nanowrimo_lj | Daily Excerpt Post: Day Three

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Daily Excerpt Post: Day Three

Daily Excerpt Post

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The telephone exchange in Sparty Lea was in the General Shop cum Post Office, and the Postmistress let him call from her front room and even made him a cup of tea. His sister hadn't yet received the suitcase, appreciated the warning and offered to have someone drive it over to the village for Robert, which he accepted gratefully. He was conscious of Jervis being a trifle thinner across the hips than he was, and was terrified that he'd split the trousers with too much wear. He did, however, wander around the village and admire the old stone cottages and their lovingly-tended gardens. The high rocky slopes to the east and west tended to channel the wind along the road, and he was grateful for the thickness of his borrowed clothes.

The walk back to the Asylum took nearly an hour, with the steepness of the road and the views that Robert kept stopping to look at. He walked past the main gates, waved to Bill who was working on the side gate, and kept up until he came to where his car had come off the road. The length of the skid marks and the position of the large rocks that he'd just missed convinced him that he was damned lucky, and he felt as if his last remaining cat-life had just been crossed off the register.

Yep, still curious.

Also, I want to know who the knobbly-kneed guy was. WHO WAS THE KNOBBLY-KNEED GUY?

Rodgson’s Apothecary on Oxford Street, I happened to know, was one of those chemists which continued to stock the drug, and so it was there that I headed now, new shoes clicking on the cobbles and leather suitcase in hand, every inch the respectable gentleman. There were, I told myself, other drugs which I equally needed if I was to take on medical duties aboard the Managarmr; simple antibiotics and antiseptics, and more vital and expensive chemicals like adrenaline and laudanium. But at the back of my mind, I knew why I was heading to Rodgson’s; X-735T in my blood, calling out for more; the itch which comes on far before full withdrawal. I had been without it perhaps a day longer than accustomed, and yet I already felt its absence.

And, I told myself, why not? The disguise might not persist, but if my courses did – and heavier, as was so often the case with those who left a course of the drug – they would still be painful, and I would still have no concept of how to cope with them. My doctor’s licence was in my wallet. I had the money.

Why not?

(and the answer to that question, later on...)

You may think, from my ominous wording, that there was some hitch with the licence, or, perhaps, that he questioned my purchase of the drug. You may suspect that he apprehended me, or at least reported me. Yet none of these things are the truth; the purchase went without a hitch. Smoothly, if expensively, it was done, and he even offered me a bag at little extra cost, which I gladly took. I was in the process of transferring the medicines into my new bag, my wallet and license out on the desk, when the door jangled. Automatically, I turned... and looked direct into the eyes of the Zephyr’s resident doctor.

The silence stretched out for a long, tense moment. He looked every bit as shocked as I was; they had doubtless sailed away the day before in the glib belief that the women aboard the other ship had done their work for them.

I moved first, shovelling the remaining bottles quickly and carelessly into the bag and grabbing for my wallet, but his tongue was faster than my hands; “THIEF! LIAR!” In long strides, he hurried towards me, eyes blazing. “She’s no doctor, sir, but a woman! That document is a fake!”

And now the entire store had ground to a standstill to watch. Perfect. Bloody perfect.

Brilliant lead up to an "oh crap" moment.

And a wild chase through Oxford Street. And a GIANT OWL.

I love writing. XD

“Men only beyond here, Alice,” Roger said when she didn’t immediately put James down and let him walk.

The woman looked at him with an almost confused expression, one eyebrow going up as if to ask what exactly he meant by that. Two long seconds passed and then she looked down at James who made a shrugging motion with his shoulders, then she put him down on the floor. He started to commando crawl using his forearms into the shower area.

“You can’t walk?” In his surprise, Roger’s words leapt out of his mouth.

“No.” James’s reply was of the testy type meant to note the question was far too obvious to truly need an answer. “Alice-- carries me—because-- it’s necessary--.” He continued to crawl as he spoke, making his sentence sound choppy as he seemed to hold his breath for every pull forward.

“Shit, I’m sorry.” Roger scrambled forward and grabbed James under his armpits to pull him up. “Let me help you.” For a skinny emo boy, James was heavy. Roger grunted with the work of pulling him almost upright until Alice reached past him and bodily lifted James by the back of his shirt and then settled him against Roger so that it looked as if Roger were supporting a James who had drunk a bit too much and couldn’t keep his feet. “Thanks Alice.”

