CHAPTER 4
“Blossom?” the professor called out as he went upstairs towards the girls’ bedroom. “Are you okay up there? We have some good news…” Not receiving an answer, the professor continued into the bedroom. He noticed the door to the bathroom open, and saw Blossom curled up on the ground, shaking. Heading over quickly, he said, “Blossom! What’s wrong?”
With her eyes tightly clamped, she whispered in a shaky voice, “I-I… I… I saw… m-myself…”
The professor looked up at the bathroom mirror, then back down at her and said, “You mean you…?”
“I’m gonna die,” she said, her voice strengthening but still filled with fear. “I’m gonna die… I’m gonna die!!”
The professor put a comforting hand on head and said, “No, you’re not. Listen, you’re going to beat this curse, you understand? You’re going to find the source of it, and find a way to break it.”
“How?!” Blossom shrieked, tears squeezing out from her eyes. “W-we can’t find the f-fortune teller, a-and…”
“Actually, that’s what I was coming up here to tell you,” he said, looking down at a piece of paper in his other hand. “We think we’ve found her. There’s a woman in Townsville with a police record that came up in my search, and she matches your description, right down to the scars around her eyes. Her name’s Judith Barrows… we’ve got her address and everything.”
Blossom lifted her head a little bit, looking up, “R-really? So you… you think maybe she’ll know how to undo this?”
“If anyone knows, she does, right?” the professor said, and glanced down at her. “All you need to do is take a little trip over there, and…”
Too late, the professor realized that he had just made eye contact with Blossom, who realized it as well in horror. “NO!!” Blossom cried out, hugging the professor’s leg and crying, “No, no, not you too!! Oh god…!”
Scooping her up from the ground and hugging her tightly, he said, “It’s all right, Blososm, it’s all right…” He frowned sadly as he felt Blossom shaking in his arms, and told her, “Nothing’s going to happen to any of us. Do you understand?”
Between sobs, Blossom managed to say, “…y-yes…”
“Great,” the professor nodded, “Now, you head over right now to…”
Blossom shook her head, “No… no, I c-can’t leave anyone out of my sight… w-we gotta make s-sure we’re all safe… a-and someone’s gotta watch… watch out for m-me now… a-and you, too…”
“Then we’ll all go,” the professor reassured her, “and watch out for each other, okay?” Blossom gave a slow nod and hugged the professor a little tighter, as he carried her out of their room and back downstairs. Despite the confidence he carried that they would make it through this, he also felt a bit afraid as well, knowing that if they didn’t, it would be the end of them all…
* * *
The professor drove his car out of the garage, and started heading towards Townsville. Next to him in the front seat was Mitch, and the girls were buckled up in the backseats… Robin, without a seatbelt, was squeezed in between Buttercup and Bubbles, both of them holding onto her tightly… Bubbles said, “Don’t worry, we won’t let anything happen to you, all right?”
“All right…” Robin nodded. She called up to the front seat, “Professor? How far is it?”
“She lives in the west part of town,” the professor replied, “in an apartment building near the waterfront. We’ll be there in just a little while.” Blossom listened to the professor talk, but kept one of her hands on the car door handle and another on her seatbelt at all times. If anything happens, she thought, I can fly out of here in an instant and get the car to safety. I’m not going to let another traffic accident happen…
Looking over at Blossom, Buttercup asked, “What happens to the professor? I wanna know, just in case, so I can see it coming…”
“I think… I think an explosion,” Blossom said. “H-he looked burned… but he was thrown back, hitting something hard… I-I dunno, an explosion is the best I could figure it out…”
Bubbles stared out of the window for a second, then asked, “Blossom? What… what happens if the fortune lady can’t… you know…” Blossom didn’t answer… she didn’t need to, since Bubbles already knew just as well as the rest of them did. The question just hung in the air on everyone’s minds, though.
If I can’t undo it, Blossom thought, then I… I don’t know what I’ll do… I’ll do anything not to die like I saw I would… anything… Every time she thought of the image she shuddered, breaking out into a sweat. That was probably the worst way to die she had ever seen, and she swore to herself that if there were no other way out, she’d kill herself before it happened. Better to die by her own terms rather than the curse’s…
As they drew nearer to the apartment, Buttercup got more and more nervous, knowing that something could happen at any moment. She didn’t want to admit it, but she was scared to death by this whole situation… she had a fear of dying buried deep within her that normally never saw the light of day. All her life, she had been her powers to protect her from this, and constantly made herself out to be the strongest of the three, because it gave her a feeling of invulnerability, that she couldn’t die so long as she was so powerful. But faced with inescapable death… she didn’t know how long she could keep it together. At any moment, she felt like she was going to lose control and just run for it, in a futile attempt to evade her fate, but she still had one thought that kept her from doing so: there’s always a way out, and they could find it.
