Staring out the window in my cramped office full of folders here and there, file cabinets making up one wall, a bookshelf on the other and a desk barely big enough to fit my legs under it. The smell of mold and lunches past lie dead in the air.
“Tobias, aren’t you going to answer my question,” someone said with a malicious smile. It was a man in a trench coat. He likes to go by Phil but his name is Marian. Today it poured almost as bad as it does in the wet season and he always said “I hate the noise windbreakers make when they rub together, worse then chalk on a blackboard,” so right now he stood in my office soaked to the core.
“If your question had made any sense I would have answered but I don’t under stand what you are talking about.” I replied.
“Well I just want to know how my partners doing? Is that so wrong,” he pleaded, the blood vessel on his eye indicated he was less than happy. How did I get a moron like this to be my partner?
“It’s not wrong to ask questions, it’s just tedious.”
“Well I find it relaxing’ to chit chat with my coworkers. It’s part of my routine, everyone’s got a routine.”
“My ‘routine’ is doing my job, even if that means dealing with someone as obnoxious as you.”
“Jesus Christ! I’m ‘obnoxious’ you’re the obnoxious one! If it was up to me I swear to God we wouldn’t be partners! Lets just calm down and talk like civil human beings here!” he shouted, what a waste of energy.
I craned forward to get a closer look realizing, “It popped, huh.”
“What popped?” his anger dulled and was lost in confusion for a moment, soon it would erupt right back into where it left off, “Forget it,” here we go, “Now what was I talking’ about… Ah, Yes. You need to quit being such a smartass and do as you’re told! Now for today we need to investigate Sectors 3, 4 and 6. There have been some issues with the reactors and we don’t think it natural, then again how natural could it be in a town like this. You may want to bring some talismans but that’s only if you know you’ll need them, moneys tight and you need to stop wasting them.” He lectures me about wasting our protective talismans but he wastes more of them in an hour than I do in a week.
The train to Sector 2 isn’t far and the ride isn’t long, but the people who are on it stink of sickness and death. Sadly, there is no other way to travel in between Sectors other than walking and the weather and the politics doesn’t quite permit that. As the train starts to take off I stared out the window to see the sunrise, if I had a normal job I’d still be asleep. I’ve been staring out windows a lot these days as if I was waiting for something or someone to save me.
As I looked around I noticed that there were quite a bit of people who were wearing masks, shows you how common the plague is these days. One guy had a severe case, his eyes were almost completely black and his skin had bubbled up around his neck. By tomorrow morning he’d be dead, no gone. I’d kill him now if we weren’t in such a large train, too much space for me to hide anything. As I looked at him he met my eyes with his, it was like staring at death himself, maybe I was.
The man was old and was probably weak even before he caught the plague. He wore rags on top of a formerly green jacket. His legs were covered with only his socks and shorts. His legs were no thicker than twigs and his arms no greater. If I had a normal job I would have felt sad and not threatened. He pulled an arm up and began to remove his mask, his face was as thinner than faces could get and when he opened his mouth dust came out. He moved his jaw as if he was trying to speak but he couldn’t because the federation, my federation, took his tongue. The infected lose all rights as human beings, even as beings, in the eyes of the federation. This man was about to cast he was gone.
“Tobias, what is it you look like you’re seeing a ghost. You aren’t seeing a ghost, right?” Phil asked, and then he looked and saw what I saw. He ripped his pistol out and shot that man in the head. Black blood poured out of the hole in his head but his jaw kept spelling out a spell. People began to scream and I pulled the emergency breaks and the train halted to a stop. By now he was almost complete with the spell, people were going to die. Phil had already used two talismans and he was about to use a third one, this one might actually be to shut the old man up. I reached in my pocket and ripped out a talisman. As I pulled it out a piece of it was torn and it broke the matrix that gives it power rendering it useless. “Damn you Phil for telling me not to bring many,” as I said that I looked over just in time to see the old man burn Phil alive.
Phil’s screams ended as his body was turned to ash by the magical flames and the man began to eat his ash, drain it of the life force trapped inside of him. Once the old man had finished sucking up the ashes his transformation would be complete and he would be a complete demon. I had no time to think and barely any time to act. I pulled out my gun and fired. I fired until all the ammunition in my pistol had disappeared into the abyss of this man’s insides. Yet, no matter how much I shot him he continued to take in the ash until it was too late.
As the last particles of ash were eaten, he went limp. Not because he had died but because he was about to be reborn. His already tight skin became tighter and tighter, his bones poked at his skin as if they were trying to burst from the thin sack of flesh encompassing them.
The first part to split is always down the spine, the first thing to emerge the tail, the first sound it makes your last. As the tail shot out of his coccyx, the end looked like a grotesque spear. It was bone white, it’s blood vessels lay on the bones running up and down pumping the black ink through the body carrying the life force of my former partner. It screamed and the tail snapped at me. I felt it pierce my heart because my heart kept beating and I felt it hitting something. Death for me was slow, I had seen other people die and it seemed quick but this was slow and it wasn’t relaxing.
