Subject: Hell and High Water Chapter 1 (repost)
From: ECSCEG@LUSTA.LATROBE.EDU.AU (GIBSON,Evan)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 1993 03:39:27 GMT
Well, from some of the mail I got it seems that it's been quite a while since
the first chapter of my story was posted, and a few people had never seen it,
so for the sake of the new comers, here it is... again...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
When Hell and High Water Collide
Copyright by Evan Gibson 1993
Prologue
He slowly stretched himself to his feet, and shook his head, to clear
the hair from his eyes. He'd been sitting, watching for a long time. A very
long time. Not much else for him to do. He slipped the bottle of cheap, but
not nasty, whisky into his coat pocket and limped down the street, his bare
feet picking their way casually through the debris, until his slightly hunched
form disappeared into the shadows.
No-one bothered him.
Why would they?
He looked harmless enough, black shirted in holy jeans, the kind
worn in from extensive use, rather than the stylised mega-bucks fashion
ware. His hair drifted over his shoulders like an executioner's hood and his
eyes glinted faintly.
He was amused.
No-one bothered him.
He was amused. Anyone who looked as harmless as he, in this
area, was usually stupid and soon dead, or hiding something. He wasn't
dead, but he wasn't hiding anything either. He really was harmless. That's
what amused him. This big tough area, the malignant den of numerous
denizens of the afterdusk, and he was free to wander it at his will, just
because everyone drew the wrong impressions from his appearance.
It wasn't that he looked weak, mind you. Six foot tall, fit, (Well,
almost fit.) in a green army great coat, the black patch on the back an
ominous skeletal figure carting a farming implement, with the words "Be
seeing you..." dripping warning next to it.
Really, anyone else who looked like that would have been a
walking threat, but this guy just didn't cut it. It was his face. The glint of
amusement in his eyes certainly didn't help, people thought he was
laughing at them, or at least at some big joke that they couldn't quite catch
a glimpse of. But he just didn't look dangerous. Perhaps it was the
uncertainty and pain etched indelibly into his features, but he looked like
the kind of guy that would go without his first meal in a week, just because
he saw someone who might need it more. The kind of person that really
didn't belong on the edge of a combat zone out the front of a bar named,
in malfunctioning neon, "The Chatsubo".
No-one bothered him.
They watched him. Talked about him. Some wondered who he
really was, and what secrets he hid behind flashing eyes and swaying
stride. But bothered him?
Would you walk up and pat a harmless carpet snake in the middle
of a poisonous creatures display, just because it looked like a carpet
snake? Well, perhaps you would, but then you probably wouldn't belong
there either...
So everyday he limped slowly down the refuse strewn streets,
sometimes favouring his left foot, sometimes his right and sat watching the
bar. Drinking scotch and watching.
Always watching.
There hadn't been many there recently, apart from the Asian man
in the yellow coat who seemed more like he was drifting somewhere off in
space than tormenting himself with this existence (Perhaps he tormented
himself with another....) and the tall, graceful woman who had had the
door held open for her by a young man who didn't seem to belong here
himself.
Noticing this unexpected courtesy, the amusement that always
bathed his features broke through the alcoholic stupor into a grin, and he
stood, hesitantly taking a step towards the door.
Perhaps it was no longer time to watch.
Chapter 1 - A touch of yesterday.
Picking his way across the asphalt carpet, he went to kick some of
the rubbish out of his way. It moved by itself. He shivered and quickly
looked away, focusing instead on the wall ahead. Scraps of paper hung
loosely on the wall, remnants of ads and protests stuck to the wall by
some naive or suicidal individual. A fragment detached itself and floated
slowly through the thickened air to land on top of a pile of something. If
you looked really closely you could imagine a face under the debris, as if
this rubbish was once more human in nature. He smiled slightly to himself,
sad but knowing, it was probably the poster of the offending
advertisements. There were those who didn't take kindly to the defacing of
the Chatsubo, and the body hunkered up against the wall had the kind of
roasted look that said he had met with one of them.
From somewhere a car screeched past, barely missing him, but not
slowing. He raised one eyebrow, then laughed, and for just a second it
looked like the sun broke through the clouds, but it was probably just the
inadvertent flicker of the streetlight. The only one still standing on the
block.
He took another step.
Closer and closer.
If he stopped to think what he was doing he might turn back.
