Preternatural (Worlds & Secrets) (39 page)

“
To where? I’m honestly confused,” I told him as he dragged us along towards the C.E.T. We and other people walked inside it and suddenly vanished.

G
oing through a C.E.T. was like going through a Root System except this was more like holding onto a roundabout and being spun mercilessly whilst being steady on your feet.
A rush of green spectrums whirled around us circularly with violent winds that sounded like a set of knives being jammed into malicious whirring propellers. Above, I noticed a series of numbers that kept escalating with loud ‘ping’s as the sound of rushing air grew louder and louder. We were on twenty-seven.

“Right, let go, buddies!
” Robbie said.

“But we’re not holding on to anything!” I mentioned. The number moved up to twenty-eight.

“Trust me, you are,” he responded. Twenty-nine. I was utterly confused because I honestly felt as if I were glued to the spot with my hands strapped beside me. With a loud ‘ping’ the number changed to a bright green ‘30’. I did whatever Robbie suggested and I sort of turned around, in the hopes that I’d unstrap myself from the C.E.T. It was magnetic; as I turned away forcefully, a force was trying to keep me strapped in.

Suddenly
, we were spat out of the Transporter as the colour of the new floor quickly painted itself into being.

“
Guys, look up,” Robbie gestured, pointing upwards. I walked towards the railing as did Jaden and Jade. We peered over the restricting railing and strained our necks to look upwards. I gasped and then pulled my head back in. We seemed to be closer to the top floor. The ceiling was made of glass and was a triangular prism projecting outwards.

Eventually
, we were pulled along towards a large dimly lit opening with a large television screen hung up – all previews of films being shown tonight were available on it. And there it was. Robbie’s on-going ramble became a strange, bizarre and childish exclamation of him jumping up and down rabidly, practically screaming
“
oh my goodness, oh my goodness, oh my goodness!
” Jaden and I were forced to excuse him as others walked by.

On both sides of the room,
there were rows of food stands. We walked to one of them and looked at the
glorious
food through the glass. I almost drooled at the tacos, popcorn and chips. Behind the counter were grillers which had hot dogs and burgers cooking on them and buns in the glass case next to them. A woman in a plaid blue and black uniform attended to us as I continued to salivate over the luscious food.

“
Jade, take the money. If I continue having it, it’ll be wasted on unnecessary things,” Liam joked.

“
Hi, what can I get you?” she asked. She
tried
putting on a fake smile but it was horrible. Just
horrible. You could clearly see she hated this job.

Instantly
, we began talking spontaneously to Jade but pointing to varieties of food. She kept turning her head to each of us uncountable times and it began to seem certain that we were stressing the poor girl out. Then BAM – she exploded.

“OKAY!” she yelled out. She inhaled and looked at the woman before rambling on: “right, I’ll have fifteen hot dogs, three large fully-salted popcorns, two unsalted; just plain and crispy the way these two like it! –” she exclaimed on Liam and Jaden before continuing, as the woman was quickly scribbling down Jade’s orders in a notepad. It was probably my vivid imagination but this all seemed pulled out of an animation.

“
– three sweet popcorns, four tacos for these boys with
everything
on it – woman I am
not
kidding do
not
skimp on the fillings or they’ll be back on you like wolves – seven large cokes, ten packets of skittles, five packets of M&M’s and a large bottle of water.” Jade then gasped for air. I’m sure she had used her telepathy for every piece of that order because we were all fully satisfied.

The woman went to the back of the room and went to the grill to get the hot dogs. A
light and almost unnoticeable breeze suddenly flew overhead and appeared as hands made of air. They began typing on the till. It clicked, rang and then suddenly opened to reveal coins which had the usual vertical sword and ‘V’ overlapping it.

T
he other side of the coins had either a flame, a head that strongly resembled Markmardowal’s, a fox, two crossing hatchets, a large monument or a tree, all with their values written in cursive figures below. Underneath the figures was the word Pasil. The red, blue, green, light blue and purple notes each had a majestic monument printed onto them – one of them I noticed to be the grand marble building behind the Trim Ridge fountain. The word
shack
was clearly printed on each of the notes with a symbol before the values that seemed to be an ‘S’ with an ‘H’ overlapping it. As the woman turned around, the hands made of air slowly disappeared.

“
Okay, that’ll be fifteen Shacks and twelve Pasils.” Suddenly, we looked at Jade, expecting her to provide the money. She reached into her pockets and wasted valuable time swimming her hands around to get a grip of the cash.

“
Hang on,
jeans are so tight
–” After she had finished wasting two precious minutes of ours, she caught the money and took out two blue and green notes. One stated ten shacks and the other five shacks. She then pulled out several Pasils from her pockets; there were two silver small-sized ones and a big bronze one. The coins clinked in Jade’s hands as she handed them over to the cashier. She kindly accepted the money and put it in the electric till. She swayed her hand across the front of the till and a gush of wind brushed across to slam it shut.

“
There you go. Enjoy the movie,” said the woman.

“
Thank you,” we said unevenly. Jade lifted her hands, waving them over the food we had just purchased as began to levitate into mid-air.

“
Liam – could you –?” asked Jade, pointing to the food. Liam clicked his fingers and shields of electricity encircled the food. Jade put her hand down whilst her eyes were still a fierce and bright purple. The food hovered behind Jade as we got in line to give our tickets in. The people preceding us had just finished and entered a long hall ahead. A man in a black and blue outfit stood in front of us, looking extremely tired but attempting to hide it. He was doing a stand up job at disguising it, I must say. If you looked past his dishevelled hair and lifeless eyes, of course.

