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The Dreamcatcher
Part III : Götterdämmerung
“I’m convinced that you hate (that you hate)/You hate me, you like to see me cry” – Limp Bizkit, ‘Nobody Like You’
Buttercup stirred momentarily in her sleep, and her eyes opened sparcely. Through them, she saw Blossom’s face, angelic in sleep, as she slumbered the night away. Uttering a low, weary groan, she forced herself to turn over, and she closed her eyes again. However, try as she might, she couldn’t get to sleep. Her imagination began to run wild, replaying the images she’d seen of all that had happened to them like a horror movie; the bugs that had crawled so sickeningly all over them, Blossom’s wounds bleeding like stigmata, Bubbles spiralling calmly away from them as they desperately clawed at her, the hellish flames that sprang up on her body, dancing like gremlins… With a frustrated sigh, she forced her eyes open again, frowning with annoyance, and looked over at the wall, out of the window. All she could see was indigo outside, vaguely lit by the Moon.
It was only then that she noticed that Bubbles wasn’t sleeping, or even lying wide awake, beside her. The covers were pushed back, and there was still a slight indent upon her pillow. Buttercup felt her sister’s side of the bed tentatively, trying to find at least some sign of her, but there was none. Gently, she nudged Blossom and whispered anxiously to her, “Blossom! Wake up!”
“Huh?” Blossom whispered as she felt someone prodding her in the shoulder. Sluggishly, she propped herself up on her elbow and asked, “Buttercup? What is it?”
“Bubbles is gone,” Buttercup replied, whispering with a harsh hint of urgency. “She’s missing! I don’t know where she is – ”
“Don’t worry,” Blossom said, settling back down. “She probably went to the bathroom, or something. Go back to sleep.”
“I don’t think so,” Buttercup said, and jumped out of bed. Running quietly out towards the bathroom, she reached it to find the light off and the door open. One quick check ensured her that Bubbles wasn’t in there. “She’s not there!” she whispered again, irrational fear surfacing inside her. “Oh, God…where could she be?”
“Buttercup, calm down!” Blossom attempted to reassure her, but she had no success.
“She could be somewhere else in the house, just shivering and crying in a corner,” Buttercup said, jumping immediately to the worst-case scenario. Then she thought of something, something which made her blood run cold. “Maybe it’s got her!” she gasped, overwhelmed by her dread by now. “Torturing her with something else! It could be anything!” She gestured wildly as she paced around the room as though she was possessed.
Blossom, scared a little by her sister’s ominous rambling, quickly got out of bed, grabbed Buttercup by the shoulders and shook her hard. Her sister’s head flopped forward, and Blossom stared deep into her wide, terrified eyes. “Don’t lose your head. For all we know, Bubbles could be fine and well. She could even be sleepwalking, or something, but we can’t just jump to conclusions, OK?” At the same time, though, she was touched. She knew that Buttercup had feelings for them both, but she had never seen them expressed before in a physical form. Now, seeing Buttercup worrying over Bubbles’ whereabouts…it brought out something new, something clandestine, in her. As her sister nodded in comprehension, seeming a bit embarrassed, she rubbed her shoulder supportively. Buttercup looked up at her and smiled a weak smile at her. She helped her back towards the bed, but then she stopped when she heard something from downstairs.
Buttercup noticed her hand slip off her shoulder, and she turned around to see Blossom frowning in deep concentration, as though she were listening to something. “Blossom?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Do you hear something?” Blossom replied esoterically, still staying completely stationary where she stood.
As Buttercup copied her, she too could hear something coming from downstairs. It was too quiet to tell what it was. It sounded to her almost unsmooth and forced, like someone breathing in and out repeatedly. Whatever it was, she didn’t like the sound of it, and by the look on her face, neither did Blossom. “What is it?” se inquired, as bemused as she was afraid.
Blossom replied, “I don’t know,” and as she began to creep towards the door, she said, “Let’s find out.” Carefully treading down upon the carpet, the two of them slunk out of their room and along the hallway towards the stairs. The sound became a lot more obvious as they began to descend the staircase. It seemed to be a pattern of irregular breathing, almost like crying. Blossom paused as she heard a floorboard creak underneath her foot, and she stepped off it quickly. Having disembarked from the final step, they set foot on the hall carpet, and began to feel slightly scared. They knew their house like the back of their hand, but at night, without any light to guide a path, it was a completely different place. The coat rack in the corner now resembled a dead, skeletal tree, its branches stripped of leaves. Blossom gestured to Buttercup to follow her as she started to sneak across the corridor. Ahead of them lay the Professor’s laboratory, and they could see that the light was on as it shone through the minuscule gaps between the door and the frame. The sound now appeared more deep and masculine to them, and they could hear the heavy breathing as they crept closer. They looked at each other in escalating worry and confusion. Carefully, Blossom reached up, grabbed the door handle and turned it. The door swung open slowly and silently, and they both peered inside. There were no lights on in the room, save the one on the Professor’s desk, and the small circle of light it produced on the floor revealed the Professor himself, slumped forwards on his desk, resting his head on his arm.
That’s what it was, Blossom said to herself, the Professor was just sleeping – But he wasn’t. As they started to walk down the metal staircase, they could hear his breath entering and escaping in wretched, irregular sobs, and they watched his shoulders heave as he wept miserably. “Oh, my God,” Blossom said, surprised, almost shocked, by what she was seeing, “Professor, are you OK – ”
At the sound of her voice, the Professor’s head jerked up from the table, and he looked at them, startled by their sudden appearance. Both of them could see the light shining on the tear marks etched on his face, and his eyes glimmered as more tried to escape from beneath his eyelids. “Girls!” he exclaimed, sniffing and wiping his eyes thoroughly, “What are you doing here?”
“We heard you upstairs,” Blossom replied. “Well, we heard something. We didn’t know what it was, so we came downstairs, and we found you. What’s wrong?”
The Professor wiped his eye again as another tear leaked out, and said, “You don’t want to know.”
Something clicked inside Buttercup again, and she uttered, “Oh, God. Bubbles! Where is she? For the love of God, where is she?”
“Calm down, Buttercup!” Blossom said, “You’re getting all wound up again! Bubbles must be around here somewhere – ”
“That’s what’s wrong!” Buttercup explained. “She isn’t anywhere in the house! She isn’t in our room, she isn’t in the bathroom, she isn’t in the kitchen, she isn’t here! We must’ve checked all the rooms and she isn’t here! She’s gone!” After her outburst, she breathed in and out a few times, trying to get her breath back.
Blossom took in what her sister had said, and she didn’t like it. The very thought of Bubbles being attacked by some horrendous, terrifying monster made her stomach turn. “Maybe we should go look for her…” she began, but the Professor cut her off.
“No, honey,” he said. “No, it’s…there’s no point. I know where she is.” He cupped his forehead in his hand, as if he was going to start crying again.
“Where?” Blossom asked credulously.
“Huh?” Buttercup muttered.
The Professor took a deep, shaking breath, and said, “Bubbles is gone. She’s not here any more.”
“What?” Buttercup responded, both curiously and fearfully.
“What do you mean she’s gone?” Blossom asked, equally uncertain of what he meant.
He looked guiltily up at them, his hands trembling vehemently as he said to them, “I was doing a study to find out how you girls work, how your system functions. I asked Bubbles if she wanted to help me with the experiment, since she was the only one of you three around, and she agreed.” His hands clenched into fists while he retold his experience. “So I asked her to come down to the lab after you three went to bed. She came down, and just waited for me on that stool over there. I told her that I would be doing a little test on her, which involved injecting her with a special kind of serum. She was sceptical, but I assured her it would be OK. But after I gave her the injection…she said she started feeling funny…her skin just lost its colour, went completely white, and then she…” He broke off, and then whispered tearfully, “Oh, God, Bubbles, I’m so sorry…”
“What? No…” Buttercup said as she looked over at the stool. Clouded in the dark, it seemed to her like the electric chair, lethal and foreboding. It can’t be!, she told herself, No! It can’t be like this…
“So…” Blossom said, struggling to come to terms with what she’d heard, “…Bubbles…is dead?”
The Professor nodded solemnly, and added, “She just broke down, into her essential components. Right there, in front of me. Then they just dissolved into the air. I can’t bring her back…” A tear made a small, almost inaudible noise as it hit the tiles.
“No…” Buttercup whispered. “No, this…this can’t be happening…not Bubbles…” Her vision blurred as tears began to well up uncontrollably in her eyes, and she looked away from them. She thought with sadness and anger about the little girl that had been taken away from them, trying to restrain the shuddering spasms of grief that were impending to diffuse through her body. She’s gone, she thought, she’s been taken away –
But then she remembered by who, and turned back to face them, watching Blossom mutter to herself, “This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening…”, trying to lull herself into an imaginary sense of security. She looked at the Professor, practically seeing red, and her mouth contorted into a snarl.
The Professor was distinctly alarmed to look up from the floor and see Buttercup staring at him with a terrifying look of raw hatred and loathing, her teeth bared like a wolf’s. Her breath was hissing in and out through her teeth, but what scared him most were her eyes. In each was a murderous spark, seeming to glow like a star in the sky. “Buttercup?” he asked nervously, “Are you all right?”
“You did it,” Buttercup replied, pointing at him in condemnation, “you killed her.” With that, she began to advance on him, putting each foot slowly and deliberately down on the ground. “You killed her,” she said again. Deep inside her, a homicidal mania was beginning to develop.
“What? No…” the Professor answered as he got off his chair and took a cautious step back. He broke into a slight sweat as his daughter approached him further, and he felt like he was trapped inside a padded cell with a roommate going slowly berserk.
“You did it,” Buttercup said, her voice getting louder and louder as the rage began to take control of her, “You did it! You killed her!”
“Buttercup, what are you doing?” Blossom asked from the side. “It’s not his fault…”
“I didn’t…” the Professor responded, his voice little more than a muffled whisper. “I couldn’t…not to Bubbles…I couldn’t, I didn’t – ”
“Liar!” Buttercup screeched suddenly, cutting him off. She was now within striking distance, and the muscles in her arm clenched with anticipation.
The Professor saw Buttercup gaze straight up at him, and he trembled as he looked into her eyes, seeing the flare of angst and aggravation flicker in them. “No…” he whimpered, “please, Buttercup, I didn’t know – ” His sentence broke off and transformed into a yell of pain and surprise as Buttercup suddenly leapt up and landed a clean punch in his rib cage, and felt the air knocked powerfully out of him. Holding his chest with both hands, and guided by the sheer force of the blow, he fell sideways and collapsed onto the tiles.
Blossom uttered a strangled cry as she watched him being knocked to the floor, and she watched helplessly as Buttercup started to approach the Professor again, her quest for vengeance still not complete.
Gasping for breath, the Professor sat himself up, but he only saw Buttercup coming closer to him, moving in for the kill. Pleading with her, he said, “Please, Buttercup…I’m sorry…she just broke down, and I couldn’t stop her – ”
“Mangy cur,” Buttercup growled as she drew her fist back through the air again, “lousy, good-for-nothing waste of space!”
“Please, Buttercup, please,” he begged, still panting, “I couldn’t stop her, I couldn’t do anything! Please, don’t, please…” He looked at her imploringly, trying desperately to calm his daughter down, but she ignored his pleas, and he was knocked to the floor again. He felt an explosion of pain inside his head as his skull hit the tiles, and he lay on the floor.
As she watched her victim suffer on the ground, Buttercup yelled at him, “How could you do this to us? How could you?”
“Oh, dear God,” Blossom whispered fearfully to herself as she watched the assault happen. The Professor’s head flopped limply to the side, and he simply lay there, breathing in and out deeply. A small trickle of blood was running from the corner of his mouth. The look of cold terror in his eyes made her hands tremble, and she thought, This can’t be happening! No, no, it can’t be…Bubbles isn’t dead…she’s not…it’s it again, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s playing tricks on us…this isn’t real – “Buttercup!” she shouted, “Snap out of it! It’s just a dream! It’s not real!”
“Shut up!” Buttercup shouted back. “You’re lying! You’re both lying!” Her fury now had an unquestionable hold on her, and she stormed towards the Professor. She pulled his head towards her by his shirt collar, and said threateningly to him, “So, you like to play God, huh?” The Professor didn’t answer her. “You know. Control people’s lives, how long they survive, like some sort of lab animal?” she hissed through her teeth. “Well, now you can see what it’s like to meet God instead!” With that, she swung her fist at his temple and struck him a tremendous blow on the side of his forehead.
The Professor lurched to the side and felt the wall break his fall. He turned himself over, looking with dread at the seething animal that his daughter had become. As he felt his strength give out, he whispered, “Girls…I’m so sorry…” Then, his eyes glazed over, his head flopped forward and he lay perfectly still.
Blossom uttered a soft, strangled cry as she watched his head bow towards the floor and his eyes close gently. “No…” she murmured, and she tilted her head to look at her sister, who was still seething with rage. She watched as Buttercup’s heaving shoulders went up and down like waves, and her breath escaped through her gritted teeth in long, hissing draughts.
Buttercup looked the Professor over, her fists still clenched and trembling. But as she did so, she felt the madness, the urge to kill, subside. It shrank back into her body without a trace, and she began to feel normal again. What just happened?, she thought as the mania floated away in shards, Why do I feel so uptight – It was only then that she realised what she’d done. As she looked helplessly at him, lying horribly still on the floor, she moaned, “Oh, God, what have I done?”
Instinctively, Blossom rushed over to the Professor’s side and felt his wrist, searching desperately for a pulse, while Buttercup simply stood to the side of her in a horrified stupor. She waited to feel a throb in his wrist, praying to God that she could find one. At last, after what seemed like an eternity, she felt the familiar sensation of blood flowing, and she breathed a huge sigh of relief.
“Is…is he all right?” Buttercup asked meekly from in front of her.
“Yeah,” she replied. “I got a pulse. I think he’s gonna be OK.” Delicately, she lifted the Professor’s limp form over her shoulders and began to trudge back towards the stairs. Buttercup soon snapped out of her paralysis and flew over to assist her, supporting the other half over her shoulder. Together, they flew up the sets of stairs to his room, where they laid him carefully on the bed, hands by his sides.
After one quick check to ensure he was still breathing, they both went outside, leaving the door open. Buttercup held her head in her hands and said, “I’m sorry, I…I don’t know what came over me, it was…just this weird kind of…insanity…”
“Don’t worry,” Blossom responded, rubbing her shoulder as they reached the bottom of the stairs. “It wasn’t your fault. I bet that it created that scenario just to try and fool us – ”
“So where’s Bubbles?” Buttercup asked urgently. The two of them stepped through the front door, and she shivered as a cold, nocturnal breeze drifted past her.
“I don’t know,” Blossom replied. “All we know is that she’s not in the house.”
“Oh, God,” Buttercup sighed, running a hand through her hair. “How do we know where she is? How are we gonna find her?” Suddenly, as if in answer to her question, a high-pitched shriek of terror rose from the forest on the outskirts of Townsville and made them jump. As it pierced the tranquillity of the night, and echoed away into the farthest reaches of the atmosphere, they both knew who it was – they had heard it countless times before.
It was Bubbles.