Never look into their eyes.
Never feel their pain.
Never get involved.
Never let the voices swirling through his head take control.
Never again.
He removed his hand from the pocket, bringing the bottle with it,
taking a deep mouthful and replacing it effortlessly, from long practise.
The warmth spread through him, dulling the growing fury in his brain in mid
outcry. He shook his head, black waves spinning through the air, and
reoriented himself. What was he doing again?
Oh. That's right.
He almost turned away.
Almost.
One voice leapt from the whirlpool of thought to shimmer in his
eye.
"What the hell?"
He smiled and stepped through the door.
***
There was nothing special about the car. Nothing that caught your
eye, nothing that made it particularly interesting. It was a typical
corporation vehicle. It worked, it got you where you wanted to go, but it
wouldn't win any competitions for style. Really, the only strange thing
about the car, the one thing that would've caused anyone who saw it to
scratch their heads in confusion, was it's location. What was it doing in a
combat zone?
The car slowed, turned around, and headed back down the street.
***
He blinked and allowed a second for his eyes to adjust to the
gloom in the bar. It wasn't much worse than the gloom outside, it just had
a different feel to it. All at once it was both threatening and comforting. A
few of the newcomers looked up to see who had stepped in. The old
timers didn't bother. Anyone of interest would survive long enough to make
it back. The lucky ones who lasted long enough to visit the Chat twice
were considered regular customers. Of course it depends on your
definition of the word "lucky".
He limped around a few of the patrons who ignored him. Actually,
some of them were lost in their own worlds and probably didn't realise he
was there. He crossed to the scuffed and dented bar, made of something
that probably used to be wood, and waited, standing next to a man in a
disposable jumpsuit, that was slowly disposing of itself while he wore it.
The bartender turned to him, mumbling something about "The
decline in clientele these days" under his breath and said, "Yeah?
Waddaya want?".
He opened his mouth, closed it again.
What DID he want?
His hand brushed the bottle in his pocket and he smiled.
"A glass of ice, please.", a voice asked, swirling through the air to
taunt the ears with things forgotten, fading into obscurity even as the
sentence closed.
Ratz frowned, both at the request and the strange thoughts of
better days that flicked into his mind. Distracted, his ancient but
serviceable prosthetic almost crushed the glass he was cleaning, but he
blinked, cleared his head, and proceeded to fill it with ice.
The man reached across the counter, took the glass and smiled
softly, "Thank you." He turned and dragged his right leg towards the
nearest empty seat. For some strange reason it completely slipped Ratz'
mind to ask for payment, but then the moment was gone, and the aging
bartender scowled as he saw the newcomer pull a bottle of scotch from his
pocket and carefully fill the glass.
He sipped the whisky, then thought again and took a mouthful. The
guy whose table he'd seated himself at stared and tried to figure out
whether to get upset or not. He decided that anyone who'd do something
so stupid with so little fear, or even concern, either wasn't worth worrying
about, or was too dangerous to upset. He frowned and stared at his drink
as the other guy looked around the room and thought to himself, "This is a
nice place, perhaps I should have come here earlier."
Somewhere deep inside a voice was heard to whisper faintly, "You
did". The smile slipped from his face for just a second, but the thought was
gone and he couldn't quite figure out what it had said.
He drunk deep, to dull the memories, and turned to the guy
resolutely ignoring him across the table, "Hi. They call me Thunder."
***
Somewhere nearby, a car that was conspicuous only by it's
presence pulled up to a curb.
***
"Thunder" he whispered again, knowingly. He waited for
recognition. Everyone knew Thunder. He could remember the times when
he'd had to disguise himself to stop from being mobbed as he walked
down the street. Everyone knew who he was. Perhaps they were
pretending he thought. But why would they pretend? Maybe they had
forgotten. Memories are hardly reliable records. He knew that all too well.
But forgotten already? How long had it been?
How long had it been?
The memory spun around the vortex in his mind, disappeared into
the heaving maelstrom and was lost.
How long had what been?
He sighed softly. It didn't matter. It would come in time. What he did
not know could not hurt him.
He hoped.
The alcohol slowly diffused into his bloodstream and the torment
faded to a barely controllable torrent of grief.
He mourned for things unknown and sung softly to himself,
"But a shadow of what was,
Can't believe the things I've lost."
