The Parallellists : Genesis

Chapter 4 - Hunted

When Jake woke up, everything was a blur. He could see only fuzzy shapes and voices that sounded very far away.

As his vision slowly started to clear, he realized that he was a hospital ward and surrounded by several people.

Two of them Jake had never seen before. A man and woman dressed in standard hospital uniforms.

The other five were faces he knew too well. They were the faces of Ethan, Amberly, his father,Patrick, his older sister Roxanne and his younger brother Ben.

"Guys?" Jake wheezed cautiously sitting up.

"Jake!" cried Ben rushing forward and jumping onto Jake's lap. He wrapped his arms around his neck and squeezed so tight that Jake thought that he might break his neck. His shaggy, chestnut brown hair tickled Jake's face.

"Ben, you're murdering me." wheezed Jake patting Ben on the back.

After one last squeeze, Ben let go of Jake and sprang off the bed. Roxanne bent down and placed her hands on Ben's shoulders to keep
him from fidgeting.

"Dr. Gale!" cried Ethan grabbing the Doctor by the arm and shaking him. "Is Jake gonna be alright? If he dies, my father will sue this entire hospital. Please, I will even donate organs to save him! How many pints of blood does he need? Does he need a kidney transplant?"

The doctor pushed Ethan's hands away and held him steadily. "Mister Wayland, Jake is alright. He was just suffering from a rapid increase in heartbeat and and adrenaline rush for some strange reason. But other than that, he's perfectly fine, he'll be out of hospital by Thursday." So back to your story, a stray dog came towards you, Jake and Miss Godwin - " he turned to Amberly, who stood at the back of the group, leaning against the wall with her hands in her blazer pockets. "Jake runs towards the dog to try and stop it from attacking, then the dog pounces on top of him and he passes out. Then the dog retreats and vanishes."

"Oh, way more than that happened!" screeched Ethan, pacing about the room like a deranged nutcase. "A HUGE Cerberus wannabe with only one head was about to have us for lunch, when this crazy idiot ..." He gestured to Jake, who had gone completely white as he recollected the Norbert incident. "He ninja runs towards it, which is something that Jake doesn't normally do!"

"Jeez, Ethan, thanks for sharing that!" Jake muttered, his cheeks burning red in embarrassment.

"You're welcome!" Ethan shouted before carrying on with his story. "Then Jake starts screaming in some weird language! And then a flash of blue light literally comes out of him! Then poof! there's nothing left of the dog but a pile of ashes! And then Jake decides to pass out and slept comfortably all the way to the freakin' hospital!"

The doctor stared at Ethan like he had completely gone round the bend, as did Jake's Dad and Roxanne. But Ben looked up at Ethan in awe, he always looked up to Ethan more than Jake.

Jake sighed and glanced at Amberly, who had been standing quietly in the corner the whole time, he had completely forgotten that she was there. He was about to look away, when Amberly lifted her gaze and their eyes met.

Jake was still mesmerized by her beautiful eyes, shining like two silver coins. But something about them felt sad, like she'd seen things so traumatizing that Jake couldn't bare to imagine what they were, but it still filled him with curiosity. What happened to her?

There was an awkward silence for quite some time in the ward. Nobody seemed to know what to do next, or how to react to Ethan's crazy account of what happened.

But then, Roxanne started to laugh nervously, everyone's were on her, even Amberly broke eye contact with Jake to look at her.

Roxanne patted Ethan lightly on the shoulder.