Fable (on hiatsu)

38. Dread

"We are managing an awesome game of tag. What else could we be doing?" Jo said rather angrily.

"Getting drunk like two morons?" Kyuu commented disdainfully.

"Hey! We aren't doing this for fun! We actually just found out that being drunk allows you to see the Other Side, so there." He gave me a meaningful look. "Though it seems to do weird things to Craft..."

My suspicion was correct. The reason I lost five hours of my memory (and overall meaningful life) were wasted on the alcohol in my system.

The next question being how in the world it got there in the first place.

"Mind telling me when I got drunk?"

"Oh, you didn't drink anything if that's what you're asking. Toby filled a dart with concentrated vodka... and other stuff... and shot it at your neck when you were undoing your hair. It might still be there."

Well, that was helpful and annoying to find out.

I passed my hand up my neck and, sure enough, found a tiny dart the size of my pinkie toe. Great. My friends are so reliable. It was my fault for having forgotten Toby's *ahem* reputation, though.

"Well, that's fun to know. I suppose you didn't think that I would lose a few hours of memory because of you two, did you?"

"You lost your memory?"

"Cool! I've always wanted to know what it was like!"

"Toby, you always forget things. It's exactly the same, except I will never ever remember. Now why the hell would you set up the tag thing anyway?" I asked.

"Well, we found an old book in the clubroom titled 'Fun Things to Do with Friends' and the game of tag was included. We then thought it would be fun to do this with the Spirits around here!'

"You're nuts. Totally bonkers. Do you really want to be devoured by an angry player? Really?"

"Well, no. Who would want that? Wait, was that a rhetorical question? You know I'm not good at those!" Toby stressed.

'Ugh. All three of you give me headaches," I moaned theatrically. Kyuu protested: "Hey!"

At least Toby and Jo seemed less drunk now that they had something to focus on. Like an interesting conversation. Behind me I could hear the excited howls of the spooks who haunted our school. One of them rattled the door open and slunk in.

"Hey,  are you all hiding? You- you're humans!" the spook shrieked. "What are you doing here, on the day of the celebration?!"

I ran up to it and grabbed a fistful of its foggy milky substance fiercely. Glaring at it, I dragged it's terrible face close to mine. As I did so, I let my life energy course freely through my body, not letting any of it escape. My sight quickly clouded with the liquid orange yellow of the sun. A fierce wind tore through my frame, like an electric storm of unimaginable size above a desert.

"Don't cause trouble," I snarled. "This is a celebration, not a killing fest. Keep quiet."

Electric white-hot power sizzled up my arm and tickled it's neck painfully. It let out a terrified yelp and ran away. The power coursed through me, lulling me through dreams of smashing all the spooks and spirits that had scared me witless countless times. A second away from stalking out of the room to do just that, Kyuu dragged me out of the power-crazy illusion.

"That was so cool, Craft! You look pretty damn cool!"

"What?"

"Your whole body's glowing, bro! And your hair's flapping in some invisible wind! Damn, you look like some badass guy from one of those anime's I watch!"

Kill me now. You can't be seriously saying that.

My eyes must have said it all, I swear they must have. But did anyone care? No. So Kyuu continued on piling stuff that mortified me more and more. I couldn't open my mouth, it felt as if it was sealed shut. I had to say something! If I didn't she'd give me the coup-de-grâce without noticing and I would die hiding in a bundle of blankets when I got home.

Then something happened.

I can't be 100% sure what, but one second we were all in that room and the other we were falling into the school swimming pool. The shiny blue water glinted playfully back at us. I could see our shadows at the bottom.

With an unsightly shriek we all tumbled into the water.

It hit us like a wave, a tsunami carrying everything away, a concrete parking lot. A concrete parking lot covered in salt, to boot. Since we have a salt water pool. Yay.

Spluttering, drenched and unhappy, we all rose to the surface and made our soggy way to the shallow end. I was still glowing gold apparently, cause the water looked all orange around me. I forced the bouncy particles of life energy inside me to slow down and my body (thankfully) stopped glowing.

That was when I got the awesome idea of looking around. Sitting playfully, one foot in the water, was Plum. Her eyes were wrinkled in the corners and her mouth grinned at us. A laugh escaped her perfect lips.