As the computer monitor impacted with Freddie's skull, his head snapped forward in a sickening crack and his unconscious body slumped to the ground. Everything in the room froze in place before a shower of objects plummeted to the floor in a dead drop, Carly included. She broke her fall on the carpeted surface with her face, resulting in a bloody lip and a forming bruise on her left temple. Crying out in pain, she clutched at her injured shoulder and curled her knees into her chest.
"I did it… I killed him," Sam began to confess as she unclipped her hockey helmet and discarded it. "I've been close plenty of times but I always figured that it would be a malfunctioning homicidal robot-girlfriend that got him in the end." She sunk into the floor in a daze. "Carly, when I go to prison, will you write to me?" The brunette groaned bringing attention to her own injury and Sam snapped out of her haze. "Carly? Carly!" She leapfrogged over Freddie's prone body, picked up a stray pillow and slid it underneath her friend's head. Carly whimpered in gratitude.
"Check his pulse," she mewled, motioning to Freddie. Sam scurried to Freddie's body, untied his left shoe and throwing it behind her, rolled down his sock and put the sole of his foot up to her ear. Carly's eyes squinted at this strange behavior. "Sam?"
"I'm trying! I'm trying! I don't hear the ocean at all!"
"That's seashells Sam!" she griped. "Bring him over here!" Sam dragged Freddie's body by his left foot over to Carly whose intense pain had ebbed into a dull throbbing. She didn't let it distract her. Placing her finger under his neck, she gave a relieved sigh as she felt a weak heartbeat. Hers pulsed faster as soon as she realized that there was a stripe of blood trailing from where Freddie's body had lain to the position he was laying now. Frantically rolling Freddie's body over, she gasped at the matted blood pooling at the base of his head. All she knew at that moment was that to stop the bleeding, she had to relieve the pressure. She pulled the pillowcase off of the pillow Sam had collected for her and pressed it into the back of her tech producer's head. The white fabric quickly lost its color as it soaked in the waves of red. Clot, clot, clot, please clot! "Call Spencer! We need to take Freddie to the hospital!"
"Done!" Sam yelled as she flipped open her cell phone and began dialing. As beaten and bruised as Carly was, it was nothing compared to her emotional state. With her best effort, she tried to stay calm. But looking at Freddie splayed out in her lap, she began having trouble breathing. Come on Freddie, hold on. You don't have holes in your head. You're very unholy. I call you that all the time. My unholy Freddie. Dizziness began to overtake her and Carly's body began to feel very heavy. "Carls, are you okay?" Three wavy, diluted, rotating images of Sam treaded towards her with concern in their eyes.
"Yeah, I just feel kind of hot…" Carly looked down at her hands which had split apart like a hydra into six hands. "Holy Hindu goddess!" Carly dropped the ruined pillowcase in shock and shuffled herself backwards until her head hit the wall behind her. She felt as though she was about to lose her stomach but gulped it down as Sam began shaking her.
"Cupcake, look! He stopped bleeding!" Carly knew she had to be hallucinating now because out of the corner of her eye, with Freddie's body turned away from her, she noticed that the gash on the back of his head was gone. In its place was whole, smooth, untouched skin.
Carly twiddled her thumbs restlessly trying not to scratch at her stitches while Sam paced up and down the hallway cracking her knuckles in anxiety. They were both outside a window where Freddie's body was hooked up to a breathing apparatus. The doctors were waiting on his x-ray photos to develop.
"Carly," a voice called out.
"I don't want to talk about it Sam."
"You did something back there," she murmured.
"No. No, I didn't. I did not. Not a thing." Carly's voice began to get more frantic as she tried to convince herself of her own normalcy, "At least, I don't think I did. I did nothing! Oh who are we kidding? Yes I did! I did do something! A very big something! There was a thing of some kind that I did!"
"You healed him, Sweetheart. You know what that means? You're Jesus. You know what I did? I almost killed him. You know who else killed a lot of people? Hitler. I'm Hitler and you're Jesus. I'm evil, you're good. I sport a meticulous mustache and you're rocking the white robe. This is some trash. I am always the bad guy!" Sam growled enviously.
