Chapter 6

Pandora trod disappointedly out of Lewis’s apartment. Although the answers given by that weirdo were all a little odd, they weren’t so odd that she could be certain he wasn’t telling the truth. Really, the strangest thing was how many questions he had answers to. It couldn’t be normal to be able to list all the bikes you’d ever owned, as well as their colors. A quirk she could have chalked up to an eccentric love of biking, had he not stated he didn’t particularly care about bikes immediately afterward.
Well, a bust was a bust. No alien invasions or government conspiracies to be found there. Now she could finally just give up and leave the weirdo alone.
Pandora stopped in her tracks. Theories and questions began to buzz in her head, overwhelming every other thought she tried to have. Focusing on anything became an impossibility, causing her to take what felt like an hour to find her car. A fact made infinitely worse by the fact that the parking lot her car was in only had a dozen cars in it, at most. No, she told herself, she just needed to leave well enough alone, and let it go.
Then, curiosity began to set in. The unknown began to creep throughout her brain and try to drag her back to the apartment, to spy, to search, to examine. She knew she shouldn’t. It would be disrespectful, and could very well get her arrested. It was just a bad idea!
Pandora shook her head. She’d come over again next week after organizing some notes. With permission, of course. She’d find the secret without sneaking about. Maybe she could take advantage of the whole Googling traffic thing? I mean if Lewis needed his phone to look up a word like-
Oh snitch! Lewis’s phone! After getting distracted by the Google search, she had absentmindedly put it in her purse-ish thing, and forgotten to return it!
Pandora stopped just short of opening her car door, then turned around and dashed back to Lewis’s apartment, fumbling through her bag to find the phone along the way. Upon reaching the door, she immediately opened it, forgetting to knock.
“Hello? Lewis?”
The lights had gone out, and the whole apartment was dark. The whole atmosphere had been instantly changed from warm and friendly, to downright creepy. Pandora rapidly found herself falling silent, as an irrational fear began to make speaking and moving difficult. Pandora had never liked the dark, not quite to the point of nyctophobia, but enough to be abnormally afraid of it.
Thankfully, she managed to force herself to stumble far enough in to reach the kitchen door, where she managed to see something incredible: Lewis, with small bat-like wings, a long thin tail that had a large cleaver-esque blade at the tip, horns, and a pair of blue half-ear half-antenna thingamajigs sprouting from his head. He was halfway up the fridge, and struggling to stay that way.
After the initial shock wore off, it only took a split second for Pandora to whip out the camera that she always carried with her, just in case. It only took a split second more for her to take the perfect shot.
Of course, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. So, to oppose Pandora’s action of taking a photo, Lewis had the reaction of his antenna-ears twitching, followed by him turning around to face Pandora. There was a brief moment of silence, as Lewis was frozen in place, and Pandora couldn’t stop staring. Lewis’s eyes were solid black and rounder, yet somehow still soft and warm. His mouth was full of pointed teeth, and held a large cookie captive in his jowls.
Lewis pulled the cookie into his mouth and chewed for a second, and then swiftly returned to his normal state. Unfortunately, this meant he could no longer maintain his grip, so he fell to the ground.Lewis slowly started to stand up, then waited a bit more before he finally broke the silence.
“You saw?”
Pandora briefly pondered why he had asked such an obvious question, and whether or not she should respond honestly. However, before she could reach a conclusion, a bolt of blue whizzed by her, shattering her camera. A moment later, she found herself on the floor, a small blue creature wearing a headband holding a large metal nail up to her throat menacingly.
Well. At least today had been interesting.

A note from the author ninja:

Originally, Pandora was a bit rushed. I needed a second character that was human, but I didn’t have a lot beyond that. Lewis had been rolling around in my brain for months, but I hadn’t thought about his supporting cast until it was too late. Thankfully, Pandora developed fast, and I don’t foresee anymore incidents like chapter 2 in the future.