Without a moment’s notice, the two of them lifted off into the air and flew towards the sound’s source, hoping to pick up on it before it faded away into the darkness. As the last remnants of the scream rose towards the night sky, Blossom pinpointed their sister’s location, and signalled to Buttercup to follow her. Concentrating deeply on the epicentre of the sound, she began to fly downwards towards the huge, gloomy mass of trees below. They pierced the canopy layer, leaving the branches shaking gently. A few leaves detached themselves from them and floated leisurely towards the ground. The two of them landed on the ground, foliage crunching underneath their feet, and they both gasped when they saw two apparitions leading Bubbles away into the wood. Bubbles retained her normal colour, but the other two were ghostly beacons, illuminating the forest with a frightening, white glow. They seemed to be facing no resistance as they took their docile victim with them between the trees.
“Hey, you!” Bubbles heard someone shout from behind, and she twisted her head round to see who. She almost cried out, “Girls!” in a sudden outburst of happiness and relief, but she gasped instead. Her sisters were indeed in front of her, but they were no different from the two children taking her away – pale, listless, unearthly…and they were advancing on her as well, to assist the others. Oh, God, she moaned silently, I’ve got no hope…
“Bubbles!” Blossom cried out upon seeing her sister’s terrified face stare pleadingly back at her, and she and Buttercup began to run towards her.
“Let her go!” Buttercup ordered the phantoms, “Let her go!” But they ignored her, and continued with their slow march. She could see Bubbles trying to break free from their grasp, but she couldn’t. That’s crazy!, she thought, They’re just ghosts, after all –
Thrashing frenziedly against the ghosts’ grip, Bubbles frantically tried to escape. She was slowly being encircled by spectres, each one with a bloodless aura around them. As her sisters reached out for her, she continued to struggle with all her energy against them, until she finally felt the strong hold on her shoulders disappear. Too late to stop herself, she cannoned forward, almost into the welcoming arms of one of the remaining two figures. Realising what would happen, she stopped herself and began to back slowly away from them, watching them with widening eyes.
Blossom watched in amazement and horror as the ghosts evaporated into the air, and Bubbles tumbled forward with the momentum. But as she made to try and catch her, Bubbles doubled back, looking at them both with a cold, fearful expression. Tears glimmered in the little moonlight there was, and Bubbles began to back away from her. “Bubbles?” she asked carefully, “It’s OK! It’s just us – ”
“No, no, you’re not,” Bubbles replied tearfully, her voice quavering with terror. “You…you’re just trying to fool me, aren’t you? Come to take me away with you?”
“No, Bubbles, it’s OK!” Buttercup reiterated, “We’re not ghosts – ”
“No!” Bubbles yelled at them, “You’re lying! I can see that you’re dead, and you’re not taking me with you! You’re not!” She felt her back press against a tree trunk, and she knew that there was no place left to run. Another tear fell onto the leaves.
What’s wrong?, Blossom asked herself, She’s experiencing some form of dementia, or something… “It’s just a dream!” she said to her sister. “It’s not real!”
She looked on in shock as Bubbles broke down and started to cry, holding her head wretchedly in her hands as she moaned at the floor. “Please, just go away,” she begged them, “just leave me alone…please leave me alone…” Her shoulders heaved up and down as her breath entered in deep, miserable gasps.
Quickly, Buttercup ran over to her sister’s side and knelt down beside her. “Bubbles!” she said, “The ghosts are gone! You’re still here!” However, Bubbles took no notice of her, and let loose a pleading, fearful whimper. To prove her point, she lay a hand supportively on her shoulder.
Bubbles felt someone touch her shoulder, and she looked up hurriedly, expecting to see one of her ghostly sisters clutching her arm tightly – but she didn’t. All she saw was Buttercup, the snowy hue of her skin gone, looking anxiously at her. Looking at her sister’s hand on her shoulder, she felt the warm, human touch. She wasn’t a ghost, neither were her sisters. With relief, she threw her arms around Buttercup’s neck and hugged her closely, just glad to feel a real person again.
Buttercup was taken aback as Bubbles leapt at her, but calmed down when she felt Bubbles pulling herself close to her, as if she didn’t want to separated from the land of the living. As she stroked her sister’s hair gently, she said soothingly, “It’s OK, sis. It’s all over…”
Blossom smiled affectionately at this touching scene, and watched as Buttercup led Bubbles back over to her. “You OK?” she asked. “You’re not hurt, or anything?”
Bubbles sniffed and replied, “No, I’m not hurt…just scared.”
“It’s OK,” Buttercup said, rubbing her shoulder. “They’re gone.”
“God,” Bubbles whispered reflectively, “it was so scary…these ghosts just came out of nowhere…the boy from that earlier dream I had, and…and he had his sister with him, or something.” The flow of speech was broken up with harsh, panting breaths. “Then, I saw someone trying to attack me, with a knife, then everything went black. When I opened my eyes again, I saw that I was a ghost, just like them, and someone was dragging my body underneath a tree…” On the verge of tears, she looked up from the floor at them, and then pointed weakly at Buttercup. “It was you,” she uttered. “Well, a ghost of you, and you had this horrible expression on your face, it was like…like you were enjoying it…”
With that, she began to sob quietly again, and Buttercup put her arms around her. “It was just a dream!” she said, shaken by what Bubbles had told her, “I would never try to hurt you like that!”
“I know,” Bubbles answered tearfully, “but it seemed so real…”
“Come on,” Blossom recommended, nodding her head towards the sky, “we’d better get home before anything else happens out here.” The absence of light made the forest appear so ominous that she was almost deluded into picturing nomadic spirits wandering through the trees. Bubbles nodded vigorously in agreement, and all three lifted off into the air, leaving the forest, and whatever there was in there, if anything, at peace.
“So, that’s what happened?” Bubbles asked with fear, her voice quivering as they went back inside.
“Yeah,” Blossom answered. “I don’t know what happened, Buttercup just…went out of control…she couldn’t stop herself…”
“Oh, my God,” Bubbles whimpered. “Is he OK?”
“Yeah,” Buttercup said, “he’s fine.” She closed the door, and felt the warmer, welcoming feel of their house. As they flew up the stairs, she asked Bubbles, “Are you OK?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Bubbles replied. She smiled at her sister, and removed her fleece before clambering back into bed. Snuggling back under the covers, she felt the tiredness creep up on her again, and she felt her eyes close uncontrollably. But even as she slept, the haunting memories of the suffocating darkness around her, and the ghosts attempting to drag her down into the Underworld, an eternity of drifting sullenly through the night, made her groan and turn in her sleep…but none more so than that intoxicating whisper, beckoning to her to come and play with them, as it echoed around her mind.
*
Buttercup stirred momentarily, her head reeling in a daze. As her eyes gradually became used to the darkness, she simply lay blinking at the ceiling for a little while. She looked over at the clock, but found that it was too obscure to read. Strange, she thought, I can usually see it… It’s just my brain again. I do feel really tired… Stifling a yawn, she got out of bed and started to walk towards the door. It was too dark to see anything, so she had to resort to feeling her way through the room, like in a game of Blind Man’s Buff, even though she must have retraced that same path more times than she could remember. At last, her groping hands felt the door frame and she went out onto the landing. Even the window at the end of the hallway could do nothing to make it more visible, and she started to stumble on towards the bathroom –
But then she stopped, rooted to the spot. There was breathing coming from the other end of the hallway. Although it was quite soft, her accumulating terror amplified it to such a level that it sounded like a steam train. For what seemed like an eternity, she stayed absolutely, perfectly still in turmoil, with only her eyes moving as they darted erratically around the hallway, but of course, there was only darkness. The breathing grew louder, and she heard the faint creak of a floorboard as someone pressed down upon it. Cool sweat started to form on her forehead and arms, trickling down and making her shiver as it passed over her skin. Still scouring the darkness for any signs of movement, she ran her hand across the wall, frantically searching for the light switch. Her chest tightened, in the grip of an invisible vice, as she heard the breathing further approach her. Another floorboard creaked. After she felt the hard plastic square and the switch in the middle of it, she pushed it upwards.
The hallway suddenly became aglow, bathed in light, but as she looked over to where the noise had been coming from, she let out a sharp, startled scream.
A man was standing at the opposite end of the corridor, a man whom she didn’t recognise at all. He was crouching over slightly to maintain stealth, and she could only see a bit of his face. He wore black trousers, black trainers and a white T-shirt, which was spattered with red blotches. His hand moved slightly, and Buttercup’s breathing became harsh and dry in her throat when she saw that he was wielding a ferocious-looking meat cleaver, which had streaks of crimson running down the blade, the same colour as the patches on his shirt…
Oh, my God, Buttercup thought helpless, Who is this guy? What’s he gonna do to me?…
His head tilted upwards from the floor to look at her, and she started to edge away along the wall. Wild, black hair was straggling in his face, and his teeth were gritted in a hideous grin. But his eyes filled her with a deeper sense of unnerving fear than anything else about him. One of his eyes was blue, the other was milky-white, and his relentless gaze bored like a drill into her mind. She stared in terror back at him, her heartbeat now so violent she could feel it in her throat.
A drop of blood slid effortlessly off the edge of the meat cleaver and splashed onto the floor.
Suddenly, his head snapped upwards like a crocodile’s, and the sheer shock almost made her tumble backwards, but she supported herself weakly against the wall. Slowly, with lumbering footsteps, he began to advance on her, breath hissing in and out through his clenched teeth. His eyes were transfixed on her, viewing her with a murderous intent as he crept towards her, clutching the cleaver firmly in his hand. Long, bony fingers flexed around the handle. She continued to creep along the wall, her breathing gradually becoming more deep and rapid. Oh, God, she thought, Why can’t the others hear what’s going on?…
“Who…who are you?” she stammered, feeling her legs giving way. “What do you want?”
“My name isn’t important,” the man replied, a chilling, sinister tone in his voice. “What do I want?” He took another step forward. “I want you.”
“W-why?” Buttercup asked, as bemused as she was terrified.
The corners of his mouth turned upwards in a cruel smile, and he hissed back, “Because I’m hungry.” He laughed shortly, the evil kind of laughter that sent shivers down her spine.
No, she thought, pulse racing, no, it can’t be…not here…
Many a night, she had had harrowing nightmares of a deranged person stalking her, wanting nothing more than to sink their teeth into her flesh…visions of her body being gutted like a fish’s which had left her feeling fearful and nauseous when she woke up. She had read about travellers lost at sea, or that football team lost in the mountains, who had resorted to eating each other to stay alive… By now trembling violently, she instinctively backed away from him as he neared her. The meat cleaver…the red on his shirt…
“I’m going to eat you, little girl,” he said, each word echoing uncontrollably around her mind. “I’m going to suck your blood…I’m going to rip your carcass apart…”
“Girls, help,” Buttercup pleaded feebly, too scared to even scream, “please help me – ” But she was cut off when a chorus of voices appeared in her head, reciting a deadly, monosyllabic incantation that made her retch upon hearing it.
Kill the girl…cut her throat…spill her blood… Buttercup let out a whimper as the voices chanted ceaselessly inside her head, and she moaned, “No,” softly as the cannibal raised the cleaver into the air.
“First you see a flash of steel,” he hissed, “and then you die.” His tongue passed steadily over his upper lip, relishing the fresh meat that would soon be his.
Kill the girl…cut her throat…spill her blood…
All of a sudden, Buttercup tripped backwards over her own feet and fell to the floor, yelling in pain as she jarred her back in the process. Through her squinted eyes, she could see him almost standing over her, ready to deliver the fatal blow, the cleaver poised like a sacrificial knife in his hands. He panted frenziedly as he held the blade over his head, staring down at her with a terrifying, maniacal expression.
Kill the girl…
Another image formed in front of her eyes, one in which she could see herself.
…cut her throat…
She was staring vacantly up at the ceiling with wide, lifeless eyes. Her skin had been drained of colour and was now a deathly shade of white. Her arms lay limply on the ground beside her. The middle of her dress was stained with a dark, red hue, so concentrated it looked more maroon than red.
…spill her blood…
A curved blade glimmered to the side, in the shape of a crow’s beak…a scythe…
“Girls!” she yelled desperately, “Wake up! Please, wake up – ”
The cannibal suddenly swung the blade downwards, pointing a corner dangerously at her. He tutted, and turned the blade to her arm where he began to trace an invisible line with it across her skin. It felt so soft that it was painless, but Buttercup still gasped when he withdrew it, because it was bleeding like a large papercut. A small trickle of blood seeped out from it and began to meander down her arm. In utter panic and terror, she watched helplessly as the man drew the blade back up, ready to finish what he started.
Girls, she prayed, please, please wake up…please help me…
Pinning her to the floor with his hand like a druid, the cannibal gritted his teeth with determination, and they seemed to shine like ivory in the light. Buttercup uttered a final, chilling cry of submission which seemed to echo through the hallway. A tear rolled slowly down her cheek as the clock on the wall ticked her life away…
Bubbles opened her eyes narrowly as she woke up. She could swear that she had just heard someone shouting, but it had stopped as soon as she woke up. Maybe it was a dream, she thought, and turned herself over. As her head tilted to the other side, she noticed that the hall light was switched on. Frowning with bemusement, she got out of bed and walked over to the door, but paused when she saw someone’s shadow slink across the wallpaper. They were holding something, something which looked a bit like a flag, but the way they were hunched over…
Quickly, she hopped back onto the bed and nudged Blossom gently. “Blossom,” she whispered urgently, “Blossom! Wake up!”
“Huh?” Blossom murmured, “What’s going on?”
“I think something’s prowling around outside,” Bubbles said, quivering slightly.
Blossom sat herself up, leaning back on her hands and replied, “Are you sure?”
“Yeah! I saw a shadow move across the wall, and it didn’t look like anybody I knew…I don’t know what it is.”
“Don’t worry,” Blossom began, “It’s probably the Professor – ” But she stopped when she heard Buttercup scream from the corridor. With a start, she vaulted out of bed and ran towards the door. Bubbles followed her, and both of them peered around the door simultaneously. They saw Buttercup cowering on the floor, being held firmly in place by a complete stranger, and both watched in horror as the stranger lifted a knife back over his shoulder. Fresh blood dripped off the blade and made crimson blotches on his shirt.
“Oh, my God,” Blossom said as she lifted off into the air.
The man suddenly turned to look over his shoulder at them, still clutching the knife in his hand. The fingers on his other curled into a fist. Even as Blossom flew at him, her arm drawn back and ready to strike, he still fixed her with an unperturbed, disturbing gaze. Blossom prepared to land a punch on his head as she glided towards him, but as she swung forward, the man suddenly vanished in a small puff of white smoke.
Buttercup felt relieved of a burden as the man took his hand away from her. Looking up fearfully at him, she saw that he had turned to look away from her. But before she got the chance to escape, the cannibal suddenly disappeared from view, and he was replaced by the figure of Blossom, heading straight for her at a lethal speed. She shrieked, “Oh, God!” and fell to the floor, protecting her head with her arms as if sheltering from gunfire.
