The thirteenth chapter is here, despite the bad number. Enjoy!
Chapter 13: Flash Fire
Stunned and in shock at the flash and shooting glass, Jill flew backwards and landed on the ground, her body halfway in the elevator compartment. The touch-screen machine started to fizzle, destroyed and broken, as Jill heard a sound of snapping coming from above her.
The elevator collapsed suddenly, plummeting to the bottom floor in a quick flash of movement. Jill rolled backwards quickly in the nick of time to avoid her death, and to still remain as one piece instead of two bloody halves, as Thomas Fan did. A loud crash was heard from below, and before she could examine any further, the elevator doors closed. To her surprise, no alarms went off as it should have if there were a malfunction, but she ignored the fact, dusting her clothes and realizing that her shoes were left behind when she rolled backwards, and were inside the elevator at the bottom of the shaft.
"That was close," she panted, making her way to her room, then running into the room to answer the ringing phone. It was no other than Goombella, still trapped in the car.
"Hello?"
"Jill! Where are you?" said Goombella in an alarmed voice.
"I once again cheated Death."
But something struck in her mind in relation to the pattern. It was the words of the ancient tribe leader, Head T.
"Remember the new rule of intervening; one can't skip without another cheater's help."
Jill stopped in her tracks, hesitating on her next step. She turned on her overhead projector on the other side of the room, planning to place a map of an ancient desert onto the light before going back to the phone again.
"Wait, sorry," corrected Jill, picking up the phone. "I didn't cheat yet."
"What do you mean?" Goombella asked.
"I can't cheat without you guys with me. Someone on the list has to intervene for me, and I can't do it by myself, which I just did." Jill looked around the room to see if everything was approvable of safety. She found no objects fitting into the category.
"Well," said Goombella. "We'll try to reach you, but we need to find a way out of this car first." Dry Bones suddenly grabbed the phone from Goombella.
"Jill! What is Tilcoree HP?" he said.
"Tilcoree HP?" repeated Jill. "Yes, I know what that means. It's an an---" Before she could say any more, the phone finished off with a zap and a spark. Jill dropped the phone onto the ground and looked at the white crystal, which started to glow on one of the sparkling faces. She went over to the desk and noticed little white scribbles glowing conspicuously on the side, hiding a secret that existed since the day of a certain burning death.
She touched the crystal for a split second, and once she was sure it was cool enough to hold, she picked it up into her hands and looked at the message. She gasped, her eyes gleaming with confusion and triumph. There was a sentence that gleamed right on the surface of the rock, and the more Jill looked at it, the brighter it appeared to glow.
"I think I know," said Jill finally in a soft voice, getting up from her chair and carrying the crystal to the other side of the room, not watching where she was about to step.
I will start sharing the first page of Jill's notebook, dated back to the day she turned fifteen, exactly three years and 39 days ago:
Water: A colorless, odorless, and most known liquid which covers 70.8 of the surface of Earth. It is essential for most plants and living organisms.
Spotted elsewhere: On Europa and Enceladus (Moons).
-Boiling point 100°C (212°F)
- Freezing point 0°C (32°F)
Natural bodies of waters:
- Ocean
- River
- Bay
- Lake
- Gulf
- Creel
- Harbor
- Pond
- Wash
-Reservoir
- Lagoon
Around my area:
- Stream
- Inlet
- Channel
- Sound
(End of page)
As she eagerly walked over to the other side of the room to discover the true meaning of the secret gem message, she stepped on her notebook on the ground and tripped, her hands flying into the air as her as her body fell forwards. Instead of hitting the hard, stone flooring, her face was smashed into the glass of the overhead projector in front of her. Numerous glass shards pierced into her face, and along with the burning sensation of the strong, intense light, her face was miraculously lit on fire.
She screamed as she raised her head from inside the machine, not able to see as she put out the fire with a towel besides her. Her face was dripping with blood, cuts visible everywhere from her forehead to her chin.
Looking around frantically while crying at the same time, she lifted a mini aquarium from a nearby desk and poured it upon herself, as the pain started to grow by the second. She was gasping, as she felt debris of glass still stuck into her face, and pulled them out slowly but painfully, dripping blood all over the floor in a bloody and wet mess.