He laughed in pained amusement, "Heck, I can't even remember
the things I've lost.". He grimaced and took another drink, trying to
remember, wishing he could forget.
The door crashed open, spilling light into the yawning dark.
Silence.
The man across the table looked up. The man across the table
rose to his feet, as if there might be an opportunity in the atmosphere,
waiting to be absorbed by someone, as long as they weren't here. And
before you knew it he wasn't the man across the table anymore. He was
the man out the door, then the man across the street, the man on the
move.
The men in black stepped into the pool of light spreading on the
floor. Shadows of somewhere else, that faded into obscurity at the edges,
leaving you unsure of where they ended and the rest of the world began.
One of them slid towards the bar, catching the bartender's attention with
eyes like a void.
A holocube appeared in his hand, from somewhere in the
darkness, "Have you seen this man?"
The hair was shorter, neater, the clothes more expensive, the eyes
more aware and innocent, but the face was the same. Ratz' gaze drifted
through the half-light under furrowed brow, but the guy who had brought
his own whisky was nowhere to be seen. He raised an eyebrow, and
continued wiping the glass, perhaps he wasn't as green as he'd appeared,
"No, he hasn't been in."
The holocube was gone, into the black, and a card fluttered from
it's place to alight on the counter. "If you see him...", a chill drifted through
the air.
Ratz shrugged and nodded, scraping the card from the almost
wooden surface and glancing at it briefly, before it slipped nervously into
his pocket.
" Richard D'Eath
Shadow Company
The Morgue
It is appointed unto man once to die...
And after that... The Judgement.
- Hebrews 9:27 "
So. They were back. Ratz looked up from his thoughts, but the
door slammed shut, and they were gone.
A sheepish looking face appeared above the edge of a table and
Thunder regained his seat. He grinned, not quite sure why and clambered
to his feet. Ratz caught his eye, motioning him over. "You keep dangerous
company.", he frowned as the business card was stuffed into the others
pocket, "You're living in the shadow of the valley of death, my friend,
watch your step. There's another exit behind the stage, better use that." .
Thunder walked around the sprawled patrons and the tiny stage to the
door at the back, and then, he too, was gone.
Ratz watched his departing back, sighting the reaper and the
words he guarded, "Be seeing you...." The antique barkeeper smirked to
himself, "I doubt it."
A drop of rain splashed onto Thunder's shoulder as he limped
down the street towards tomorrow.
He never got that far. He made it to the corner, noticing the man
who'd left the Chatsubo in such haste across the street, when the
opportunity that had been in the air knocked.
Opportunity miscalculated and knocked a trifle too hard, with a
rather nasty looking pipe on the back of the man's head and something
once human crashed to the ground, a piece of wreckage washed up on
the shore of the dead.
Thunder watched from a shaded doorway as Opportunity probed
through the pockets in the leather jacket of the man lying in the gutter.
The deceased person started to slowly disappear. First his laughing watch
(on the hour) and then his crying earings (drip on demand with whatever
you fill them with), followed by a satisfied wallet (full of something).
Opportunity looked to be pretty tall and fat. But as this man's possessions
went into pockets behind the knees, under the arms, and in the groin,
Thunder began to sleepily realise that he'd have to be pretty skinny. There
was no sign that the objects he took had ever existed. Seamless pockets
opened and in went the stuff. They sealed and that was it. From human
being to excess protein, devoid of identification and valuables, and it all
took under two minutes. Thunder decided to follow Opportunity as he
skipped away from the lucky dip and headed down the street. Following
someone was something he did remember and it was not as if he had
anything else to do.
The clouds rumbled and played his song, as the water drifted
down, tapping him on the shoulder and washing the darkness away.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Opportunity was created by Adrian Vallis.
A9300114@pitvax.xx.rmit.edu.au
__\/__
. / ^ _ \ .
|\| (o)(o) |/|
THUNDERFOOT#-.OOOo----oo----oOOO.-------#---Immortality-for-sale,--
The # Evan "ThunderFoot" Gibson. # Lifetime Guarantee!
Legend # ECSCEG@lust.latrobe.edu.au #
Continues # gibson@latcs1.lat.oz.au # Old Immortals never die.
#____________Oooo.___________# They just.... DON'T...
