The Spirit World 2

[Jilly]

((Katelynne Kirkpatrick continued from the temple))

There were two girls on the ground, bodies positioned so one held the hand of the other. Both bodies were pretty far gone; one didn't even have a head anymore. The flies buzzing and lingering miasma pretty much confirmed they'd been there for a while.

The clothes, though… that red frayed sweater told Katelynne everything. Caroline. The girl who presumably saved her from Quinn, and Katelynne was too self-centered to even thank her.

The other girl must've been Regina, then. Katelynne didn't know too much about her back home. She kinda wished she did now. She seemed real kind, the kind of kindness Katelynne wished she had more of herself.

She prayed and gave them a moment of silence. And then she kept heading straight. They weren't who she was looking for.

---

It was well past twilight, and there was still no sign of Princess anywhere. But Katelynne couldn't give up. Not yet. She had to be here somewhere. Princess was strong. She can't get hurt, that was an impossibility. Strong people didn't get hurt.

Katelynne kept a straight path from the temple up the island. Kept silent, kept a steady pace past the voices and cries from the stables that didn't sound like her, or the bodies in the menagerie proper that definitely weren't her (along with a bag free for the taking, but... she couldn't do it. Call her weak but she didn't care; she weren't no grave robber.), or any of the other bodies that gave false positives on the radar. She forgot the map of course because she always had to absentmindedly forget something, but as long as she kept a straight path she could make her way back with Princess easily. Just had to find her first, easier said than done. How far could she have gotten, though?

Regardless, she'd just have to chase her all over this god damned island until her legs gave out. Each twig that crunched under her heel meant she was another step closer. That was enough motivation to keep going through the morgue.

Her eyes stayed glued on the radar, the screen angled up and down to get the best moonlight possible on the backlit-less LED screen. Forgot the flashlight, too. But she couldn't use it, anyway. Too risky. All she had was the shovel thing that looked like it'd already been through a bit, though by now she learned not to ask questions.

Katelynne's heart skipped as a new dot blipped on the screen. Somewhere to the northeast. A solo dot.

And it was moving.

Her feet picked up in tempo.

She couldn't see anything in front of her save for an endless abyss of trees in the darkness. But she couldn't stop.

The distance between her and the dot drew closer and closer.














A rogue tree root ensnared her foot; the radar and shovel clanked along the ground as she plummeted.

She didn't have a moment to spare, though. She quickly pushed herself back up and grabbed the shovel and the… the radar with the battery pack pried open and off-kilter, screen caked with dirt and nothing displayed.

No. No no. No no no no no no no

She fiddled with the battery and forced it back in and gave it a good smack or two while keeping her momentum forward.

Nothing.

Come on…. please. Not this. Not right now.








...Nothing.













Don't do this to her. Not now.













The screen came back on, the LCD dots flickering alive on the unlit display.

She clutched the radar tight in her bosom. Her breaths never felt so liberating. But there was no time to recuperate, the dot wasn't gonna wait for her.

---

Katelynne found herself in some sort of clearing now.

The dot was here.

...

...! Over there!

"Princess!"

Katelynne broke into a full sprint, radar and entrenching shovel clutched tight.

It was her, just standing around in the woods in the middle of the night. Her back was faced towards Katelynne, but it was definitely her.

"Princess!"

Katelynne pounced on and embraced her from behind.

There were so many questions, but she couldn't confangle the words together. It didn't matter right now.




Until it did. Katelynne had found Princess, the one thing she could be sure of. She didn’t know if her friend was okay.

Even at a pounce, she didn’t feel okay. She was quivering like a dog left out in the rain. She was burning up. Sickness. Fever. Had to be something, and something bad. What on Earth was going on?

“Kate…”

Katelynne pulled back at the tiniest smidgeon of a voice. It was small. Scary kinda small. Defeated. It sounded like Princess, looked like Princess. What with Katelynne having half buried herself into the girl’s sticky sweaty hair… Not just that, it wasn’t. Coppery.

“She-... she’s…”

Princess was breathing easy. That was okay. She was hot, way too hot, Katelynne wanted to rush her to the nearest ice that didn’t exist on this damn ocean rock hot. But that could be fixed. They just had to move.

Katelynne opened her mouth, but got interrupted a quarter of the way there.

“Megan.” One of Princess’ other friends.

