text: "Where are we now?" I asked. I scanned over the long, spindly trunks that hung down from the clouds of treetops. There was no sun, but the sky was blue and the ground was as lit as day. "Here," he said impatiently. "And where is here?" "Where we are." I rolled my eyes. Fine, then. We are here and that's where we are. "Now you're getting it!" he smiled across his four rows of teeth. "Oh, mind yourself," he said, slapping my chest with his cane. I stopped: just out of the way of a centipede thicker than myself and longer than a train. It skittered along, barely giving me a passing glance. Its body kept coming and going and coming and going, pouring down the road like a legged river. "We're gonna be here a while," he said with a gravelly chortle. He wound his rubber-like arms around his body two, three, four times before placing them firmly on his hips. He turned his head with an audible creak and stared at me, closing his lips but keeping his smile. I coughed, forcing my gaze away from his. He didn't move. I kicked some dust from below my feet. His stare dug into my flesh. A passing tree trunk way above us swiped through the air. It rained flecks of dirt onto my face as I watched it. He was still staring at me, as if he was waiting for me to do something. I glanced towards the back of the centipede. The end of the centipede was in sight. "That was awfully boring," his eyes shifted mechanically up and down my body. He finally turned his view away from me and to the sky. He leaned way back in an exaggeratedly exhausted showboat. "We're already at the end and it feels the same as when it began!" I eyed him in clueless silence. The centipede washed out of our way. Its rump wiggled like the tail of a happy dog. Or of a hunting cat. He spun his right forearm around his elbow like the hand of a manic clock, gestured forwards after a good few spins, and touched his forehead to the ground. "Shall we continue?" he asked the dirt. I took a step forward. Crossed the centipede's road. Walked a little bit away. He was still behind me, head pressed into the dirt. I crossed my arms at him and sighed. "We shall," I gave him. He rolled down his neck and over his back, landing, on his feet, by my side. "Wonderful!" he smiled. He marched forward, bouncing off of each step and swinging his arms wildly at the shoulder. I trailed behind him, watching the tail of his coat drag a trench through the dirt. Tiny bugs wiggled out of the bed of the trench and pulled on the sides, burying themselves again. Some of them chittered angrily as they did so. "Your coat seems to be disturbing the bugs in the dirt," I told him. He gave me a patronizing laugh. "That's what it's for," he said over his shoulder. I considered asking what that meant, but instead, I shrugged it off and kept walking, careful not to step on the line he was drawing. "You won't hurt them," he told me. "They're too far down." I hummed him a response; just enough to show that I heard him. I still avoided his wake. Suddenly, he stopped walking. He stood rigid and even sprang back and forth a bit, as if his heels were staked into the ground. I flinched and slid to a stop. Without moving the rest of his body, he tilted his head back and looked at me upside-down. His mouths kept smiling, but they shaped into a frown from my perspective. "You aren't losing your curiosity, are you?" The playfulness in his voice was gone; he sounded more like a normal person than ever before, but coming from him, 'normal' was chilling. I tried to speak but my words got caught in my throat. I swallowed and shook my head. "Good," he said, retracting his neck and facing forward again. "Your curiosity is your only lifeline, you know. I wouldn't want something to happen to you." He stood still for a moment longer, as if for dramatic effect, then took a huge step forward and continued his bouncy march. My body was colder and stiffer after that, but I kept pace. We walked in silence for a little while. A thin tree trunk swung lazily by, mere inches above the ground. Our world was getting darker as the leafy clouds filled more and more of the sky, dangling ever-larger trunks over the world below. "Where are we going?" I finally managed to ask. "There," he said. "And where is there?" I pursued - as if I didn't know what he was going to say. "Where we're going." He looked over his shoulder again. "Come on, you know that by now! We're going there and that's where we'll be!" At least he was jolly again. "You-hoo!" something screeched. We both froze in place. Its voice was nails on a chalkboard, a fork over a plate, teeth against wood. "You-hoo!" it screeched again. I started turning to the sound. Two long arms clasped against my temples, holding me in place. "Don't look at it," he hissed. "Keep walking." His face was inches from mine. I was lost in a sea of yellow sclerae. We took careful steps, me moving forwards and him moving backwards. He didn't release my head. "You-hoo!" He took faster steps. I was forced to follow. "Please-oh!" The screech started morphing into a pained moan. My back tingled. I felt the stare of something sinister burn through me. I tried to turn around and look behind me. It was pure instinct. I couldn't control myself. But he held my head forward. "What wins?" he yelled into my face, his crossed sets of teeth ejecting acidic saliva. "Your morbid curiosity, or your desire for safety?" "Hey-ah!" The moan turned to anger. "Hey-ah!" It was getting louder. Closer. It took an immense amount of willpower to control my head, even with his vice grip restraining me. His pinpoint pupils shook all around, examining every last pore of my face. "Gotcha!" Something sunk into my back. I screamed. He relinquished my head as I craned it around. A maniacal cackle drowned my ears. My body filled with a burning warmth. My vision went blank. *(This is only part one but I'd like to post this and request some feedback before taking it much further. I want to be a writer and I have lots of things I want to publish, but those are novels and books and I need to practice first; this short story is my first 'real' attempt at creating something meaningful.