Skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as a raven’s feather. Yeah right! I ran through the snow cursing my aching muscles as they constricted and refused to move in the frozen field. A blood-curdling howl sharpened my senses and my legs finally responded with the only thing that would move them. Fear for my life.
My pants caught around twisted branches and bramble hidden beneath the snowdrifts. I tripped and fell hard head first into the snow. I used my hands to block my fall but my palms were already chapped and raw. I jerked my head up whipping back my too long black hair that my mother refused to cut and it got caught in the nearby trees.
I yanked the hair not caring how much of it stayed in the branches. I fought the tremor of my thighs and bleeding of my lips as they cracked open spilling them with the crimson fluid they were constantly compared to. A pale white girl with black hair and suddenly the Snow White jokes were in abundant.
I heard a single branch snap and took off in a jolted panic bursting through bushes as the hellhounds drew near. I could hear my bastard of a stepfather laughing as his hunting dogs ran me down like a scared rabbit. He liked the fear, the terror of the hunt. It’s how he killed my poor naïve mother. He forced her to run as he chased her down with his bowey knife.
Her screams echoed in my ears. “Run Tatyana! Run and don’t look back.” So I ran like the hounds of hell were after me but they were so fast. I twisted around just a second to slow as one hit my shoulder hard snapping down and tearing through my jacket and into the meat of my shoulder as he rode me to the ground.
I could hear the snap and break of bone and sinewy tissue as he tore into it hungrily. Rune always starved the dogs, like I said BASTARD! But I was too cold to feel the pain, too numb to cry out.
“Hut, hut,” he called as he broke through the last bush. The dog shook his head breaking my shoulder completely before he released. “You shouldn’t have run Snow,”
he teased. “It only excites me,” he said rubbing down the front of him suggestively. I spit blood out into the snow as the ravens shrieked above us. “Skin as white as snow, lips the color of blood, and hair as black as a raven’s feather,” he recalled savagely and I dug into the snow with my feet forcing myself away from him. “A beauty right Snow, the fairest of them all.”
he teased. “It only excites me,” he said rubbing down the front of him suggestively. I spit blood out into the snow as the ravens shrieked above us. “Skin as white as snow, lips the color of blood, and hair as black as a raven’s feather,” he recalled savagely and I dug into the snow with my feet forcing myself away from him. “A beauty right Snow, the fairest of them all.”
“Screw you,” I growled kicking further back until I felt the ledge of the ravine in my hands.
His eyes widened in wonder. “It’s over three hundred feet straight down Snow you won’t live.”
“And yet still the better alternative,” I hissed. He jerked forward in panic trying to stop me but I kicked out one last time and sent myself flying through the air.
My hair whipped outward around me and the ravens took flight circling like vultures as I kept my ice blue eyes locked on him. He was howling in anger and I felt the pleased smile tug my lips before my body hit the icy water and my mind went black.