Jorgé
Silent, sneaky and eluding Thalia left the office to wander. The sound of footsteps along the tiled floors of the Great Hall fill the empty void of noise with small clicks. As she crosses through the doors onto the carpeted eighth grade hall, the clicks quiet into thuds, and she strides forward with no fear.
She is a mouse as she wanders down the halls in search of a class room to organize for extra credit. With only the emergency lights on, the hall is cool and unsaturated. The dark fills the corners of the wing slowly creeping out further only to lash back into the corner as the light flickers. The occasional tile line running across the floor is hit with her foot and makes a click while every other time her feet fall to a thud. Glancing down the eighth grade hall, she sees the classrooms spaced out evenly, even through the left turn, with lockers lining the left side. Small items glisten through the halls as if they are trying to trick the world that they are precious gems, and that you should pick them up.
The small shining objects varying in color have light dance through them. Small items the color of the gems aquamarine, topaz, spinel, emerald and many others lay upon the ground in wait. Near where they hunker small dents among the floor and lockers appear.
"I wonder what these small gem things are," Thalia questions, "Maybe someone dropped them. Although, they don't look familiar."
A faint clicking noise rounds the corner of the hall and a large creature the size of a small car appears. It's tan tentacles with small hairs come out of the outline of a pear shaped mouth writhe with emotion. It's red, curved and pointed ant body with red lines streaming across it pulsate with anger,. The orange fire looking bottom of the abdomen glows with heat. The monster dubbed Jorgé's talons come out of its body and dents the floor it walks on with a pointed end. Its legs are rectangular with a ball socket and then large talons and small wires connecting the rectangle and a talon. The white outside of the ball socket and the black inner circle of the socket perfectly fit with the theme of its gray and slender legs with a 'v' half way down them.
In a voice only described as a thousand beetles clicking together in unison to create syllables Jorgé scolds "I'm Jorgé, and it seems you have something of mine!" Its oval eyes with black oozing pupils stare into Thalia's hand where the eggs lay. It's voice is unclear and Thalia couldn't understand it.
"What!?" Thalia stutters as its teeth which come out of the pear outline of Jorgé's mouth appear more and more sharp with every passing second.
Jorgé's tentacles squirm toward her in a desperate attempt to get his eggs. Thalia cries in dread and runs. While running into the science room, she hears the click of Jorgé, but this time faster and more urgent. "Need!" it bellowed. Thalia scurries into the seventh grade portion of the science room and hides behind a teacher's desk.
The clicking slows but never stops. It's half circle head coming out from the top of its mouth careens around the room in search of Thalia. It marches over to the desk to find her quivering in fear.
"I don't know what you want from me!" she cries. Jorgé cocks his head and focuses on her hands and once again tries to slide his tentacles into her hands to grab the eggs. She yells and takes off in a bolt. While Thalia runs from the science room she drops a kunzite colored egg.
"Cooo," Jorgé purrs as a cat would and grabs the egg and gently places it into a gray hole in its abdomen. "Mine!" It screeches and bolts toward and eventually in front of the girl.
Thalia hold her hands in front of her and crumbles to the floor, the eggs falling to her side "Please," she says in anguished tone. "I can't understand you! I can never help you!"
"You wander and steal!" It wails, barely unable to speak English without failing. Thalia grabs the eggs and runs down the hall.
Why am I keeping these? Surely my life is more important? Thalia asks herself. Jorgé's eyes which were once almost all the way closed are wide open with a burning fire glare. As she bound down the eight grade hall in the dark emergency light lit hall the darkness in the corners seems to grow closer to her with every flicker of the lights. Sprinting through the hall she runs back through the doors which she started at into the band room.
Dodging chairs and only a few seconds ahead of Joregè, she takes a leap behind the marimba and crawls under it to get into the far corner of the band room. Wiggling to get behind the chairs on their rack Jorgé bursts into the room with the few needles and scooper on his leg flared. The needle by the 'v' on his upper left leg looked more sharp than it had ever. The curly devil tail on his upper upper left leg curled and recoiled in rage as a spoon looking item on his ball joint ready to use.
Jorgé glances around the room in search of Thalia, churning up chairs as it maneuvers around the room.
"I know you're here," it cries in a dreadful voice which can make anyone collapse into a ball, yell and cover their ears. "I can tell."
Jorgé releases a blood curdling screech that makes Thalia fall down in pain as she covers her ears. The chair rack she was hiding behind makes a loud squeal as it moves after being hit by her.
Jorgé immediately runs to her but is careful to not disturb the percussion instruments as much as a car sized monster can. "I found you!" he says barely able to speak coherent words.
"Please I don't know what you want!"
"You took the next generation? How else shall we survive?" Jorgé preaches in a still horrific but less psychologically damaging tone. "Those 'gems' you call them are MINE!"
Thalia is awed that this creature has not immediately killed her. "Next generation?" She asks in a shaky voice riddled with fear. In fear she drops all seven eggs. "What are you doing? Those are yours? Why were they on the ground? So you're not going to kill me?"
"One question at a time," he says with a more proper tone than she thought he could muster, although he still says it in his killer voice. "Now give me those!" In a lighting fast motion his tentacles reach to the gems and grabs them and places them in a dark gray hole in his side. Suddenly the dark abyss of his mouth with about 23 teeth jutting out of it the pear outline appears less and less fatal. The sixteen hexagons lining where his mouth and abdomen meet do not glow as fiercely with yellow as they once had. The 22 hairs coming out of the hexagons lowered as he visibly calmed.
The red welts on its upper and middle section of his curved abdomen look as if they are cooling. His once wide eyes return to the natural state of tall ovals with three fourths of it being gray eyelid and 3 black freckles under each eye. His medium sized pupils still ooze out of his eyes into streams with the left pupil further to the bottom of the eye. On the bottom of his abdomen there is and orange under stomach with thirty-three now faint dots.
Jogrè purrs and stumbles out of the room with still some anger, pushing over chairs in his wake. He trots through the emergency exit of the band room. When Thalia gets up to see where he went she sees nothing, not even prints in the snow. The snow blinds her with its illuminating glare and she resides back into the school and sits on the ground.
Waiting in the band room stunned from the previous events, she tries to speak one word but finds her voice is too shaky to talk clearly. Standing up slowly she almost fumbles over with her weak knees. Getting support from a nearby chair she glances around uneasy and begins to walk unstably.
What a mess, she thinks and begins to return chairs to their normal resting spot. That was enough of anything for the rest of my life. She exits through the back doors and goes to her locker to get her boots. Do I really have to go back to school? Thalia pulls on her boots and coat while slipping her shoes back into her locker for Friday. Should I tell others? Walking slowly through the band room she makes it to the emergency exit where she last saw Jorgé. No they wouldn't believe me, maybe I'll just tell my close friends and see what they think.
When she enters her house her mother welcomes her home. She says 'hi' and goes upstairs to think about everything, hoping to never see a gem ever again.
