The half-forgotten
Other half of my short life
In short story form

 
The Power Source Was Taken
11-12-1999

I set a plant down in the middle of a magic circle. Some sort of power nexus marked by an outside ring of stone obelisks and an inside ring of human statues. It started to grow. I ran for some fire escape-like stairs, knowing I had a limited time to recruit my help before the plant grew too large beyond my control.

I bounded up several clanky staircases and across several metal platforms among the rooftops until I found my party. Amy decided to accompany me back. Already I thought I'd wasted too much time, and I felt like she would slow my return. I practically fell down the series of stairs like an acrobat, grabbing onto rungs and footholds at the last moment, while he rushed to actually run down.

We reach the nexus. The plant is gone. Amy keeps going toward the enemy stronghold, but I see three witches rise up out from the shadows a small distance beyond, in the forest between. I try to warn her, but more converge upon me. We retreat to the circle, the witches closing in. I yell, "Fireball!" and a ball of fire froths forth from one of the statues, englufing one of the witches, but doing no damage. They're almost upon Amy now, and I can sense more all over the place. I suddenly remember that only lightning can strike them down, so I hold up my arms and yell, "Lightning!" Blueish light crawls up one of the obelisks before concentrating at the top and firing high into the sky. The charge returns to earth, zapping one of the witches, disintegrating her. Amy knows the trick, so we do this more times, frying more of the enemy until they retreat beyond the circle. "The nexus was supposed to defend us automatically," I explain to Amy as we defend ourselves, "but the power source was taken." So not only did we have to control it manually, but it was running out of power, too.

I find myself in the snow, advancing upon enemy lines with a bunch of other people. They're backed up against the wall of their complex. We're throwing snowballs at them. I nail a woman with a baby in the head with an iceball and she goes unconscious. The baby cries. I run over and pick it up. It cries for a little while, but then stops. Someone else comes along and tells me it's best not to meddle, so I put the kid down.

I'm in an underground palace with two other people. We're flying. A room we're in starts to get consumed by darkness, as if someone poured it into a corner and it was not so much diffusing, but actively flowing out from there, engulfing the room. We flew away from it, but it continued to spread. We escaped from the palace. I flew through the sky toward my old house on Aberdeen, which was much larger on the inside than on the outside to allow for flight. I went to the highest point in the house where there was a niche in the wall by the ceiling. I looked inside and both my mom and my sister were there. They said they were hiding from the oncoming darkness. I felt cheated because there wasn't enough room for me. I convinced them there was still time before the sun set to run to the store and buy something larger to hide in.

We get into a car, my mom driving. The sun is almost set, and everything has an orange-red tinge to it. We're speeding bigtime. I look behind us and see a cop with his lights on, coming up behind us up a hill. I start to scold my mom for her driving, but the cop passes us. Cars merge into our lane because there's tires placed in the middle of the other one. Time was running out, though. We had to stop for gas, and my mom wondered if they took Discover. I didn't know she had a Discover card, and I was really annoyed, because it seemed to me that everyone always complained if someplace didn't take it. We got out of the car and went inside, except it wasn't a gas station, it was a cafeteria. Some Japanese (or Mexian? Can't remember) guy went to the front of the line and started sampling the chips. I told him that was inappropriate.


posted by Phlegm at 11/25/2003