A cord got tangled in her slippers and was pulled out, but Jill saw it in the corner of her eye. Although she was still in an excruciating mode of pain in her slashed face, she jumped out of the way, kicking the cord from her legs as it electrocuted the huge amount of water on the floor. She fell to the ground, and to her dismay, she found that her legs were too weak to get herself up. Her ankles had been paralyzed by the water.
She tried to catch her breathe, as she suddenly spotted the white crystal, just merely few feet away from her. The overhead projector fell over, setting fire to the various spilled chemicals on the ground.
"They need it," she thought to herself quickly. As she started to find tears of hopelessness in her eyes, the flames traveled along the trail of dangerous water. Jill reached over and grasped the crystal in her frail hands, got up to her knees, and flung it out the window, having all her doubts on the chance of a miracle. "Mush," remembered Jill.
Although Jill studied compounds, liquids, and complicated science material, she never knew anything that lay after the time of being lifeless. But she felt inside her that she would meet the others; Peach, Mush, and the additional victims along with her. Their deaths had arrived too soon and too gruesomely.
The flames traveled along the water and ended at her desk only a few feet away from her, lighting the table on fire and burning the objects in the way. Without warning, the various chemicals in her test tubes blew up simultaneously, in a strong, intense, flash, as Jill was thrown backwards into the counter behind her. Her neck was snapped against the edge, as she fell to the ground. The fire spread to a nearby row of Bunsen burners.
"We made it!" shouted Goombella, as the back of the back seat opened up to the trunk of the car. She pushed it open, Drew following right behind her as they stared at the blinding light in the open air. They gazed around the parking lot to gather their minds together.
"Where is Jill?" asked Drew. Before any of them could say another word, an explosion was heard from far above them, and as they looked up at the sky, a blast of fire shot out of the window of Room 666, as if a dragon had blasted its fiery breathe out into the air. The two confused people ducked as glass and metal fell against them from the floor high above.
"The crystal!" cried Goombella. "Catch it!" Drew looked up at the falling remains and saw the crystal in the air, falling directly at him.
In a one in a 345,000 chance of catching an item unexpectedly along with other trash when a person had meant it to be caught, Drew caught it from the sky. He looked at Goombella, who looked at him back, and they both knew that Death succeeded once again.
In the next hour, Las Vegas was filling with chaos. The empty parking lot was no longer empty, but filled with police cars, news reporters, and ambulances, along with investigators and numerous fire trucks. Many had come with the news that the victim was a cheater of the past blimp catastrophe, but others had come for other reasons. Motel 6 was treated nearly the same.
"Two people in the 10: 27 Blimp Curse found dead yesterday in Las Vegas," read Drew from a morning newspaper the next day. "Motel 6 is closed down after huge fire, Degree Effluence at Trihydrate H20 Academy will be shut down for the next month."
"Not only that," said Goombella, biting down on an almond croissant. "Last night, 30,000 people have left the city. They're paranoid with all the deaths happening in the past week."
"Today is Thursday. It's just tomorrow for the flight back," reminded Drew. Goombella nodded.
"Ludwig is suing us."
"Us?" hissed Drew. "Why us?"
"Well, isn't it obvious?" said Goombella. "He's telling his lawyer that I killed Wendy by pushing her head into that metal hook. And that you tried to kill them instead by pouring hot wax all over the both of them."
"Well, he's an asshole, so we don't worry about him, right?" said Drew. Goombella nodded again.
"I know what'll make you happy," said Dry Bones. "Let's ride the Manhattan Express Roller Coaster at the New York New York Hotel."
"But…why? Isn't that dangerous right now?" Goombella said in a hesitant tone. "And I thought you said we would examine the white crystal in the morning."
"We aren't next, are we?" pointed out Drew. "Death won't strike as long as we don't look at the next photograph."
"How do you know that?" said Goombella. But Drew got up from his seat and took a few steps to the exit of the store, then turned around.
"Race you across the street to the ride!" he said, as Goombella chased after him with a noticeable smile.
You can still have fun, discovered Goombella, even when Death is after you.
Jill is dead (gasp!), and so will others later on, yet she had the most suffering death scene. What will the next chapter have in store? Oh, and I have to congratulate LittleDude300 for making the list, except that you spelled Lahla wrong! Just kidding, it was excellent; I liked it as much as the other great reviews. As to others, thank you for reading so far, I will try to update possibly in the next week.
