And then that candle lit up inside me during one of my study sessions with Laura.
No, not now, I thought.
It was hard to see Laura’s handwriting through the blinding light in my head.
Could I resist this? I’d never tried before. I forced myself to take deep, even breaths. The tugging on my spine was getting stronger. I forced myself to stay still.
“Brent?” Laura suddenly jogged me from my concentration. She’d laid a hand on my arm but I couldn’t even revel in that feeling because my hands were clenched so tightly. “Are you okay?”
“I’m sorry, Laura.” The words were coming out of my mouth, bypassing my will completely. “I’m not feeling well all of a sudden. Will you excuse me?” I was on my feet and running towards the tennis courts before Laura could give me an answer.
I wanted to be anywhere but the woods but my legs didn’t stop pumping. I both needed to be there and didn’t want to be there. Maybe there wasn’t any way to fight this and I should stop trying. With these thoughts, I got to the clearing before Natalie did, out of breath and doubled over. She wasn’t even at school that day, so it was no surprise.
Neither was the monster that crouched in the clearing. It stood at around seven and a half, maybe eight feet; small in comparison to other outer-dimensional monsters that we’d seen in recent months. It flickered as it slowly looked around, obviously confused but not looking worried either. What I first took for strange green boulders were actually the monster’s curled fists and a relatively short torso sat squarely over thick, inverted-bending legs and long feet. The eyes were huge and bulged from the face. They made the head look small and disproportionate. It caught sight of me and let out a low clicking call. I took half a step back.
Great. What was I supposed to do? Fighting these things was Natalie’s job. I only showed up for…what did I show up for?
This tangent was cut short by the movement of the ODB. It took two steps in my direction and I was sharply aware of how long its stride was. I was still breathing heavy. Judging from those legs, I was sure the ODB could out run me any day. The monster raised a fist, as if it were aiming to punch me, but it was much too far away. Then it swung, and jumped at the same time. The monster came rocketing towards me, fist first. I threw myself to the side and rolled. Not like the graceful rolls Natalie did but I managed to break my fall a bit. I scrambled to my feet and turned. The ODB had nicked a tree and smashed a chunk from the side. That tree could have been me.
There was no choice. I ran.
I could hear the low clicking behind me and the rustle of tree branches. Dodge, I needed to dodge. I turned sharply on my ankle, changing direction almost forty-five degrees. There was some benefit to all this running after all. The air whistled behind me. Where the hell was Natalie? Even as I inhaled fear with every gasping breath, inside, I was screaming about the injustice of it all. Things had been going so good. This outer-dimensional being had better not kill me! I would have screamed it aloud but, you know, I kind of didn’t have the breath to scream and run at the same time.
“Brent!” Natalie burst from the woods, fully transformed. I was too busy running to acknowledge her. She hardly looked concerned; her face was too electric with excitement. With a quick flex of her fingers, the giant gun unfolded. I performed another sharp turn and got out of her way. I felt, rather than heard, three blasts go off. Looking over my shoulder, I saw the outer-dimensional being dodge each shot with a sharp side-step.
I circled around Natalie, letting her have the field. She didn’t even spare me a glance. Not like I had just been running for my life a little while ago. Still, I’d never been so glad to see her. I put a hand to a tree to gain some balance and let my legs collapse, trying to catch my breath. I was feeling a little nauseous.
Natalie, meanwhile, had run towards the monster, firing all the way. She was still a terrible shot so only one beam actually hit the outer-dimensional being, catching it below the knee. The green beam cut a clean hole right through the leg and glitter began to ooze from the wound. The skin around the hole cracked and fine lines of light shot out.
Natalie gave a whoop of triumph, even jumping a little (and then stumbling on her decent as her heels stuck into the ground), and continued to close the distance between herself and the ODB. The monster hadn’t moved much, distracted by the wound, but when it looked up and found Natalie practically right in front of it, it took no time to act. As Natalie was leveling her giant gun at the monster, it lifted its boulder-like fist and back-handed Natalie. Natalie managed to change the position of the gun to shield herself from the brunt of the blow but it still sent her tumbling back to my feet.
“Natalie! Are you okay?” I could barely manage a whisper, still out of breath.
Natalie pushed her large gun off of her torso and sat up. She was dirty but seemed okay otherwise. “I’m fine,” she grumbled. Except…
“Uh, Natalie,” I said. I pointed at her chest. “Um, your, er—top...” My voice trailed off, too embarrassed to say anything else. Natalie looked down at herself. The string that held the two cups of her bikini top together had come undone. She was dangerously close to giving me a full flash of her chest.
