Crystal Jones - Chapter 1

Chapter 1 - I take a Sphinx skydiving
The monster freight-trained into me, its jaws smashing together as it narrowly missed my waist and its bright red eyes flared with rage. I backward-rolled away from the monster and faced it for the first time since it had started chasing me. Backing away, I saw just how large it was and just how brutal it looked. It had the body of a huge lion, except the fur was the colour of wet sand and it had no mane, and the claws were over twice as long as an ordinary lion's, like Wolverine claws. The head was that of a woman, with a huge shower of golden hair and fierce orange eyes.

"End of the line, little one!" sneered the monster. Snarling like a beast, it pounced forwards and I leapt over its head, clinging on to the edge of the Statue of Liberty and the monster roared after me, climbing up with its claws plunging into the metalwork several inches deep. Beneath me, people screamed and I kept on climbing, desperate to gain high ground on the monster. It had been pursuing me all day, and I'd been way too scared to fight it. That stopped now. Now, I needed to stand my ground against this monster.

"Stand and fight, coward!" screamed the monster.

Not an option, right now, I thought, continuing to climb. The monster was terrifyingly fast for something so huge. It didn't seem scared of heights, unfortunately. It would have really helped if it was. I climbed on to the head of the statue and stopped to catch my breath. My skin had turned crimson with sweat and exhaustion and there were tears of asphyxiation in my eyes.

I should probably give myself an introduction. My name is Crystal Jemima Jones and I'm eleven years old. I've been on the street all year, fighting monsters like this one. Only the other day, I was set upon by snake people and had to behead them with a bin lid to get them to leave me alone (Don't ask). Then, there was this huge, muscly one-eyed man in an American football shirt who tried to throw me off the Chrysler Building, so I pulled him over with me. I blacked out at that point, so I've no idea how I survived the fall on top of that humvee.

I'm rather tall for my age, and I haven't had a haircut in ages so my black hair is like a waterfall tickling down the back of my neck. My eyes are black as well, and I wear a figure-hugging red shirt with the American eagle emblazoned upon it, a black long-sleeved biker jacket and green trousers that are pinned to her waist by a black belt buckled with a silver lightning bolt. I haven't worn shoes in months. For an eleven year old, I'm in pretty good shape.

I turned around and watched as the monster continued to climb. It was very near the top, and its claws were making sickeningly sharp scraping noises. Something made me wonder why no cops had showed up - there was a giant lion-woman freakshow climbing after a girl up the Statue of Freaking Liberty. Why was the New York Police Department so freaking bad at its job where I was concerned. In the films, this monster would have been shot down hours ago and saved me a whole lot of running.

The monster reached the top and grinned maliciously. I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out my cell phone - a Samsung Galaxy S7. I smiled and squeezed the volume button. In my hand, the cell phone transformed in a flash of light into a six-foot spear with a dark-brown wooden shaft, a fifteen-centimetre leaf-shaped blade and a thin leather grip to fit both my hands so I could wield it like a staff. If I pressed the power button, it transformed into a pretty awesome sword, but I considered since I had a full open space then a larger weapon would have come in more useful.

"Bring it on!" I urged, more to myself than to the monster. The monster threw back its head and laughed brutally, before lunging, its claws extending by a further ten centimetres as it plunged down on top of me. I swiped the spear for its face and smacked it to the right, the blade leaving a savage, jagged scar along its neck. It hit the edge of the Statue's head and howled, before lunging back at me and I swirled my spear, blocking its claws desperately. I combat-rolled underneath it and turned back, only for the monster's tail to swipe me in the face and knock me against one of the spikes of the crown.

The air was knocked out of me and I groaned under the strain of returning to my feet. I felt the air pulsate behind me and knew the beast was moving in for another attack. I rolled to one side and the monster crashed into the spike, bending it downwards to a banana shape. Snarling, it turned around and shrieked, arcing towards me at full speed. I leapt into the air and instinctively pounded the open space beneath me. As if I were breaststroking in water, I powered upwards and spun my spear so it was pointing downwards, before spreading my arms and legs and landing on the monster's back and sinking my spear one centimetre into the back of its skull. The monster froze.

"Filthy, cheating scum!" it howled, sweeping its head to one side and dislodging me. My spear blindly stabbed as I fell over its skull, and the blade stabbed into its eye. The monster let out a gut-wrenching shriek of agony and I hit the metal surface face-first, my spear clattering a few feet away from me. Coughing, I heaved to my hands and knees and looked at the monster. There was thick, purple blood swelling in its punctured eye socket, turning its fur a deep vertigo. The blood dropped loudly on the metal, like the beats of a drum. I knew, full well, that I'd really pissed the creature off now. Nobody liked a poke in the eye, and if you had claws that could kebab seven people each at the same time, then it was a bad idea to piss you off. A really, really bad idea.

The monster reared up and lunged. Suddenly, time slowed down and I became unbelievably aware of my surroundings - I focused on the fact that the clouds were gathering above me like magnets pinning together, and I could distinctly hear thunder growling. I also focused on the fact that my spear was two feet away from me and I carefully reached out, flexing my fingers as if I were kneading bread, and suddenly the air gathered around my spear - I could somehow see it, transparently, like tear-gas - and it flew off the ground, spiralling wildly, and landed perfectly in my hands.

Without knowing at all what I was thinking I plunged the spear into the sky and screamed a battle-cry. The clouds pulsed violently and a bright-purple lightning bolt exploded down on top of us, connecting with the blade of my spear. The metal somehow absorbed the electricity and I slammed my spear down, stabbing into the collarbone of the monster just as it came close to shredding me to pieces. The explosion that followed was terrifying, a huge burst of intense blue that blasted from the monster's body, ripping it to huge chunks of meat and two halves of an agonized, shrieking face. I was thrown back by the powerful shockwave that followed and the world whirlwinded violently and I screamed as the swirl of colours blurred through my eyes too fast for me to handle.

I don't even remember hitting the water.