Certified .oooO ( )
Caffeine ( ) ) / "Dancing on air, just over the edge,
Addict. \ ( (_/ and it's only a matter of time till
\_) gravity notices." - Me
Subject: Hell and High Water Chapter 2 (Repost)
From: ECSCEG@LUSTA.LATROBE.EDU.AU (GIBSON,Evan)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 1993 07:26:15 GMT
Well... It's been a long time with exams and all, but here's a rewritten and
finished version of chapter 2, with chapter 3 finished and to be posted soon.
Anyone who missed the start can e-mail me and I'll send them chapter 1.
Thunder smiled enigmatically and raised his bottle of scotch in salute to those
around, before taking a big swig and returning to his usual seat on the floor
in the corner...
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When Hell and High Water Collide
Copyright by Evan Gibson 1993
Chapter 2 - The valley of the shadow of death.
Shannon was in a hurry to get to the hospital. You could tell by the
honking horns, waving arms and bellowed curses that followed in her trail.
She really didn't care. Work had precluded her staying there yet another
day, at her husbands side, so she hurried back in the hope that perhaps,
somehow, today would be the day that his eyes would open, his mouth
twitch up in a smirk and his voice whisper softly, "Hi, Honey. I'm home."
He hadn't regained consciousness for a single instant since the
accident, let alone open his eyes or smile. For days all she had felt was an
intense loneliness and a raging desperation and she did little but laugh or
cry, flying from one extreme to the other. She giggled hysterically at the
smallest things and then collapsed in paroxysms of weeping, the salted
water trickling aimlessly down her tanned and even cheeks.
The tears had gone now, and she was left with a fierce
determination that she would be there when he came around, that it would
all be fine in the end. She had lived in the hospital for the past two and a
half weeks, and would not have left when she did, had work not
announced their intention to fire her if she didn't come back straight away.
They phrased it more nicely than that, with lots of condolences and the
suggestion that she may wish to take an extended vacation to care for her
invalid husband, but the real meaning was obvious enough. Deep inside
she knew, but never admitted, that the chance of him awakening was
slight, and that she really could not afford to lose her job.
Practicality laced with fear had forced her to the office, but love and
hope brought Shannon back to the hospital the very instant that she could.
She parked the car at a jagged angle, far too preoccupied to correct it, and
jogged to the elevator, leaving the underground bunker of a carpark for the
healing institution parked precariously above it.
Leaving the elevator in a rush, she almost bumped into a black
clothed man trying to enter it. He looked straight through to the core of her
being, and nodded his head, almost in greeting, almost in recognition,
before flowing through the closing doors into the elevator beyond. She
thought it strange that he didn't turn around, just kept facing the rear of the
cage, unafraid of anything that might come from behind. The doors shut
with a hiss of escaping air, and he disappeared from sight.
Shannon pushed the unusual incident from her mind and continued
on to her husband's room, turning the corner to see a perfectly made up
bed, without the hump in the middle that would be a human. Panic, fright,
no, stop. Calm yourself. There has to be a rational explanation. Back out,
check the room number. Oh, my God, it's his room, where is he, what
happened? Could he have checked himself out? Sudden elation, quashed
quickly, lest unwarranted hopes be dashed on rocks of pain.
Think. He couldn't have moved himself, someone must have
moved him. Who? The hospital. He's just in another ward. Relief flooded
through her, and she almost fell over, before pulling herself together and
walking over to the nurse checking the drip of a patient nearby.
"Excuse me.", that's right, calm now, get that tremor out of your
voice.
The nurse turned, "Yes."
"Uhhhh.... Tom, Tom Steele, my husband, was in that bed just over
there. Could you please tell me which ward he's been transferred to?"
A perplexed look appeared on the nurses face, "Your husband?
They didn't contact you? Shit.", she grabbed a nearby chair and lowered
Shannon into it. "I don't know how to say this, but... he'd been in a coma
for three weeks. There were only traces of brain activity and he was
declared legally dead and they came and took his body. I'm sorry. I can't
believe they didn't contact you, hang on a second. I'll just go get
someone."
The morbid content of the nurses reply didn't register for a while.
"Who came? Where did they take him? Where is he?", she fired questions
at the back of the retreating uniform. A slight narrowing of delicate
eyebrows, blood draining from her face, "Dead? Dead! No.", unbelief and
denial skittered back and forth, the only defence against hysteria and such
complete and utter despair that only those who had lost part of themselves
could even hope to understand.