At the same time, the Professor lay unconscious on his bed. All he could see was black, and all he could hear was the dull thud of his own heart beating in his chest. Suddenly, the tranquillity was shattered by a scream of terror that tore through his mind like a bullet. Lethargically, his eyes opened to survey the darkness that surrounded him, and turned to look at his bedroom door. It was slightly ajar, and light streamed in, forming a yellowish patch on the wall. Completely drained of energy, he allowed his head to flop back sideways onto the pillow, but then he heard another scream, one that he knew was real. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up weakly. With his body aching all over, he stumbled slowly towards the door. As he opened it, the bright light sent a sharp, stinging pain screeching through his head, and he blundered out into the hallway. But when he rounded the corner and turned to look down the corridor, and caught sight of Buttercup throwing herself desperately to the floor. “Girls?” he asked as he began to stagger over to them, “Are you OK?”
Blossom stopped abruptly as Buttercup’s head appeared to veer forward in front of her, and she stopped herself barely inches from her sister’s face. At that moment, Buttercup yelled something and fell forward as though she’d been shot. “Buttercup?” she inquired, watching the trembling figure in front of her, “What’s wrong?”
Buttercup didn’t answer her question, but simply pleaded, “Please, don’t hurt me…leave me alone…please don’t hurt me…” Blossom reached out to touch her, but as she did, Buttercup cried out again and lurched away from her, saying, “No, no more pain…don’t hurt me, please don’t kill me…”
The Professor rushed over to her side, and said, “Honey? What’s the matter? It’s OK!”
Her breathing began to gradually slow down as her fear dissipated away like a wave. Cautiously, she took her arms away from her face to see both Blossom and the Professor looking worriedly down at her, and Bubbles wandering timidly over to join them. She sat herself up, holding her knees in close to her chest, and breathed in and out, deeply and rhythmically.
Putting a hand on her shoulder, the Professor asked, “Are you OK, honey?”
Buttercup sniffed and replied, “Yeah…now.” She wiped her eyes, and added, “Man, I was so scared…this man just appeared out of nowhere and started coming towards me. He said he was gonna…kill me and…devour me…” Her speech quivered as she retold her traumatic ordeal. “He was about to k-kill me with a knife, and then…and then you guys came, and…he was gone…”
The Professor picked her up gently, and hugged her close to him. As he stroked her hair, he whispered, “Don’t worry. It’s over. You’re still alive.” All was forgiven. After all, she would never have attacked him like that if it hadn’t been playing tricks on them all. A grim expression set on his face, he began to carry his daughter back to bed.
As she followed the others, Bubbles moaned miserably, “Oh, my God, it’s even in our house!” And they realised with dread that she was right. Their only sanctum had been snatched away from them – now they weren’t safe anywhere.
“Don’t worry, Bubbles,” the Professor assured her as he lay Buttercup back down on the bed. “You’ll get through this. All of you will. It may not be easy, but you’ll survive.” He smiled comfortingly at her, and the other two clambered back into bed. Kissing them goodnight, he said again, “You’ll get through. Don’t worry. Goodnight, girls.” As he closed their bedroom door, he too felt the intolerable pangs of fear, the feeling that no place was a safe haven…
The feeling that they were being watched.
*
Next day, the girls were flying warily over Townsville as they made their way home from school. Each of them had been instilled with such a debilitating paranoia that none of them could bear to be left alone. It was omnipresent, stalking them like a scavenger, persecuting them whatever the circumstances, be they alone, together, with the Professor, in their own home…
Blossom’s eyes darted subconsciously to the side, looking apprehensively around for any danger. In her heightened state of panic, she half-expected a horrible, winged monster to come swooping down out of the sky, uttering a blood-chilling screech as it did so, but none came. God, she thought, what are we gonna do? It isn’t safe any more, there’s no place we can go…
Down
below, the city of
Blossom cried out in pain as the light engulfed her, the heat burning her so intensely that it felt like napalm, and she felt as though she was suffering in Hell itself. She could even see the light through closed eyelids since it was so bright. The torment raked invisible, flaming claws across her skin, carving into it like a knife, and the pain made her strength give out. Drained of her energy, she fell forward limply and felt the air rush past her as she spiralled downwards. Although she couldn’t see it, she could sense herself nearing the ground as she sped towards it, ready to crash and burn upon impact. She cried out one last time as her body smashed into the concrete, and she lay there motionless while the psychosomatic blaze raged around her.
Buttercup only looked forward. She didn’t dare look behind to see if anything was coming, and she didn’t notice Blossom drop out of line. Her eyes watered slightly as the wind blew past at a furious pace, and she narrowed them. All she could see in front of her was light blue, the cyan colour of a pure, cloudless sky. However, she stopped suddenly when she heard Blossom call out to them from behind, “Girls! Something’s going on down there!”
Bubbles halted when she saw Buttercup stop in mid-flight, and it was only then that she noticed that Blossom had gone. Then she too heard Blossom calling to them, her voice coming from behind her, and she turned to look in its direction…but Blossom wasn’t there.
“What’s up, Blossom?” Buttercup asked as she turned around to face her sister, but then added, “Where’d she go?” when she saw an empty space in front of her. Blossom had vanished.
“Where’s Blossom?” Bubbles inquired, by now beginning to get scared.
“Blossom!” Buttercup called out, “Blossom! Can you hear me? Where are you?”
At that moment, a terrified voice rang out through the air, as clear as day, yet they couldn’t see where it was coming from. But they recognised it – it was Blossom’s. It yelled, “Girls! Where are you?”
“Oh, my God,” Bubbles whimpered, “Blossom, are you OK? Are you there?”
As the voice faded away, Buttercup shouted, “Come on! We’d better look for her!”
“But she could be anywhere!” Bubbles replied, on the verge of tears. “Oh, God…” Her sister set off back towards the city, and she followed suit, praying silently that they found Blossom before it was too late.
Blossom lay slumped on the floor, her eyes closed as if she were asleep. In deep contrast to the blinding flash she had seen before, she couldn’t see anything at all. Everything around her was pitch black, and she wondered, What’s going on? Am I blind? Why am I here – But suddenly, emanating from the chasm of darkness around her, there came a sound, faint but audible. It seemed to call to her, and she listened as it cried, “Blossom! Blossom!”
Buttercup?, she replied telepathically. Without even moving her lips, her words seemed to echo through the gloom. Are you there?
“Can you hear me?” the voice shouted, “Where are you?”
Buttercup!, she yelled, I’m right here! Please, help me, Buttercup, I don’t know where I am –
Groaning softly, Blossom slowly opened her eyes, and winced as she felt her head reel. Her body was filled with a strong, dull ache from where she’d hit the ground, and her shoulder radiated an acute pain throughout her arm. Clutching it with her free hand, she steadily got to her feet, just managing to stand upright. She looked around, expecting to see the familiar skyscrapers and paving slabs, but they weren’t there. All she saw was an infinite expanse of sand, with no foreseeable signs of life, which seemed to stretch over the horizon. Her chest tightened as she looked around, but still finding nothing but arid wasteland. She looked up at the sky, and it was tinted with a slight reddish colour. It seemed to shimmer as currents of heat glided across it. Shielding her eyes as the glaring Sun beat mercilessly down upon her, she desperately whirled around again, searching in vain for anything alive, anything moving…anything there. But she found nothing. The air was filled with an eerie silence, bar the faint howl of the wind, and she felt a sort of sensory depravation as she surveyed the desert around her. “Hello?” she called out, “Is anybody there?” No answer came, and she felt a shiver travel up her spine. Slowly, she began to trudge across the sand, her feet making soft crunches as they embedded themselves in the ground.
A man stood at the bus stop, calmly reading his magazine. The wind felt soft and comforting as it streamed through his hair. He looked impatiently at his watch. God damn it, he thought, I’m gonna be late if the stupid bus doesn’t come –
He stopped when he saw something strange. A little girl came walking up the road, looking so disorientated she was almost staggering. Her eyes were wide and trance-like as she divulged from the main road and headed into the more woody area at the side. He was about to go after her, but the bus finally arrived. He got on, paid his fare and sat down by the window. As the bus closed its doors and continued on its way, he caught once last glimpse of the girl as she vanished among the trees. Must’ve imagined it, he told himself, and he opened up his magazine again.
Warm sweat trickled down Blossom’s forehead as she wandered on, so viscous it felt like oil, and she felt her throat become parched and dry with the heat. After what seemed like forever, she looked behind her, only to see her tracks in the sand stretching away into the distance. Wiping her forehead with the back of her hand, Blossom asked herself, “What am I doing here? What is this place?”
This is Townsville, a mysterious, unworldly voice replied.
“Who said that?” Blossom said, turning around quickly to see who had spoken, but she could see no-one. “Is anyone there?”
No, the voice said. Everyone’s gone…well, except you.
“What do you mean ‘everyone’s gone’?” Blossom inquired.
Don’t you remember? There was an explosion. You saw it. You were the sole survivor. Blossom simply listened closely as the voice continued. Everyone else died. You’re the only human left.
“No,” Blossom responded, shaking her head in disbelief, “no, that’s not right…it can’t have gotten everyone…”
But it did. Look around you. See? There’s nothing left. Everything was vaporised in the blast. Everything, even down to the smallest insect…gone, just like that.
Blossom giggled, purely out of desperation, and couldn’t stop herself.
Why are you laughing? You’ll be next.
She stopped laughing all of a sudden, and asked fearfully, “What? Why?”
Think about it. The blast obliterated everything on the planet. That means nothing to eat, nothing to drink. Besides, the fallout will kill you anyway.
As she took this in, Blossom stood still, staring blankly at the vast expanse of desert that she was in the middle of, and realised what had happened. Her breathing rate began to increase uncontrollably, and she knelt down on the floor. She couldn’t believe it had happened, but it had. Her worst fear, worse than all the others put together. She had had sleepless nights about it happening, turning it over and over countless times in her mind, racked with worry that it would happen to them one day…and now it had wreaked its irreversible fury on the world.
Armageddon.
A tear fell from Blossom’s eye onto the sand as she saw her hopeless position. She was alone, the only person left in the world, and she wouldn’t be for much longer. No food, no water…she would die soon, just like the others had. But whereas their deaths had been quick and painless, hers would be slow and lingering, writhing in agony as she felt her body succumb bit by bit, until…
Her body shivered with misery and fear as her breath escaped in harsh, wretched sobs, and she fell over onto the sand, holding her head in her hands and whimpering, “No, please…oh, God, I don’t want to die…” Tears plunged to the ground like raindrops as she wept, creating dark blotches in the sand.
At that moment, a scalding wind sent an acrid cloud of dust cascading over her. The heat was so strong that it burned her as it billowed past. Her eyes stung as grains of sand were sprayed into them, and she closed them instinctively, cringing as the wind sent fresh waves of pain radiating through her body. Some of the dust clustered in her throat, and she struggled to expel it, spluttering with great, whooping coughs. The storm made her envisage little piles of sand building up around her limbs, growing ever larger, covering her body like a blanket, until she had been buried alive… Then it stopped, almost as soon as it had started.
Dazed by what had just happened, Blossom simply lay on her back, staring helplessly up at the sky. A crow was circling overhead, an ominous, dark shadow against the blinding sunlight. As it hovered above her, it uttered a nasal, croaking cry which echoed across the sand. Something else was alive, she thought, filled momentarily with a vague sense of hope. She watched as the crow began to spiral downwards and land on the ground. It hopped a couple of steps forward and then turned to face her, sunlight sparkling in its black, beady eyes. It cocked its head sideways in an unworried fashion and ruffled its wings.
Why a crow?, Blossom wondered as she surveyed it, Why was it – But then she found out why, and she clutched her throat as she felt it tighten like a knot. A searing pain erupted in her chest, so violent it was as though it was tearing her up from the inside. For a brief, fleeting moment, she lay squirming in anguish as the crow watched her suffer. The flames in her chest subsided, although she was still gasping for breath, and she lay still on the floor, sweat rolling down her face, and she thought it was just passing – but she was wrong. Fear began to sweep over her again as she felt the feeling fade in her legs. Not only could she not move them, she couldn’t feel anything, either. And it was spreading, and the words, ‘Oh, my God, what’s happening?’ flashed across her mind as the numbness climbed intravenously through her body. Yet an invisible hand was still gripped around her throat, slowly starving her of oxygen as the plague killed her off, and she cried out in pain and despair, begging for someone to come to her aid, but she knew there was no-one there. Her hands went dead, and she could no longer feel the grit that lay beneath them. Every breath now resulted in a scintillating gasp of agony that set her lungs ablaze. She felt a drowsiness overcome her system as her back lost its sense of touch. Suddenly, the voice came back.
You see?, it said, magnanimous in victory. It won’t be much longer, then you can see all your family and friends again…
“No, please,” Blossom croaked, “don’t let me die this way…please…”
Soon, you’ll be nothing, the voice continued, a body without a grave, without a name…
Another tear fell off the edge of her face, and she felt her chest become calm, soothed, painless. Clinging to life by a thread, she lay in terror as the anaesthetic travelled further up her spinal column, approaching her neck.
Meanwhile, the crow took a step forward, still viewing her without a care as if this were an everyday occurrence. The crow, she thought, it’s brought this on me…it was just an omen…
Her eyes became more translucent as she stared back up at the sky, and as she felt the last breaths of life withdraw from her body, she said to her family telepathically, Hold on, guys. I’ll be with you in a minute.
Buttercup yelled out with frustration and kicked the ground. Where the hell was Blossom? She and Bubbles had checked everywhere, every place in Townsville imaginable, and now they were on one of the rural routes that led out of the city. To each side of the road was a small stretch of woodland, not as dense as the one they had been in the night before. Her fists clenched with fury and anxiety as she thought frantically where their sister could be, but she was interrupted when she heard Bubbles start to cry behind her. Turning around, she saw that Bubbles’ head was tilted towards the ground, and a tear was trickling down her cheek. Compassionately, she put her arms around her neck and held her tight.
Bubbles hugged back, and whimpered, “Oh, God, Buttercup, where is she?”
“I don’t know,” Buttercup replied, and her stomach tightened. “But…we’ll find her, Bubbles. I know we’ll find her.”
Suddenly, as her sister murmured, “Uh-huh,” into her shoulder, both of them heard a strangled cry emanate from within the forest, and a couple of birds took flight at the sound of it.
It could be Blossom, Buttercup thought, and she hoped to God that she was right. She motioned Bubbles to follow her and she set off into the forest. The two of them wove in between the tree trunks, their eyes darting around, trying to see their sister down below.
Eventually, Bubbles spied a familiar-looking figure and shouted, “Down there!” With that, both flew downwards through the air towards the person Bubbles had spotted. As they came in closer, Buttercup’s heart almost stopped. It was definitely Blossom – but she wasn’t moving. She was lying motionless on the ground, and the colour had been drained from her face.
They landed on either side of her, and Buttercup said frantically to her sister, “Blossom! Blossom! Can you hear me?”
Slowly, with a considerable effort, Blossom opened her eyes, and looked at them blankly. “Girls…” she croaked, “I thought you were…”
“Don’t worry,” Bubbles said, making to pick her up, “we’ll take you home, and then – ”
“No,” Blossom said, Bubbles’ outstretched hand on the verge of touching her, “don’t touch me…I’m radioactive…”
“Radioactive?” Buttercup asked.