“Hmm,” the professor remarked after making a turn at an intersection, “I think that’s the building up ahead… we’re almost there.”
“Where? I can’t see it,” Mitch said, straining to see over the dashboard from the front seat. After a few unsuccessful attempts, he grunted irritably and undid his seat belt so he could stand up and get a better look.
The professor looked over at him in shock and said, “What are you doing? Put your seat belt back on…” Bubbles, suddenly worried that if anything happened to the car now Mitch might be in danger, let go of Robin’s arm and started to reach towards the front seat, trying to grab hold of him…
With his eyes off the road just for an instant, the professor didn’t spot a large broken bottle on the edge of the street, and the car drove over it. With a loud *bang*, the front right tire blew out, and the car started to skid to the right. Everyone grabbed hold of whatever they could, except for Blossom, who immediately undid her seatbelt and opened the door, flying out of the car and circling around to the back. She grabbed hold of the rear bumper and held tight, jarring the car to a stop.
That was a mistake, however… in the sudden stop, Mitch was thrown forward into the front windshield, hitting it with enough force that he crashed through it, flying out onto the road in front of them. At the same time, Buttercup lost her grip on Robin’s arm, and the force of the stop sent her tumbling against the front seat and out the open door Blossom had left the car through. She rolled a few times in the street, sliding to a halt finally.
As everyone recovered from what had just happened, Blossom gasped and flew over to check on Robin, while the other girls had already undid their seat belts and went to check on Mitch. Robin coughed and started to sit up, and Blossom was relieved… despite a few small scrapes and cuts, she seemed amazingly all right. When she looked over at the other girls to see how Mitch was, however, she saw Buttercup biting her lip and looking back over sadly.
The professor got out of the car and looked at Mitch… he said, “I’ll… I’ll call the hospital, and…”
“No…” Buttercup said, shaking her head. “No, it’s too late…” Bubbles was trying hard not to cry, and turned away from Mitch, looking over at the professor expectantly to wait for what they should do next.
Blossom said, “Robin’s fine… she got a little banged up, but she’ll be okay, right?”
“I think so,” Robin said. As she started to sit up, her eyes widened as she saw a car turning onto the road at a nearby intersection, coming fast and heading directly for them… obviously, the driver had not seen them. She cried out, “Blossom!!”
Blossom glanced over, and seeing the car heading directly for them, had just enough time to grab Robin and throw her into the air, shouting, “Girls, catch!!” The car rammed into Blossom in the next instant, knocking her to one side and causing the car to slam on the brakes, coming to a stop. Robin, in the meantime, was arcing through the air towards the other side of the street, screaming… she had been thrown a little too hard, and went over the girls’ heads. Buttercup hesitated, taken by surprise, but Bubbles launched herself into the air, trying to catch Robin as she passed over.
She just barely missed, her hand brushing against the edge of her foot as she went by. Robin fell down towards the buildings on the other side of the street, directly onto an iron fence that was in front of the building, her head coming down onto one of the spikes. Her scream was cut short, and Bubbles, who had watched her fall, gave a horrified shriek and covered her eyes to avoid seeing the grisly sight.
Blossom got back up from where the car had knocked her, and saw what happened. NO! she thought… No, I was trying to save her! Th-that didn’t just happen…Robin, no… But it dawned on her as well that she should have seen this coming. After all, the image she had seen when she looked at Robin earlier wasn’t broken bones or anything, nor was it being crushed like if the car had hit her… it was exactly how she was now.
A deathly silence hung in the air for a few moments, nobody daring to talk. The driver of the other car got out and saw the accident, saying, “Holy geez… i-is there anything I can do…?”
The professor snapped out of his trance and said, “Call an ambulance… quickly.” The man nodded and went off to find a phone, and the girls let him go, knowing that an ambulance couldn’t save them now anyway… Waiting until the man disappeared into a building, the professor focused on the apartment complex and said, “Let’s go… we don’t have any time to lose.” He started for it, and the girls followed, although they glanced back at Mitch and Robin’s bodies, feeling terrible at leaving them behind like this. But they knew they’d be joining them if they didn’t finish this as fast as they could…
* * *
The professor read the doorplate aloud, “Apartment 4E. This is the place…” He reached out and knocked on the door firmly. As they waited for a reply, Blossom hoped that she was home, or else they were back where they started. If the woman had left town already, there was no possible way they could track her down in time. They would all be dead long before that.