Walking forward, the intention was to leave Alice behind, but Roger stopped and turned back. He hadn’t told her where she was going. “Further down the hall is the women’s bathroom. While you and James are in, I’ll see if I can get some clothes for you both.” It meant his own shower was going to get delayed, but that didn’t mean much. Now that the immediate threat appeared to be over, Roger was starting to feel a touch of excitement over the whole thing. No one had been found alive topside for months. The last ones to come had brought a fever with them which cost the overall group nearly 30 lives. James and Alice appeared healthy and maybe, just maybe, they knew something about this whole thing.

He waited until Alice started to walk away before going into the shower area further. There was a chair for the older fellas to sit on while they showered, and he maneuvered it with his feet before settling James on it.

“Do you want help undressing or can you manage?”

“You’ll have to do the bottom half.” For the first time, James blushed, ducking his head as if to hide. “Usually Alice helps me, but yeah…” he trailed off letting the thought go.

“Gonna ask, don’t answer if you don’t want to, is Alice your girlfriend?”

“Maybe. I don’t really know. I just remember waking up with her standing over me and thinking I’d died and gone to heaven finally. I’m not really sure why I thought ‘finally’ but I remember that thought clear as day. She had a chain hanging off her neck, with a wire charm that said ‘Alice’. I’ve been calling her that ever since.”

Roger untied and pulled off each of James’s shoes while he listened. Then he rolled off his socks. Obviously the young man’s clothes hadn’t been changed in days. They were caked with dirt, sweat, and what Roger figured was probably blood.

“How long has she been carrying you?”

“Six months or so, I guess. It takes a lot longer to get from place to place these days. We’ve been walking pretty steadily, but I caught a fever two months ago and we had to stop for a while. I was worried she was going to leave me. We’re going somewhere, but…” James trailed off again, the words dying in the air between them. He pulled his t-shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor.

“But?” Roger finally prompted. It took some effort from the both of them to get James’s pants and underwear off, but once they did, all Roger could do was try not to stare. James was covered in scars as if someone had simply taken a razorblade and started drawing on his skin. Some of the scars made designs; however, most were just criss-crossing single lines. They ran up and down his arms, legs, and torso, but abruptly stopped at his collar bone. It was as if the artist hadn’t wanted to mar him for a bust of his shoulders and head.

“I don’t know.” James finished, looking decidedly uncomfortable under Roger’s eyes. “I just want a shower. I’m tired of smelling like week old death. Could you just leave the soap next to the chair and turn the water on?”

Standing beside the mirrored wall, it was only Jan who was left to fend for herself.

Her solitude lashed out at the dancers; Jan could never keep quiet. If her mouth was not moving, then her hands were clapping. If her hands were not clapping, then she paced back and forth, allowing her heavy footfalls to mock the airy treads of her dancers. If she did not pace, her eyes screamed. They followed each dancer through repetitions of each sequence over and over again until something burst inside of them.

“Enough.” Rehearsal had lasted for only an hour and forty-five minutes. Despite the daily schedule of two and a half hour slots, it always became second nature to know when progress was impossible. Some days you completed the choreography, some days you did not. The dance company blamed Jan. Jan blamed the dancers. The dancers did not care.

There was a pause. Stephens had lowered his hands. He looked puzzled for a moment – and kicked-puppy hurt – then his face cleared.

“Doughnuts!” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“You said you were hungry. That must be why you're so cranky. Your blood sugar's low.”

“Dr. Stephens, I'm cranky because you dragged me all the way here just to see...”

“No. No.”

“No what?” Theo's body was so tense he was vibrating.

“No. I can't let you see her like this. You're not in the right frame of mind. You're going to have a couple of jelly doughnuts – I always keep some in my lab – and some coffee, and then you'll feel better and we can – are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” Theo ground out. “Due some medication, that's all.”

“All the more reason to have a cup of coffee and relax. Relax.” He purred the word like a Buddhist guru trying to soothe a particularly inadequate novice meditator. Theo stared at him, fists clenched tightly – then abruptly he did relax, a small, lopsided smile twitching the corner of his mouth.

“Please excuse me, Dr. Stephens. I'm not always this grumpy.”

“Not at all.” Stephens was shooing him out of the study, back into the messy sitting room. It felt almost welcoming now. “What is your medication for?” he asked.

