The Fifth Element

Part 2 Chapter 30

"What are you talking about? "she asked, her blue eyes widening at my words.  Her slightly damp medium length mousy brown hair hung in tangles around her face.

            I sat up and began ripping the vines away from my body, using the dim orange light to see in the otherwise dimly lit room, until they were all gone. I put my hand down on the ground to push myself up and felt something wet.  Startled, I brought my red stained fingers to my eyes.  Remembering who the blood must belong to, I swallowed and traced the fine line of crimson that snaked along the black, golden floors to a figure lying motionless on the ground. And that figure didn't have a head. Where it's head should have been was nothing but chunks of brain matter and bits of skull fragment.

         If I had been the me before living in purgatory for 400 years, I would have probably projectile vomited everywhere. Some of the spirits I talked to there included images of their death, and most hadn't died a nice peaceful death.

            "Is that headless body...Greta!?" I asked, the words sounding shocking, yet morbidly satisfying, as I registered the body wore a gray, shapeless dress.

            "Yeah about that..." Santana said and my eyes turned away from the gory sight.  "Things got a little out of hand after I broke free from her control. She tried to make me brain dead so well I made it so she didn't have a brain ."

            "Santana where is my mom?"

            "The last time I saw her, she was at the table Greta had set up that weird feast at. After I broke free from Greta, I ran here.

            "What about Hampton, how did you get away from him? Wasn't he in the room too," I asked and I had no sooner spoken those words than the whole room shook violently and lost my balance for a moment and almost fell directly onto Greta's headless corpse.  I caught myself last second, although I couldn't stop myself from stepping on some brain which squished under the heel of my shoe.

            "That red-headed girl with the half-burned off face came back, and she came back angry and with Vivian and Arnold. They began fighting and I used the chaos to slip away and come her. It sounds like after the fighting Hampton."

            "And is my mother out their too?"

            "Yes and yes-" Santana began.

            "Okay let's go. Do you remember how to get back to the room?" I asked.

            "Yeah," she said and walked towards the exit with me behind her and through Greta's office and I cast the spell to conjure a ball of light to light up the dark hallway. "But I think we need to slow down for a second and get our priorities straight," she glanced over her shoulder at me before turning back around, "like as in the soulless monsters that have been unleashed on a bunch of defenseless people in my world. I think your mother and my sister are just fine with Vivian and Arnold there."

            "Arnold?" I asked, recalling the creepy little brown haired boy with glass that had accidentally come with us to the other world.  I guess it would make sense that he would be half of something since he hadn't lost his soul while crossing between worlds.

            "He has scary powers, powers that a little creep like him shouldn't have.  Your father trained him along with me.  In fact, even your father was a little nervous with him, because even he wasn't sure if he should be teaching him how to control his powers." Santana said and turned a corner, just as something crashed through the wall just ahead of us.

            I began to cough when a cloud of dusk surrounded me and choked my lungs. When the cloud cleared I could see something moving up in front of me.  It looked to be a very tall man with a missing arm but when it cleared I could see that it was no man at all.  It was a creature made of rocks and it was holding something in place on its shoulders, while it staggered to its feet the figured turned his head towards us.  His glasses caught the light of the glowing purple-tinged ball of light that hovering in the air in front of us.