Read and enjoy the twelfth chapter!


Chapter 12: Fire Flash

"Is he dead?" asked Goombella, wiping her face with a nearby napkin on the desk besides her.

"I…I think so," stuttered Drew, and he noticed the burnt squirrel on the side of the room.

"That was a sign," Drew noticed. "The burnt squirrel was a sign of his Death." They both jumped back in surprise as the lamp let out a spark, onto the spilled beer on the carpet as it lit up in a blaze. Goombella and Drew looked at the peculiar fire, which started to form letters.

"It's another message," Goombella stated in no surprise, only for the fire to spread in a line and spell out a word.

TILCOREE HP

They stared at it in utter silence.

"Uh, a sign?" asked Drew.

"Don't be stupid, of course it is," sighed Goombella. "Everything we see from now on that's weird and unusual, until we beat the design, will be a sign. I'm realizing that they're mostly used to taunt us."

"Or maybe this one is used to help us out," pointed out Drew. "Let me write this down somewhere so we can look at it later." He took out one of the photographs from Goombella's backpack and wrote down the strange message on the blank opposite side, but then frowned when he turned the picture over.

"My shivering scapula!" he exclaimed. "Come over here and look at this picture."

"I can't," said Goombella. "The fire is spreading all over the room, and I can't put it out!" She kept on waving the blanket over the spreading flames, but with no triumph and success.

Goombella handed it over to Drew willingly and went to the corner of the room, while Drew flapped the blanket over the flames in a more successful fashion. But it wasn't successful enough, and Drew let go of the blanket. The flame-covered blanket drifted to the bed, which was then lit by the drops of sulfuric acids, and soon enough the bed was engulfed in an inferno. Goombella shrieked as a fireball suddenly shot out at Drew, as he flew backwards onto the stained carpet, which was then put on fire. Smoke spread out at different places within the burning room.

"Are you all right?" asked Goombella, kneeling over to Drew's side.

"Let's go," gasped Drew, grabbing her hand before opening the door.

"Wait!" she cried, taking a last glance at the dead squirrel before she exited the door, and another tiny explosion was heard as they both exited the motel.

"We can't leave the motel room on fire!" cried Goombella. "There are people in the other rooms! We have to warn them!" She went back into the motel and spotted a fire alarm lever, which she pulled down. Alarms shook the building as motel guests came out of their rooms from down the hall, alarmed and in confusion.

"Take your belongings and evacuate!" shouted Drew, entering the motel behind Goombella. "There is a huge fire! Tell everyone and somebody call nine one one!" Hurried screams were heard as people rushed out of their rooms in a hurry, and banged on other doors to make sure no one was left behind to die. Numerous people were dialing for emergency on their cell phones.

"Okay, now we can go," announced Drew quietly to Goombella.

"Are you sure?"

"If you don't want to save Jill," he said quickly. "The firefighters will take care of everyone." They both jumped into their car and drove off, before looking back at Motel 6 and the fiery room on the side of the wall. They were both relieved when they started to hear sirens in the distance, signaling that help was on the way.

"Motel 6," Drew sighed. "Another unlucky sign."

Back at the school college, where the next victim was currently at, Jill looked over at her unusual water chute; especially keep her eye on the white crystal in the middle of the sideways passageway as the waves slightly pushed it back and forth.

To her surprise, the wave machines at both ends suddenly stopped moving.

Before she could take a step towards it, the white crystal in the water altered into a different, indigo color. Jill's eyes gleamed with joy as she knew that she was close to finding the solution to cheat Death.

"What could this be?' she pondered out loud to herself. She raised a lid in the glass chute and tried to take out the water-soaked crystal, but she pulled back quickly as she touched it, blowing on her fingers at the excruciating heat. The rock seemed to be burning at a high temperature, as she took out her special translucent heat-absorbing gloves and, carefully, placed the hot crystal onto a think layer of bumpy foam. Her phone rang.

"Rotten timing," she said with a slight frown, and picked up the phone.

"Hello?"

"Hello Jill? It's Goombella and Dry Bones."

"Oh, hi!" said Jill, her mood becoming delighted once again. "Where's Frank? Can I talk to him?"

There was a pause. Goombella looked at Drew worriedly for an answer.

