Page 49 of Elemasters

He couldn’t stay here. Couldn’t just exist in this mockery of the night that almost took his life. He needed to get out. Right fucking now.

Without another thought, James turned on his heel and booked it in the opposite direction. He had no idea where he was going, he just knew he had to move. Dried grass and dead leaves crunched under his feet, decaying vines whipped past his face, and the unmistakable scent of rot assaulted his nose as he sprinted, but he never thought about stopping even for a second.

When he finally looked back to confirm that the crash was far behind him… he finally skidded to a halt.

He hadn’t actually gone anywhere. He was still standing right next to the wrecked remains of his old car as if he hadn’t just put half a mile of distance between it and himself.

“What the fuck man,” he panted, trying desperately to catch his breath, “how the hell am I supposed to get out of here?!”

The silence persisted, but the driver’s side door suddenly sprang open, with something falling out of it and hitting the forest floor with a soft thud.

James screamed out of horror as much as recognition.

It was him… or at least, a plant that looked exactly like him; green skin and rotting purple veins, completely lifeless and rapidly wasting away into the dead soil beneath his feet.

“Oh FUCK THIS!” he shouted, taking off in a different direction this time. He ran until his ankles stung. Until the soles of his feet ached. Until breathing felt like a herculean task.

Yet, when he looked over his shoulder, the car was still right there… it was like he hadn’t taken a single step.

Defeat crashed over him like a tree limb, forcing him to drop to his knees as his twitching eyes locked onto the car, taking in all the details.

James had been unconscious after the crash happened. The photos of the damage didn’t do justice to how completely fucked it was up close. But what was worse was the knowledge that he had been in that car. If it wasn’t for some weird quirk of fate, he would be little more than a mangled corpse… just like the one made of leaves and vines currently decaying into the ground.

Maybe that was the key! If he could stop the plant version of him from dying, maybe that would get him through this insane nightmare.

He rushed over to the decaying plant-corpse, standing over it as his eyes frantically scanned its body. There had to be something he could do; Dustin saved his life with CPR that night, and while James couldn’t do that, he wasn’t powerless.

His eyes dropped to his ring, and he took a deep breath as he tried to calm himself down. He felt like there was electricity in his blood as his power rushed through him, lighting up his veins in that neon green that made him feel like a superhero.

He stretched out his hand over plant-James, extending his awareness into the foliage to stop it from decaying. For a moment, it seemed like it was working; the body stabilized and seemed to resolidify… but then the green skin quickly turned brown and the light in James’s veins flickered and faltered.

His stomach flipped violently, and he dropped to the ground as he started vomiting profusely.

The message was clear; he couldn’t fix this. He couldn’t stop it. He was gonna die. God. He was gonna fucking die.

Tears streamed down his cheeks as panic overtook him. His veins glowed and faded erratically as his mind grasped at solutions and quickly discarded them. The ring around his finger felt heavier than it ever had before; as if it were locking him in place, forcing him to watch himself fade into nothingness.

Looking down at his own hands only made it worse; the color was draining from his skin, and while he wanted to freak out even more, he was just so fucking tired. Sheer exhaustion, right to the bone. The kind that made it impossible to run, to fight, to do anything but just… sit.

He ignored the feeling of the cold dirt biting through his jeans and looked over at what was left of the plant body. It had completely deteriorated now, with nothing left but a cold, dead-eyed face, staring up from the soil.

“I… I’m sorry,” James mumbled, though he couldn’t quite name what he was apologizing for. The accident that night hadn’t been his fault, and he turned his near-death experience into a lesson instead of a tragedy. That was a win! Most people would’ve crumbled into a shell of themselves after that, but not him. He was determined to live louder and more freely than ever… so what was this emptiness in his chest? Why was he feeling sorrow? Why regret?

He leaned back against that stupid fucking silver Lexus and just let himself cry. It was honestly fitting that he’d die braced against the damn thing. If it wasn’t for Dustin, he would’ve ended up exactly like the car; shattered, scrapped, forgotten.

He'd never entertained that thought before, not explicitly. It had lingered in the darkest corners of his mind like a monster under the bed ever since that night, but he’d locked it away. Focused on literally anything else; soccer, literature club, pottery classes, fucking anything.

For all the good it did. Where had that gotten him? He was still here, staring at the literal face of his mortality and there wasn’t a god damn thing he could do about it. He couldn’t escape it, he couldn’t outlive it; he just had to… carry it. Grow with it, instead of in spite of it.

Too bad he wasn’t going to make it out of here. None of it even mattered anymore.

With the last bit of energy he had left, he did the only thing he could think of doing; he reached out and gently closed his plant version’s eyes. Even if it wasn’t really him, it still deserved to have peace. Stillness.

He leaned back against the car, preparing for darkness or for the omnipresent silence to finally overtake him… but something else happened instead.

Flowers.

Where the plant-body had been, there was now a small patch of lilies.