All For Not

Page 93

"Come on, let's move quickly and calmly, all right?" I turned around, moving down the stairs, disappearing from the upper floor without saying anything to the others, simply blending in with the students evacuating.

The time it took for all of us to get upstairs and to start herding the masses was plenty of time for my chest to constrict painfully and when Enid left the school to wander the woods in search of my sister, it was enough time for my chest to start crackling my skin like cooked flesh. I rushed, moving down the stairs with speed as my eyes flickered off and on at random moments like glow lights or fireflies. On the third step from the bottom I paused, ears perking up at the sound to my right.

A gut feeling had begun to pull me towards the quad, my mind in a tormenting worry for Enid and my sister, and while Thing would be safer than the girls I still worried for him as well, Enid was out in the woods with him on disastrous moon phase, a hyde's domain in terms of knowledge of the forest and who knows what about my sister at this point.

Following the screams and a sudden deranged laughter that echoed through the school I entered the public space, the center tree as barren and dead as the walking corpse, half rotten and demented waved his hand through the air, stopping an arrow mid flight before him.

"No!" I watched with a burning stare as he flicked his wrist and sent the arrow back towards its original sender, Xavier. However he yelled as my sister dove to stop it instead, the arrowhead piercing through the layers of clothes and through the skin and tissue right below her shoulder, "oh my God!"

My breathing started rambling in fury as I practically began to glide forward as she spoke to Xavier when he rushed for her, "I'm fine. Go. Get them out of here! Now!" He doesn't move, "I will send you back to hell." He stayed, standing next to her before stepping forward as I crossed into Crackstone's path, standing before both of them and the pilgrim himself, "forgive me for being late."

"Morella! Grab her, get her and the others out of here," the grunt of my sister has my jaw ticking in revved anger, still so stubborn, it ruffles my fucking feathers... "And who are you?" The voice in front of me was disgusting sounding as it fell from the pilgrim, Xavier taking the distraction to grab a hold of my sister and heave her up, a cry of pain leaving her as she grit her teeth together.

They moved away as the sound of her pain wafted through my ears, ringing in my mind as my eyes began to glow, a bright burn of molten fire, deeper and more golden than it had been before, my bones popped on will and my shoulder blades split open, my clothes tearing deep holes as my wings pierced through them.

My feathers fluffed as the large bones unfurled at my sides, the sight of my wings a miracle it seemed to the dead faced man before me, "sister? An angel comes to stand before the wretched creatures, these outcasts..."

Studying him, I tilt my head, watching him as he brings himself from his stunned confines, he giggles, a noise of excitement. It's like Crackstone's been put into a trance as his arms spread wide and he looks upon me and the wings speared from my back, "you're here to help me, aren't thou, sister. Here to rid this place, my town of these vile creatures, I brought you here," he walks closer, finishing with a whisper, slowly almost as if he's unsure, thinking he's viewing, hallucinating a mirage of sorts as his knees buckle slightly.

Blinking, I realized, although it would be to my advantage. This creature, this man, this dead being in the image of an overgrown pilgrim; was an idiot.

"With your help sister, we will rid the world, no more of these beasts..." My mind flashes to my parents, my birth and adopted, right before it flickers to my siblings, to my grandmother, to Lurch, to Thing. Fester the black sheep, cousin Itt and his own, even the twins. Everyone... The entire Addams family, my family were no beasts in my eyes and his words sinking in made my rage light up hot and bright; molten.