"Something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. We must be possessed or something. There's no explanation for what happened in there!" Sam, sensing that the tall brunette was veering towards a meltdown, stopped mid-stride and pulled Carly towards her, wrapping her arms around her comfortingly. "I just... I'm so confused. I hate being full of confusion. It's so confusing!"
Sam rubbed circles on her on the back in consolation, "I've been there kid. It's like that one time in the lobby when I was pawing at a delivered jar of cookies and tried my hardest to take a handful of them out. My fist got stuck and I turned into a raging Samzilla"
Carly gave a faint smile at the memory, "Then I told you to calm down and that you had to let them all go and take out one at a time. But you were stubborn and insisted on swinging your arm in circles until you accidentally knocked out Lewbert."
"Accidentally? Speak for yourself," the blonde smirked, "and that's how we'll manage to deal with this Shay, stealing one cookie at a time, punching out one doorman at a time." Carly nodded her head and snuggled her cheek into the nook of Sam's shoulder, grateful to have such a supportive friend.
"I heart you Puckett."
"And I heart cookies… And you. It's a pretty close race. You win though."
When Spencer came back from the hospital's cafeteria, he returned with a tray of questionable food that the two girls annihilated with their safety sporks. Carly and Sam had both skipped breakfast and lunch so Spencer stood there spork in hand not able to get a bite in edgewise. Another half hour and a doctor came by and declared that Freddie had woken up, he had a minor concussion, no internal bleeding and it was fine to see him. Evening hours, however, prevented them from all going in at the same time to visit so two of them had to wait.
Carly knew how bad Sam felt at this point so she encouraged her to be the one to go in and talk to him. "That's a good idea." Spencer agreed, "I want to go show Carly my newest exhibit anyways, it's only a few blocks from here so we'll come back later to take you home." Sam accepted the plan and waved a farewell to them as she opened the door to Freddie's room with a hesitant creak. He lifted his head and smiled at her as she sauntered in.
"Hey nub, how're you feeling?"
"You know that time Spencer made a sculpture by smashing in a tin box with a sledgehammer?"
"Mmmhm."
"I'm that tin box."
"Good, you big dummy, that's what you deserve for going all poltergeist on us." She hated how her statement came out. She meant for it to be an insult, but god help her, it sounds like a compliment, all soft and affectionate and gentle. She guessed it was because of the twinge of regret she felt for being the one to hurt him.
"I have something for you." Sam finally admitted. Her tongue darted out, licking her lips nervously as she set herself down in the chair next to his bed. He raised his brow at her questioningly. She began leaning towards him when her self-consciousness got the better of her and she turned stiff.
"Well, what is it?" Freddie asked. Sam extended her pointer finger towards him and beckoned him closer with it. He began to finally see how worried she was by the guilt shimmering in her eyes. He inched closer to her, violating the number one rule of 'Sam's bubble.' As he found himself in Sam's personal space, he caught the scent of cinnamon spices, the familiar soap that Sam bathed in. It drew him in nearer. Their eyes locked and the usual icy silver coldness of Sam's irises had turned into warmer watery blue. Instinctively Freddie's found his gaze lowering to Sam's full, pursed lips. Ironically, his mind was getting cloudy but he began to notice smaller details. For one, they were evenly complimentary in breaths, inhaling and exhaling in sync. And secondly, he could feel Sam's arms looping around him and settling around the back of his neck. She pulled him closer.
"I just… this is what I wanted to give you," Sam whispered, her chin tilted slightly. He shut his eyes and parted his lips. Since that night between the both of them on the fire escape, he'd been wondering if another opportunity to kiss her would rise. This seemed perfect. But as quickly as the intimate moment presented itself, it passed. With his eyes closed and lips unkissed, Freddie felt Sam move away from him. He perceived something caressing his chest and looked down to see what it was. Hanging over his chest was a small, plastic, orange whistle. "It was the prize in last night's cereal box. I looped some spearmint dental floss through it to make you a necklace. Now you'll have a way to signal us for help when stuff starts flying around again and it'll get rid of the reek of tick lotion you carry around with you." Sam bantered at him, back in true form.