Theo glanced at a notice-board he hadn't observed before, scraps of scribble-covered paper pinned to it like butterflies. “Blood pressure,” he said, blandly.

Stephens squinted at his guest's unusually pale, bloodless face, and shrugged. “I'll get you that snack. Wait, here's some water...” he pounced on a half-empty bottle hiding behind a stack of notebooks, “so you can take your meds.” And he bustled off. Five minutes later he was back with a steaming pot of coffee, two cups, and a plate of stale, squashed doughnuts, which were leaking raspberry jelly: surviving veterans, it seemed, of a long and bloody war against being peckish.

So, when a man grabbed onto Niccolio’s leg the agent shot him a cold, angry glare. The man might have shrunken away from such a cold hearted stare if it wasn’t for the fact that his legs were crushed under a slab of concrete. Natasha sighed and shook her head. He smiled at her grimly. Then, as a nurse rushed past them screaming, they both laughed. “Like a scene out of a movie. Dramatic, isn’t it?”

Curtly, they nodded at a commanding officer. Hey gave them a friendly, if not amused smile. “Weather is nice, isn’t it?” The temperature was in the mid seventies and the air smelt of burnt flesh. Indeed, it must have been a fine day for a man in search of a promotion. If he directed the officers accordingly, he could very possibly have quite the rosy life ahead of him.

“We won’t find anything here though, the bastard never leaves a trace of evidence. So why bother coming here? It’s not as if any of this rubbish will help anything.”

“Of course it will, Officer.” Niccolio’s tone was respectful but the glint in his eyes was quite mocking. The officer either didn’t notice or cared not to show that he did. “Why how heroic it is of us, to take time out o f our busy schedules to aid this fine city.”

The officer laughed. “Aid this fine city?” He shrugged, completely lost as to what his superior meant. “Why, is that not your job?”

Natasha shot her friend a warning glance. He blatantly ignored it. “My job? Well.” He folded one arm over the other casually and flashed the officer a brilliant smile. “My job is to rip your so called bastard’s head off and shit down his throat.” The officer paled and his eyebrows rose. “My job is that of a simple killer.”

He began to walk back to their car and Natasha hesitated before quickly apologizing to the man. They exchanged pleasantries before he told her that if his squad found anything, they’d be the first to know. She found Niccolio smoking in the driver’s seat and when Natasha sat down in the vehicle, her first thought was to grab the cigarette out of his hands. She didn’t. “That was not necessary.”

Aaron sighs and sinks into the stiff leather, his eyes slipping closed until Alison nudges him. "Sorry, no sleeping," she comments, unphased as he glowers at her. "We need to be on top of our game here. Who knows what we need to do to help Nick, after all. It could be a number of things..."

"What do you mean?" he asks, yawning against his fist as she shifts uncomfortably.

"Well, sometimes the easiest thing is best... sometimes it requires a lot of thinking and planning ahead of time. Unfortunately, a lot of times it takes a split second decision or it's just too late to do anything." She smiles confidently at him. "But you're a smart boy, I'm sure you'll be fine."

He pulls a face at her before returning to look out at the town passing them by. "I just realized I never got a straight answer as to where we're at," he mutters, careful to keep his voice down due to the taxi driver who's obviously listening in.

"Oh," Alison says, looking surprised as she thinks over their conversations from the night before. "You're right, I was distracted. Red wine does that to me." Bolstered by the short smile he provides her, she sighs. "Andover, Massachusetts."

"Oh," he says quietly. What else, after all, is there to say?

Rymyn relished the moonlight. Its pale white glow illuminated the world in a way the sun never could. He shunned the light time and wore heavy goggles if ever he had to go out during the day. Cautious and quiet, he observed the relationships of the people and manipulated them as he liked.

There was no moonlight tonight, however. Instead a storm had rolled in off of the Unnamed Sea, bringing with it unseasonably cool winds and drenching rains. Rymyn had been minding his own business when he heard people arguing on the path near the old temple he had made his home.

Walking slowly, cautiously, quietly, he moved between the trees to get a better view. He saw two people standing in the rain butting heads. The male, obviously an obnoxious Light Goer, was tall and had darker skin and perfectly coifed hair. The female was shorter, her long hair hanging in a wet mess down her back and in her face. What caught Rymyn’s attention was her fair skin. It wasn’t as light as his own but it practically glowed when compared to the man who was berating her.