“There was an explosion…it’s…fallout…”
“It was just a dream, Blossom! It didn’t really happen!” she persisted, draping her sister’s arm over her shoulders. She nodded to Bubbles to take the other one. “C’mon. Let’s get you home.” She felt an eerie sense of de ja vu as they both of them lifted off again, supporting Blossom between them. God, she thought, how long is this thing gonna last?
Blossom gradually felt some of the strength return to her limbs, and she could breathe more clearly now. The sky was as placid it had ever been. Taking deep breaths periodically, she said, “It just…happened. This huge ball of light just came up out of nowhere. I called to you, but then I discovered that you were gone, and then…then it just…kind of swallowed me up. Oh, God” – she shuddered as the memory of the pain resurfaced – “the pain was so horrible. My body felt like it was on fire, and…I blacked out. When I came to, everything was gone. There was just this enormous desert, stretching as far as I could see. There was nothing there, so I walked onwards for a bit, but then this voice began talking to me…”
As she
imparted her story to them, Buttercup thought, So that’s how she went from
“It told me everything that had happened…that I was next. Then I lay down on the ground, and I saw this crow come down and land at my side. It did nothing, it was just watching me…and then I felt myself being strangled, and my chest began to hurt. The feeling went in my arms and legs, and I just felt…delirious. I didn’t care that I was dying, and it just…” She broke off, and she breathed out in a long, quivering sigh.
“Oh, my God,” Bubbles moaned, “what’s gonna happen to us? They’re getting worse and worse, and…and we can’t stop it…”
Buttercup realised with horror that she was right. A precognitive feeling arose in the back of her mind, automatically telling her that something terrible was about to happen to them. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead as they opened the front door, and carried Blossom inside.
*
The Moon hung in the sky, gazing down
upon the Earth as it continued on its way. It was full, slightly clouded in a
thin mist, a large halo glowing around it as it radiated beams of silver-blue
light on to the ground, making the city of
The girls flew back over it towards their home, having just completed a late job for the Mayor, an attempted heist at the First National Bank. Bubbles looked fondly at the Moon as they glided past it, and it stared inanimately back at her. Narrowing her eyes fractionally, she found it strangely enticing and arcane, as if it had some hidden quality that only she could understand.
“Hey, Bubbles!”
Someone called to her, and she broke away from her dream to look sideways. Blossom, having now recovered from her earlier ordeal, was gesturing to her and shouting, “C’mon! You wanna get left behind? Let’s go!”
“Sorry,” she said meekly, and she rejoined her sisters. But she still couldn’t get the image of the Moon, that beautiful full Moon, out of her head, sitting up there in the heavens, tacitly orbiting the Earth with no disturbances at all…
Something twinged. A strange, unnatural feeling came over her, and she sensed her stomach tighten a little. She couldn’t quite tell what she felt like, she just didn’t feel…herself. Subconsciously, she uttered a murmur of discomfort.
“What’s wrong?” Blossom asked when she heard Bubbles mutter something. “Are you OK?”
“I feel…strange,” Bubbles replied esoterically, and she blinked a couple of times. “Like I’m…not right…”
Blossom thought for a moment, then looked ahead. She herself couldn’t see their house from where they were. They could examine this. As they started to fly over a residential area, she said, “Let’s land down there.” They did so, and she took notice of the quaint feel this street had. Each garden was marked with white fenceposts, leaving a wide gap for people to walk up the path to the front door. She felt Bubbles’ forehead. There were no feverish symptoms there, so she checked her arms instead, but there was nothing she could find. “I can’t sense anything wrong with you,” she said to her sister. “Are you sure you feel unwell?”
“Yeah,” Bubbles replied, equally as unsure. “Well, I don’t feel sick, I just feel weird.” There it was again, the disquieting sense inside her body, soft but very clear. It was an onset of something, she knew it…but what was it –
All of a sudden, her stomach contracted sharply and she gasped, folding her arms across it. A tempest was beginning to stir itself up inside her body, and she found it hard to breathe.
Blossom jumped as Bubbles unexpectedly breathed in quickly and shrilly, her cry filled with terror and confusion. Her head jolted upwards to look at her sister, and she saw her clutching her stomach with both hands. Buttercup did the same upon hearing her, and she asked, “Bubbles! What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” Bubbles replied, tears forming with the pain. “My stomach…it hurts so much…” She felt like she was going to be sick, and she bent over, noticing a foul-tasting liquid accumulate in the back of her throat.
“Come on,” Blossom said, “we’d better get her home, and – ”
There was another sharp intake of air from Bubbles, and she sank to her knees. The pain inside was now so acute that her stomach felt like it was being crushed. She also felt something else…something black that was slithering up through her bloodstream, preparing to manipulate her body in any way it wanted. It infiltrated every crevice, growing little, black roots that snaked through the smallest gaps. The pain became unbearable, and she yelled out again with pain as her stomach tightened further, as though in a vice grip. Sweat began to run down her face as she bent over.
“Bubbles? What’s happening?” Blossom asked quickly, by now beginning to get scared. She had never seen an internal pain this violent before, and what was worse was that nothing showed through her sister’s pale skin, no marks, no signs of any kind. There was nothing they could do about it. Oh, God, she thought, what’s happening to her?… Bubbles’ head slowly tilted upwards from her crouched position, and she saw that hair was straggling in her face. It was unreal, but somehow, it looked longer to her, and much more wild. It retained its natural blonde tone, but it was tinged with a lustrous silver colour. She swore she could see it stretch and expand by another half-inch, and thought, What the hell’s going on?
Still gritting her teeth with the intolerable pain, Bubbles groaned as her suffering continued to ravage her stomach like a fire. She no longer felt like she was going to be sick, but that she was going to die. Her head reeling as she knelt back up, she supported herself on one hand, clutching her stomach with the other. But she noticed something weird, and she turned her hand over. She whispered, “No, no, no…” Her hand had opened out, as though someone had cut into it. It didn’t look like a part of her any more, more like…like a paw. With her arm shaking with fear, she clenched it, letting it quiver resonantly, and then unfurled it. She gasped when she saw sharp, hooked claws on the end of her hand glisten in the moonlight like knife blades. Her pulse went into hyperdrive. Taking her hand away from her stomach, she saw the same features and simply stared at it, her eyes wide in terror. And still, the evil inside her veins was clambering further up her body, a plague rendering resistance futile.
Buttercup watched helplessly as Bubbles writhed in agony before her. She hoped that someone could hear from inside their houses and come outside to help, but no-one came. What’s happening to her?, she wondered, I don’t remember Bubbles being afraid of anything like this… She risked a glance over at her sister again, and watched as she raised her hands to her face, looking at them with an expression of sheer horror. It was only then that she noticed, like Blossom had, that Bubbles’ hair had grown longer. It now looked untamed and loose, streaming down over her shoulders. Her eyes turned to her sister’s outstretched hands, and saw the formidable paws they had become. She took a cautious step towards her when something made her stop. As soon she set her foot down on the ground, something dark began to creep up Bubbles’ arms. Bubbles whimpered as it enveloped her skin with a dark, ominous layer like a lit fuse. When it reached her shoulders, it seemed to stop, and she took the opportunity to find out what it was as Bubbles bent over again. Delicately, she touched it, stroking it back and forth as Blossom looked on. It felt warm, but at the same time, dry and bristly, much harder than human hair. Except it wasn’t hair.
It was fur.
“What’s going on?” Blossom asked, “What’s happening?”
Fur, Buttercup thought reflectively, paws…a full moon…that means that –
Bubbles suddenly threw her head back and shrieked at the sky, her cries reverberating through the night, and the blood chilled in their veins as it transformed into a harrowing, primal howl, as though she were baying at the moon.
Then the fur began to grow again, engulfing the rest of her body in a thick blanket. Bubbles felt the cold dissipate away from her as something covered her, protected her from the wind. Her blood felt much warmer as it flowed through her veins, and she felt more at peace…until she felt something creep up her neck. At that moment, a sudden, terrible urge overcame her, the urge to hunt, tear, kill. Her body jerked awkwardly, and she uttered a strangled cry of rage as she felt her bones rearrange themselves.
Buttercup backed away cautiously, and ran around to Blossom’s side. Both watched as Bubbles shook her head dementedly from side to side, and they were horrified to hear that she was snarling. As the coat of fur extended up her neck, her hair melded with the fur on her back, creating a silvery-blonde mane around her shoulders. She screamed again, opening her mouth as wide as she could manage while it concealed her face with a mask of fur. The two of them gasped. Jutting out from Bubbles’ mouth were vicious, canine fangs, the kind that could snap bone in one bite. They watched in horror as her pigtails sharpened and became ears, and gazed at the pelt that she was now clothed in. Then she began to grow, her new muscular form enlarging to the point where she loomed over them. Blossom backed away as the intimidating monster before her thrashed around wildly in the final stages of its hideous transformation. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Buttercup’s hand reach slowly out for hers, and she was about to grab it when the creature’s head turned to face them and opened its eyes.
Buttercup felt her throat close up. Her sister’s eyes were still the same, but they now shone with the terrifying, carmine glow of fresh blood. She took a step forward. A bushy tail whisked itself out from behind. The creature’s teeth bared themselves, and it growled at them, a low, rumbling growl that made their hearts stop.
“No,” Buttercup whispered, petrified by what had just happened, “no, please…oh, God – ”
Without warning, the wolf suddenly lunged at them, its jaws open like a bear trap, its claws poised. Both dived in different directions, and Blossom rolled out of the way as it swiped at her again, missing her by little more than an inch. As she leapt out of the way again, she thought, What do I do? Bubbles is a werewolf, what can I do – But she was taken completely by surprise as she felt something rake across her stomach, and she clutched it tightly, crying out with pain. Looking up, she saw the wolf drawing its paw back. In the dim streetlight, she saw that the tips of the claws were coloured darker, with something oozing down them. She took her hand away from her wound, and looked with terror and disgust at the dark red bloodstains on it. The wolf made to strike again…
Buttercup watched her sister cower on the floor as the wolf approached her menacingly, its back arched with a murderous hunger. I gotta do something!, she told herself, I gotta help Blossom! With that, she charged forward and leapt into the air, sensing the prickly but luxurious warmth as she landed on its back. The wolf noticed, and flung its head furiously from one side to the other trying to dislodge her, but she grabbed on to its fur and held tight. Then it stopped. Buttercup heard it panting, and stayed where she was. Suddenly, its head snapped back over its shoulder and one of its fangs sank into her leg. She yelled with the pain as it was thrust into her flesh, and yelled again as the wolf yanked her off forcefully, its tooth cutting further and further into her. Her body slammed against the concrete, but she got to her feet as it leapt at her again and evaded it. When she turned around to look behind her, expecting to see it pouncing again, it had vanished into the shadows.
Convinced that it had run off, she breathed in deeply, trying to get her breath back. Her leg almost buckled with the pain. Every movement set her nerves screeching. She thought to herself, Oh, God, why? Not to Bubbles, not her – Where’s it gone to? Bubbles could be lying any lying anywhere, all alone –
She noticed Blossom bending over in front of her, her hands clutching her stomach tightly. As she began to walk towards her, she asked, “Blossom, are you O– ”
Something roared with fury from behind her, and she looked over her shoulder. All she saw was a rapid flurry of fur before something landed on her back, and she fell to the floor, crying out under the weight. She felt four limbs press down on her back, and the wolf snarled again.
Blossom whimpered, “Oh, my God,” as it landed on her, too terrified and injured to do anything about it.
Suddenly, its head lunged forward and its jaws snapped shut, carving a streak of crimson into Buttercup’s skin. The sudden explosion of pain evoked the ruthless feelings of hatred and vengeance that she had felt the night before as adrenaline began to speed through her bloodstream. With conviction, she rolled herself over onto her back and kicked upwards. The wolf fell off her and keeled over onto its side, its jaws snapping wildly at the air with rage. Buttercup quickly got up and ran over towards Blossom, cursing as she ran on her injured leg. But as she was about to take her sister’s hand, Blossom screamed, “Look out!” She looked behind her, but it was too late, and the wolf drove her to the floor again, knocking the air out of her. With its muzzle barely an inch from her face, she swung her fist at it and landed a ferocious punch on the side of its head. The velocity of the blow made the wolf’s head veer to the side and away from her, and Buttercup tried to get up into the air, but it leapt like a cougar into the air, and it was on her again, ripping and tearing…
In one of the houses, oblivious to what was happening outside, an old man got up from his chair to fetch himself a drink. He was getting on in years now, in his sixties. His black skin was tarnished with wrinkles, and his black hair was rapidly turning ash-grey, but he had it good; a nice house in the suburban area of Townsville, of close proximity to the city itself, in a nice neighbourhood, where no-one was like the people he’d lived with in the bad old days…
He shuddered. The fire in front of his armchair flickered and crackled, filling the room with a soft, pulsing glow. He opened the door of his liquor cabinet and grabbed a glass from inside.
All of a sudden, he knew. He knew that something was happening outside. An experience he’d been through in the early seventies had left him with a sort of extrasensory perception, an ability to sense what other people could not. To this day, he could never quite understand quite how it worked, but it was working now. Putting down his glass on the table, he walked over to the front door, wondering what the hell was going on. He opened it, and his eyes widened.
A huge animal was loose in the middle of the street, and it looked to be attacking two children. One had red hair and was leaning against a car, clutching her stomach and watching the creature with frightened, tearful eyes. The other girl, one with hair almost as dark as charcoal, was trapped underneath it, trying to hold it off as razor-sharp teeth snapped at her face. “What the hell?” he shouted, and stepped off the porch onto the driveway.
The girl by the car looked up upon hearing him, and her eyes shimmered with the moisture in them. He could see a signal in the child’s eyes, one that told him, ‘Oh, thank God you’ve come!’, yet her expression remained one of complete and utter morbid terror. “Please, help us!” she screamed, “Please…help!”
He looked wildly from one girl to the other, and saw the wolf try to attack the second one again. “Hang on, kids!” he shouted back, “I’ll get help!”
Buttercup heard someone shout from her left, and she looked over while still trying to restrain the wolf’s fearsome teeth. She answered, “OK, but hurry!” As he ran back into his house, she looked back at her attacker, and felt her arms tremble and weaken, transfixed as she was by its burning, red eyes. It opened its mouth again, and she felt nauseous when she saw its teeth dripping with blood, collecting in droplets on the very tip and then falling onto her dress. As she peered down its throat, a dark tunnel of doom and despair, she screamed, praying that the man would come back…
He tore through the front door and surged into the living room. From above the fireplace, he removed a rifle from the wall and rested it on his armchair. Then he forcefully opened a draw in his desk, scrabbling frantically through its contents and hearing various soft noises as objects spilled over the side of the drawer and bounced on the wooden panelling. Then, his hand closed over a small box, and he drew it out. He read the label and nodded when he found that it read, ‘Smith and Weston 9mm Calibre Silver Bullets’. He pushed the tub out from underneath the lid and took one between his thumb and forefinger, then inserted it into the rifle. He cocked it, and heard an audible click. Finger poised on the trigger, he ran back through the living room, and out through the front door, just in time to hear the black-haired girl scream from beneath the creature’s clutches. Quickly, he raised the barrel into the air and supported the butt against his shoulder. He looked along the barrel through the sight with one eye, aiming right for the wolf’s heart, but he was shaking so much that he kept shifting off centre. Get a hold of yourself, Abe, he told himself, you’re doing this for those little girls. He positioned the gun again and took a deep breath.