"Dead? He can't be dead, he wouldn't just leave without saying
goodbye like that. Oh God!". Her mind flicked back to memories three
weeks old. Twenty two days of regret and pain and unforgiveness. That
morning, that morning before he left their home for the final time.
She hadn't meant it. Not one word. She'd just been so incredibly
mad. It was his day off. The one day a week they got to spend completely
together, alone. The company rang and, just like that, he was off to work.
"Sorry, Darling. It's really important. I've been working on this for ages, I
just can't let Geoffrey stuff it up like this. You understand, don't you?"
A bundle of repressed disappointments and wounded promises
welled up in a tower of rage and green eyes burning she yelled, "I
understand perfectly well, if the company means that much to you, you
can sleep over there. Don't bother coming home."
And he didn't.
Ever again.
***
Opportunity was annoyed. The guy had just walking along by
himself, nervous, agitated, looking over his shoulder every step. He'd been
begging for it, looked like he'd seen a ghost and was rushing off
somewhere to get a priest, half scared the spectre was following him. And
then he'd gone and died. Died! Just like that. It was pathetic, he'd hardly
had anything on him, nothing worthwhile anyway, and it was awful hard to
talk to a dead man. If he could've just talked to the man, well, the ex-man,
he could've got some info, some clue about the next thing to add to his
collection. But no. The idiot had just up and died. Still, he had really
deserved to die. Survival of the fittest and all that. If he'd wanted to live he
shouldn't have let himself get so distracted. The thought cheered him
somewhat. He'd survived. He, Opportunity, was one of the fittest.
If he'd stopped to think about it, Opportunity would've realised that
if he was annoyed at anyone it was himself. It was just clumsiness really,
striking just a little too hard, but he couldn't admit that to himself. He knew
what he was doing, he was good at it, he just knew he was. They were all
just too blind to see it. He stumbled on the edge of the gutter and angrily
kicked a scrap of cardboard out of the way. A rat squealed and stared up
at him with hungry eyes. He kicked it too. It glared at him in pain and raced
it's shadow down a grate, out of the sewer above and into the sewer
below.
It was the rain, he decided. It was interfering with his vision and
disturbing his senses, stuffing up his feeling of the all and all. Yeah, that
was it, the rain. Bloody nuisance. Still, not far to go now, almost home.
He paused.
Shook his head, for a second he'd almost thought he'd heard the
faintest trace of a tune drifting through the pounding of the skies
percussion, but it must've been the whistling of the wind. He walked on,
avoiding the puddles by the reflection of light from somewhere on their
surface.
Wait. He wasn't imagining things, there it was again. Someone was
definitely whistling to themselves, and they were getting closer. He ducked
into the nearest alley, hefted the pipe and waited. This time he'd get
something more than a few measly bits of jewellery and a wallet. He'd get
some information. For a second he hesitated. The guy was whistling.
Calling attention to himself. Naahh. He must just be stupid. Stupid.
The footsteps stopped.
Opportunity waited, just around the corner.
***
Thunder felt the rain hitting his head, his shoulders, his upraised
face. It was so much simpler than everything else. To just stand and dwell
in the sensations of the moment, luxuriating in the cold and gentle sting of
the tears of God. The person he'd been following had disappeared. He
leant against the tattered, crumbling facade of the building and sighed.
Why were things so complicated?
The fluffy dice on the rear vision mirror of life bounced around,
gaudy and pointless, obscuring one thing, then the other. He kept turning
around, but could never quite catch the view, surrounded by a ghost. A lot
of ghosts, phantoms of things he could sense just beyond the veil, but
could never touch.
His breath caught in his chest, racked by sudden tears, as he slid
down the shattered wall to sit in the shattered remnants of his life, wet and
cold and hysterical and not really caring one way or the other. Boneweary
beyond his years, an old man tortured by dementia of the soul.
Memories of memories of things once known, forever forgotten,
drifting, just beyond reach of the tendrils of his mind in the mists that
fogged his thoughts, slipping, tantalising in, to brush his being with
fragments of what was till it almost became whole. A jigsaw of life, one
piece short of complete, strewn across the floor before comprehension
dawns, the big picture unknown, and once more unknowable, an
unattainable glimpse of forever that you know you'll never regain.