As this torture continued I kept tacit shouts telling the demon to remove it’s tail from my body but it wouldn’t let go, or was it that I wouldn’t let it go. Letting go meant death, when the tail left my body my blood would pour from my insides and I would die in seconds. What was so bad about that, I’m going to die either way?
Something started screaming.
I knew this scream. It expressed every bit as much pain as I felt, but it wasn’t mine. I don’t know how long it took but it finally came to me. This demon that was killing me was being killed but by what. Its spear still stuck me through and it had shown no signs of retaliation. What was happening? I asked that question to late because I could feel the last remnants of life exit my body.
Half of me was washed away in the rain, the rest drowned in the pain and sorrow of not floating down that river. I felt dead. I was dead. Why am I conscious? If I’m dead I should be dead. So why do I still feel a body of flesh wrapped around me.
As time past I felt my body being moved, I could feel everything but I could see or hear anything. I was tired and I wanted to sleep but something wouldn’t let me. I felt what I thought may have been an autopsy and then a funeral, things seemed to happen in very fast succession but it was still eternity. As I went from place to place it had all seemed okay, the autopsy was bearable and so was the funeral, but then I was buried and I could feel the light being cut off from me as I was lowered one foot at a time. It was very final. I knew I was dead but why was I so sad now. Will I be this sad forever?
My thoughts of some eternal depression were interrupted as someone, something, reached out to me. They grabbed me and cradled me and brought me back to the surface. I had very mixed feelings about this but it was surely better than sitting in a coffin for eternity.
“Looks like we have a Sleeper, Lovely?” someone’s voice called out to me, it was almost horrifying. Someone had found me and what were they going to do to me. They knew that I knew they were there. They know something I don’t. Who are they and what will they do to me?
As more time passed I felt many strange things this time I was numb but I could still feel some of it. Eventually it ended and then I woke up, as if it were the first time I was every awake. Colors shined brighter the walls were an off white with what looked to be mold on them. I could taste the air, and it was crisp and clean. I could feel the breath of the person behind me, and I could smell the faint scent of perfume. I found myself laying one a big metal block and there were bloody tools here and there and chemicals in shelves all around the room.
“Very good, you adapted well sleepy,” came the strangely cheerful voice of a woman. She wore I smile bigger than any I’d seen before. She had some wrinkles on her face but not many; the main indication of her age was her silver hair. The odd part was that she was smiling while wearing a white lab coat that reeked of blood and was covered in it.
I asked her, “Is that mine?” And I pointed at her lab coat.
She looked at her lab coat, a bit confused, “Yep, most of it.”
“Okay…” This was quite disturbing, “Where am I?”
“You are in the Safe,” again with a big smile.
“The Safe, what’s that?”
“Nothing really, just a place where people like you live.”
“Like me? What do you mean?” That was when it struck me, “What did you do to me?” Now I was panicking.
“No need to get excited, I just fixed you up nothing big.” That did nothing to ease my panic but upon hearing ‘fixed’ I looked down to see what she did to me. What I saw was really nothing at first I was wearing some bloody rags and I checked my arms, my legs and my head, nothing seemed off. I recalled my last memories, of dying and of all that had happened afterwards. I asked, “I died, why am I alive.”
She replied with the same tone you get from a mother reminding you that you don’t know everything, “Just cause you’re not dead doesn’t mean you are alive.”
“What, of course it does,” she made no sense at all, who was this whack-job.
“Don’t be stupid, you’re the one who didn’t check their heart, or did you forget it was split in two.”
I wanted to tell her she was wrong, that no she was the idiot, but she had a point and I needed to find out the truth before I say more.
So I checked my pulse. I waited and waited for the pulse to reach my wrist but it didn’t come. I began to frantically check all my major arteries but time after time nothing happened. I felt another greater panic and realization flood over me and I blacked out.
When I woke up I had a headache and I was still on that metal slab. She had disappeared. And there was an opening in the wall that I don’t recall. I got up and when I put weight on my feet my knees buckled. It took several minutes for me to get up but eventually I did it.
When I got outside there was a hallway. I wondered if there was a window in this safe. I walked down and I saw iron vault like doors with small glowing crystal emblems in the middle of the doors. It had a magnetic attraction to it. I began to step towards it and it sent shivers through my body. As I got closer and closer I began to shake. It felt good, as if my body was flowing with power. I was barely fractions of centimeters from it when it blew back projecting me to the next wall and I hit it with a crack.
“Oh my well aren’t you a curios one,” if was her again. She looked down on me and I tried to get up but my back was snapped in half.
“What the hell was that,” I pointed at the crystal I had just been blown away by.
She simply said, “It’s a door, but it’s locked.”
“What the hell.” She pulled out a little pendant and held it to my chest. There was a ringing noise as the pendant began to glow, and then my chest. It was yet again a terrifying event. I stared as she brought it closer and I tried to stop her but I couldn’t move, I was broken. It got closer and closer and my chest grew brighter and brighter.
It finally touched my chest and my body began to pop and squeal. The noise began to synchronize and grow louder together. Until finally she pulled it back with an exhale and my body made the most grotesque cracking and grinding noise and my bones swiftly moved back in place.
She looked at me with an empty face and said, “Now then let’s have a talk Sleeper.”