une surprise si sombre

She couldn't still the beating of her heart thrumming against her chest. His maniacal laughter echoed through the ship like a horrid phantom. Her breathing caught in her throat as she could *hear* him climbing after her. Stalking nearer, nearer, nearer. She silenced the whine that threatened to escape her throat. She had never known this kind of fear. She remembered he had a few accomplices, who no doubt would aid him in his hunt.

She buried her nose into her arms to still her breath as she hid under the first thing she had seen. Her breath would not slow as the sound of his canine claws click and tick and clack over the boards, closer, closer, closer. Ringing like a dire bell toll down the empty rooms.

His voice entered her ears like a ghastly call in a glass house, intent to break them. She stilled her trembling as she could practically feel his entrance into the room she had prayed was her sanctuary. The scent of him was imperceptible under her own terrified pheromones. Iris wished she could stop her ears from the cacophony of his symphony crawling over the floor and slowly climbing the desk under which she cowered. Slowly she pressed her body further into the floor, wishing the giant tin can would simply swallow her up into its growing deepening shadows.

Her eyes, the color of her namesake dared to lift up and see the puff of his hot breath linger in the air before his bruised and bleeding nose appeared. Impossibly her body saturated itself with immodesty, blooming for him as a last resort in the most twisted turn of depravity. She was repulsed by her own sordid rousing.

With a shuddering breath louder than a damning bell in the dreadful silence she swiped up again at his nose presented for her and scrambled out of her bolt hole, launching herself against the sides of the desk. She slithered and leaped around the corner and darted back into the corridor, heading the way she had come.

A panther materialized out of the shadows and she screamed as it launched toward her to keep her blocked. She scrambled back the other way! Penned in like a wild mare between the panther and the violet nightmare she dived down into another room, her tail a banner behind her. Her breathing was harsh and uneven against her throat.

The room was sparse! Too sparse! A table, some wooden crate boxes! She crawled behind the only space she could find, the shadows between the wall and the crates.