All of them breathed a collective sigh of relief when they heard footsteps approaching the door, and the sounds of locks and chains being removed. The door edged open, and Blossom kept her eyes on the ground, not wanting to look her in the eyes. A woman was at the door; she looked middle-aged, with black, wavy hair and the beginnings of some wrinkles. She was wearing a simple flowered dress and a shawl… even though she wasn’t wearing the gaudy fortune teller’s outfit she had been earlier, she definitely matched Blossom’s description, with the hazel eyes and the scars that surrounded them. “Can I help you?” she asked.
“Judith Barrows?” the professor said. When the woman nodded, he continued, “May we come in?” The woman looked confused at their presence, but when she looked down and saw Blossom looking down at the ground, she froze for a moment, and stepped aside to let them in.
Going inside, her apartment had a few antiques and some simple furniture, but the walls were also covered with newspaper clippings… a lot of them looked like obituaries, with entries circled in a heavy black marker. Judith, in the meantime, went over to an easy chair in the room and sat down, saying, “I don’t need to ask why you’re here…”
Blossom, still keeping her eyes away from the woman, said, “What did you do to me?!”
“I’m so sorry,” Judith said, sighing deeply. “The gift has been with me since I was a child… it was given to me by my mother, who had received it from a stranger when she was a girl…”
“What is it, exactly?” the professor asked.
Judith closed her eyes and said, “A curse… a curse that has been passed from person to person for who knows how long. The stranger had told my mother that it had been passed along continuously, maybe for hundreds of years. Once I had it, I couldn’t take it, seeing so much death, and tried to…” She cut herself off and motioned at her scars. “But the curse… protected my eyes somehow. I couldn’t hurt them. So I’ve lived with it ever since.”
Buttercup asked, “Where did it come from?”
“I wish I could tell you,” Judith said. “My mother had done a great deal of research to try and find its origin, but came up empty-handed. It could very well be thousands of years old, not merely hundreds. But it must have been secretive, as she could not find even the vaguest reference to it in any historical records.”
“But why me?” Blossom demanded. “Why did you pass it to me?”
Judith looked over at her and said, “It happens when you reach a certain age… you must find a child to pass the ability to, the curse sort of compels you to do so. I am very sorry it had to be you, but I had to find someone willing to take it… your mind was open and you were willing, so I took the opportunity. I couldn’t help it, please believe me…”
Blossom frowned, “So how do we get rid of this thing? How do we stop the deaths?”
“You can’t,” Judith said, shaking her head. “The deaths you see are cast by the hand of fate. They cannot be stopped, and believe me, I’ve tried…” Bubbles and Buttercup stared at each other when she said this, both of them afraid by what the woman said.
“No, I won’t accept that!” Blossom shouted. “There has got to be a way to keep it from happening! I don’t want to cause people to die every time I look…”
“Cause?” Judith asked, confused. “What do you mean?”
Blossom blinked, and said, “Everyone I’ve looked at so far today has died… I’m causing this…” She hesitated, and feeling cold again, she asked, “You… you never caused them?”
“Most of the ones I saw took years before they came to pass…” she answered. “This… doesn’t make any sense…”
“Unless…” the professor spoke up, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. Everyone looked over at him, and he said, “Maybe your superpowers are enhancing it somehow. It’s just a theory, but maybe it explains how come with Judith, she was just seeing how the people would eventually die, and you’re actually causing them to die… if it had been anyone else…”
“Oh god…” Judith said, staring off at the wall in shock, “…what have I done?”
Blossom gritted her teeth, staring at her and saying urgently, “You’ve got to tell me how we can stop this! This thing has already killed a lot of people at the fair, and my entire class from school… and now it’s going to kill both my sisters and my dad, and me as well! You tell me right now how to get rid of this!”
Judith looked at her blankly and stammered, “I-I don’t know! I’ve never… never heard of anything like this happening, a-and I…” She trailed off as she realized Blossom’s expression had changed the moment she had looked over at her. “What…?”
Blossom felt herself sweating a bit and said, “I-if you don’t want to die… due to being crushed… th-then you’ll help us find a way to stop this, all right?”