“Brent!” Natalie barked, fumbling for her strings. I quickly turned away, suddenly feeling very hot. Natalie was a friend, and yes, she wasn’t well endowed in the anterior region but cleavage was cleavage and boobs were boobs. I shifted uncomfortably as I stared at the bark of the tree I was next to.
There was a sudden grunt and I turned around in time to see Natalie jerked off the ground, wrapped in the oversized fist of the outer-dimensional being. Caught up in the drama of her bikini string, neither of us had thought to keep an eye on the ODB.
“Natalie!” I ran towards the monster. I didn’t have a weapon but that thought wasn’t crossing my mind in that moment. I just knew I had to do something. I punched out at its chest but the monster didn’t seem fazed. The flesh was firm and flexible, like punching a gym mat, I thought. The monster only gave me a passing glance and then turned back to studying Natalie caught in its fist.
“Let go, you ugly alien!” Natalie was screaming and squirming. The ODB uttered a few clicks and then squeezed its fist. Natalie’s words died away in a piercing scream of pain. To hear it gave a rush of fear to my heart and I redoubled my attack on the monster. I kicked it in the shin, right where Natalie had managed to shoot it before. The monster hissed, finally looking down at me, and then kicked me back. The wind knocked out of me, I tumbled away, landing face first in the dirt. Coughing, I struggled to get back on my feet. Natalie needed me and that was the only thing I could think of.
Before I could even get to my hands and knees, a firm weight landed on my back, pressing me into the ground. Whatever breath I’d caught, it was forced out of me again. I could only see the foot of the monster in front of me, short sharp nails gouging into the earth. Blood dripped into the ground in front of my nose. Red blood. Natalie’s blood.
I was furious, and scared, and deeply sad but no thoughts came to my head to make sense of what I was feeling.
The weight on my back was slowly growing, bending my spine in a way it shouldn’t. I grunted, having no space for a more desperate sound. Stars were popping in my vision and everything just hurt, sharp and strong.
Then there was another sound, like scraping metal. Warm sparks splattered against my face and neck and then disappeared. Natalie dropped to the ground in front of me, the fist scattering into dissipating light. The rest of the ODB crumbled after Natalie fell, cut roughly into threes, and then disappeared. For a moment, I lay where I was, taking deep breaths and wondering if I was still alive. There was the touch of a hand on my back.
“Are you alright?” a voice asked. My limbs shaking, I got to my hands and knees and looked up.
There was no way this could be happening.
It was Laura. She crouched in front of me, her grey eyes concerned but unafraid. She looked the same as she had when I had seen her just a little while ago. Except now she was dressed in a bikini strap top, miniskirt, trench coat, and boots and she clutched an over-sized sword in one hand. I was too surprised to even steal a look at her chest, so wonderfully revealed.
I think I managed to nod.
Laura looked over my shoulder and her brow furrowed again. Natalie.
I scrambled around and crouched next to Natalie. She was alive, her thin chest shuddering with breath, and she was conscious. It was difficult to look at her and the nausea I had been feeling earlier increased incredibly. Her left arm was bent in wrong angles and a splintered rib bone was poking out from her skin. Large puncture wounds were bleeding freely above and below her shoulder, along her side and hip, and I suspected down her back too. There was a lot of blood in the grass.
“Oh, God,” I choked out. “Natalie…” My head was spinning and I didn’t know what to do with my hands. They just hovered over her. Tears were streaming from Natalie’s eyes, her face too pale. But she didn’t utter a sound. “We’ve got to—we’ve got to call an ambulance! We’ve got to get help!” I fumbled to tug my cell phone from my pocket.
“How are you going to explain this?” Laura asked, crouched across Natalie from me.
“It doesn’t matter!” I said, still trying to get my phone. My fingers felt overly thick.
“I’ll heal her.”
I looked up at Laura. “You can do that?”
Laura’s face was grim as she looked at me. She nodded. Natalie had never mentioned a healing ability before. I doubted she even knew about it, or else I would have heard about it before.
Laura let her hands hover over Natalie. They were shaking, I saw. I wanted to reach out and steady them. In a moment, rings of light opened up under her palms, casting strange shadows on Laura’s face. They rotated slowly once and then shot down, plastering themselves over Natalie’s wounds like stickers. Almost faster than I could catch, Natalie’s ruined arm snapped back into alignment and her broken rib disappeared back into her side. Spikes of light shot out of her puncture wounds. Skin mended in a simple flash of light. Then it was over. Laura was shaking more than ever and a slight film of sweat had broken out over her face. Natalie buried her face in the grass, sobbing now. Tears welled up in my own eyes.
“Thank God,” I sighed.
