Hiccup

Suddenly there was a sound from behind, her eyes widened and color left her face. It left no room for denial, the snapping of sticks was from the movement of something way beyond a person's mass. 

Her chin reached a hunched shoulder as she slowly turned, then even slower, turned forward again. There below wasn't earth anymore, it had faded into surreal frequencies of blur. 

"I'm going to die. I'm going to die like an idiot." Hiccup. 

A nexus was walking directly towards her. "Dear God," She thought, teeth grinding like a leg being amputated. What will they say of her death, that what transpired drove her to madness? 

Too scared to unclench, she muttered, "Not like this," Without an ounce of air leaving her lungs.

More sticks broke, closer, louder. She began to stand and wiped her eyes, barely restraining the haywire they sought for. Turning around, she hung her head towards the doom on its way, dragging her dilated pupils across the grass in front of each heart wrenching step.

Hiccup. 

Tears swelled. She hoped to at least die with some dignity but that's not happening, she'll die hiccupping like a child. 

"How.. Why was it behind me?" 

Thoughts of the past, the future, all strangled her as they piled up. There had been something all this time, a shadowing angel or grief, orchestrating, wanting nothing more to see her cry out, to be mortified in despair. She scowled, clenching her fists and cursing everything. 

"You made this end for yourself." She discarded that feeling and cursed it all anyway, especially herself for rubbing it in. 

The creature stopped a few feet away. Thoughts ran, leaving her behind with only visions of what her corpse will look like. Hiccup.

A pungent smell of ash and mildew filled the air. Her eyebrows tremored at the elephant shaped wooden feet, looking through them, at them in frantic sequence. It began clicking, the noise reverberated all around as if in a cave under a human eating insect. There shouldn't have been more room for terror, it made room. With her visions growing all the more gruesome, gasping abruptly turned involuntary as if submerged in cold water, overwhelming her nose with its scent until she choked back a gag.

"You've done it now," Her body screeched as it broke its frozen state to twist her face away from the creature. Hiccup.

There was a roar within her rib cage, "You've offended!" It threatened to collapse itself before repeating that mistake. The aching self rebuke couldn't be argued with, her mind was too scrambled to consider the improbability of it killing for being offended, that it'll kill her because it's a monster.

The clicks altered to something else, like a cricket gone berserk. This bizarre change of sound, did it mean something? The unknown was too uncanny for her eyes to resist, they flickered over to catch glimpse of decaying logs and stone that were its legs, structured like something needing an exorcist. She found herself puzzled as to why she's standing up to this creature. Falling, being smaller, more compact, would that ease the terror?

"No." Her body rejected, coating her knees with something intangible that held them stiff. It was resolute in responsibility, unequivocally convinced movement and survival wouldn't mesh well. For insurance, memories came flooding back in. Reasons to live weren't in short measure, and she was still alive. A desperation sprouted, maybe there's a right move to make, maybe every second of improvidence was a wasted opportunity.

Another inexplicable noise and another shift within herself due to it. Just standing was exhausting, it was like being cooked to the creature's taste with her own emotions. 

"Is that what those noises are?" The first clear thought to formulate, and it infuriated. She wanted to look at its face with all the scorn she could muster, but it couldn't be done. Instead, she closed her eyes.

"If I die, I die. If I die, I die." The words thrashed around as if trying to break through her skull, to escape association with its creator. But it could not. If the will to live was just a dance to the creature's strings, she wouldn't have it any longer. A bitter acceptance would be all it gets now, accompanied by feeble trembling.