The wind swerved and rumbled through the area, whizzing past tents, ripping them off the hinges, bending the laws of physics as the rain travelled haphazardly, burning down the skins of traumatised campers - Lia hid underneath the ceiling of the tent, keeping away from a paralysed Aaron covered in ashes and grey textures of various reptiles. She saw rings of fire wrapping around the raindrops, melting the spontaneous dropping temperature into a wave of sinister heat, the wind wailed and roared its peek of extreme heights of rage, jerking the crowd off their feet to fling them far up into the sky before they came crashing through the air to splash onto the ground to be endorsed by liquidy mud.

Lia was confused about what to do, she scrambled around to find an answer, maybe find closure but George, who should have been the closure, was passed out in a deep dream that hushed him from being woken. It was a succubus dream as its tentacles bandaged George with a lifetime of pleasure, pushing him away from the world that was rotting in chaos. Screams and the storm were all Lia heard while what she envisioned was her crush sitting peacefully with his arms folded into each other as his skin cracked the pale pinkish colour of white to open the peeping hole to the dark grey that lay beneath. With a little bit of strength, Lia rushed out of the tent, remembering the cave that she met Aaron in, she thought it would be stupid but she wanted this trouble to vanish. Her feet lifted off the squishing surface as she sprinted into the woods, huffing and puffing, feeling all the nerves inside her body become working engineers to push out more adrenalin into her veins to reach past her limit.

She kept looking behind her because she felt like she was being followed by something with evil intentions, but when she looked back all she saw was the thickness of the wind twisting trees and shaving them to the ground. Lia thought she was paranoid but she saw red eyes ripping through the murky setting, they were a blur and it was followed by the core of the destructive nature connected to Aaron's dark mind that was stressing out to the brink. The cave was in her vision, she felt relief as she was reaching the possibility of the suspect of the entire thing, her arms stretched out with her fingers sprawling around to touch the concrete walls, as her fingertips touched the walls, as she was about to escape the evilness. Lia shook one foot in the cave and was suddenly washed into the sky with an invisible force that saw her feet lift off the ground, cutting the lines to gravity as Lia gilded backwards uncontrollably.

Thinking quickly, Lia dug her nails into the lines of the concrete where it was blended and used all of her strength to hold on to not have a dangerous moment of endlessly flailing through the swift bulky wind; her nails stung and tried ripping its grip off the wall to calm the stress but Lia bit her lips so the brain can focus on that pain only as blood whizzed past her face, standing no chance to face the swarm. The wind continued to develop more aggressively as it became a horde of nuclear pressure. Lightning zapped the trees with its virus leaking through every tree surrounding the cave to ignite flames that erupted into the air and catch other vulnerable trees that also exhibited the flames of hell. Lia held on with all her might until one push from the wind while she was crawling inside the cave, propelling her to stand out and having no endurance, hauled her off the concrete walls and smashed her against trees that escaped the fire's plague.

The wind squashed Lia on the trees, giving her a hard time breathing as she felt her lungs collapse due to pressure and her arms flapped around like nothing, her cheeks stretched behind her ears as her mouth opened the gateway for curving rain to flood the mouth with unnatural sensations of heat that shouldn't be coming from rain. Lia had to intensively close her eyes because they were quickly drying up from the wind that wouldn't allow her to relax and kept Lia as an experiment to wreak all its havoc onto.

"Aaron! AARON!" Lia tried screaming at the top of her lungs, pleading for Aaron to hear her so Aaron could relax his reign of terrorism, but nothing reacted back, it only made the wind more harshly stronger and more lethal to handle with when Lia felt the tree she was trapped on was starting bend backwards and implode inside. As Lia was about to give up, the struggle of the wind plummeted and the force of danger started relaxing, prompting Lia to drop onto the ground and cover her in complete mud - Lia felt depleted and devoured from energy, her body ached everywhere and she expressed it with loud groans, rolling over on her back to at least feel fresh from what just happened.

"Ugh…"

Waiting for the right moment after being healed slightly, Lia yanked herself off the ground and stumbled over to the cave, when she reached with discomfort, she flopped through the cave, crashing into the rock table and essentially kicking it off the flat rock stand. But the chess game fled from the ground and scattered across the room, Lia grabbed a picture of Aaron and his sister and headed back out into the wild where the wind still existed but wasn't that more dangerous than it was a minute ago. She rushed into the campsite, seeing the mess on the ground and shoved herself into the tent to face a fully grey Aaron that sat motionlessly.

