by D. R. Mather
Beth looked at her after. “WOW, now that’s an energy boost!”
When Judy pulled away, Roland and April called out, “Lesbian alert.”
Judy let out a fake angry “ARRRR…”, then headed back.
Kevin turned and went to Alex, grabbed him and hugged him tight, “I’m sorry man, I had to do something drastic to get it out of you, and it had to be something you loved that was in danger. I’m very sorry.”
Alex hugged Kevin back, “Christ, you scared the shit out of me Kevin.”
“Yeah, I have that effect on people.” He slapped Alex’s back and pulled away. Roland considered yelling out ‘fag alert’, then changed his mind.
“OK, now, Alex has had zero practice at this, so let’s start with that.” He turned to Beth, “Seat ma’am if you will?” Beth curtsied and went back to sit. Kevin put his hand out as she passed and rubbed her back a few times as she went. The audience applauded.
Beth sat and looked across the seats, “He’s actually a very nice guy when he isn’t drinking.” Everyone laughed, even Kevin.
A few minutes later, Kevin had Alex on the side of a steel plate that stood upright on the floor and was being held by Kevin. Beth stood ten feet away, facing the guys and the steel plate.
“Okay Beth, don’t hurt my steel plate, just, you know…kiss it gently.”
“Got it, one gentle kiss coming up.” Beth released a blue bolt that had white lines mixing through it. It hit the steel plate but it didn’t burn a hole through, it melted the surface a bit though.
“Beth, back it off just a tiny bit more okay?”
“Gottcha Kevin.” And she backed it off a bit. The steel was smoldering, but no longer melting.
“Now Alex, stop her from hitting it.”
Alex stared at the blue bolt and tried to focus. After a minute he let out a huge sigh and slumped down. Beth stopped her bolt of light. Kevin looked at Alex then to the group.
“April, please?”
April came over and stopped in front of Alex.
April took Alex over to the far end of the basement, to tell him where to find it. Kevin stood to the side of the steel, Beth put her hands on her hips, and they all waited. When Alex and April finally came back, she turned just as the two of them got to Kevin.
“Remember Alex, from inside, here,” and April touched her mid-chest, then sat down.
Kevin sets Alex to the opposite side again, then said “Beth, if you might do the honors.”
She didn’t talk now; she just released a blue bolt. Kevin noticed how much more control she had every time she used it. It came across, slowly. You could walk back and forth in front of it if you were fast, and could keep ahead of it.
Kevin just had to say it, “Very nice Beth, very nice indeed.”
She managed a smile, but the bolt never wavered or slowed. It touched the steel as if someone threw a feather at it. The blue light just sat and swirled against the steel. Kevin put his other hand against the back of the plate – it was cold to the touch.
“Okay. Now, Alex, once again from the top, block the light from touching the plate.”
Alex set himself and stared at the light; he slowly raised his hand. The blue light wavered, then it was off the steel, about an inch away.
“Good, can you balloon it out?” asked Kevin.
The light backed up more, now it was a foot away.
“Beth, you gonna let him do that?”
Beth and Alex both understood what Kevin wanted: resistance from both of them. The rest of the group were just mesmerized by the display.
Beth gave a little more and the blue light went back to the plate.
“For shame Alex, letting a girl beat you.”
Alex formed a stronger barrier.
“Ah, Beth, your man is giving you shit again.”
Beth pushed more, Alex pushed more.
Three minutes later and the most astounding thing was going on at the Colburn Inn, in the basement to be exact. Alex had to step back a few feet because the bolt of light was raging now, it was hitting the barrier with tremendous force. Alex still had it a foot away from the steel plate. Blue spiders of light were spreading out, in up and down, left and right angles. It looked like a Knight’s shield. The sound was getting loud, and the resistances from both were creating a vibration in the floor. Kevin did something; he took away their focal point, the steel plate. It has nothing to do with this anymore.