Blossom watched on in horror as the wolf tried to reach in and bite Buttercup on the face, but she was distracted by another movement. She turned to see that the man had returned, but also that he was aiming a gun at the wolf. Oh, God, she thought suddenly, he’ll kill Bubbles – “Wait!” she shouted desperately, “Wait!” But she was too late. With a resounding bang, the gun went off, and she saw smoke seep out of the barrel.
The wolf howled with pain as it felt something hard and spiteful penetrate its arm, bringing with it a searing bout of pain that shot through its system like an electric shock. Wailing pitifully, it staggered away from its victim, swaying drunkenly from side to side as it struggled to contain the coma that was slowly overwhelming it.
Still lying motionlessly on the floor, Buttercup cringed as the wolf suddenly raised its head towards the sky and howled. She thought, Oh, my God, is this a ritual? Do they normally howl before they kill people? Then, with relief and surprise, she watched as it began to lurch away, still shrieking with rage and agony. Its tail fell limp between its hind legs as it crawled away, a mere shadow of its former self with breath escaping from its lungs in weary gasps. Suddenly, its strength gave out and it keeled over onto its side.
The one known as Abe wiped his brow with the back of his hand as the wolf fell sideways onto the pavement. He started to walk over towards the two little girls, both of them still looking absolutely petrified even as the wolf’s lifeless body lay on the ground. But as he did so, he saw it shrink it size, contracting from a formidable monster to about the size of a pup. Then it morphed, and he muttered, “The hell?” as its coat of fur retracted inside its skin. It ears flopped downwards and turned into bunches of human hair, and its teeth shrank back in its mouth. Its claws sank beneath its skin, and its paws joined together to form a hand…a hand like those of the little girls. He simply watched in amazement as the lupine features were taken away, leaving behind the pale body of another girl, with blonde hair and with her arms laid weakly on the pavement. Oh, my God, he thought, I could’ve just killed an innocent little girl –
The other two watched as the wolf slowly faded from view, and Bubbles was brought back. As the last hair disappeared, they both rushed forward to their sister’s side and looked at her forlornly. Her skin was ashen and insipid, and there was a trickle of dark red snaking down her arm and making an horrific imprint upon it. Her clothing was ripped in a number of places, but at least it had left her with her dignity. “Bubbles!” Buttercup said urgently, “Can you hear me? Are you OK? Say something! Please, say something…”
Slowly, fighting the urge to close them again, Bubbles wearily opened her eyes, and sighed faintly. She winced and gritted her teeth as she felt the pain that was spreading throughout her arm.
“Are you all right, Bubbles?” Blossom asked, kneeling down beside her.
Bubbles blinked a couple of times and replied, “My arm…it hurts…”
“Don’t worry,” Blossom said soothingly. “Everything’s OK.”
Bubbles sat herself up and clutched her arm protectively. It was only then that she noticed the tall, elderly man that was standing in front of her. His expression was one racked with guilt and worry, and she saw the gun in his hand.
“Jeez, I’m so sorry, kid,” he said imploringly. “I thought you were…I mean, I didn’t know that that…monster was you.”
Bubbles murmured incoherently in response, but Blossom said to him, “It’s not your fault. She transformed into a…a werewolf.”
The man looked up at the sky, and saw the full moon that lay resplendently in it. My God, he thought, she’s right. “Are you girls OK?” he asked, remembering the injuries they had sustained.
“Yeah,” Buttercup replied, “now.”
The man sighed as he surveyed their wounds. The blonde-haired girl was also shivering violently. Brought up in a Christian family, he had been taught to take care of those in need. “Wait here,” he told them. “I’ll get some things for you.” With that, he ran off back into his house.
“Oh, man, Bubbles, I’m so glad you’re all right!” Buttercup said, and she hugged her sister tightly.
“I’m sorry,” Bubbles whispered back to her, “I tried to kill you…I tried to kill both of you…”
“It wasn’t you,” Blossom told her. “It was it, just trying to control you.”
Going into the living room, Abe grabbed his woollen blanket from off his armchair and let it hang over his arm. Then he went into the kitchen and fished around in a drawer for some bandages. Finally, he entered the downstairs bathroom and withdrew a pair of small forceps from a pot. He returned to the girls, each now kneeling down in the middle of the street. He took the forceps and said to the blonde-haired girl, “OK, kid, I’m gonna take this bullet out of your arm. It’ll hurt a bit, but it’ll be very quick. OK?” The girl bit her bottom lip, and nodded.
“Do you know how to do that?” Blossom asked him.
“Don’t fret,” he replied as Bubbles held out her arm, “I was a medic in the army.” He spied the wound, a savage, little bullet hole near her shoulder. Luckily, he could still see some of the bullet protruding from it. With a calm precision, he inserted the forceps into the wound and clasped them around the bullet. The girl drew in a sharp breath through her teeth, and he smiled reassuringly at her, saying, “It’s OK, kid, just five more seconds.” Suddenly, he jerked his arm back and pulled the bullet out. It was covered with the grisly remains of human tissue, but he put it in his pocket. Then he took a bandage, and proceeded to make a sling around Bubbles’ arm, stringing it around her neck. He asked Blossom to come forward, and to hold her hands up in the air. He whistled when he saw the savage gashes across the child’s stomach, and then wrapped another bandage around her waist. She thanked him, and went back to her sister. “You all right, kid?” he asked Buttercup.
“I’m fine,” Buttercup replied, “just got this one cut,” and she showed him the scar on her cheek where the wolf had bitten her earlier. “And my leg hurts,” she added, and he winced when he saw the spiteful tooth mark in her leg. It wasn’t bleeding as much, but it still looked pretty nosty. He bandaged it up, then took the blanket and draped it over the blonde girl’s shoulders. She looked up at him gratefully, and said, “Thank you.”
“’S no problem, little missy,” he chuckled, and then knelt down beside them. “So…this wolf…that was you?”
She sniffed, and replied, “Uh-huh.”
“She isn’t really a werewolf,” Blossom said, “it’s this thing that’s coming after us, and – ”
“Thing?” he asked. “What kind of thing?”
“All of our worst nightmares are becoming reality,” Buttercup said. “Like, Blossom’s scared of snakes, and she almost got killed by one, Bubbles is scared of wasps, and a huge swarm attacked her!”
“I see,” he said. “And…you ain’t fond of werewolves. That right?” She nodded. So did he. “I know the feelin’.”
“How?” Blossom asked incredulously. “How could you feel what we feel?”
The man was silent for a minute or two, and then said, “It happened to me as well.” Another silence.
“You mean…” Buttercup said, struggling to comprehend what he’d said, “your fears came to life, too?”
“Yes,” he replied. “1973, I remember it was. Livin’ in Townsville with my wife and children. I had it good…until it came along.
“I suffered, I think, five dreams during that ordeal, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else. First thing was spiders. Ever since I was little, I was afraid of spiders. Then one night, while I was out in the garden, I heard a rustlin’ from behind me, and I turned around to see this giant spider on the lawn, bigger’n I was – ” He stopped when he heard the blonde-haired girl gasp with fear and cower inside the blanket. Smiling at her again, he said, “It’s OK, kid. It happened to me not you.” The girl smiled weakly back, and he continued. “I escaped, ran inside the house. Then came the fires. My whole living room just spontaneously caught on fire. My wife found me throwin’ water over the furniture, trying to extinguish it, but it wasn’t real. Next was rats.” One of them cringed, and he said, “Yeah, I hate ‘em too. I still do. I was on the couch downstairs, watchin’ TV, when I heard a scuttlin’ and all of a sudden, this huge army of rats came out from under the couch. I was too scared to move, and so they climbed up onto the sofa, and then all over me. But then they went away. That night, there was a blackout. I was in a different room from my family, so I was separated from them. It was dark, I couldn’t see anything. But I wasn’t so much afraid of the dark itself as what lurked in there. I was on my own, and I heard this deep breathin’ coming from the corner of the room, and getting’ closer. I was close to screamin’, I was. I would’ve if the power hadn’t come back on.” His fists clenched as he described his last and most terrifying dream. He spoke slowly, and the girls could hear his voice cracking with emotion. “Then, the last night, we were all at home, havin’ dinner when I heard a noise from outside. I opened the front door, and there was this racist mob marching down the street. They pointed at me, shouted things at me and then ran towards my house. I closed and locked the door, but they forced their way in with a battering ram. I was knocked to the floor, and I was trampled underfoot. I heard two shots, and my wife screamin’, then the mob left, still stampin’ on my body if possible. When I got up again, I found my house ransacked, the kitchen table upturned and my wife and kids…dead.” A tear glistened in the moonlight as it rolled down his face.
“Oh, no,” Blossom said with sadness and disgust. “They…killed them?”
He nodded. “All of ‘em shot in the head. I wasn’t afraid of the racists, but that something like that would happen to my family. I waited for it to go away, for everything to be all right again, but it didn’t.”
He heard the blonde girl sobbing and realised that she was crying. “Aw, don’t cry, little girl,” he said, and hugged her close to him. It comforted them both, knowing that they each had a shoulder to cry on. He took a deep breath, and said, “But then, after all this happened, I met the person who’d done this to me face to face.” He lowered his voice. “I don’t suppose y’all know of a guy called…‘Him’?”
The girls gasped, and Blossom figured it out. It all made sense now…who else had the power to do these things to them, but Him?…
“Well, he came to me…said that he would revive my family…if I sided with him. You know, joined the forces of evil. But I refused. I believed in God, and only in God, and I said, ‘No’. I could’ve had ‘em brought back to life, but…I would be sellin’ my soul to the Devil, and…I knew my family wouldn’t like it if I did that.”
“So, how did you destroy it?” Buttercup inquired, shaken by his woeful tale.
“Oh, I didn’t destroy it,” he replied. “I couldn’t. And neither can you.”
Bubbles whimpered, “Oh, no…that means we’ll never be left alone…”
“No, no, no,” he said, “you can defeat it, you just can’t destroy it.”
“Why not?” Buttercup asked.
“Because it’s a part of you,” he said. “Take away one part of you, and you won’t survive. It’s like…it’s like an ancient temple, the Parthenon, supported on all sides by pillars. Take away one pillar, and the temple’ll collapse. You follow me?” They nodded. “Now, this guy, ‘Him’,” he continued, “he’s thrivin’ on your fears. That’s what gives him his power. If you take that fear away, so he can’t get at it, then he ain’t got nothin’ to work with. You gotta face up to your fears, and he’ll go away. Get me?”
They nodded again, but much more vigorously this time. He smiled at them in a proud, fatherlike manner. At least these three gorgeous little girls wouldn’t have to go through what he had – bereavement, loneliness, alienation.
Blossom plucked up the courage to ask him a question. “Excuse me, sir – ”
“Call me Abe,” he said. “Abraham McKenzie, that’s my name.”
“OK, Abe,” she restarted. “This may seem intrusive, but…did some people try to lynch you, ever?”
He stared at the pavement in deep thought, still with a protective arm around Bubbles, then looked at her and said, “How in the hell did you know that?”
“I had a dream a couple of days ago,” Blossom answered him. “I was checking a part of Townsville before we went home, but I saw a man running towards me. He had black skin, just like yours, and he seemed desperate to get away. But before I could help him to escape, this mob came around the corner and tried to hang him. I tried to stop them, but they strung me up as well, and…then the man vanished once the dream had ended.”
“That’s true,” McKenzie said. “I was attacked by some racists in 1954, when I was sixteen. I was accused of a crime I didn’t commit, and they tried to lynch me, but something stopped them before I got to the tree, and they let me go. I still don’t know what it was, but I suspect it was God.” He looked at his wristwatch. “Lord almighty, it’s only eight-thirty.”
“Is it?” Blossom exclaimed. “Oh, my God…come on, girls, we’d better get home.”
McKenzie shook his head. “I don’t think you should,” he said. “It’s not safe out there. Who knows what he’ll do to you next?” The girls nodded in agreement. “Tell you what,” he offered, “I’ll drive you home. He don’t bother me any more. Whadda ya say?”
“OK,” Blossom agreed on their behalf.
“All right,” he said, and walked back towards his house. Beforehand, he unlocked the car. “Why don’t you get in?” he said. “I’ll just lock up, I’ll only be a minute.” With that, he disappeared back inside.
As the girls climbed into his car, they thought carefully about what he had told them. Buttercup felt vindicated knowing that a single display of courage was all that was needed to destroy Him’s evil magic. She looked over at Bubbles, still wrapped in the blanket, but now regaining some of the colour in her face. “You OK, Bubbles?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Bubbles replied. “Thanks.”
Buttercup smiled warmly and ruffled her sister’s hair. “We’ll get through it,” she said. “All of us will. Right, Blossom?” Blossom nodded.
“I know,” Bubbles said, now starting to feel much warmer.
At that moment, McKenzie came out, locked the front door of his house and got in the car. “If you tell me where you live,” he told them as he fastened his seatbelt, “I’ll have you home in no time. Know these streets like the back of my hand, I do.” He stuck the key in the ignition and turned it. The car spluttered, then roared into life. Carefully, he backed it out of the driveway and drove up the road.
*
Watching the clock anxiously, the Professor clenched his fists. He hadn’t heard from the girls since they left, and that was at least half-an-hour ago. His stomach tightened when he imagined what terrible pain they could be in at that particular moment, or what dreadful creature was pursuing them mercilessly, baying for their blood. Another bead of sweat rolled down his forehead, which was now glistening with perspiration. His mouth was dry through worry and concern, and he swallowed. All of a sudden, the doorbell rang, and hoping that it was the girls, he rushed frantically to the door and flung it open.
He was overjoyed to see the girls floating in the air before him, and he breathed a huge sigh of relief, but there was someone else with them, someone that he had never seen before. It was a tall, elderly man with dark skin and black hair. The light from the hall revealed some patches that had turned grey, as if it had been singed. “Hello,” he said uncertainly. “Can I help you?”
“No, thank-you, sir,” the man replied, and he noticed a distinct Cajun accent in his voice. “I’m spoken for.”
He nodded, and then hugged his daughters tightly. “Thank God you’re all right,” he said, indescribably grateful for their safe return. “What happened to you?”
“It was a…a werewolf, Professor!” Buttercup managed. “Bubbles just started transforming into a wolf, and there was nothing we could do to stop it – ”
“Yeah,” Blossom continued, “then Mr. McKenzie came out and shot the wolf, but then it changed back into Bubbles, and…and she still had the bullet in her arm – ”
“Oh, my God,” the Professor said, on the verge of panic by now. He turned to McKenzie and asked, “Is she OK?”
“Yes,” McKenzie replied. “I extracted the bullet before it could take effect. She’ll be all right. She got her arm in a sling now, but I think you’d better take her to the hospital just in case. One of ‘em got bitten in the leg. They got scratched, too, but I bandaged ‘em up.”
“Thank you so much,” he said, unable to express his gratitude in quite the way he wanted. “Thank you for taking them home, and helping them, and everything.”
