A Twisted H2O

A Crimson Halloween

Yuu Pov
The Crimson Flowers stayed on my trail as I zoomed through the water, trying to find my merfriends through the sea of glowing bodies in the town. I jump out of the water and drag myself as far as I can on the stone street before the Crimson Flowers wrap themselves around my mermaid form.

This is it. I'm going to have my powers drained.
The flowers cover my body, soaking up my mermaid magic. My body changes into its human form, and the flowers get off of me and slither somewhere else. I shakily get up, leaning on a wall to balance myself. I weakly walk on top of the flowers, following the sounds of feminine screams.

"Emme! Over here!" I scream, coming after them as I sprint with a limp.

"Yuu don't come any closer! They're doing something to everyone!" Emmeline screams from her bedroom balcony.

"If we don't do something soon, we're becoming plant chow!" Riri exclaims, pressing her hands on the railing as the flowers slither toward them.

"This is the end, guys!" Cleora wails as the flower wraps around her leg.

There has to be something I can do. Think! Think! I've got it!

"Emmeline! Freeze the flowers! I think it'll stop them temporarily!" I yell, hoping my theory works.

"What?! Are you crazy?! If I use magic, I'll get swallowed whole!" Emme screams back, stomping on a vine.

"Just trust me!" I yell, backing up.

Emme takes a deep breath and sticks her hand out. Ice covers the room giving Cleora and Riri a chance to break the ice Crimson Flowers into smithereens. My friends jump off the balcony and hug me.

"I'm so glad you're ok!" Cleora cries, hugging my body tight. "So, what do we do now?"

"It's a full moon tonight, and our powers are more powerful. We should go into the water and find Dino. She can help us. Remember how she ate a Crimson Flower earlier?" I recall thinking we might have a chance. "We have to swim fast once we transform. The flowers are attracted to the magic in the transformation."

"We should move. More flowers are coming from the city!" Cleora screams, seeing a tsunami of glowing red building to the sky slowly. "Run."

The girls run through the City of Flowers, jumping over bodies and flowers. Cleora trips over a cocooned body and gets up, but just as she does, it grabs her ankle.

"Help me!" The body screams, a singular eye bulging out in pain.

"AAHH!" Cleora screams, kicking its hand away and backing up. "I'm sorry, but I can't help you! I can't help you!"

Riri grabs Cleora and runs to Emme, dashing to the shore. I stop running and look at the graveyard as the Crimson Flowers go into the graves.

"Girls, look!" I exclaim, pointing to the graveyard.

A dead body with flowers coming out the sides of its head bursts from its grave, shrieking. The Crimson Flowers vines replace its vocal cords, veins, and bones for its decaying body.  I snap a photo and send it to Azul.

"A-" Cleora almost screams but gets stopped by Riri's hand.

The flower zombie stumbles around and walks onto the streets, sniffing out magic as more zombie brethren rise from the graves.

"Nobody makes a sound," Emmeline mouths, slowly backing away to the steps leading to the docks.

I text Azul about the zombies, telling him and the others to be careful.

We carefully tiptoe to the docks, free of Crimson Flowers, jumping in the water. We torpedo away into the farther sea as the zombie, accompanied by the Crimson Flowers, runs to the docks smelling their magic from transforming. The flowers retreat as there's no sign of magic anymore, and the zombie shuffles and moans back to the city, looking for more fuel. We swim to glowing water and find Dino reuniting with itself.

"Hi girls, I was meeting the rest of myself," Dino says, turning around as the rest of the algae attaches itself onto her makeshift, glowing merbody. "Why do ya'll look so panicked?"

"The Crimson Flowers are in the city and wrapping themselves around everyone!" Emmeline shrieks, remembering shoving her family down to the bunker room as the flowers approached their house.

"They made the dead rise! How is that possible?" Cleora shouts, her eyes wide and erratic.

"That's the thing with those pesky Crimson Flowers. Since energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it feeds off the leftover magic from the dead. But at the same time, the corpse is the flower's body which it uses to seek out more magic to fuel itself. Therefore, keeping the dead body walking as it feeds from the magic inside it," Dino explains, her teeth becoming sharper. "That's partially why hardly anyone has ever stopped a Crimson Flower invasion. They forgot about their dead, and the dead overwhelmed them."

"Please help us! Our friends are inside the city, and they need our help!" I wail, thinking of Grim and my friends fighting off zombies.

"Oh, don't worry. We've been waiting to have a feast!" Dino snarls, her nails turning into claws. "But first, I'm handing off some of myself to you girls. You'll need it if the flowers are in your way."

The glowing algae travel up our arms and put themselves in their bloodstreams.

"This feels better than any full moon I've experienced," Cleora says, staring at the moon. "Let's eat!"

We swim back to the shore, which the Crimson Flowers has made theirs.

"Here, let me help," Dino says, dragging her now Granmamare(Ponyo's mom)-sized onto the shore.

Dino's tail turns into legs, and she stands up and stomps on the flowers shaking the ground. The flowers disappear as the algae eat them up. A couple of zombies run onto the beach and immediately try to bite us.

"Emme!" Cleora screams, seeing three about to gang up on her friend.

"I've got it!" Emmeline replies, jumping into the sky. "Frozen!"

When she lands on the beach, glowing light blue ice shoots from the sand covering the whole shore. The flowers and zombies are ice statues, giving Riri, me, and Cleora a chance to break the zombie's bodies into pieces.

"Holy crap, Emmeline, that was awesome!" Riri compliments, walking to Emmeline as they make their way to the city.

"I was going to tell you guys before this evening turned into chaos, but I discovered my unique magic. I can freeze large areas. Thankfully, my mermaid cryokinesis makes things a bit easier," Emmeline explains, freezing another zombie as it tries to shoot a Crimson Flower at her.

"Oh, ew! The Crimson Flower attached itself to its jaw," Cleora squeals, looking at the frozen Crimson Flower with rotting teeth in the middle. "Let's hope they don't take over the living bodies as well."

As they walk by the exploding cloth booth, they see a couple of broken cocoons.

"Me and my big mouth," Cleora whines, looking at the glowing mummies running toward them. "Don't kill them. Dino might be able to restore their magic!"

"I just got a text from Azul. He says to meet up at the bell tower at NBC," I say, kicking a mummy in the head, knocking it out.   

I make a baseball bat out of ice and block a zombie and mummy from biting me. I push them back, using my right hand to use hydrokinesis to engulf them in Dino's algae.

The zombie and mummy shriek as the Crimson Flowers dissolve from their bodies. The mummy returns to its normal human appearance, and its chest rises and falls after a couple of moments. Glass breaks as Riri shoves a flower zombie(or Burner since we've decided to start classifying them) into a storefront window.

"Who wants to start gardening?" Riri asks, picking up an electric hedge trimmer.

"I call dibs on the machetes!" Cleora squeals, jumping up and down in excitement.

I so want a shotgun or chainsaw!

We run into the store and pick our choice of weapons, then walk back out, ready to face a Crimson Flower apocalypse.

"Who's ready to fuck some flowers up?" Riri asks, turning on her hedge trimmer.

"We are!" We exclaim, taking out our weapons, ready to bash the undead.

I turn on my chainsaw and run into the hoard of undead flower zombies.