He wasn’t sure how far to push them; he could cause a major problem or worse, get someone killed. He looked at the shield of light. He had seen it before: the walls in the beings’ ship was made of the same energy.
“Both of you keep it at this level, no more, no less. I want you both to slowly back it off, but keep everything centered in this exact same spot as you do.”
The light ‘spiders’ started shrinking; the invisible wall was shrinking too, at the same rate. In a few seconds, it was over. Kevin looked at Beth; she gave him a ‘thumbs’ up. He then looked at Alex.
“That was freaking neat,” said Alex, and then went over to Beth.
“Ok, one more test,” said Kevin. “Beth and April, come here.”
They both went over, as Kevin got all four plates. He lay them on the floor so that one corner of each touched the corner of the next, in a spread out flat box shape with nothing in the center.
“Girls, I need you to build me a box, just as fast as you can.” Kevin stepped out of the way.
Beth whispered something to April, who whispered something back, and then they faced the steel plates.
“Ready April?”
“Ready Beth.”
The four plates flew up to stand on their edges, forming a box, and Beth welded them together.
Kevin walked to the box, “Nice, VERY nice!”
All the edges that touched had been welded from top to bottom, with no bubbles or skips. It looked like they were fused together.
“Alex, look what they did to my plates. I need those later, fix it will you?”
Alex walked until he was just out of the ‘crash zone’, where the plates would hit the floor, then he stared into the box and thought. The steel plates shook, then seemed to bulge in the center, then split apart at the four corners and dropped flat to the floor. Kevin started to clap, and then everyone was clapping and cheering.
“I think we’ve done enough damage for one afternoon. Class dismissed.” Kevin gestured towards the stairs.
Everyone piled through the panel to the living room and started picking out seats, Cindy was bringing up the rear because it took her so long to walk up the stairs. As Roland turned into the living room, he turned back to ask Cindy if she could close the panel when she went though. Roland never asked that question. Roland spun to ask and saw Cindy, on her hands and knees, halfway to the living room.
“Shit!” He took off out of sight from everyone. Kevin was at the panel in a split second, everyone else was a bit slower. Roland was Bent over Cindy, trying to get her to either sit or lay down.
“Come on hun, can you sit up?”
“Uuuu…nnn…ooo.”
Kevin was there now, “Come on Cindy, let’s lay you down.” He lay her on the floor and spun around, “JUDY, PILLOWS.”
Judy was there with Kevin a few seconds later, helping Cindy get comfortable. Cindy couldn’t talk, she only moaned while holding her tummy.
Kevin looked at Judy, “Can you help her?”
Judy took Cindy’s hand and began to lean over her, then stopped. She had a puzzled look on her face.
“I…I…can’t help her. I can feel it when I touch her hand. She isn’t injured or sick Kevin, I can’t help.” Judy dropped her hands to her side.
“That’s okay baby, we do it the old fashioned way. Roland, ambulance, now.”
Roland was up and running. Kevin picked Cindy up like she was as light as a basket of laundry and took her to a sofa.
April came running in to the living room as Kevin lay Cindy down; she had a wet towel in her hand
.
“Here Kevin, use this.”
“Thanks April,” he wiped around Cindy’s face then put it behind her neck.
All they could do was try to relax her until the ambulance arrived. Beth was lightly rubbing her head; Judy was lightly rubbing her tummy. After some time, Kevin heard the siren;
“Alex, the door please.”
Alex ran over and put his coat on, then headed outside to wait.
Kevin leaned in close to Cindy and quietly said, “Lucky you honey, you get another ambulance ride.” He thought he saw her smile a tiny bit, but he wasn’t sure. She wasn’t responsive to their words anymore.
Once again, with Cindy and Roland leading the way, the ambulance was flying down the mountain with Kevin and the group close behind.
“I hope this doesn’t become a habit with her or she’s going to need to live a lot closer to a hospital,” said Judy.
“Judy, what did you mean you couldn’t help her?” Kevin got a very curious look on him.
