“Follow me,” Amanda whispered to Crystal, gently pushing open the door to the ladies’ room.
Crystal followed, wondering if maybe she should take the lead. She had fought more of these things than Amanda had after all. Instead, Crystal settled for stretching her senses out, searching for the monster’s location like Kaine had taught her. She could feel all sorts of things now that she was stronger inside and out. She could feel the fear of the people outside immediately, but it was ebbing off as the people got farther away. Kaine’s strong presence pulsed, like a beacon of light not far off, outside maybe; and the faint presence that was the boys’ power centered near Kaine. There was a shining brilliance that was shockingly close by. Crystal at first thought it was the monster or an echo of Kaine’s power, but as she concentrated, it seemed that it was Amanda.
Wow, she had gotten really strong since the last time Crystal had checked. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to let Amanda go first.
“There,” Amanda said, pointing at a spot in the wall. All Crystal could see was the mirror, the facets, and the cabinet that hid the piping and cleaning materials beneath the faucet.
“Are you sure?” Crystal asked.
As soon as the words left her mouth, the mirror cracked in a spider web pattern, and a toilet in the adjacent room exploded, sending water and shards of porcelain pouring out onto the tile floor. An eerie clacking accompanied by a gurgling noise resounded in the walls and even the ceiling above their heads.
Amanda turned to Crystal; “You’re not scared, are you?”
“Oh, hell no.” Crystal wished she could believe that.
Troy reeled back, gasping for breath, his lungs burning. So far, after about ten minutes of explanation, five of concentration, and now twenty of stumbling around and trying to do what seemed to be the hardest thing in the whole world, all Troy had been able to do was force a trickling flow of water off of his fingertips. And he would have been able to do that with all of the sweat that he’d accumulated; he didn’t need this super power crap to make him wet!
Unfortunately, Troy had no way of stopping the conjured water and it was apparently costing him his energy. He could feel his strength flowing away; it was weird. Or maybe the breathlessness was due to his smoking habit. The trickle had made him all the more damp as he tried to brush the sweat form his brow.
“Damn it,” Austin growled, resting his hands carefully on his knees, heaving almost as much as Troy. So far, all Austin had managed to do was singe his own hair and burn his forehead when he tried to brush his hair out of his eyes. Troy had no way of knowing, but Austin was extremely uncomfortable because all of his perspiration evaporated almost as soon as it was formed. Such was the burden of being able to conjure fire from thin air and not knowing how to control it.
“How are we supposed to fight if we don’t know what to do?” Austin pulled his hands away from his jeans to observe the darkened burn spots in the shape of his handprint. “Damn it. Fifty-dollar Levi’s…Jesus.”
“He ain’t here. And as for instructions on insanity, go ask the mystic mop-top, over there,” Troy jerked his chin towards Daniel. Of the three of them, Daniel had done the most as far as using any “supernatural,” force. He had conjured up some sort of mini whirlwind that knocked the monster flat. For a short while. It also succeeded in blowing the boy’s glasses into oblivion, so now he just stood and blinked around, trying to figure out where he was.
All Kaine had done was make sure that the monster didn’t kill them and didn’t lose interest and try to go somewhere else. As big and threatening as the monster was, it avoided the lithe priest like the plague. The twenty-foot monster levered on its huge knuckles, studying them with narrow slit eyes that burned red. The thing was lanky with two long, spindling arms that didn’t seem very strong, but Troy had been smacked by one and found out that it was very muscular and laced with something that made the resulting cut swell and burn like fire on his left cheek. The legs looked much the same, only the feet were more like the tripods on which movie cameras stood. The body was black, and patterned with an exoskeleton that resembled a human’s. If human skeletons were made of charred film reel.
The massive, V-shaped head lowered and the mouth split to let out another ground-shaking roar; but it didn’t attack. It just seemed frustrated that it couldn’t kill these little things that couldn’t kill it, either.
“Yeah, buddy, that’s about how I feel,” Austin shouted at the monster, as if it could understand him.
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“I’ve had enough of this,” Troy hissed.
“Yeah,” Austin agreed, “But let’s try just once more before we beat Kaine’s ass in and make him kill it.”
“Okay,” Troy straightened up and took a deep breath. “I’m going to try to make a puddle at its feet, you scare it and knock it over.”
“How are you going to do that?” Austin asked.
“Just make Daniel distract it or something, I’ll get up close and make some more water come out of my hands,” As it was, Troy was soaked through from the amount of water pouring out already, and it showed no signs of letting up anytime soon.
“Hey, Daniel,” Austin stalked over to the skinny boy to tell him the plan. Troy looked for the best possible approach to the monster and tried to “feel,” as Kaine had said, if he could make the water increase in flow or pressure. All he felt was really wet.