Rymyn moved closer to the path to get a better look at the intriguing female. The male had leaned in close and Rymyn could sense the tension rolling off of them both. He wondered for a moment if he’d wandered into some odd Light Goer mating ritual until the female pulled away with a disgusted look on her face. She said something that Rymyn couldn’t hear over the sound of the rain but stopped short when her eyes landed on his own.

“Dark Child,” her lips read. Rymyn was caught in a precipitous position; he could run off into the woods and leave the pair behind or he could step forward and accept the path that Ar had set before him.

“Fear resides and faith drives…” Rymyn said quietly to himself. With a deep breath he stepped forward, leaving the safety of the trees for the open path.

She watched the man with the shaggy hair examine the cave interior. How had he found her? Was he the one who shot her? She didn't think so, but she couldn't be sure. Her only refuge was breached. As he busied himself walling up the entrance (was he playing a game? was he trying to trap her here with him for who knew what purpose?), she moved toward him in a quiet crouch, and raised the rock she held high above her head. He turned toward her, a look of shock on his face, his mouth open, and she crashed the rock into his head. He collapsed slowly, not losing the surprised look on his face. He lay still, face turned into the sandy floor, blood seeping from the wound on his head. She bit her lip, unsure what to do. On one hand, he could be a useful ally. But on the other, he could be one of them, or even just your common, garden variety predator. She moved his head so he could breathe, and quickly trussed him up with some ropes she grabbed from her pack. When he was disabled, she sat down a good distance away and trembled. She was no stranger to violence, but she was a hunter, not a killer. She pulled his duffel bag close and examined the contents. One of them would not have taken time to pack survival gear, relying instead on stealing and taking from others. She frowned. Perhaps she had made a mistake. As he lay unconscious, she tried to think.

“There's a Goddess of...”

“Let's not have this again.” said Spatula, “Yes, there is. Because once upon a time, in a far off kingdom that's unfortunately fallen for a reason that was nothing to do with me, honest guv'nor, there was a race of people who were halfway intelligent. Yes, we are related. No, we don't fight. Much. And no, we don't sleep with each other like all the other stupid trollops in the Pantheon.”

“Um...” began Ulrich.

“You should know. You summoned her.” said Oswald.

“I... I... suppose I did...” he sighed, “I don't suppose you could go and do the same thing to our enemy, but twice as much, could you? It might make me look a little better.”

“I don't even remember exactly what I did. I had only just woken up.” admitted Spatula, “And I can't control my powers that precisely yet. Plus, your enemies are way over the other side of the river, I'd have to fly there to see who I'm aiming at and my wings hurt like Hades.”

“She's not a full Goddess yet.” said Oswald, “She needs a Visa. And she needs a certain number of worshippers to do so, so she's wandering around town press-ganging everyone into service.”

“No, that's NOT what I...” she sighed, “Look, I can't destroy your enemies for you but I can free you from this prison.”

“Where would I even go? I'm hated by my people! Into exile? I can go there by myself! In fact, that's sort of the idea...”

“I can explain what's happened to the High Chieftain right away.” said Oswald.

“... Are you going to go and say 'its okay, everyone, Ulrich just summoned the Goddess of Defeat in a crowded room full of our entire army!'?”

“Well, yes, that's what happened.”

“I can manage without the glowing report. I can't see how worshipping you is going to help me at all, frankly.” said Ulrich.

“And you'd rather rely upon your own famous natural talent?”

“I was doing fine until you popped into my life.” said Ulrich, “I must sound like such a weird Evangelist. 'I found defeat today!'.”

“No, Mr. Gregorio's the Prophet. You're the Keeper of Mysteries. The Zarvera.” she corrected.

“Oh yes, the Zarvera...” he blinked, “You know the innkeeper?”

“He gives people free drinks if they worship me.” said Spatula.

All right, seriously, this I would buy.

Definitely and for sure.

The drops of blood led to the service elevator I’d always assumed was broken because it had been flanked with the same sort of caution tape we use in the field to show the boundaries of a dig site. The tape, ripped in two, now littered the tile floor like a forgotten party streamer. I’d never put any thought into the specifics of the elevator, but when I looked up I noticed that one of the arrows above the doors was lit, which I’d never seen before- I only noticed it now because the only other lights in the room were the glow of the open refrigerator and the fluorescent light coming in from the corridor. I’d also never noticed that instead of the normal arrows indicating up and down, this elevator had one arrow pointing down and one pointing sideways. It was this arrow that was shining brightly against the garishly green wall of the laboratory office.