“I touched her, and I felt it; like when I fixed Beth, I knew when to stop. I couldn’t find anything wrong with Cindy.”
“Could it be that going into labor isn’t something we’d call ‘wrong’ with a person?”
“No, it was more like a feeling deep inside of me, something said, ‘don’t do anything’.”
“Hum,” Kevin pondered. “Judy, think hard, did it feel like something was blocking you?”
“Well, for a brief instant I could have sworn I heard ‘Don’t you dare do anything’, but I’m not sure if it was real or my imagination.”
“I see, I think the evil is trying to get to the babies everyone. I suspected it earlier, but I had no proof. Now I think I have it.”
“Then isn’t she safer with us then in that ambulance?” asked April.
“No, I don’t think so, I think it has a hard time locking in on us, if we relocate fast, it loses us.”
“How the hell did you come up with that idea?” said Alex.
Kevin looked in his rear view mirror at Alex, “I’ve been doing this a while my friend.” He thought for a second or two more then added, “Judy, see that small cut on my arm from work?”
“Aha.”
“Fix it please.”
“You’re driving sweetheart, I’ll get us all killed.”
“No, hold my arm with your hand and fix it.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“Just humor me then, okay?”
“Well, okay.” Judy jutted her hand over Kevin’s cut. She thought about it, then saw the skin start to turn blue. She only held it a second, nothing notable. After all, it was no more than a scratch. When she took her hand away, the scratch was gone.
“But, how did I…”
Kevin looked at her, “In the hospital, Cindy had wires all over her, her arms had I.V.’s in them, she was hard to get to, and so you saw the obvious solution; take out the tube and breathe it in. Only I don’t think you really needed to do it that way, it was just that in your mind, you didn’t want to upset all those wires and tubes. So you solved it the way you saw fit. Honey, after that, it’s what you thought you had to do. Get it?”
“I do remember them all in my head; I remember thinking ‘I hope I don’t pull anything out’.”
“Right, then with me and Beth, you just figured it had worked that way, so why bother trying another way?”
“Really Kevin?”
“I’m guessing you could heal with your foot if you wanted to baby.”
Judy put her head back and thought about it. “Do any of you guys have something wrong with you?” She looked to the back.
“Why Judy, can you fix mental instability too?” asked Beth. “Because I think I’m going nuts!”
Judy stretched back to Beth and patted her hand, “Oh you’re just fine, silly. What about you Alex?” She grabbed his arm. She thought she was kidding with him, but she stopped dead still.
“Oh...oh...”
Alex looked at her weirdly, “What? What do you mean Oh ‘Oh’ Judy?”
Judy wasn’t talking though; she’d got Alex’s arm in her grip and was slowly twisting her wrist back and forth on his.
“Alex, did you know you were sterile?”
“Amm…no.”
Judy pulled her hand off of him, “Well, you aren’t anymore!” She spun back to the front with a big grin on her face. Beth and Alex looked at each other.
“I guess I should get some condoms Beth.”
“I guess maybe you should.”
Kevin murmured out, “Get some bug spray, it works too.”
Judy slapped his arm.
At the hospital, everyone was in the waiting room, waiting for some news. Once again, the rag mag became popular reading. Two hours or so later and the doctor came in to talk with them.
“Cindy is fine. She was having a lot of pain that we couldn’t seem to nail down. All the tests are fine for now though. I want to keep her here for a few days. If it happens again, we have to consider a ‘C’ section. The babies’ heart rates were very elevated for a while; we don’t want to risk anything happening. She’s close enough to her due date now that we’re confident the babies will be alright. However, the longer we can safely hold it off, the safer everything will be naturally.”
“So she’s here for a while, right?” asked Kevin.
“At least four or five days.”
Kevin looked at the group, “OK, then let’s arrange a car for Roland.”