"Dry Bones, what should I say?" asked Goombella, covering the speaker of her phone. "She thinks that Frank is still alive.

"Tell her to just come down," replied Drew nervously. "We're still stuck here and helpless."

"Uh, Jill, if you don't mind coming down here," requested Goombella. "Our car doors are stuck and locked, and we seem to have trouble getting out of the car."

"Try shattering the windows," Jill suggested, keeping her eyes on the white crystal on the other table. Goombella looked at Drew, who immediately shook his head.

"We can't," said Goombella. "And we're…Jill, hurry up quickly!" Both people hung up on their phones.

"What's wrong Goombella?" asked Drew. Goombella quietly pointed to the three seats on the back, and to the creature sitting in the back of the car. A red thin snake with a yellow strip on the side.

"That's a Garter Snake," explained Drew, chuckling. "They're not poisonous."

"Are you sure?" asked Goombella. "Then it has a reason that Death made it appear."

"Oh, I know," realized Drew. "You're making her come down to help us! She's going to get killed!" Goombella took out Jill's picture quickly, as Drew picked up the Garter Snake by the middle of the body, looking at it and letting it free through a small slit in the window.

"Okay," said Goombella. "I bumped into her unknowingly in the line of the ride, and took a picture accidentally."

The picture had a heavy flash, and the top part of Jill's head was nearly pushed against the lens of the camera. It was a dark background, with flashes visible on the sides.

"Well, she's coming down here to help us," said Drew. "But she's going to probably get struck by Death before she reaches us."

"Then that elevator," gasped Goombella. "Quick, we have to get out of this car."

Jill exited her classroom and closed the door, before walking over to the elevator and pressing the button. Within a few seconds the elevator doors opened, and she stepped in.

"Please request the floor number," announced the machine. Jill wrote down the number

0 on the touch screen. The elevator doors closed and the elevator descended. Only after going two floors down the elevator stopped moving, and shook slightly. Jill hid her alarm as the elevator shook once again. In a sudden shoosh and and startling sound, the elevator dropped nearly six floors down in a flash, as the TV on the corner of the top of the wall broke off, shattering onto the ground. Jill shrieked, grabbing onto the railing besides her and pushing her body to the floor, trying to gather back up her mind in panic. She opened the emergency door on the side of the elevator and tried pressing the back-up mode button, only for no signal to appear. The lights above her in the ceiling of the elevator burst, leaving her in darkness and stillness in a closed area.

"You're not going to die," whispered Jill in panic. "You're not going to die." She took out a mini flashlight from her pocket and shone it against the emergency buttons, found the light switch, and flicked it on. She let out a sigh of release when the backup lights spun on in the corners.

"It won't work," said Drew, putting down the golf club after trying numerous times to crack the window with it. "We need to find another way to escape this car."

Goombella looked around quickly for a solution, but was startled as she fell backwards into the back of the car. She felt something budge.

"Wait," said Goombella, pushing once again at the back wall of the car, and felt the wall move slightly. "I think this can be pushed down to bring us to the back of the car."

"You mean into the trunk of the car?" asked Drew.

"Help me push against this area," Goombella told him. As Goombella used all her might with her head, Drew used his boney arms to try and push their way out, through a small area.

"We apologize for the malfunction," announced the machine in the elevator. "We will now bring you back to the floor you had started. Please contact a school administrator as soon as possible."

The elevator started making its way back to Jill's original level, where she had first left off. The doors finally opened back to Floor 60, as Jill took out a stylus from her pocket and used the touch-screen to contact the front office, while unaware that the elevator was still not safe, and was still malfunctioned in a certain area.

"Contact substitute Ms. Annasia Encastraw," said Jill, typing the information on the touch-screen as the doors of the elevators opened up.

With a loud, blinding flash of white, the touch-screen glass burst.


I cut this chapter off early to save more for the next chapter. If you have read this far in my story of Death Riding, congrats! I hope you like it. I will update soon! Reviews are appreciated and optional (ignore below please).

"When Aunt Em states that they may have to give Toto away in Kansas, Miss Gulch says 'Now you're seeing reason!' When Dorothy agrees to give the ruby slippers to the witch, the witch says the same line."

(Please don't mind the statement above. It's embarrassing, and it's also the slayer's problem.)