on my nerves but I hide it and stand forgetting the owl is perched on my forearm. After contemplating my response and making him incredibly uncomfortable (though he tries to hide it) I explain that the owl in fact found us.
“The owl is a different type of species than any I know,” Zula pipes up. “ He is much larger and a strange color…” She pauses and makes an almost unperceivable movement in Caden’s direction and I smirk. I know exactly what she’s doing. Caden will find himself short of any valuable on his person and won’t know it until he checks for them later. “… that is incredibly unusual in owls. While he is built like a great horn he has a barn size. He’s also out in the daytime which is odd.”
Caden is growing increasingly bored with her ramblings and is instead gazing off into midair. Then he turns and leaves. What pisses me off most is he never explained what he meant when he told us not to get help. I am going to have to ask Zula what she got from him.
