Anyone would be, if caught in a similar position, I think. This… no one could prepare for a scene like this, not even in your wildest of nightmares.
Accepting my fate? I wanted to laugh. How the fuck could I accept my fate when I was literally about to be eaten by a huge tiger that, mere moments ago, was a rather cute guy? A cute, creepy guy, but still a cute guy all the same.
No, there would be no acceptance of this. None at all from my end. Maybe from theirs, from the entire circus’s side, since it looked like they did this sort of thing all the time—none of the performers lifted a finger to help me, only staring at me with wide eyes, waiting for the show to start.
Nigel gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod to the tiger, to Trey, and after that, it was over for me.
The tiger lowered its mouth to my face, giving me a tiny lick on the cheek, rubbing its whiskers against me as if marking me with its scent, and then… then the beast did what beasts did best in this world, human and animal alike. The tiger opened its powerful, strong jaws, letting out a gruff roar before sinking its fangs into my body, its claws digging in deep.
Pain erupted, fireworks inside my head, my vision growing blurry almost instantly. Even the adrenaline, the fright of being naked and tied to a table beneath a tiger could not keep me sane in that moment. I saw flashes of orange and black fur, heard the roar of the tiger as it went at my body again and again, blood squirting, hot, searing agony coursing up and down my body, hitting every single nerve.
It was too much, an overload of pain. I couldn’t even cry out, because after a few moments, the tiger brought its jaw to mine, clamping down its teeth on my throat and giving it a good tear, ripping skin from my body and exposing my throat. All bloody and liquid-y, I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t cough, couldn’t do anything.
Everything began to subside. My vision, my heart rate, everything in my body started to slow. I could feel my warm blood seeping out, coating my chest the same way it did the fur around the tiger’s mouth. Everything was red, maroon under the moonlight, gory and disgusting and full of nothing but pain.
I should’ve screamed, I guess. I should’ve tried to get out. I should’ve known better than to go on this date by myself after being stood up. If being stood up wasn’t an omen for being torn apart by a fucking tiger, I didn’t know what was.
Either way, it didn’t really matter. Either way, it was too late for me. As my consciousness began to fade, as the pain and my destroyed body began to ebb away, I knew one thing for sure.
I was dead.
Chapter Two – Thana
They say you’re supposed to see your whole life before you die, that your life plays like a movie in your head, in your mind’s eye, as you lay there, dying. I didn’t, but maybe that should’ve been a sign, a sign that things were not so simple or easy for me, that there was more to it.
There always was.
No, I didn’t see anything, nothing but blackness. Hard and cold, nothing but a void surrounding me like a hug from a stranger, a stranger who was oddly welcoming in its embrace. The world around me vanished, and I was nothing but a lost girl who’d taken a wrong turn somewhere, a girl who probably would’ve had a better life if I hadn’t been born to parents like mine.
But we didn’t get to choose who we were born to, didn’t get to pick our families. We got whatever life gave us, and if we didn’t like it, too damn bad.
Me? I’d wound up at a crossroads, at a place I never thought I’d end up. An early death, at the hands of something so unreal, so impossible, I had no idea what to think. In the end, I supposed it didn’t matter. Everyone would be better off without me. It wasn’t like I had friends or anything like that. I was a loner, someone who kept to themselves. For the last few years, I’d been the girl everyone made fun of in school.
And now I was dead. I wondered if they would act sad, if they would come to my funeral and weep