ELEMENT

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Fleshbags and the Worms

The snow was fragile enough to melt under Cole's feet as he walked up the street, a purple-haired chatterbox flouncing behind him.

"Oh, look!" Quincy shook his arm. "There!"

Cole laughed. "You're not supposed to help me in these kinds of games."

"Well, you haven't found a single blue building because everything is bricks. The post office counts as blue and you walked right past it!"

"If I picked a brown building maybe I'd have the same luck."

"Are bricks red or brown?"

Cole shrugged, kicking a pebble. "I think it's both. Ooh, wait! That building there. It's blue. That's a point for me."

"Yeah, barely blue. Like a baby blue. Newborn baby. Fetus blue."

"Fetus or not, it's still blue." Cole flapped his hands. "That's three points for me, and 62 for you. I'm catching up," he joked.

Quincy giggled. "So, are you excited?"

"Are you sure your dad is okay with me coming up?"

Quincy gnashed his teeth together, hesitating. "Yeah!"

"Alright," Cole responded carefully.

Coming up on Quincy's house, it was surrounded by trees, almost as if it was hiding itself from the rest of the world. It had one floor, maroon siding, a large garage, and a black metal mailbox. A sign hung from the bottom of the mailbox, rotting wood with green paint spelling a five letter word.

As Quincy ran ahead, Cole tilted his head in confusion. "Terry?"

"Yeah!" Quincy called from the porch. "That's my family name. Did I never tell you?"

"Oh." Something was ringing a very faint bell. "I think I knew someone by that name once."

"Right, I forgot you're old."

"Hey!" Cole chuckled, coming up the porch steps to meet Quincy.

"I mean, you probably did! This house goes back to years before the Exile." Quincy pointed, carefully opening the screen door. "Now, be really quiet, I don't know if my dad's asleep or not."

The inside of the house was a cabin-like brown color, dark wood enveloping the rooms of rocking chairs, tapestry rugs and a stove that looked so rusty, you might have to whack it to get it to work.

"We can't go to the garage from the outside," whispered Quincy in a low voice, "so we're going through here."

"You're taking me to your garage?" Cole whispered back, somewhat surprised.

"Come on!"

The floor barely creaked, and stirring from another room made Quincy nervous. But eventually, both piled into the cold concrete garage, and Quincy brought out a whistle.

"See this?" He plopped it into Cole's hand, made entirely out of tree branches.

"Uh, a whistle?"

"Check this out." Quincy blew into it, and no sound came out.

"Ah. Maybe it's broken."

"Look!"

Small squelching noises echoed in the stone-clad room, and suddenly, pinkish worms all stood in a square, neatly in formation, with a bigger one in front of them all. They all made a slight hissing sound.

"Everyone, calm down!" Quincy barely squatted their knees, holding their hands out. "Calm down, guys. This is Coleslaw. He's an ally."

The bigger one turned to meet the group, and after a while, the hissing stopped all at once.

Cole was perplexed. "Uhhhhh. When you said you had a worm army, I didn't think you were being, uh, totally for real."

"Oh, it's for real." Quincy smirked. "I promised you all that after last incident, I'd never bring an untrustworthy fleshbag in here again, right?"

"Last time?" Cole turned to Quincy.

"Mailmen are intrusive."

"ohokay"

Quincy tossed an apple onto the ground, to which all worms jumped to, and within seconds, it was devoured, core and all. "You know, Cole, I think these guys would make a great addition to the guards at the castle. Talk to your sister about it, maybe!"

"Right." Cole stammered, nodding and smiling. "I'll get right on that."

To Be Continued in Chapter 39