Hopscotch

Jules stormed out of the house and slammed the door as hard as she could behind her. She was still pulling on her coat as she strode across the walkway through the heavy rain. Her umbrella forgotten in her fit of rage, she didn't want to go back for it and face what was in there. Besides, this was the type of rain no umbrella could shield you from; it bounced off the path and latched onto your legs, that type of rain.

She was out of the house for less than a minute and already soaked through, but she didn't care. All she wanted was to get away from here, catch her breath.

At the end of Old Country Lane, she walked through the sparse trees to the old, abandoned building. The rain was still coming down hard and she figured she probably looked like a half-drowned mime by now, since she didn't believe in waterproof makeup, but loved a lot of eyeliner and mascara.

Curiosity had always lighted the path to this building, though lack of time, due to work, had kept her from following it, but, finally, she was there.

The concrete awning above the entrance had fallen in on itself ages ago, but she could still get inside. That was the beauty of her job; it kept her in shape and able to kick in any door she wanted. A couple of kicks and that door was down, no matter that the laces on her combat boots weren't tied.

She was greeted by a darkness that could only belong to an abandoned industrial building like this. She pulled out her phone, ignoring the notifications for the 14 missed calls and the various messages - the last one reading, "I really need you...", and turned on the flashlight function.

The little spotlight showed her the cracks running along the concrete walls and floor. There was debris everywhere and an especially large crack ran along the floor, as if the building had been torn apart by an earthquake once. Only, there hadn’t been an earthquake here in over 200 years.

She followed the crack to a door, which fell out of its frame as soon as she touched it, and entered what had probably once been a huge hall, but now looked like an outdoor courtyard.

Nothing covered the space, and the night sky up above was clear and speckled with stars. There was not a drop of rain falling from the sky, yet the ground was covered in dozens of puddles of different shapes and sizes.

To get to the other end of this hall/courtyard she would need to jump to avoid getting her feet even more soaked. While she hopped along, concentrating on landing on the dry patches, she thought about Hopscotch, one of those innocent games children play on the playground.

"Don't hit the puddle, don't hit the puddle" she thought with every leap. Then came a long one she needed to jump over. Easy. But when she landed, she took a tiny step backwards into the puddle. No drama. Had it only been an ordinary puddle, but this thing was deep. Her leg had already sunk to the knee and would have gone much further, had she not caught herself and pushed her body weight forward again.

Safely back on land she looked into the puddle and saw a shimmering light somewhere deep below the water surface. She cast a glance across all of the puddles she had just traversed and realised they were fusing together into one large body of water. This was turning into an interesting challenge, she thought.

It tested her agility and endurance to run and hop and skip and not fall into the water, but then she slipped once more. This time her whole leg disappeared in a puddle and she immediately felt tremendous pain. She fought to free herself and when she had pulled it back above the water surface, she saw it had been chewed to the bone by something toothy. She pulled a sharp tooth out of what was left of her calf muscle and wondered at the creature below the surface. The water started to close in around her, but she would not give up and continued to the door, dragging her mangled leg behind, and all the while thinking that maybe she should have stayed and helped her team destroy those blasted flying monkeys after all.