McKenzie grinned, and replied, “No sweat. It’s in my nature to help people. It’s instantaneous.” He beamed admiringly at the girls. “They’re quite the little troopers, your girls. Haven’t seen that kinda fervour in any kids their age before.”
The Professor smiled, and said, “Thank you, Mr…Mr…”
“McKenzie,”
Abe told him. “Abe McKenzie, I live over in
“It’s no trouble at all,” the Professor answered. “Do you want to come in for a cup of coffee, or something?”
McKenzie shook his head. “No, thank you,” he replied, “I’d better be getting’ back home. ‘S kinda late for me, y’know,” and he laughed at his own joke. The Professor couldn’t help but smile in response. God bless you, sir, he thought as the man walked back towards his car, thank you…
As he unlocked his car, McKenzie waved at them all. “Have a good night!” he called, and watched the girls wave back as he climbed into his car. He started up the engine, and saw the Professor carry the girls back into the house. “Good luck, girls,” he said to himself, and he reversed the car back out onto the open road.
“Oh, you poor girls,” the Professor sighed as he carried them back into the house. Bubbles still hadn’t said a word, and he thought that she was asleep, but she was simply too tired to speak. He pushed some of her hair out of her face, and found it hard to envisage her becoming such a terrifying monster. “Maybe you should get to bed early tonight,” he suggested. “You’re all really tired, especially Bubbles. What do you think?”
“Yeah,” Blossom agreed. “It’ll help us think better, won’t it, girls?”
Buttercup nodded. Bubbles still didn’t move.
“OK,” he said, and he carried them upstairs to bed. For some indiscernible reason, he felt very proud looking at their weary faces. They were so strong-willed, it was incredible. They had stared death in the face so many times before, and yet they were always left standing on their feet, with nary a broken bone among them. Girls, I love you so much, he told them telepathically, I love you… Carefully, he set them down on the floor, but lay Bubbles on the bed. He nudged her shoulder gently and whispered, “Bubbles? Bubbles? Are you awake, honey?”
Bubbles’ eyes opened wearily, and she answered, “Uh-huh. I’m awake.”
“Sorry if I woke you,” he said.
“You didn’t,” she replied, and smiled weakly at him.
“What I think is that you should get some sleep. You need your rest, especially if you’re going through something like this.”
“OK,” she murmured and sat herself up.
As he went out, he said, “I’ll just give you girls some privacy,” and he shut the door. He leaned against the wall and drew a hand through his hair. God, he thought, how much worse can this get for them? Werewolves? My God…I can’t even begin to think what that was like for them. He stood silently for a moment in sad contemplation, staring blankly at the picture that hung in front of him. It was a family photograph, one taken when the times were good, before all this happened. He felt that he had betrayed the girls somehow. He had had it. A few nights ago, he had discovered what was attacking them, but now all that was left was a blank memory. His one chance of helping the girls, and then he had forgotten it. What can I do?, he moaned silently, I can’t just make everything all right again…what else is there?
He clenched his fist suddenly, and said to himself, unaware that he was speaking aloud, “Get a hold of yourself! How are the girls gonna make it through if you can’t even control yourself? Get a grip!” Standing up again, he breathed in deeply a couple of times, feeling the cool, refreshing air gush into his lungs. Having regained his composure, he knocked on the door and asked, “Girls? Are you done in there?”
“Yes,” Blossom replied, and he let himself in. They were already in bed, waiting patiently for him to come and tuck them in.
He kissed them goodnight, and as he did so, he said, “Are you girls OK, now? Do you want me to leave the door open?”
“Yes, please,” Bubbles answered him. “But I feel a bit better, Professor. Mr McKenzie told me how to stand up to my fears so they wouldn’t hurt me any more. I might be able to handle it.”
He felt delighted to hear this from her, but at the same time disheartened that he hadn’t told her so himself. “That’s good, Bubbles,” he said encouragingly. “That’s the right way to think.” Rubbing her shoulder, he got up and walked back over to the door, where he switched off the light. He made one last precautionary glance at the girls, but they had all settled down, each one of them with their eyes shut. “Little angels,” he muttered to himself before he went back downstairs.
Sitting down in him armchair in the living room, he turned on his lamp and picked up his book from the table beside it. He opened the pages outward and read, pausing periodically to hear if anything was happening upstairs. Meanwhile, up on the wall, the clock ticked away the night quietly. Oblivious to this, he continued to read until the lightbulb in his lamp flickered and went out, as did the light in the hall. Left alone in the darkness, he waited patiently for the light to return, but it didn’t. Great, he thought, a power outage, just what we need. He got up from his chair and stumbled around blindly in the dark, guided only by the little light that seeped in between the drawn curtains. Determinedly, he made his way towards them, cursing as his shin struck a table leg, and threw them open. It wasn’t much illumination, but at least he could find his way around again. He walked back through the living room towards the hall and set foot on the first step. Grabbing onto the banister for support, he shifted his feet up one stair at a time until he reached the upstairs landing. There was some light here, too, coming in through the window at the end of the corridor, and he crept quietly back to his room so as not to wake the girls. He couldn’t do anything else, so he might as well just go to bed now. As he approached his bed, he opened a drawer in his bedside table and fished out a small torch, one that would provide him with enough light to get to bed. He switched it on and lay it down on the counter, then changed his clothes and slipped underneath the covers. When he turned it off, he felt very alone and isolated in this great space of gloom, almost afraid. But it was OK, he reassured himself, there was nothing lurking out there.
At least, he thought there was nothing.
Buttercup turned over in her sleep, peacefully dreaming of a Utopian fantasy where everything was right, where there was no war, no crime…no pain. Birds sang sweetly in the sky above, and she started to walk through the pleasant fields and pastures. A glittering city lay ahead of her, glowing resplendently in the sunshine. But all of a sudden, everything changed for the worse as the buildings began to crumble and fall, some peeling apart like oranges as they crashed to the floor. Clouds of dust rose into the air, and she coughed as she felt them choke her and cut off her air…
Slowly, she opened her eyes. It had just been a dream, and she reviewed her surroundings through half-closed eyelids. For a moment or two, she simply lay where she was, staring at the wall, but then she decided to get a glass of water. She was slightly surprised to see that the hall light had gone off, but she guessed that the Professor had turned it off himself. Her mouth felt parched and dry. She needed a drink of water. Carefully, she swung herself out of bed and plodded over towards the door, still in fatigued confusion.
Suddenly, she felt something pressing down hard upon her head, and the pressure became so great that she was forced to kneel down on the floor. She tried to push back up against this invisible force, but it was like pressing her back against a brick wall and she couldn’t budge. What’s going on here?, she thought, Why can’t I move up?…
And then it began. Her pulse accelerated to an alarming rate, and her temples throbbed so violently they felt like a horse’s hooves. Unable as she was to move her head and see what was going on, she began to breathe in more deeply and heavily as she found herself very short of breath. The darkness around her swirled and distorted itself into macabre shapes – a sword, an ‘X’…a skull – and the newly formed images started to float ominously towards her like graveyard spirits, and she swore she could hear them cackling as they approached her. She started to hyperventilate, pleading quietly, “Oh, God, please make it go away…go away…”
I told you I’d be back. She was startled when a voice appeared in her head…her own voice. Now I am real.
“What?” she asked, still buckling under the crushing weight on her head. “What do you mean?”
I told you before, the voice replied smoothly, that I did exist. Just not yet. But now I do for real.
“Liar!” she answered. “How do I know you exist if I can’t see you?”
Because you can feel me. On the inside.
“What are you – ” she began, but then she realised what it was talking about. At that very moment, a black vine began to snake up through her body, and she felt her brain being enslaved by something just as deadly. She clutched her head with both hands and yelled out as the voice’s powers gradually took her over, but she could do nothing. Shaking her head frenziedly, she felt the evil overcome her system, and she sensed a homicidal urge rise and accumulate inside her. “No,” she whimpered, “no…” The ghostly images were now dancing in a circle around her, still laughing wildly in the darkness. She tried to be resilient. “No!” she cried, “I’m not doing this…I can’t…”
Oh, yes, you will, a different voice imparted to her, another that she recognised. You’re going to destroy them for me.
“What? No!” she replied in disbelief. “I won’t do it! You can’t make me – ”
Yes, I can, the voice said. I had the power to set you on fire, to make a werewolf reality. I had the power to kill each of you. But you will do it for me.
Buttercup sensed the final, big push and knew that she had lost. Screaming with desperation and terror, she knelt down on the floor as the evilness started to take control…the blood pumping in her head grew louder and stronger, her breathing became more hoarse as she felt it asphyxiate her…
Eventually, the pain subsided. She withdrew her hands from her forehead and looked at them. Nothing had changed, nothing was wrong with her. She looked over to the bed. Her sisters were still slumbering silently, unaware of her. But they had to die. They all had to – that’s what he had told her. Without so much as a hint of remorse for what she was about to commit, she crept out through the bedroom door and down the stairs.
As she slunk out, Bubbles suddenly stirred from sleep. Opening her eyes narrowly, she was alarmed as she looked straight through Buttercup at the wall. But as her eyes adjusted to the dim light from the windows, she saw that her sister wasn’t in fact there – the covers had been pulled back. Puzzled by her sister’s disappearance for a brief moment, she supposed that Buttercup had simply gone to the bathroom, and tried to go back to sleep again. However, something inside her head kept telling her that it was an illusion, that they were all in grave danger. She tried to ignore it, but it was too clear and poignant to ignore. It made her suspicious, and she got out of bed to follow her sister out of the room, her injured arm still dangling in Mr. McKenzie’s makeshift sling. It’s OK, she told herself, Buttercup’s probably just sleepwalking –
Yeah, sleepwalking with a knife in her hand.
The hall below seemed to open up like a deep chasm stretching down into the Earth, but Buttercup paid it no mind. Guided only by a little bit of light from the living room, she walked calmly through the deserted, dark corridors, searching for something she could use. Suddenly, she narrowed her eyes as a blinding flash of bright light emanated from the kitchen. She entered it, feeling slight pangs of cold as her bare feet touched the frigid kitchen tiles, and looked up at whatever was emitting this abrupt burst of light. Pulling herself up, she stared at a weapon that had just materialised on the table – a perfectly formed axe, the kind one would use for chopping firewood. Carefully, almost apprehensively, she took hold of it in two hands and instantly felt…different. She felt like Arthur with Excalibur as she wielded it menacingly in her hands, feeling a sense of satisfaction as it tore through the air.
Bubbles went out onto the landing. She couldn’t see Buttercup anywhere, and the bathroom light was turned off with the door ajar. Maybe she was downstairs. Taking care to make as little noise as possible, she set foot on the stairs and clambered slowly down them. When she reached the middle, she peered through the banisters into the kitchen. She was surprised and a bit bemused to see Buttercup standing in front of the kitchen table, seemingly grabbing for something that lay on the surface. Having pulled herself up to the height of the table top, she watched her sister grab whatever she had been striving to obtain and take it down with her.
Her chest tightened when she spotted the axe that was now in Buttercup’s clutches, and as she heard her say, “Yeah…this’ll do perfectly.”
Whispering, “Oh, my God” to herself over and over again, she hurried quickly, but quietly, back up the stairs.
Buttercup turned sharply to look over her shoulder when she heard something scramble up the staircase, making minute creaks in the floorboards as it went. Unconcernedly, she turned back to the mystic weapon she held in her hands and muttered, “Doesn’t matter. They’re all gonna go, anyway.”
Bubbles ran into their bedroom, leapt back onto the bed and shook Blossom awake. “Blossom!” she hissed urgently, “Blossom! Wake up!”
Blossom murmured incoherently and woke up. “Huh?” she asked wearily, “What’s the matter?”
“It’s Buttercup!” she answered, trying to drag her sister from under the covers. “Come on! We gotta find the Professor!”
“But what’s happening – ” Blossom exclaimed suddenly as Bubbles yanked her out of bed and led her forcefully through the door. She quickly came to her senses when she found herself being pulled along by her terrified sister.
They stopped outside the Professor’s room, and Bubbles urged her, “Quickly! Get inside!” She had no choice as she was shoved in, and her sister ran over to the Professor’s bed. With amazing agility, she jumped up onto the mattress and said, “Professor! Wake up! Please, wake up!”
“Bubbles?” he asked sleepily as his eyes opened. “What’s wrong? Are you OK?”
“Yeah, Bubbles, what’s going on?” Blossom asked, slightly irritated with Bubbles for doing this. “Why’d you have to pull me out of bed?”
“Buttercup’s snapped!” Bubbles babbled, a quiver all too present in her voice. “She’s gone crazy! I saw her downstairs – she’s got an axe, and she’s going to kill us!”
“Calm down, honey!” the Professor said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “Are you sure? Maybe you were just dreaming – ”
“No!” she interrupted him. “I wasn’t dreaming! I was wide awake, and I could see her holding this hatchet! She’s gonna – ” But she too was cut off by the sound of a stair creaking under someone’s weight. They all fell silent as it was followed by another, and then another.
My God, Blossom thought, maybe she’s right…
“What are we gonna do?” Bubbles whimpered softly so as not to be heard. “What do we do?”
“Don’t worry, Bubbles,” the Professor said, evidently as scared as she was. He looked expectantly around the room, searching for any place the girls could hide, but he couldn’t see anything in the darkness. Perfect. “Quick!” he instructed them. “Hide in the corner! She won’t see you there!”
“What about you?” Blossom asked, “I’m sure you can fit in, too – ”
“I’ll be fine, honey,” he replied, eager to get them concealed from view. “Just go. Hurry!”
“No,” Bubbles protested, “we can’t just leave you here – ”
“I’ll be fine,” he repeated himself. “Go! As soon as she corners me, you sneak out the door and call someone. OK?”
Both of them nodded, and reluctantly, they retreated to the darkest, most impenetrable corner of the room and sat down upon the floor. Then they waited – they waited for Buttercup to arrive.
Meanwhile, as her sisters hid, Buttercup advanced up the stairs towards them, her mind focused on what she was going to do. She would find the girls, and they would put up a fight, but she would kill them, the Professor as well. However, when she neared the top of the staircase, she heard the Professor mutter to them, despite its faintness, “…you sneak out the door and call someone. OK?”
She smiled coldly. With the stealth and power of a ninja warrior, she took a colossal leap backwards down the stairs, clearing them all in one bound and landing on the carpet at the bottom. Then she swiftly ran through the kitchen, her footsteps still making little to no sound at all, opened the window and clambered through it, still holding the axe under one arm. The wind outside was chilly, but she didn’t feel a thing. Scouring the front garden intently, she smirked when she found what she was looking for – a telephone wire, lain across the grass. With one swipe, she sliced it cleanly in two, but then she remembered something. She turned around and spied the cable that led to the ‘phone in their room. The axe head made a soft thump as it embedded itself in the ground, and she withdrew it to reveal another bisected wire. Silently, she jumped back in through the window, sealed it shut and ran back to the staircase. With the same pace as before, she carefully set her foot upon each step one at a time, hearing them groan under the strain. After a while, she reached the landing and left the last step to spring upwards again.
She felt calm and collected as she went into their room, but she found no trace of them. Undeterred, she exited it again and prowled the corridor that led around the corner and to the Professor’s room. Her eyes darted from side to side as she sought them out, but she arrived at his bedroom doorway with nothing to show for her efforts.
