Leo Blue POV
"My bus is immune with your magic." I tell the Water Witch some day in May. I haven't slept a wink, because it's freaking impossible.
The Water Witch looks at me with her razor sharp eyes at the door while she stands there in the door frame, leaving me in the darkness of the night. She squints slightly as says, "What's that?"
"What's what?"
"That?"
Oh! She's talking about the sack I was carrying over my shoulder. It was completely full of sugar plums that I collected from my Guinea pigs over the past few weeks. "They're plums. Plums that I've.... created with my dreams." I lied.
The Water Witch gave me a look. The Don't mess with me look. She was absolutely suspicious about the amount of plums and the number of nights I've spent. Oh God, if she finds out that I never actually had these dreams, would that be okay?
"Ah. I see." She says tightly. With a sinister flash in her eyes, she pulls me into the cabin, takes a purple and beautiful sugar plum from the bag, and looks at it deeply. "This looks rough."
"Okay, but I'm not here for you, I'm here for her." I tell Water Witch sternly.
She turns around to face the cabin door in the back, and back at me. "She's asleep."
"Asleep? Sugar Plum's asleep, but she's alive isn't she?"
"I'm holding her hostage. In the room I put her in, she's forced into a deep sleep, untill I make her go out and find you."
"Well, you can tell Sugar Plum that maybe she'll finally be free! I've slept so many times, and had so many dreams, that I have so many plums and kept them all in this bag where I keep them safe."
Water Witch's eyes grow wide when I show her the inside of the bag. "It's like Christmas eve." She whispers mystically as she turns on her heel.
"Sit." She tells me.
I sat there on the wooden chair across from her vicious gaze.
"I really like you, Leo. I think you're working harder than most people in your situation would."
"Ah. Great." I was uncertain on where this was going.
"Those dreams are.... your dreams, aren't they?"
"Of course!" I panic.
"Very well." She quipped, looking at her long finger nails carefully, "You do realize that there will be... mmm... consequences to your actions."
".....Yes."
"I've always said that the world was a dangerous and evil place, and I'm always right! Yet people still go around thinking I'm some old wicked Witch who kills people."
"But isn't that what you do? Kill people?"
"Oh, no! I only try to help people. Some people deserve to be forbidden from the world, so I've held young creatures with me and told them what to do and what not to do. I tell these young creatures that if they obey my orders, they'll be happy and alive when they are set free, and if they don't, that's when they get it."
"And you call yourself a good person, but you forbid people from their own freedoms?"
"I don't forbid them! These people come to me for help, I give them a task, and they follow. If they can't do that, that's when I unalive them! That's it! Anyone who steps into my life gets either me... or death." She then laughs viciously.
"But when Sugar Plum was a regular teenage human, you never killed her. Why not?"
"She was not like other girls." She says quietly, almost sadly. "Anyone can tell you that she had a stunning personality, but she was a monster, that's all she was and all she ever would be."
"How so?"
"She came to California for me to help her. You see, she was born in Tennessee much like yourself."
"Yeah, she told me that before."
"She had sleep demons, and awful nightmares that made her do insanely unlawful things. She came to me for help. She wanted to do what she wanted and escape these nightmares, so I gave her my tasks, which she tried to follow, but her nightmares made it too difficult. I couldn't kill her so I trapped her in a book and sent her off to Tennessee hoping that her family or something might find the book and free her, but instead, she waited decades in that book untill you found her."
"You had her trapped and tortured, didn't you care about her?"
"I told her that she had to wait around for someone to rescue her. If you, Leo Blue, get enough plums filled with your dreams, that'll reset the clock. We'll be in an alternate universe where she could actually be safe and happy."
"But I can take as long as I want, right? The clock will reset either way."
She lets out a hot laugh. "That's what you think!" She then takes an aggressive bite out of an apple as I begin to panic. "You have untill June."
"June?!"
Oh crap! It feels like my life depends on these dreams! Oh God, what a poor woman! She wants to be happy and alive, and back to fifteen and live life without her problems.
I came back to the bus that morning. The bus is immune with the magic now, so the time emidiately stops, and I'm already able to take these people anywhere. I gently place the bag of sweet smelling sugar plums next to the seat. I taps my feet impatiently and the summer heat drips down my body.
Maxton Malute was the first person to arrive.
I see him walk in through the rear view mirror, looking as skeptical as he did all those other days.
"Maxton! You're the first one today, don't you feel special?!" I ask.
"Yeah. You could definitely say that again." He says calm and casual as he steps up to the isle and reaches into his pocket.
I turn to look at my watch to make sure it's still 12:00 noon, which it is. Suddenly, I feel a sharp pain hit me in the middle of my back, which faded out a moment later.
What the- I reach my hand to feel it, only to realize that it's liquidy. What the hell... is that? No, it can't be! Blood!? I feel my energy drain from the veins. I fight it and stand up and face Maxton, who stood in the middle of the isle behind me, holding a gun out.
Something took the breath out of me as I say "Oh... hell.....no." as I collapsed to the bus floor.
This was it! This was the end of my life, and of Sugar Plums life! Goodbye world!
Author's note: People who have read Cursed Pool already knows what happens to Leo, but ahhh! I love the scene where he gets shot! Anyway, you had to have expected that Maxton actually uses his gun at some point. Stay tuned!
