The Fifth Element

Time slowed down, and my world shrank down to Henry and the hand poised to plunge into his chest. Somehow I knew if that black fire even touched him he was going to be gone, gone forever.

“Stoooooop!” I shouted. I wrenched my hand free of Amber’s grasp and went barreling towards the fight. The boy attacking Henry froze, and turned his head to look at me. He looked familiar, but that was the least of my concerns.

“Get off of him!” I yelled.

The boy was knocked off Henry by some invisible force and flung backward across the room. That’s when time sped back up to regular speed. I reached Henry, and I held out my hand to help him up, but in typical Henry fashion, he refused it and got up by himself.

“What are you doing? I told you to get out of here!” he growled. He gritted his teeth together and pointed to where Amber still stood; pale and looking a little shell shocked. “You’re getting in the way!”

“Good I’m glad I’m getting in the way, this fight is obviously hopeless, and we need to leave now!” I said, at this point, I could feel myself growing frantic.

“I’m not going anywhere, but you’re going to leave!” Henry said and pointed towards Amber again.

I shook my head at him. Really? Did he expect me to leave him to die? “I just don’t want anyone to die because of me, that’s all and I know if I refuse to leave, so you’ll have to come with me, or I stay.”

The look on Henry’s face was one of shock at my words, but it soon turned serious, ” I’m buying time for you to get out of here! You need to go now!” he ordered and gestured for me to leave, but I kept my feet firmly planted in place and shook my head.

“You come, or I stay,” I repeated, even though I was terrified and really did want to run away, “You are a jerk to me 95% of the time, but I feel like you are one of the only people with power who don’t want me dead. I need you!”

In the meantime, the boy had gotten up and had begun taking wobbly steps in our direction. There was an ominous black mist forming around his body.

I turned my face away from Henry to stare at the approaching threat. “You either come with me, or I’m going to stay here, I’m not leaving you,” I repeated more urgently and pointed to the boy. I squinted my eyes while the boy’s body shimmered and began changing shape and grew in size. The boy started taking on more reptilian features. I moved closer to Henry, and I felt his hand go around my waist protectively.

Most of the students had cleared out of the cafeteria at this point, but a few still hadn’t managed to evacuate. The ones who did remain were thrown into a complete panic, and all tried to rush the exit all at once. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone ended up being trampled to death.

“Henry,” I whispered. “We really need to get it out of here; it’s obvious that it’s after me, he called out my name, so I’ll be bait. We’re putting all these students in danger by staying!”

“That’s exactly why you should leave right now!” Henry said, his voice full of frustration. “But,” he relented, “not without me, right?” he said, and the entire time he spoke his eyes didn’t leave the approaching figure cloaked in black mist. It now looked more like a giant lizard each second that past.

“Right,” I answered.

“GO!” He shouted suddenly and pushed me forward. “We’ll try and lure it outside.”

At first, I stumbled, caught myself, and began running full speed at the entrance in the wall. There was a loud hiss behind us, and the rumble of giant feet. I ran, maybe faster than I ever had before in my entire life, but the distance between me and escape only seemed to grow.

When I did eventually reach Amber, it, the thing that had once looked human, was only a mere five yards away.

I was only steps away from the hole in the wall when Henry shouted something like this is probably going to hurt before his body collided with mine. We both ended up landing flat on our face in what looked to be a hallway. Amber sealed up the entrance right behind us, and not a moment too soon. The lizard thing slammed into it seconds later.

The whole wall shook at the force of its impact, and a couple of stones wiggled loose. The wall didn’t look like it would hold up very long, sure enough, rocks began raining down onto us. I barely avoided being crushed when one of the bigger stones dislodged itself and landed only a foot away from me. I quickly got to my feet.

Hands grabbed at my middle. I felt myself being hoisted into the air, and flung over someone’s shoulder, like a sack of flour.

“Henry put me down, I can walk on my own,” I began to struggle to try and get myself free from his grasp.

“I’m not Henry, so does that mean I can keep carrying you?” came a reply from a voice, which didn’t belong to Henry. It felt like a stone had been dropped into my stomach. Not good, I was 99 percent sure the voice belonged to the boy who had tried to kill Henry and then had turned into a lizard. But how had he gotten through the wall? Wait, why was I worrying how he had gotten through the wall, and not that he was holding me.

