Chapter 56 - Distractions

Welp, that's it for the carrots, Barry thought to his sister. I really hope they're giving that man a really good beating, Ella thought back. I should have went with him, I would've made sure to wipe him off the face of the Earth!, Barry thought. This time, I probably wouldn't stop you, Ella thought back. They must have already taken care of him by now..., Barry thought.

Meanwhile, my jelly boyfriend struggled to stay together as he wept onto the bed. His fingers were beginning to fall off, and his hair begun to shed. "...Jelly! Your body!", I shouted. He looked down, to see four of his fingers were on the ground, and lots of his hair were scattered about. He closed his eyes, focusing on putting himself back together. Goyer watched as the body parts turned back into a liquid, climbed up into his shoes, and re-formed his body back to the way it was meant to be.

"You need to go outside for a little bit", I told him. Sniffling, he changed the color of his face back to the 'normal' skin tone, before heading out into the hallway. As he left, I sat down next to Goyer. "He's been really bent up about you, lately...", I told him. "I... see that.", Goyer replied, coughing yet again to clear his throat.

"You didn't get around to how you came across the newer kinds of N", I said to him. "You said something about 'Natural Means'?", I asked. "Ah yes... After his incident, we began tests in more controlled environments. I see that he's taken after you really efficiently. What is your name anyway, young man?", he asked. "You can call me Mark. I'm just a regular Staten Island guy, who just happens to have a monster he has to take care of."

"I see you've named him, 'Jelly'. I guess that's not the most impressive name I've ever heard...", he told me, casually laughing. "Well, it's a lot better than 'Experiment #6'. Speaking of which, why do you call him Experiment #6? What happened to the past 5?", I asked. He rubbed his chin, trying to call back those memories from so long ago. "I... I can't remember, actually.", he eventually replied.

"But anyways, on with your story?", I asked him. "Well, the addition of these experiments provided a lot of extra data for us to work with. I'm sure that you know what I'm talking about, if you've lived with... Jelly... for a while. Recently, we've discovered that the N can affect some animals, but not others. This proved to be especially effective on the Leporidae family..."

"The- the what?!", I asked. Little did I know, a nurse walked in behind me. "Excuse me... but it's the professor's lunch time!", she said, pushing in a cart that was carrying some food. "Oh! I'm so sorry! Let me move these chairs over then...", I told her, pushing the chairs to the side of the room so she could handle the trays of food. She pushed her cart to the side of his bed, and carefully placed some plates along the sick man. She gave me a look, saying, "Oh! I'm sorry, sir, but you'll have to leave the man alone while he eats."

"Nonsense!", Goyer shouted, pounding the bed with his left arm. "I've had a wonderful discussion with this man, and I wish to continue it!", he told the nurse. "Calm down, sir! If you really want to, we'll let him stay, alright?", she told him. "Please do...", Goyer replied. As she finally placed a glass of water and a carton of milk on the nightstand beside the bed, she turned around, pushing the cart into the hallway. "Just don't get into too much trouble!", she told us.

When she left, Goyer continued his discussion, after taking a couple spoonfuls of corn into his dry lips. "...In other words, bunny rabbits..." I gasped in shock, blurting out, "So THAT'S why you put a bounty on him?!" Goyer sighed, telling me, "I wouldn't call it a bounty, per se, but rather a reward. He was one of our most important experiments, that blue rabbit..." I pulled the chair back up to the side of the bed, sitting down.

"Uh... about that...", I begun to say, before yet another distraction took us out of the conversation. "M-Mark?", my jelly boyfriend asked, standing in the middle of the doorway. I ran up to him, letting him inside the room, before closing the door behind us. "Are you okay, man?", I asked. "Y-yeah... I just needed a couple minutes outside is all. So... what did I miss?", he asked. I responded, "We were just getting to the bunnies."

My jelly boyfriend stopped in his tracks, before we both simultaneously looked over to Goyer. After he took a bite of green peas, he continued on with the story, finally free of distractions. "The bunnies... I have both good and horrid memories of those rabbits...", he said. Then, all of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something tall and white... I looked over to find nothing there. I rubbed my eyes, just to make sure that I wasn't hallucinating or something.

Back at the house, Ella suddenly gasped. What's wrong?!, asked Barry. Ella stood in the closet, with a completely flushed look on her face. "Ella? Ella?!", he whispered to her. She seemed to be sleeping with her eyes open, completely unresponsive. "Ella! GET UP!", Barry yelled. At this point, he didn't care about what happened if he got caught. To him, Ella was in danger, and she needed to be saved.

Little did he know, Ella was pulled out from the consious realm by a mysterious force. One second, she was in a dark closet, then in the blink of an eye, she was standing in front of the hospital. What the... where am I?!, she asked herself. She looked around, to find people walking past her. She tried thinking to them, to get their attention, but nothing worked. She eventually tried walking in front of the pedestrian, just to have them walk right through her.

She begun to question if she had just died, and was cursed to walk among the living. She bent down, laying against the closed hospital doors, beginning to cry. Do not worry, my child..., she heard a voice call to her. She lifted her head in shock. Who is that?! What's going on?!, she asked. Standing up yet again, she begin to see someone forming from mid-air in the middle of the parking lot.

She bent down to her knees, realizing what the figure revealed themselves to be. M... Mom?!