Behind the door, the Professor sat on the end of his bed, expecting his daughter to come bursting through the entrance any minute now. He held his breath as the blade of an axe slowly crept into view like a shadow, and Buttercup followed suit. As she came into the room, looking up at him with unnerving eyes, he stood up and asked, “Buttercup? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Buttercup replied, her icy tone freezing him on the spot. His eyes were still transfixed on the menacing hatchet she held protectively in her hands, the tip a smooth, clean curve. She took another step forward, watching him intently like a hawk, and said, “I want to know where the girls are.”
“Why?” he asked, though he already knew what the answer would be.
She laughed, and replied, “Come on, Professor. I know you know the answer.” Her smile faded. “Now tell me where they are.”
In the corner, Blossom nudged Bubbles gently and nodded towards the open door. Surreptitiously, she started to crawl on her hands and knees in the direction of the door, and could only presume that her sister was following her. But Bubbles was so frightened of what she was seeing that she couldn’t move. She could only stay and watch helplessly as Buttercup took another step forward.
The Professor broke out in a cold sweat as he saw the other two slink out of the room, furtive shadows in front of the dim light, and he answered, “No. I’m not telling you.”
“I’m asking you nicely,” Buttercup said. “Will you tell me where they are?”
“No – ” he began, but he suddenly felt the air knocked out of him as Buttercup’s arm lunged forward and grabbed him around his throat. He uttered a strangled cry as he felt her hand dig into his neck.
“Last chance,” Buttercup said. “Tell me. Now.”
As his daughter’s grip began to close around his windpipe, he got an idea. If he could somehow trick Buttercup into believing he was dead, she would let him go and search for the girls herself. Then he could help them. It was risky, but also feasible. To add to his charade, he started thrashing around, trying to get her to relinquish him, even though it was extremely dangerous.
Buttercup’s arm trembled with the exertion as she clutched the Professor’s throat tightly. He was weakening, she could tell. Then, he croaked back, his voice hoarse with his lack of oxygen, “No…I’m not…telling…” and with that, he sighed and his eyes rolled back in his skull, then his eyelids closed. He lay limply in her hand, and she allowed his lifeless body to drop to the floor, his head flopping onto the carpet.
“The hunt is on,” she announced through gritted teeth as she turned around and walked slowly out of the room.
In his feigned comatose state, the Professor listened carefully for a long while until he was certain she had gone. As a last footstep echoed through the floor before everything became quiet again, he thought to himself, OK, now all I gotta do is call the police. With that, he tried to open his eyes, but he couldn’t. Something was clamping them shut, and try as he might, he couldn’t open them again. He attempted to move his arms and legs, but they too were frozen in place. Trapped inside his paralysis, he thought, What the hell’s going on? – and then a voice answered his question, the same one he’d heard that night that it had attacked him inside the lab.
Don’t even think about it. You’re not getting near them.
And why not?, he asked indignantly.
Because I can’t let you do that. You’re going to stay right here while your girls whither and perish.
No, he thought, no…oh, God, no! Adrift in a dark ocean of black, he cried out telepathically to the girls as the voice laughed at him, mocked him as he lay motionlessly on the floor. Girls!, he yelled, Run! Hide yourselves…I’m so sorry…
Blossom crept quietly away from the door, hearing the soft squeaks from behind as Bubbles followed her. Walking through the dark, obscured hallways was like trekking through the jungle, every step laced with potential danger. Barely making a sound, she tiptoed down the hallway, around the corner and towards the stairs. “Bubbles?” she asked, “You still here?”
“Yeah,” Bubbles replied from behind her. She didn’t turn to look around, but her sister’s terrified voice was enough to convince her that she was there.
“OK,” she whispered, “come on.” Slowly, trying not to make any noise that would reveal their location, both of them edged down the stairs one at a time. Blossom had her target in her sights – the kitchen phone. From there, she could call someone who might come and help them. Her heart beating like a jackhammer in her chest, she stepped off the final step onto the carpet below and looked into the kitchen. The tiles gleamed vaguely as the moonlight reflected off them. Gesturing to Bubbles to follow her, she moved forward towards the kitchen phone that rested on its catch on the wall. Their last hope of salvation. Trembling slightly, she closed her hand around it and put it to her ear. All she could hear was a low, mechanical hum, and she punched ‘911’ into the keypad. But nothing happened. There were no familiar blips as she pressed each key in turn…just that intimidating buzz that seemed to play forever. She felt the fear begin to well up again as she replaced the receiver, hearing it click back into place. “Quick!” she whispered to Bubbles, “Upstairs!” With that, she turned and bolted back up the staircase, feeling her stomach tighten as she went. She sensed the landing at the summit just inch further away from her every time she went near it, as though she were running up an escalator.
“What’s happening?” Bubbles asked as she ran behind her, “What’s going on, Blossom?”
Blossom didn’t answer her as she reached the landing, but instead swerved to the left and ran into their bedroom. Panting, she lifted the receiver from the main body of the hotline phone and tried desperately to call the Mayor, but all she heard was the same, monotonous droning as she had done before. She gritted her teeth and, snarling with frustration, slammed the receiver back down on its catch. All of a sudden, she realised the terrible ramifications of what she’d done, and looked instinctively over her shoulder at the doorway to see if Buttercup was standing in it, but she wasn’t.
With her head still turned towards the door, Bubbles asked her, “Oh, my God, what do we do now?”
“We gotta try and escape,” Blossom instructed. “Now. Out through the kitchen window.” She heard her sister begin to sob and run after her as she persevered towards the open door. It would be all right, she knew that everything would be all right –
But as she ran out of the door, someone tackled her from the side, knocking her violently to the ground. As she looked up to see who it was, the anger slowly faded and changed into terror when she saw Buttercup standing over her, an axe clutched firmly in her hands. “Bubbles!” she cried, “Run! Get out of here!” She heard no response, not even a dash for the stairs.
“You must be seeing things,” Buttercup replied malevolently. “I don’t see her anywhere.”
Blossom looked around her despairingly, trying to relocate her sister, but she had gone. “What did you to her?” she demanded of Buttercup, “Where is she – ”
She’s back in the Professor’s room, a voice told her, cowering in the corner like a little baby. She knew that voice – it was Him’s voice. To think that I actually tricked you into believing she was behind you all this time! He laughed derisively, treating her impending doom as a practical joke. But now she’s all alone, with no-one to help her. She won’t last a minute. That ominous last sentence compelled Blossom to surge up from the floor to come to Bubbles’ aid, but Buttercup obstructed her. She tried to force her way past, but her sister held like a brick wall and she couldn’t break through. Eventually, Buttercup pushed her back and she unexpectedly fell and hit the floor. She gazed upwards as she raised the axe threateningly above her head, ready to bring it down in one swoop.
There was a quick but deadly whistle as the blade tore through the air, but she rolled out of the way just in time to hear the axe hit the carpet with a dull thud. Breathing in and out heavily, she looked up at her sister and saw her remove the axe-head from the floor and wield it menacingly in her hands. She charged at her, trying to disarm her of the hatchet, but Buttercup swiped it defensively in front of her like a sword. At last, she saw an opportunity and grabbed the wooden handle with both hands, holding on determinedly as her sister tried to wrench it arrhythmically from her grasp.
Sensing that struggle was useless, Buttercup resorted to fighting dirty and kicked Blossom in the stomach. Blossom cried out in surprise and pain as an iron weight struck her stomach, and she stumbled backwards. Buttercup retained control of the axe and looked at her sister with a savage glare. Nothing would prevent her from accomplishing what she had been destined to do. Her shoulders heaving with anger, she approached Blossom, who had managed to stand back up despite shivering uncontrollably.
Blossom saw Buttercup’s mouth split into a twisted snarl as she neared her, but she remained defiant. “You’re not real!” she denounced her as she took another step forward. “You’re not here, you’re not my sister – you’re just a manifestation of my fears and you’re gonna go away!”
“You think I don’t exist?” Buttercup asked her, chuckling in disbelief. “You think that this axe” – she pointed to it – “is so fake that it could easily cut you into pieces?” Blossom’s expression didn’t change, and she felt that some concrete evidence was necessary. “Then how does this feel?” Giving her sister little time to react, she swung the axe again.
Blossom yelled as the blunt end of the axe smashed into her ribs, and she was hurled to the floor. Sobbing with pain and anger and fear, she tried to raise herself up again, but was forced to roll out of the way again as the axe was driven into the floor in front of her. Gripping her chest tightly, awash with pain, she tried frantically to avoid the blows, but her sister was getting closer with every attempt, perfecting her aim until she was dead. After another near miss, she stood up weakly, her legs feeling like they were made of rubber, but Buttercup floored her with another vicious kick to her abdomen. Now gasping for breath in long, harsh breaths, she sat up to see her demented sister standing right beside her, bringing the axe back behind her head like a baseball bat. She tried to raise her hands to protect herself, but she was too late…and Buttercup swung. There was a tremendous crack as the blunt end of the axe smashed into her skull like a croquet mallet, and she felt shuddering waves of pain diffuse throughout her body as she cried out in agony and lurched to the side. As she felt her head hit the floor, triggering another jolt of pain, she looked back up at her sister, who was grimacing triumphantly at her. The axe blade was no longer clean and gleaming, but was now blemished with dark streaks that oozed down the steel. Rapidly losing consciousness, her eyes began to fill with tears and she felt her head gingerly, groaning as her hand sent more impulses screeching through her nervous system. She took her hand away to find a damp, sticky patch of blood that started to coagulate on her skin. “No…please…” she uttered, “…oh, God…” Then, with a final, haunting sigh, everything went black.
Trembling alone in the dark, Bubbles was too terrified to even scream as she saw the Professor’s corpse stare horrifically up at the ceiling, slumped over limply on his side. She had watched him kick and thrash demonically as Blossom sneaked out – she had watched him die. She expected the body to start putrefying and rotting at any moment, but nothing happened – he just lay still, his eyes glazed over. I’ve got to get out of here, she affirmed herself, right now… Shakily, imagining that something would suddenly leap out from the shadows and attack her, she got to her feet and crept towards the door, pressing herself back against the wall in case Buttercup came in again. No such thing happened, and she bravely set foot out of the door, checking to see if her sister was not simply hiding to the side ready to ambush her, but suddenly –
“Hello, Bubbles,” a frigid, venomous voice said from behind her, and she whirled around hurriedly to see Buttercup standing in the corridor in front of her, still wielding the axe from earlier. Blood trickled down the blade and off the edge, making minute blotches on the floor. Refusing to blink, she started to back away against the wall as her possessed sister came slowly towards her, step by step. Buttercup clutched the axe like a mystic sceptre that was feeding her with power and dark energy, and she stared up at her with steely, murderous eyes. Bubbles was so tense that she could she hear her sister’s breath whistling in and out through her bared teeth, and her fists clenched themselves.
Buttercup saw her sister’s petrified, helpless face, and said to her in mock sympathy, “Why are you so frightened, Bubbles? I’m not gonna hurt you.”
She took another step forward, and the soft sound of her feet touching the carpet reverberated maddeningly through Bubbles’ mind. Trying desperately to formulate a plan, she backed away further, cold sweat beginning to form on her hands.
“I’m not gonna hurt you, Bubbles,” Buttercup said menacingly as she came forward another pace, watching her victim gasp for breath in front of her. Her grip on the staff tightened, and she uttered, “I’m just gonna bash your brains in.”
“What?” Bubbles whimpered faintly, a tearful quiver in her voice. A tear rolled silently down her cheek.
“You heard me,” Buttercup responded, and she raised the axe above her head. “I’m gonna bash your brains in.” She gritted her teeth. “I’m gonna bash ‘em right the hell in!” Suddenly, with a roar of pure hatred, she swung the axe straight at her. Bubbles screamed and jumped to the right, just in time to hear the axe-head slam into the wall like a sledgehammer, releasing a small cloud of dust from the wallpaper. The ground shook slightly underneath her feet. As Buttercup fought to retrieve the axe from the wall, she charged for the stairs, willingly knocking her sister aside.
Buttercup exclaimed as she was abruptly pushed to the floor, and turned around to see Bubbles running away towards the staircase. She lunged forward to grab her by the ankle, but she was too quick for her and evaded her grasp. Cursing, she got up, grabbed the handle and wrenched the axe from the wall. Tiny specks of plaster dust drifted lazily to the floor, dislodged by the blade. She was irritated that Bubbles had got away, but at the same time, she felt no worry. “Run, Bubbles,” she suggested sarcastically, “run, run as fast as you can. Because I’m gonna find you, anyway.”
Air brought stinging, torturous pain to Bubbles’ lungs as she tore down the hallway, wishing for nothing but to get as far away from Buttercup as possible. All was dark except the window at the end of the hallway, and the faint light that came through it created an indistinct path through the gloom, and she could just see the staircase. You’re almost there, she told herself, just another few feet – All of a sudden, her leg hit an obstruction in the middle of the floor, tripping her up, and she moaned in agony as she crashed to the floor, the full force of her body concentrated on her injured shoulder. The pangs were now so crippling that she was on the verge of crying, but she looked at whatever she had tripped over. Still partly obscured by the light, she reached forward with her free arm to grab it, and she hauled it towards her. Its feel seemed strangely familiar to her, for she swore she could feel her hand touching human hair, and she pulled it upwards. The moonlight through the window shone on it, and she gasped when she saw Blossom’s pallid, lifeless face stare back at her, almost angelic, with her eyes closed. “No,” she sobbed quietly, clutching her sister’s body close to hers, “Blossom…no…” Her throat tightened with grief and disgust when she saw the snake of blood that had dried on the side of Blossom’s face, and she hugged her sister again, just in case she hugged back –
Get out, a voice suddenly instructed her. It sounded like Buttercup’s, but it wasn’t the psychopath who was stalking her – it was the innocent girl it had replaced, her voice full of sincerity, and a desire to get her out of there. She didn’t respond, and waited for it to sound again. But as she did, she heard the murderous golem come near her, the noise of creaking floorboards echoing around the corner. Quickly!, the voice told her, Run away and hide! Now!
Bubbles didn’t need telling twice. Considerately, she propped her sister’s body up against the wall and then hurtled down the stairs.
At that moment, Buttercup came around the corner, and noticed Blossom slumped up against the wall. She was exactly the same as she’d left her – except that she’d been moved. Bubbles, she thought, and broke into a slow run.
Hearing her attacker plodding along upstairs as she reached the bottom, Bubbles risked a glance back up towards the landing and saw Buttercup standing at the top of the stairs. The absence of sufficient light displayed her as an ominous, black shadow, the axe piercing it sideways, which was somehow even more terrifying, as if it itself were standing at the top. Buttercup set foot on the first step downwards, which triggered her into running away. She rounded the corner and charged towards the Professor’s laboratory, but first, she stopped in front of the coat cupboard, the door still hanging serenely on its hinges. To try and trick her, she grabbed it and slammed it shut, creating a tremendous boom as it was hurled back into its frame. Hoping that it had worked, she quickly made towards the lab, grabbing the key to the lab from off the table as she ran and knowing that she didn’t have much time to manoeuvre. The creaking on the stairs stopped as she stepped hurriedly into the lab, shutting the door behind her almost silently. Once the catch was safely in position, she inserted the key into the keyhole and twisted it, hearing a click as the door locked. Then she tiptoed down the stairs, found a dark corner of the room, sat down and wept quietly, muffling her sobs by burying her head between her knees.
