Jeremy Chikalto and Leviathan Island (Book II of The Hazy Souls)

by T.S. DeBrosse

  Chapter 15

  Frisky

  Frisky sat on a cliff. She braided her mousy brown hair back, and then wiped her brow. It was a humid day for a hike on a deserted island that you magically appear on after "Emo McSkinny Jeans" drops acid and hijacks the private jet of a girl who thinks she's a cat in heat. Frisky gripped a stone and lifted herself up, catching her foot between two rocks. The island rose steeply in the center and Frisky was about halfway up the face of the big, rocky hill speckled with trees. Must have been a volcano, she thought to herself. A bright green lizard scuttled over her left hand and disappeared into a crevice. Frisky yelped and let go of the precipice, but stopped her fall with her right hand. Can't believe I'm climbing without gear. She pulled herself up. Almost to the top.

  Birds scattered from the tree tops and she heard grunting. She craned her neck and saw a pair of beady eyes staring back at her. It was a monkey with brown fur flecked with white, sitting on a tree branch, holding two coconuts. The monkey tilted its head to the side, shrieked, and then clapped the two coconuts together with a great thwack. Frisky winced at the sound and squeaked. She climbed faster.

  After twenty minutes, she pulled herself over the top of the cliff and scrambled to her feet. She looked below her. What she thought would be level ground actually descended to a pool of water. The water bubbled for a few seconds and Frisky squinted at the roiling surface and inched forward to get a closer look. Her foot caught on a vine and she fell forward, slipping down the muddy slope towards the pool a hundred feet below. She grabbed at rocks and small plants, but these only joined her in her descent.

  The island spun in circles as she slid and rolled, landing after each revolution on the wrong body part, and she finally came to a stop on the bank of the pool, battered and bloodied. Suddenly the water erupted. Frisky screamed as a mass blacked out the sun and descended on her.