That brilliant revelation sprung me into action. “Put me down!” I yelled and started kicking him as hard as I could. I might as well be fighting a mountain.

“Afraid I can’t do that, but you umm might want to hang on.” With that, the boy and I went flying forward at a speed no human could possibly match. I had the brief sensation of passing through something somewhat solid, and then we were ...outside?

I opened my eyes when I felt a soft wind touch my cheek. The outside world was consumed in a thick mist, and everything was gray. This strange gray world was lit by the light of a full moon. I could just barely make out the outlines of tall, thin trees, as we flew past them. All protests and cries for help died in my throat. This place felt like a place of silence, and that silence was not to be broken no matter what.

After what seemed like hours, I had the feeling we were passing through something somewhat solid again, and then we were in another kind of forest. This one was lit by bright sunlight streaming through its canopy. Birds chirped to each other in the branches hanging over us. I heard the whoosh of dragon wings as one flew by.

The boy gently placed me on the ground and sat down on a tree stump opposite me. He was breathing hard. He ran his fingers through his curly brown hair and assessed me with his green eyes. I began to inch away from him slowly.

“Violet!” Someone yelled. I turned my head to the right to see a girl with golden blonde hair and matching gold eyes bounding towards us. “I thought I would never see you again! Everyone has been looking for you for like weeks. Oh, I knew I shouldn’t have ever let you leave my house that night. I don’t know what I would have done if Danny never found out where you were. Please forgive me for being a bad friend!” she said all in one breath and all before she reached me.

She reached out as if to give me a hug, but stopped before she touched me. I guess she had finally noticed the look I was giving her, the please-don’t-touch-me-I-don’t-know-who-you-are-and-how-do-you-know-my-name look.

“Danny,” she said softly, there was a look of complete devastation on her face, “why is she staring at me like that?” She turned her attention back towards me. “It’s me, Emily.” She gestured to herself.

The lizard boy, whose name was apparently Danny answered her, “They messed with her head so that I wouldn’t worry about it too much.” He made a koo koo sign.

I felt anger boil up. “I do not have a messed up head!” I snapped. “If anyone has a messed up head it’s him. You tried to kill Henry, and then turned into a giant lizard! Now that’s messed up!”

The girl began laughing and clutched her sides. “Well messed with head or not she’s still the same old Violet.”

I frowned at her. What did she mean by that? She didn’t know me, but she did look kind of familiar, which kind of bothered me.

“Anyways, Emily I think you should call you know who now, and tell them the mission was a success.”

Emily nodded and disappeared behind a tree. I heard the sound of faint conversation seconds later

In the meantime, I tried to avoid eye contact with Danny, and seriously the dude had a staring problem. Every time I happened to look at him, he was staring at me. Well, I guess I was kind of his prisoner, but still, it was the intensity of it that was creepy.

“Sooooo,” Danny drawled out. “Is that Henry guy your boyfriend? You seemed pretty upset when I was fighting him.”

“You mean when you were trying to kill him?” I said, letting anger saturate my voice. Danny winced a little. “And no he’s not my boyfriend.”

His whole body relaxed, which made me kind of wish I had lied to him about Henry not being my boyfriend.

“So, he’s your friend?”

“No,” I blew a black curl away from my face. “It’s complicated.”

“Complicate how?”

“Complicated like it’s none of your troll freaking business!” I bit out.

Dany leaned closer to me, his green eyes almost glowing. He pointed a finger at me. “I’ll tell you why it’s my business. I just so happen to be tied to you for all eternity, so whatever you do affects me too!”

I looked at him, mouth gaping. I hadn’t expected him to say a thing like that, but then again who would?

Neither of us said anything else to each other. He was too angry to speak, and I had been shocked into silence.

We both looked up when Emily stepped out of the bushes and then proceeded to fall flat on her face almost immediately. I might have laughed at her, under different circumstances. She got up quickly and dusted herself off.

When she was done, she turned to us. “’So, her mom’s going to be here in five, four, three, two...” A woman came charging out of the place Emily had originally first come. She had to be one of the prettiest women I had ever seen in my entire life. She had cream colored skin, curly blonde hair, and cat shaped blue eyes, but she wasn’t the center of my attention, it was the man behind her.

The first thing I noticed was the dark purple eyes.