“Ticket –” he stopped and re-examined how many we were “–
tickets
please.” Robbie reached into his pockets and quickly – much quicker than Jade did in any case – pulled out seven, small white tickets that stated: BEOWULF 01:00am to 2:45am – November 16
th
”printed onto it. He accepted it timidly and clenched them in his fist. He opened them and the white cards were now red.

“
Thank you, enjoy the movie,” he said, dully painting a pretend smile on his face. We kindly took the tickets and walked past him. There were a set of gleaming red and black swinging doors in front of us which had two large circular holes as windows. We walked closer to them and they swung open by themselves. The food behind Jade was floating gently as we walked hastily.

We were now in a cool, air conditioned hall
where the different cinema screens were. We took a right turn and came to an opening with two sets of two black swinging doors on the left and right. In the wall between them was the word Beowulf in fire and an arrow beneath it pointing to the doors on the left. We slowly pushed open the black doors on the gestured side and we were finally in the cinema. The room was extensively large and the ceiling dimmer lights were low. The majority of the audience was now seating themselves and a few were now coming in with us.

“
Come, I’m pretty sure there’s still some space up there.” Robbie referred to the highest seats. We walked further into the cinema and walked up the stairs, outlined with a row of dim lights.

“
I can’t believe it. These cinemas are just like the ones back home. Only I think I prefer these,” Jaden remarked.

We reached the highest row and
took our places. We got a very clear and broad view of the screen. I could tell we had missed all the advertisements because with a loud roar that lit the screen to a blinding white, the movie had begun. Tammy was sitting against the wall. Next to her was Jojo, then Liam, Robbie, me, Jaden and then Jade – who was sitting the closest to the stairs. Jade looked at us then stretched her hand out forward towards the direction Tammy was. A flat purple shield spread itself across, acting as a table. The food hovered above our heads and then landed on the force-field.

“
Such awesomeness
,” I whispered to myself. I still
couldn’t get over the aptitude of our abilities.

“
What did you say?” Jaden asked me inquisitively.

“
I said shut up and watch the movie,” I quickly retorted in a hiss. The sound of the crunching and munching of popcorn was monotonous. Robbie kept reciting most of the movie, as if he had seen this exact film before and he
knew
what the actors were going to say, which was putting us on edge. I ate silently and watched. I
also
deliberately bothered Jaden by stealing his food.

An hour and forty-five minutes
(which honestly felt like a century) had passed and this life-draining, mediocre movie was finished. We walked down the cinema corridors languidly, looking like complete train wrecks and zombies, whilst Robbie seemed full of joie-de-vivre.

“
Oh, and do you remember the scene where he was like –”

“
Robbie, please, for all that is good in this world –
shut up!
” Liam spoke out of sheer exhaustion.

“
Oh, right…yeah – sorry,” his little brother timidly responded. But of us all, Jade was the worst – she was unbearably cranky and impulsive if she got too tired.

“
Urgh, Aden, your voice is so annoying!” she groaned, rubbing her forehead as if stressed.

“
What –
that is so unfair I haven’t even said as much as a
word
since the movie ended,” I complained undertone.

“
Yes, but I can hear you in my head. And your voice sounds like impulsive, needless, childish
whining
!”

“
Hurtful,” I mumbled to myself, half asleep.

“
What time is it?” I asked the others, half dead. Jojo pulled up her sleeves and looked at her jewel encrusted watch.

“
Two forty-eight,” she said.

“
Really?” groaned Jade. Jojo opened her mouth and yawned.

“
Yes,” she answered plainly. We walked through the wide and not-as-lively corridor. The liveliness of the place had somewhat diminished. We headed to a C.E.T. and teleported to the bottom floor. We could
have just used Jojo, but seeing her as unresponsive and unanimated as she was, her teleporting would be like being driven by someone under the influence of alcohol. We trudged to the main entrance and crossed the bridge.

“
Okay. Positions,” spoke Robbie – the only
one of us who didn’t understand what it was like to be kept awake against your will at two in the morning.

We stretched our hands inwards, looking completely unaware of our surroundings outside
St Balowin’s. Suddenly, the others disappeared leaving fog and mist in the atmosphere and I was the last to vanish again. We reappeared underneath the canopy but fell to the ground due to our lack of steadiness and balance – all of us except Robbie, of course. We stood up slothfully and slouching over to the front door.

“I want to puke out an atomic bomb,” Liam muffled with his head in the grass as his stomach churned.

Robbie looked back at us and saw us all slowly dozing off as we stood. He rolled his
eyes and shrugged. He picked up a branch on the floor and stretched it back without snapping it. Out of nowhere, the branch whipped through the air with a
whack
and slapped all of us on our cheeks. At least we were all awake now.

“
What was that
for?!” I automatically exclaimed, at which point Robbie had already stretched his hand to cover my mouth.

“
Be quiet
!” he hissed.

“
Sorry,” I timidly responded as he gently lowered his hand.

“
Are you guys all awake
now
?” Robbie asked. Just like that, the floor was open to a series of babyish complaints from all of us.

“
Obviously,” Tammy complained.

“
My cheek hurts,” Jojo said, rubbing her cheek.

“
My tooth tastes funny,” Jaden bizarrely spoke, his tongue looking busy in his mouth as he impossibly
tried to taste his tooth.