And there, out of the very corner of my eye, in the darkest nook of the entire courtyard, out of the rays of the street lamps and the eyes of an audience, stood a canvas.

The party dies down around four o'clock in the morning or so, which is a bummer, because Scott is really starting to enjoy himself. Sober Scott hates dancing but apparently Mildly Drunk Scott loves it, because he's in the center of the makeshift dance floor, Liana Burke pressed against him, his arms around her waist. He's not exactly sure how they'd ended up in this position, because he'd maybe exchanged twenty words with her this entire semester, but he's not complaining. Tomorrow they could both pretend they'd drank too much to remember. When the speakers kick out, she twists around, not breaking contact with his body, and presses her hands flat against his chest.

“Do you want to come back to my dorm?” she asks meaningfully, staring at him through thick eyelashes. He has to admit, she makes a damn cute jazzercise instructor.

But he's meeting his dad tomorrow for lunch, and it's a two hour drive out there, and homework on top of that, and besides, Liana's roommate is a sort-of ex-girlfriend of his. “I can't,” he says, apologetically, carefully peeling her hands away before he's forced to change his mind.

Her face hardens. “Is it because of Charlie?”

Scott doesn't mean to laugh, but, well, six beers and a tequila shot. Liana seems to take that as an insult and she abruptly pulls away from him, turns hard on the spot, and takes off across the floor, Scott shouting at her back, “No! No, it has nothing to do with Charlie!”

As if he'd summoned her, five seconds later, Charlie appears at his elbow. She smiles up at him brightly. “Why so glum, scumbag?”

“Liana Burke invited me back to her room.”

“And you said no?”

“I said no.”

Charlie pulls him in for a hug, a gut-crushing, neck-squeezing hug. She might not be drunk, but she's flushed and slightly sweaty and her pinkish hair is sticking to her neck. “I'm proud of you!” she whispers dramatically in his ear, and then she slings her arm around his back, and he tucks his around her shoulders, and they head out into the chilly morning air, holding onto each other for warmth.

“Where we going?” Scott asks in a singsong voice, not walking quite as straight as he would've liked. One of the Greek gods outside the dining hall seems to have lost a crucial part of his toga and for some reason, that's incredibly hilarious.

“We're putting you to bed, drunky.”

“But I don't want to go to bed.” Scott can hear the whine in his voice. The petulant ten-year-old inside of him tends to come out, just for these occasions. “Let's watch a movie. A scary movie. You can spend the night.”

“And listen to you snore all night long? No thanks.”

“I don't snore.”

Charlie pushes him in the right direction, just enough, and he stumbles a bit, but her arm around him is solid. He's not the only drunk guy heading back into the dorm tonight. He's also not the only drunk guy with a girl under his arm. But he's probably the only drunk guy with a girl under his arm that's inevitably going to be sleeping alone.

“You snore when you're drunk.”

“Well, then, I'm not drunk.”

“Please. You're wasted.”

“Schwasted,” Scott corrects, because that's a much funnier word.

Charlie snorts. “Point proven,” she says, and then ushers him inside.

Oberon stood in front of the assembled humans, blood on his lips and an unapologetic look upon his face. The humans were stunned. All eyes were upon him, and more importantly all cameras were on him, just as he wanted. Humans made such great strides in communication whilst he slept. It was quite convenient, but he could marvel later. No he had limited time and his message had to be heard.

“Brothers, sisters, I Oberon of the Eldar, Lord of the Nightshaven line, stand before you now, unafraid. The time for hiding is over. Come. Reclaim your existence! It is the humans that should be fearing you! We used to strike fear into the hearts of mortals but now we are degraded. Turned into fodder for vapid teenage fantasies. Brethren! Come now and remind them why they feared us, why they respected us. We are death. We are salvation. Come! It is time!”

The human authorities were closing on him now, do doubt aggravated by the body laying at his feet.

“Show them!” he urged a final time before taking flight. He chuckled at the gunshots echoing around him. Yes. It was time.

He would never say he needed her, because he didn’t, but he had to admit, when she had blood dripping from the tip of her nose and splattered across her clothes as she cleaned off her knives after a successful battle, or when her eyes were bright with battle fever and she laughed as she slit an enemy’s throat… well…

She was very nice to have around.

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Daily Excerpt Post: Day Three

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