“But… I’ve seen myself in a mirror before…” Judith told her. “I die because of a stroke…”
“Not anymore…” Blossom said sadly. “I’m sorry… listen, can you think of anything that might help us? At least to undo the deaths we caused, or maybe get rid of this thing altogether?” Everyone else looked at her hopefully.
“Well…” Judith said, gripping the arms of her chair. “I… I guess… as long as you have your powers enhancing it… maybe if you took them away, it… it would…”
“That’s it!” Blossom exclaimed. “Professor, we need to get back and get some Antidote-X…” She looked back over at Judith and said, “But if that doesn’t work, we need a backup plan…”
“The only thing I can think of…” Judith said, swallowing. “Is… well…”
“What?” Buttercup asked. “C’mon, tell us!”
Judith finally said, “If… if the one carrying the curse… dies… that would be the only way to destroy the curse forever…” Everyone else looked over at Blossom when she said this, as she continued, “Maybe if the curse is gone entirely… then that will save people…”
“No,” Bubbles said, shaking her head. “Blossom, you can’t…”
Blossom looked a bit shaky and said, “To save you three? If there was no other way? I could, and I will.” She took a deep breath and said, “O-only if there’s no other way, though. We try the Antidote-X first, and…”
The professor held up his hand to cut her off, sniffing the air, “Wait… *sniff* Do you smell that?” The others sniffed the air, and looked confused… there was definitely some odd scent in the air. The professor said, “That… smells like gas…”
“Is there a leak somewhere?” Blossom asked… as she did, she suddenly recalled how the professor was going to die, and said, “We’ve got to get out of here right now!” Without wasting any further time, she grabbed hold of the professor’s arm and started flying for the window.
“What? What’s going on?” Bubbles said, following. Buttercup followed suit… Judith just stood up, confused, but by that time, Blossom had already opened the window and flown out with the professor in tow. Both of the other girls flew out as well, and Bubbles shouted, “Blossom? What’s wrong?”
Looking back over her shoulder, Blossom said, “Don’t leave without Judith! Get her out of there, quickly!” Bubbles nodded and turned around, starting to head back. As she did, though, there was a loud blast, as the gas leak in the building exploded, detonating the sides of the building out. Flames and large chunks of debris shot outwards. A large chunk of wall struck Bubbles hard, its trajectory carrying her out over the bay outside the building and into the water. Before she could recover from it, she struck the ocean floor… the weight of the debris sandwiched her against the ground, the impact forcing her breath out of her. She struggled to push the piece of debris off and swim back to the surface, but she was disoriented and panicked, and couldn’t tell which way was up…
In the air, Buttercup shielded herself from the blast, and saw some debris flying towards her that looked like a flat sheet of metal. She was about to try and dodge it when she instinctively stuck her hands out instead, catching it. As she had partially expected, the sheet hit her with enough force to knock her back through the air, but thanks to having caught it, it didn’t strike her directly. She perspired heavily as she realized, looking down at it in her hands, it was positioned perfectly to slice her in half, if she hadn’t caught it. The near miss made her freeze, gaping at it.
Blossom, in the meantime, looked back at the building, the flames out of control and parts of the structure collapsing, and knew already what she’d find if she went back inside… undoubtedly, Judith was crushed beneath piles of brick from the floors above, and there was nothing they could do. Noticing Buttercup hovering perfectly still, she asked, “Buttercup, are you okay?”
“I’m… I’m fine…” Buttercup managed to answer, finally releasing the piece of metal and letting it drop away from her. “The professor…?”
“I’ve got him, he’s all right,” Blossom said, looking at the professor where she held him. She called out, “Bubbles? Are you all right?”
There was no answer, and Buttercup looked around, trying to figure out where she had disappeared to… her eyes fell down to the water below, and her heart nearly stopped… she shrieked, “THERE!!” and pointed… when Blossom and the professor looked down, they saw it too, both of them as horrified as Buttercup. Bubbles was floating face-down on the surface of the water, completely still…
Without wasting another second, Buttercup flew over and hauled her out of the water, dragging her quickly to the shore. She was so still, and her face was turning blue. Blossom landed next to her, and once they were safely on the ground, the professor rushed over to Bubbles and checked her vitals… he immediately started performing CPR on her.
“No… Bubbles, c’mon…” Blossom cried. “Breathe, please…” Buttercup grabbed hold of her hands, but didn’t take her eyes off of them. The professor tried a few more times, and finally stopped… tears fell from his eyes, and he shook his head. Blossom hugged Buttercup tightly, crying, and Buttercup just continued to stare sadly through her own tear-filled eyes, in disbelief…