The Fallen Goddess

The Stranger

I open my eyes and see a clean, happy, clothes-wearing Koreena standing beside my bed.

"Jesus!" I exclaim and jump in my bed.

"Blake, why aren't you wearing a shirt?" She asks simply and seemingly oblivious to the fact that her being here is unusual.

"I-" I pause for a second, looking at the shirt I threw off after Koreena left last night.

"I sleep like this." I finish lamely.

"I still need help, Blake." She says, sitting down on the edge of my bed.

"I still say no. And how did you get in? I locked the door last night."

"I'm a goddess."

"Yeah, one whose powers don't seem to work." I mumble, but she seems to hear me because she flashes me a look of hatred.

"Get out." I say, starting to get out of bed.

"No."

She says this with a strong air of power and defiance.

"I'll still call the police." I say. "This is my home. You have no right to be here."

She says nothing, but I get the message: she's not going to leave willingly. So I grab my phone from the bedside table and hold it up for her to see.

"I'm calling the police now. You better leave." I say, though I don't really expect her to react. And she doesn't.

I start to dial the number. I get 9 and the first 1 in when suddenly my phone flies from my hand. Before I have time to blame Koreena, there is a loud crack and suddenly another woman appears in my bedroom. She is extravagantly dressed and us looking at Koreena with the utmost hatred. Then she looks in my direction.
 
"Koreena, I see the fall hasn't killed you. You've done things I had not accounted for..." the new woman says, pointedly looking at me. "No matter. I can just finish the job and stop any future happenings right now."

Koreena suddenly looks scared and angry, and the mixed emotions on her face are kind of terrifying.

"Leave! You have no right to tell me what I can and can't do, not in this world!" Koreena shouts, but her cries are drowned out as the anonymous woman's eyes begin to crackle, and from her hands comes enormous bolts of electricity or lightning of some sort that head straight for Koreena.

Koreena just barely jumps out of the way and, in her place, the wall is scorched through. I just stand there, no idea what to do and frozen with shock and terror.

"You can't run!" The attacker shouts as Koreena tries to run for the door, but it suddenly slams shut, and though Koreena manages to wrench it open very slightly, she can't fit through the tiny opening. "Maybe I'll just kill your human toy instead..."

For a second, Koreena looks very content to leave behind to die, but she seems to think better and quickly puts herself between me and the attacker, electricity suddenly crackling from her fingertips.

"You really think you can stop me?" laughs the woman. "I'm just playing with my food. You would already be dead if I wasn't having so much fun."

Koreena just spits at the woman, who frowns.

"Maybe you aren't so fun after all."

With a wave of her hand, the woman makes Koreena fly across the room, letting her hit the wall with a sickeningly loud bang and crumple to the floor. She then shoots a blast of lightning at me. I move, but not fast enough.

The crackling, burning electricity strikes me on the side of my abdomen and I too fall to the floor, writhing and twitching in agony.

The woman walks over and stands over me, saying something I can't hear; the ringing in my ears is too loud. She raises her hands again, and I know this is the end.

I brace myself for the final pain and shock from the electricity that with surely burn me from the inside out. But the pain doesn't come.

I feel the rumble of the Earth below me, and I see the sparking electricity about to hit me, but as if everything is in slow motion, nothing immediately happens. 

I don't understand the sudden and very disorienting change, but what I do understand is that, somehow, in full speed, Koreena is touching my arm.

I feel myself being violently whisked away into a horrible, undefinable blackness. I'm jerked around and I can't stop it.

Even the blackness seems to spin around me, and my stomach lurches.

I want it to stop, I need it to stop, but it doesn't seem like it will ever stop...