One of the bodies in the menagerie.

...Princess.





Katelynne bit her lip, held the command to leave back. She lost the words as Princess turned around. Tears. Paltry little tears, like she’d cried out the rest with whatever drops she could putter out from her empty water bottles. It barely washed the dirt caked on her face.

Wiping that right up was easy. Eerily as easy was the rest of getting her friend out of there.

She found the words again.

"...We gotta get going, okay?" Katelynne mustered out the mom voice again, brushing her kid's hair out of her face with a gentle caress. "It ain't safe here. Let's get back to the temple and get you some Tylenol, all right?"




Eventually a little nod.

“I’m sorry.”

Wasn’t sure what Princess could’ve been apologizing for. She folded the shovel under her arm and enveloped Princess's hand with her own, dragging her back to the realm of the living kicking and screaming.

---

Princess could walk still. Barely, like she'd just come back from a midnight bender, but still. It was something. She’d stopped crying, hadn’t started speaking any, but it was something. Wasn't sure if the dead silence was better or not, though. But, it was something.

Katelynne slowed her own pace down to compensate, no rush to getting to the temple but still with a purpose. It still felt so far away, but as long as they kept straight they'd hit it again, or at least the stables and stuff so they could figure out how to get back from there. But they would make it, just as long as they kept their eyes on the road and on the radar.

...The radar that froze again.

Katelynne smacked it in the side. Then she removed the battery pack and tried inserting it again after a few seconds passed.

"I think I might'a messed something up," she said with another smack. "It still works, but… please don't tell the guys." Princess nodded. She didn’t seem much curious, or much anything.

A few feet and a few minutes later, it came back online again. Phew.

Princess chose that moment to say something.

“... Where are the boys?” Awful weird moment in time where Katelynne swore it was a little girl asking her if she’d be in trouble.

"They're still at the chapel thing," Katelynne replied non-chalant, tilting the display up and down to try and get any sort of good viewing angle. "Tyrell's pretty banged up, but he brought back a bunch of stuff like this radar thing. Lucas stayed behind, but I think he can hand-"

There was a lone dot some feet away, unmoving.

"Something's here!" she whispered and pulled Princess with her behind a bush that broke the direct line of sight.

Her eyes dashed around. There wasn't a flashlight beam or sounds outside of the forest nightlife or nothing. Was someone hunkered down in the middle of the woods, or was it another dead body?

Katelynne looked back to Princess. She pointed at a mound of something on the ground, by one of the trees.

Katelynne squinted her eyes and poked taller from behind the bush.

It was just another body. She could barely make it out in the early morning hours, but this one… it couldn't be…

...She had to make sure.

"Wait here," she brushed Princess's shoulder as she got closer to the body, trowel-thing held tight in her hand.

Every step crunched and resonated through the forest, but the only sound in her ears was her own beating heart that grew violent by the foot.

...It was. It was her.

Another deep breath.

"It's Quinn."

It was different clothes from their last encounter, a size or two too big so most definitely swindled off of someone else.

Face beaten in with a mixture of blood and euphoria.

Katelynne couldn't tear away. She stayed transfixed until Princess grabbed her hand from behind.

"Someone else tired of her harlequinades as well." Princess's voice rang in Katelynne's ears, stuttering slight like she was still at a loss for words.

Katelynne squeezed Princess's hand harder.

They stood there in silence, admiring the corpse as if it was an art exhibit installation.

Katelynne's mouth felt so arid. But she… she managed to cobble together something to say.

"...How're ya feeling?"

Princess didn't reply for quite some time, poor thing's head probably swimming with so much to process as it already was. The only reply she ended up sorta giving was a head shake with more sniffling.

"...Me, too."

There was so much contempt and hatred and anger. She rehearsed in her head so many times over and over the last few days about what piece of her mind she was gonna give when they inevitably found each other again because God sure seemed determined about that. But that got taken from her. Even in death, Quinn found ways to spite her.

So she spat on her. Coughed up a good loogie and launched it like a missile square at Quinn's face.

"...Let's keep going." Wasn't sure if Princess or Katelynne herself said those words, but it was the last sound from either of them until they made it back to the temple in the morning.

((Katelynne and Princess both return to the world of the living in Dude! FO(U)RTIFIED!!! Pt. 4: A New Hope))