Buttercup crept slowly past the kitchen, her arms twitching with anticipation. Soon, the girl would be hers…well, his. She was only carrying out his bidding. Sure, Bubbles had run off somewhere, but she would find her. She could’ve escaped, but Bubbles’ mind didn’t work that way, and Buttercup was surprised that she’d even managed to make it this far. Well, it won’t be much longer, she thought to herself as she prowled along the corridor. She had heard a door slam downstairs, and she knew now where her sister was. As she rounded the corner, not making the slightest bit of noise, her hand reached out for the door handle. Having grabbed it, she waited for a few seconds then abruptly turned it and flung the door open, ready to hear Bubbles scream with terror and beg for mercy as she drove the blade into her head –
But she wasn’t there. She examined the closet dumbly for a minute, but there were no signs of life within it.
It’s a trick, you fool!, he told her suddenly, and she yelled succinctly as a crushing vice began to tighten around her skull. The axe dropped to the floor. Find her!, he ordered, and a tear fell from her eye with the awful agony.
“Yes, yes,” she pleaded despairingly, “I’ll find her, I promise, now let me go…please let me go…” The pressure vanished as soon as it had appeared, and she retrieved the hatchet from the carpet. She was going to pay. That little rat was going to pay for what he’d done to her – it was Bubbles’ fault, not hers. She wiped her eye, gritted her teeth and began to creep forwards again. “Come out here, you mangy, little mutt,” she hissed with anger. “I’m gonna make you take your medicine…gonna make you take every last drop…”
Sitting alone in the dark, Bubbles was beginning to lose hope. At first, she thought that they would all be able to contain and inhibit their fears, but now it was much more unlikely. She had seen the Professor capitulate and perish in front of her; she had come across Blossom’s corpse in the hall; Buttercup had inhumanely tried to kill her, and now she was pursuing her relentlessly like a hunter. Her shoulder was ablaze with pain, and her heart jumped at the slightest sound. She listened intently. Apart from her soft, desolate moans, everything was silent. Her sister’s footsteps could no longer be heard. Maybe she’s gone, Bubbles thought, her desperation lulling her into a spurious sense of security, or changed back. Maybe it’s over –
But then, she hurriedly stifled a scream as she heard the doorknob turn with an audible click, and then someone push against it. However, they were obstructed by the lock that bolted the door shut, and they tried to force it open a few more times. When that failed, they pounded furiously it, as if attempting to tear it from its hinges. The loud bangs echoed inside her head, and she started to tremble again. Suddenly, Buttercup yelled through the door, “Bubbles! Come up here and unlock this door!” As she barked her order at her, the door shook as tried to force her way in, but it held fast. “Bubbles!” she shouted again, “I know you’re in here! Open this door! Now!” There were more violent shudders from the door, by now resonating dangerously.
“Go away,” Bubbles whispered to herself as if in prayer, “please, just go away…” The thunderous beat ceased, and all was quiet again. Bubbles dared to take her hands away from her head, to break out of her terror and listen carefully. Waiting for anything to sound again, she waited on baited breath for a couple of minutes, but eventually came to the conclusion that Buttercup had gone. Now was her chance to escape, and she was ready to bolt through the door to freedom…but something wasn’t right. She felt that something was still there, something that made her unwilling to break away from her isolation. Little by little, it was consolidating its grip on her, and her fear began to boil up inside her again. She broke out in a cold sweat, and sensed her surroundings become much more hostile and unwelcoming. Yet there was nothing there, nothing at all that she could see…
Which made it even worse when someone began talking to her.
“It’s over, Bubbles,” they said, “don’t try to resist.” Her hands now clammy with sweat, her eyes darted around the room, frantically trying to seek out the voice’s ghostly owner.
At that moment, the power came back on, and the halogen lights in the ceiling began to glow warmly. She screamed.
Buttercup stood at the top of the stairs, the axe laid comfortably on her folded arms. She grinned malevolently at her cowering sister and began to walk slowly towards her, making quiet, tapping noises as her feet hit the metal grating. As she set foot on the freezing cold tiles at the bottom, she watched Bubbles stare inanimately back at the reprobate she had become, paralysed with fear.
Bubbles watched catatonically as her sister approached her, making the metal stairs clink with every step. She was terrified by the murderous spark that had appeared in her sister’s eyes, and her teeth were bared in a sadistic grimace. “Give up, Bubbles,” she recommended. “There’s no place to run…no place to hide…” She raised the axe above her head, powerless to control the revenge that Him was wreaking on them. Bubbles’ vision blurred as tears welled up in her eyes, and she pushed back against the wall, hoping unrealistically to fall backwards into it and end up outside the house. Her sister approached still further, swishing the axe bloodthirstily through the air.
“Please, Buttercup,” she begged, “don’t do this…fight it…please…”
Suddenly, wispy clouds of red gas began to seep out of Buttercup’s head, slithering down towards the floor like ethereal snakes, although her manic expression remained unchanged. Bubbles simply watched helplessly as they solidified and began to create a mould within themselves. She saw them fuse together to make clawed hands like a scorpion’s, long legs with pointed feet and the rest of its body until the clouds dissipated into the air, leaving behind a form…the form of Him.
“There’s no point in trying to reason with her,” Him said nonchalantly. His voice seemed have an eerie, reverberatory feel about it, echoing through her mind like in a tunnel. “She’s under my control now, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” He put his arm amicably around Buttercup’s shoulder. Simply sitting still, Bubbles tried not to break down, but it was hard when her eyes were transfixed upon her sister’s barbaric expression. “So long, Bubbles,” Him continued derisively. “I think that the angels need some new guardians.” With that, he laughed mockingly at her, revelling in her panic and dread, and then evaporated.
All was lost. Bubbles felt a tear run down her face as Buttercup came near her and brought the axe back behind her head, its trajectory aimed right between her eyes. Oh, my God, she thought tearfully, I’m gonna die…my own sister’s gonna kill me…why?…
Snap out of it!
As a message flashed through her head, Buttercup swung the axe downward, but she jumped out of the way just in time to hear a crack emanate from the corner behind her. She turned to look back at Buttercup as she wrenched the axe from the wall and charged at her again.
If you think like that, you’ll never have any chance of finding a way out of this! Fight back! He won’t expect retaliation!
And then, something that Mr. McKenzie had said played back in her memory, reminding her of something very important : If you take that fear away, so he can’t get at it, then he ain’t got nothin’ to work with. You gotta face up to your fears, and he’ll go away…
Feeling a new sense of fervour, Bubbles leapt out of the axe’s path, hearing another crunch as the blade sliced into the wallpaper. “Stand still, you little mutt!” Buttercup screeched at her in resentment. “Come back here and take your stinkin’ medicine!” Quickly, she lunged forward at her and swung quickly, no longer considering accuracy.
Bubbles arched backwards instinctively as the blade whistled through the air above her, and she saw it suddenly whip into view as it smashed into the wall. Buttercup withdrew the axe forcefully, and Bubbles straightened up, watching carefully as she drew it back over her head like she was chopping lumber. But she was ready. This time, she was ready. With a roar of fury, Buttercup veered the hatchet back towards her, but Bubbles’ arm suddenly sprung in its direction, and her free hand grabbed the axe around the handle, the blade resting barely millimetres from her hair. Her sister tried angrily to tear it away from her, to get her to relinquish her grip on it, but her outstretched arm held fast, not even buckling under the strain as though it was made of steel.
“Let go, damn it!” Buttercup shouted at her, still trying to jerk it from her grasp, but it didn’t work. “Give it to me!”
“Why should I?” Bubbles answered confidently. “You don’t care. You don’t even exist.”
“You’re stupider than I thought!” her sister yelled insultingly. “I’m your sister! How much more real do you want it?”
“You’re not my sister,” she replied. “You’re a dream, a nightmare. Buttercup would never try and do this to us. Never.” She saw Buttercup cringe and recoil as she exorcised her, and noticed her sister’s grip on the handle begin to loosen. The psychopath made grotesque, gargling noises like she was being strangled and at last, her hand slipped away from the wooden handle. She fell back, dishevelled and in agony as she felt the evil removed from her. Bubbles took a step towards her, and viewed her coolly as she groaned in pain. “I’m not afraid of you any more,” she said, as if to seal its fate. “I know what you are now. You don’t scare me.”
Buttercup screamed painfully at the ceiling, consumed with the torture as the madness was slowly extracted from her system. Slowly, like beforehand, clouds started to diffuse out through her skull, except that this time, they were black. They floated up into the air and began to meld into another form, one that swirled ominously like a tempestuous ocean. Bubbles watched in amazement as the mania was drawn back to the dark domains it had come from, sucked into the middle of the vortex. As the last one crawled sluggishly out and up into the air, Bubbles ran forward to support her sister as she toppled perilously where she stood, almost falling to the ground. Both of them watched as, from within the vortex, glowing, red eyes and a mouth appeared like a hideous mask.
It spoke to them. “You’ve not seen the last of me!” Him cried as he lost control. “I will come back and take my vengeance upon you all!” They looked on silently as it shrank back into the form of a black bird, which fluttered around in turmoil and then vanished into thin air.
Bubbles breathed out wearily. It was over. For all their suffering, it was finally over. The room returned to its former state, bright and shining with the light off the tiles.
“Bub…Bubbles?” Buttercup asked, overcome with tiredness. “What’s going…” And then her eyes closed and she slumped forward onto her sister’s shoulder. Bubbles’ heart almost stopped, but restarted when she heard soft snoring emanating from her shattered sister. She felt tired, but she couldn’t rest easy yet – there was still the matter of Blossom and the Professor to deal with. With ease, she hoisted Buttercup over her shoulder, walked up the stairs and turned the key, still in its place in the lock. It clicked, and she opened the door. The corridor it led to was still dark and impenetrable, but it no longer seemed as scary to her as it had previously done. She wandered back along the corridor, back up the stairs, past Blossom’s body and into their bedroom, where she laid Buttercup down on their bed and pulled the covers over her. Meanwhile, her sister slumbered on, unaware of what was happening.
With a slight feeling of apprehension, Bubbles went back out into the corridor and found Blossom, still sat up against the wall as she’d left her. She took her by the hand, so cold to the touch, and waited for something to happen. “Blossom?” she whispered hopefully, “Can you hear me?”
A miracle occurred. Slowly, Blossom’s eyes reopened, squinting in the bright light, and she replied, “Huh? Bubbles? What’s going on? Where’s…”
“She’s fine,” Bubbles said, rubbing her sister’s arm to try and resuscitate her further. “It’s gone. Him’s gone.”
“Really?” Blossom asked in slight disbelief. Her sister smiled back and nodded happily. “Thank God,” she muttered. “Is the Professor OK?”
She hadn’t checked yet. “Wait here,” she instructed, although her sister couldn’t do much else. “I’ll be right back.” As she ran back towards the Professor’s bedroom, she muttered to herself, “Oh, my God, is he all right? Is he OK?…” She stopped abruptly in his bedroom doorway, and laughed joyfully when she saw him sitting up against the wall and rubbing his head. He was groaning, but it sounded more like a dazed groan than a painful one.
The Professor looked up as someone blocked out the light from the corridor, and he asked, “Bubbles?” as he recognised who it was. He held out his arms and she rushed into them, hugging him tightly. “Are you OK, honey?”
“Yeah,” she replied cheerfully, “never better.”
“Where’s Buttercup?” he inquired.
“It’s OK,” she said. “She’s not possessed any more. Him went away. For good.” As he stroked her hair, she asked, “What happened to you? I thought you were dead.”
“You stayed behind?” he said, puzzled by what she’d said. “But I saw you and Blossom go out through the door – ” Him’s trickery. He realised that it had deceived him. He explained it to her. “Well, I faked my death, to make Buttercup leave me alone so I could try and help you two, but after she dropped me on the ground, I couldn’t get up again. It was like…he was preventing me from helping you.” He looked at her again, full of admiration for his daughter. “But I would’ve done it. I would’ve done anything to help you girls. You know that, don’t you?”
“Of course,” she replied.
He smiled. “First thing tomorrow, I’m taking you girls down to the hospital and get some treatment.” He kissed her. “Better get off to bed, hadn’t you?”
“Yeah,” Bubbles said, only now beginning to feel the tiredness that was overwhelming her brain. He got up from the bed to come and tuck them in, but she said, “No, it’s OK, Professor. You go to sleep, I’ll settle myself down.”
“OK, honey,” the Professor responded, indescribably glad that this ordeal was now behind them. “Would you still like the landing light on?”
“No, thanks,” she replied. “I’ll turn it off when I go to bed.”
He hugged her tightly. “Goodnight, Bubbles.”
“Goodnight, Professor.” She went out of the room as he got back into bed and lay down on the mattress.
“Is he OK?” Blossom asked as she came back, concerned at the time she had taken.
“He’s fine,” Bubbles replied, helping her to her feet and supporting her as she staggered wearily back into their room. “We’re all OK.” She assisted Blossom up onto the bed and allowed her to crawl back under the covers, then got in herself. “Goodnight,” she murmured as she got in. Her sister didn’t reply – she had already fallen asleep. As she felt her eyes close unstoppably, she stared up at the ceiling, knowing that her life would never be the same again. I’ll be OK, she told herself, no more living in fear…no more torment…
Her eyes closed silently, and she went to sleep.
*
The day after next, the girls were walking to school. The Sun seemed to shine brighter than it had ever done before, giving the pavements a pleasant, urbanesque kind of feel.
Each bore the marks of their injuries. Bubbles’ arm now hang in a full plaster cast, ready to be autographed by everyone in their class. Blossom and Buttercup had no bandages, although both had deep scars sustained on the night the werewolf had attacked them. Blossom also had a large bruise on her forehead, having claimed to the doctors that she had taken a knock while fighting. They looked repulsive – but they would heal. There was a saying that Blossom had heard before, that time healed all wounds.
Bubbles walked calmly along the boulevard, striding forth in a new, resilient state of mind. Suddenly, she stopped when she felt something creep up her unbandaged arm, multiple legs treading across her skin.
“Bubbles!” Buttercup called out, “There’s a spider on your arm!”
She glanced at her arm, and saw it – a hideous, alien creature with a spherical thorax and eight legs, ambling leisurely up her arm. She hated spiders. Come to think of it, she hated all insects. Her sisters expected her to scream and flail her arm about wildly, trying to dislodge the arachnid before it sunk fangs soaked with venom into her flesh…
But she didn’t. Calmly, she squatted down, lay her arm upon the grass and allowed the spider to step off of its own free will. When it had left, and was busy trekking through the mountainous grass that had appeared around it, she got back up and looked at her sisters. They smiled at her, silently congratulating her for her conquest. She grinned back, and they started to walk off again, their school gradually coming into clearer view as they neared it. Her new life began today. Deep down inside, however, she knew that her fear would never go away, that it would always resurrect itself in some other shape or form.
But she didn’t mind. In fact, she didn’t care.
THE END