They left Roland there, mostly because he didn’t want to leave. Kevin brought the group to the same Ford dealer that he had brought Billy and Michelle to. He picked him out a very nicely loaded Ford Fusion. April drove it to the hospital with the rest following behind. Needless to say, Roland was amazingly surprised by the gift, and gave his promises to be forever thankful.
Everyone piled back into the truck to go home. Kevin put the shifter in reverse, got half way out of the parking spot, and then slammed on the brakes, hard. Judy started to ask what it was for, but Kevin stuck his hand up.
“Stop.”
He sat still for a bit, then jammed the shifter back into reverse to complete the exit from the spot, before slamming it into first and ‘tire smoking’ his way out onto the road.
They all knew that Kevin had gotten a mission, so everyone just shut up. Judy was checking her seatbelt to make sure it was super tight, because in her words, “our asses were freaking FLYING down the road”.
Kevin took some right turns, then took some left turns, and then suddenly slowed down to below the 30 mph posted speed. They were on a residential street. He pulled over to the curb.
He turned to the back seat, “You guys stay here. Judy, they want you with me, I don’t know why.”
Judy was learning fast—she didn’t waste time asking questions, she just popped her seatbelt and jumped out of the truck.
She and Kevin met at the front of the truck; everyone in the back seat was leaning forward, watching them. Kevin said something to Judy that they couldn’t hear. As he said it, he pointed to an unassuming little house a few feet up from where they were, but across the street.
They both headed that way and half way across the street, they both vanished.
“That’s always going to fascinate me,” Alex said.
Kevin and Judy went ‘through’ the closed door of the home. They didn’t see anything.
Kevin leaned over and whispered, “They’re in the bedroom out back, on the right.”
“What do you need me to do hun?”
“One has a gun, the other doesn’t. These guys are real filth, they haven’t killed before, but they’ve raped at least twenty women between the both of them. We want both of them dispatched.”
“You want me to take the gun from the guy?”
“No baby, I think the ‘voice’ wants you to show me something else you can do.”
“I can’t do anything else honey.”
“The voice assures me you can, and you’ll know when yo
u need to know.”
“Nice, that’s a lot to work with.”
“I’ll take the one with the gun; I guess you do what you think you have to do. Besides, we don’t want blood and brains all over Mrs. Olsen’s carpets, bed and walls, do we?”
“Aha, let’s get it over with Kevin, I’m getting hungry.”
They moved to the bedroom and they could smell the guys before they even got there, they stank something awful. Judy was wondering if they knew what deodorant even was. They moved in fast. Kevin appeared, then Judy. Kevin was on the guy with the gun in no time, one hand taking the gun, the other lifting the guy in the air by his neck.
“You piece of shit, say goodnight.”
Judy was behind the guy that was just about to ‘do’ Mrs. Olsen; she was naked in her bed and crying. The guy stood up straight at the sudden sight of Kevin and Judy knew, she didn’t know how, but she knew. She grabbed the pig’s arm and held it. The guy froze instantly. He was, well, he was shrinking. That was to say, his cheeks and throat were closing in on themselves and becoming hollow, sucked in. His skin was turning grey in front of Kevin as he watched. Judy didn’t seem to be straining at all; she could just as easily have been holding the guy’s arm to walk across a prom room. The guy didn’t look so well anymore; his body began to vibrate, then Judy could no longer hold his weight, so she stepped back and he collapsed to the floor, dead.
Kevin looked at her, “See honey, coming or going, you can do both.”
Judy smiled at him for a brief second, then turned to help Mrs. Olsen. Kevin picked up the other dead body and took out the trash. He headed out to Beth, invisible to everyone, still carrying the two bodies. If Kevin couldn’t be seen, nothing that touched him could be seen.
“Beth, come out please?”
She came out of the truck.
Kevin looked up and down the street, “I know you can’t see me so let me walk to you.” He touched her and she could see him, and the two dead men.
“That explains the stench.”
“Beth, we can’t do this while we’re in this state, so I’m going to toss them into the center of the road. I want you to fry them to ash, just as fast as you’re able to, okay?”