"If that was what you consider helping, I think I'm better off just bashing my head against the wall." Freddie retorted. Sam flinched at the truth in the statement.
A knock sounded at the door and Miss Benson's hysterical face could be seen peeking through the slim vertical window. Freddie groaned and flopped back onto the medical bed. Sam stood up from the chair and made her way out of the room to facilitate the, 'one visitor per room,' policy. "I'll see you tomorrow Fredwurst sausages. Be sure not to croak, at least not before you write a will giving me your stereo system."
Meanwhile the Shay siblings were traipsing through the city and Carly was explaining to her brother the details of what had happened at their apartment. The usually honest girl didn't like to lie but she didn't know how to retell the story of events that occurred without sounding crazy so she decided that omission seemed to be the best bet. "It was a crazy failed stunt." She said, hoping her voice would stay strong. "I'm sorry about the holes everywhere. I'll take a part-time job to help pay for them myself if I have to."
"No worries sis, Socko has a French cousin named Wally and his wife Fleur. They own a carpentry company so we can hire them to fix the walls and the floor. They'll give us a reasonable discount. I just don't want you doing whatever you did ever again. I want to live to see you turn eighteen so you can go off to college and get a good education and get a great career and support your very handsome but occupationally-unlucky brother Spencer, yeah!" He optimistically bolstered, lightly punching his younger sister a few times for effect. Carly gave in to his energy and gave him a slug in the side, laughing as he clutched at his gut and feigned a hemorrhage.
They stopped on a sidewalk in front of a cramped dusty art gallery that Spencer raved about. "That's it! Right there, see my work?" he asked, pointing to the display in the window. Carly took in the sight of the suspicious dilapidated building. She wasn't sure if she believed him. It looked like a pawn shop more so than anything else.
"Oh yeah… it's awesome Spencer." She studiously scrutinized the sculpture he was showing her. It was a four-foot tall, giant, slender jar of Skippy-Trippy-Fally peanut-butter holding several golf clubs in it that were lathered in the edible material. A strap was attached to the cylindrical figure to entice a resemblance to a golf bag that a caddy would carry.
"Guess what's it called?" Spencer excitedly urged her.
"Uhhhh…" Peanut putter! His mind shouted. "Peanut putter?" she put forward.
"PEANUT PUTTER! My sister knows me so well! I didn't even have to give you a clue!" He beamed at her and rustled the top of her head affectionately. Spencer was jazzed up about his work. He was enthusiastic that someone in this world could interpret his vision and understand his love of wordplay. He didn't catch the look of queasiness Carly was experiencing as she suddenly realized she had the ability to read minds.
"Very intriguing Mr. Tibbles, wouldn't you agree?" an effeminate voice echoed through a dark room. A scratchy black and white image of the iCarly trio looped over and over on a computer screen while a young boy scratches his porcupine behind the ears. Nevel knew that one day, the tiny hidden camera he had planted in the iCarly studio would pay off with the information he gathered. However, what he saw was nothing that he would have ever anticipated. "Fredward Benson has somehow developed the technology to manipulate gravity. Unfortunately his natural ineptitude at life in general has served him his comeuppance and the boy has failed miserably in his ability to control his newfangled invention. So let me examine my quandary. Do I notify the appropriate authorities and let the governing law of the land take its share or do I seek to pillage and steal the scientific schematics for myself? On one hand, my venture in journalism would attain a breakthrough status if I was the first to leak this story. But then, a bit of subterfuge would gain me so much more. This is something to ponder over, indeed."
Reaching into a desk drawer, he pulled out a candle and placed it on the table, lighting it gingerly with a stroke of a match. He placed a plated carrot in front of his porcupine and reached for his cell phone. "Mr. Tibbles. Begin supper without me, I have business to attend to. I promise that we will rise to this occasion. At an any cost, we will reap the rewards!"
Author's Note: Thank you to Virgeoleo23, Sharkofthemist120 and trainwreck17. Your critiques are really encouraging. My story although having a pretty well thought out plotline is still open to any subplots that anyone can offer. Read and review. It gives me nourishment for mind and body. ^_^