"Aaron...your sister, Althea...please, hear me…" Lia squeezed out with all her power.

"Aaron…!"

————————————————————————————————————–

A punch, faster than the speed of sound, burst and rattled my eardrums into a constant ringing tone as I miserably watched myself get whacked through the void, my body remained intact but felt like I was possessing a failed dead body with all its bottom half utterly ruined and had veins the splat apart along with blood that squirted out the wounds slit around my swinging limbs, crunched chest and back while my head stayed active to torture me even more. There he was, materialising from out of thin air, zipping into existence, just to crack me more as I sped across the void once again. This is the hundredth time now and this monster hasn't yet gotten bored of his "clone", he was enjoying every second of it.

Fluttering in the air, the monster appeared above me, his grin was broad as he sent me colliding with the ground, denting a mile range crate, forcing dust of water to go frail into the void as I laid limp, losing touch with reality as I didn't know how to breathe or move my limbs any more. His sigh covered the entire void before approaching me to stomp his foot onto my busted chest that was beginning to cave in on itself. I didn't feel pain or know what it felt like at all. I was so fragile and lost sense of many things, my memory was failing me because it felt like I was in this darkness for tens of thousand years and had lost track of earth.

"How does it feel to be defeated by your own better self?" The monster asked, clasping his hands into fists to show pride.

"Ownself? You come nowhere near to representing me. You're a different breed that is obsessed with having an identity that it torments a teenager because it's a piece of shit-"

I rambled on, feeling my words fall into a rage until the monster stomped my head to interrupt my speech and dislocate my jaw from muttering any more words that damaged this bastard's ego. He slowly crouched down to get a better of the gruesome art he created and transpired into a bigger version of himself, trying to frighten me. Only if it worked, I stopped fearing this thing a long while back, I was getting beaten up so badly even when I reached a high speed that passed the speed of light that my fear of him felt genuinely fake. I felt calmer and did notice my emotions had failed to appear strong.

"Aaron…!"

Huh…?

"Aaron…! Please…! Wake up…!" Lia's recognisable cry for help leaked into the darkness, I wasn't being delusional because the monster was also confused. Her weeping echoed into the void and every second affected me, I felt motivated again and I needed to do something about it.

"Aaron, please! I love you…!" Were the words that influenced me to attack the distracted monster, I vibrated my hand with hyperactive speed and slashed through the monster's leg, seeing it was effective enough to tear his foot and send the monster stumbling away in agony. I wasted no time and flung myself at him, digging my nails into his sensitive neck and began scratching away. He screeched and continued to screech the more I kept ripping into his skin, attacking at the nerves to try removing his head. It was working, I scampered my hands around the head, shredding my hands through wounds that tore open the further I scratched away. Then, an opening revealed itself to me, with little struggle from the monster trying to shrug me off, I pushed two of my fingers through the tiny hole at the back of the monster's head and kept forcing all of the fingers in to feel the soggy, wet muddy brain until both of my hands were through.

Using all that I had left, I twisted both my hands to face different opposite directions and started tugging the head apart, my hands were soaked in blood and my veins jetted out my skin as I tugged more on ripping this monster's head apart. Squishy skin tried healing the head back together but I kept on dragging, being exposed to the pumping brain while pink sludge stretched from each side of the head that was gradually being separated from the connection. The monster's eyes were wiggling around as his screams continued to collapse into demon territory, crackling and glitching wildly. I rasped, yelled, howled until his head was in half, with each head half hanging from my grip. I immediately hopped off the dismembered monster's body and watched it trample around, trying to find where I was as I closed my eyes to disappear from this world.

"DON'T YOU DARE LEAVE ME!"

A strong, restricted feeling was lifted off my lungs when I felt the wind breeze across my skin, I felt the rough texture of the mat I was sitting on and felt two warm hands cupping my chin. I revealed my eyes and was attacked by the brightness, but Lia's shadow covered the brightness fully and showed how relieved she was with red-stained eyes that were recovering from the splodge of tears peeling off Lia's skin.

"Aaron…?" Lia wept into excitement, I responded by giving a fresh warm smile that had Lia react positively and bear hug me inadequately. I stroked her back and saw the reflection of myself in the mirror, my inky eyes were retracting back normally and my greyish skin burnt away and gave me back my humanity.

I'm glad it's over, but for now, it is, I will never know when the monster will take action again but I'll be more ready this time. Completely ready.