“Ready, Troy?” Austin called.
“Careful,” Kaine said, from where he was watching on the theater roof.
The monster chose that moment to lash out, striking the corner of the theater, and sending down a shower of broken brick and shattered plaster into the parking lot.
Troy jumped aside to avoid the debris, and chose that moment to charge around the animal’s left side, towards its feet. Austin took that as a signal, and began to concentrate on his palms, trying to make some kind of tangible energy come forth. Daniel stripped to his boxers and began jumping up and down, making noises like some zebra in heat.
Troy ran up, for the most part unnoticed; anyone would look at Daniel at that point. Unfortunately, the monster also shared the view of a human as far as the appeal of seeing Daniel in his boxers and turned his head away.
…Right in the direction Troy was running.
“TROY, WATCH OUT!” Austin yelled. But it was too late. The creature lunged, mouth open, and Troy had too much momentum going to stop, or change direction. He tried to slide, but that only made it worse. The creature’s jaw closed snugly around Troy’s midsection. Thankfully, the animal had no teeth, so it didn’t immediately hurt. With a flick like a whip crack, the creature flung Troy into the air like a rag doll.
Troy saw the world in slow-motion:
Ah, God, I screwed up…Hurting, hurting, … pressure, and … pain! … Ah, air… Air… There’s Austin, and Daniel…Looking at me with horror… There’s the thing’s mouth, waiting to swallow me… Air… air… Mouth… mouth… AHHHGGG! HELP ME!
Troy could see the shinny innards of the creature gleaming up at him. He could see Austin’s mouth move with no words. He saw Kaine, start forward with a look of surprise. He saw the crest at the end of Kaine’s staff gleaming in the fluorescent lights in the parking lot. The symbol on Kaine’s forehead flared once, brilliantly. That was the last detail Troy registered before time shifted back into normal speed and Troy was swallowed up in the darkness that rushed to meet him.
Amanda fell off the top of the stall door when the water pressure made the toilet beneath her explode as though a cherry bomb had gone off.
This was not a good idea; she though even as a chunk of the toilet seat banged her in the forehead before she fell back and onto the tile ground. Her head rang from getting smashed around, and the world seemed to tilt for a few seconds, but Amanda straightened and amended no to pass out. That was the sissy thing to do.
It hadn’t been so sissy to slide underneath the little dividers between stalls and have at least one of the monsters follow her. Amanda had then jumped up on the toilet seat, waiting for the thing to lunge at her ankles. She’d wedged herself against both dividers and shimmied up to a perch on the stall door, while increasing the pressure in the toilet U-bend below her. The force of the water had smashed the creature up into the stucco ceiling. Good riddance!
Now, where was Crystal?
Crystal had a less damaging and less hazardous way of killing a monster involving shining bright light on it until it melted. The red-pink monster oozed to the floor in a heap of what looked like congealed, rotted ketchup, assuming ketchup could rot. I’ve got to get her to show me that trick…
A clang and a thunk announced that the yellow one that Amanda had blown up into the ceiling was on his way back down. Sure enough, the monkey-like thing with fangs broke another hole in the stucco and dropped to the ground just behind Amanda. As she turned around to face it, Amanda contemplated trying to zap it with supernatural light, falling down, or just jumping to the side at the last minute.
“AMANDA! MOVE!” Crystal had selected option C.
Amanda threw herself sideways as a beam of light shot past her and into the monster’s chest. She felt the heat coming off the light singe the hairs off her forearm…Yikes!
From underneath yet another stall divider, Amanda watched the beam reduce the monster a bubbling puddle of scummy mustard. There was a hesitant moment before Amanda climbed to her feet. This...this was not how she had planned to spend her Friday evening. She was supposed to be going on dates and eating pizza, not combating some form of evil that decided to poses her favorite types of garnishes.
“Are you all right?” Crystal called, not moving from where she stood. He voice betrayed some of the same emotions that Amanda was feeling.
“Yeah…” Amanda said. No she wasn’t and she didn’t plan on being all right for a very long time to come.
There was a cough and a sputter from the stall next to Amanda. Amanda whirled around the divider and kicked open the door. An old woman sitting on the toilet with her skirts to her ankles stared at her.
“Uhh...We’re sorry for the inconvenience,” Amanda stammered. She turned to go, when she slipped in the puddle of mustard that had been the monster and fell, “Ow, ow, ow! God damn that mustard! I’m gonna kill it!” Amanda began abusing the defenseless condiment.
“Amanda, I think it’s time to go,” Crystal said, dragging her back.
“Yuck,” Amanda whined, “I’ve got mustard all over my ass.”