The Soul Cages

"I think I see the blue light of the circle!" Sarah whispered excitedly; her heart sped up in anticipation.

Scurrying toward the azure glow, they reached the circle, just as one other arrived.

Sarah gasped as she yanked on Amana's sleeve. Fear crept into her stomach and a screamed died as she opened her mouth and no sound escaped.

"Hello there," Orono laughed as his bulging ice-blue eyes sparkled in the bleak and dismal night. The wind howled around him like a choir of madmen.

She became even more aware of the frigid air as she stepped in front of Amana protectively... instinctually.

"What is he doing here?" Amana stuttered from behind her.

Amana's breath rasped quickly and she held tight to Sarah's top. Orono had captured Amana before and the horror of the cages was too near for the young girl to forget.

The low humming of the mines filtered through the air in a sort of tribal beat. When she had worked in the mines, Sarah had listened to the beat of the same horrible drums. Drums made of human skin. Shaking off the memory, she crouched in an aggressive pose with both arms extended out in a ready-made karate chop. No way were they going back without a fight. Too many had died already.

Orono smiled. Round and pudgy with a head much too small for such a bulky frame, his cheeks shook as they attempted to lift the heavy amounts of flesh to form his smile. It revealed three razor sharp fangs pointing downward toward a row of yellowing lower teeth. Despite the coolness of the air, his face was wet with sweat, giving his complexion the color of moist clay. The smell of decaying flesh followed him like a cloud of cologne.

"You know why I am here." He kept his smile plastered to his face as his chubby paw opened to reveal a tiny blue glass ball.

Upon seeing the ball, Amana began to scream. Her voice pierced the night sky like an ice pick through the heart, drowning out the sickening call of the drums.

Hysterical and screaming wildly, she began to cry as she ran blindly for the Allerton Circle just twenty yards away.

"No!" Sarah cried out as she reached behind her for the place where Amana should have been.

But she was too fast and Sarah fell hard as she tried, in vain, to snatch Amana's coat sleeve.

Just as Amana leaped for the Circle, Orono threw the glass ball toward her and its blue stream of light suspended her body in mid-air before releasing it to collapse into a lifeless pile of parts, very much like a sack of potatoes, to the dead ground.

Where Amana's honey brown eyes used to be were now empty black sockets.

"For the heavens, no!" Sarah screamed as she raced to the spot where Amana's body lay. The hated green coat now covered a mound of vacated flesh...emptied of a soul.

The blue glass ball pulsated with an eerie pink color as it returned to Orono's sweaty palm through the crisp air.

"Back to the cages with you." He laughed as he pointed at the ball where Amana's soul was now trapped.

Gently placing the ball into a velvet red bag, he removed another blue glass ball from the sack.

Smirking under his giant cheeks and puffy pink lips, he said to Sarah, "Your turn. Back to the soul cages!"

Just as the blue glass ball warmed to a soft pink, in Orono's grubby paw, Sarah felt a rough shove in her back and she fell instantly to the unyielding ground.

A towering, broad man wielding a metallic shield with a raised silver 'M' stood over her.