To walk down the street, knowing, with a certainty and a deja vu
you've come to dread, that you have passed this way before, but being
unable to recall when, or why, or even who you were when last you trod
this weary road. To have your entire existence lying on the other side of a
mental chasm. You can see it, hear it, smell traces of yesterday floating on
the breeze, but it lies forever just beyond your grasp.
In a voice he wasn't sure was audible, or even his own, he
screamed himself to sleep and dreamt someone else's dreams. The hopes
and aspirations of one long dead haunting each gasping breath with
nightmare.
***
Opportunity waited, just around the corner.
Where was this guy? He can't just be standing there. He was,
what? No more than three or four metres away when he'd stopped, and
that couldn't have been more than one, maybe two minutes ago. He pulled
his wallet from his pocket, (Well, it's previous owner wouldn't be needing it
anymore, and it was too fine not to have a new home.) and pulled out the
pocket mirror from the compartment. The dead dude had probably used it
to shave with. He grinned morbidly. Somewhere he'd heard that the beard
kept growing after death and just got the obscene picture in his head of
some corpse sitting up and slowly scraping his face away with a blunt and
rusty razor, not knowing what he was doing cause his mirror was missing.
Back to work.
He held the mirror just past the edge of the corner and turned it
round till it angled towards a rain drenched figure huddled against the wall.
Water sluiced along the cracks in the sidewalk to pool around the sodden
shape.
Opportunity smiled. This'd be easier than he'd thought. He slowly
edged around the corner, and when the pile of clothes didn't budge, he
shouldered the bag of human trash and strained towards the cluttered
room he called home. It wasn't that far to go, and tonight was looking up.
Everyone had a story to tell. Everyone had heard rumours, if nothing else,
of things he wanted. Things he didn't have. He didn't know what they were
yet, but when he stumbled across them...
The derelict was unconscious now, but he'd wake up. Over the
years Opportunity had learnt to bide his time. He had patience, if nothing
else. He'd get some information out of tonight after all.
__\/__
. / ^ _ \ .
|\| (o)(o) |/|
THUNDERFOOT#-.OOOo----oo----oOOO.-------#---Immortality-for-sale,--
The # Evan "ThunderFoot" Gibson. # Lifetime Guarantee!
Legend # ECSCEG@lust.latrobe.edu.au #
Continues # gibson@latcs1.lat.oz.au # Old Immortals never die.
#____________Oooo.___________# They just.... DON'T...
Certified .oooO ( )
Caffeine ( ) ) / "Dancing on air, just over the edge,
Addict. \ ( (_/ and it's only a matter of time till
\_) gravity notices." - Me
Subject: Hell and High Water Chapter 3
From: ECSCEG@LUSTA.LATROBE.EDU.AU (GIBSON,Evan)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 1993 08:36:25 GMT
When Hell and High Water Collide
Copyright by Evan Gibson 1993
Chapter 3 - Fragments of the past.
If the disapproving glances and whispered comments among
themselves were anything to go by, Shannon wasn't doing a very good job
of convincing the nursing staff of either her calmness or rational thinking.
But then, that wasn't really surprising, considering she was completely void
of both.
"I'm fine! No, I don't want another cup of coffee, especially not
laced with whatever you put in that last one, I want to talk, I heard that,
you Bitch! to talk to someone in charge. Get your hand off me!", the last
almost screeched at a young nurse who cringed and shrunk noticeably
under the fiery gaze of those sea green eyes. You wouldn't have thought
the ocean could burn quite like that.
An elderly, perhaps a better word is established, gentleman
stepped into view, "It's alright, Mrs... Steele, isn't it? She just wanted to let
you know that I had arrived. I believed you wanted to see me? Let's go for
a walk to my office.", smoothly taking her by the arm, seeming to assume
that he had a right to, and steering her dumbfounded expression down the
corridor. Almost in passing he called out over his shoulder, "The rest of
you get back to work. I'll take care of everything.", and then his attention
was fully on the lady beside him, as if it had never wandered.
"Now then, Mrs Steele. What seems to be the problem?"
***
A hand fumbled along the blanket, slipping off the bed to crash
loudly on the floor. A groan managed to extract itself from beneath the
mound of mouldy blankets and the hand almost dragged itself into the air
before giving up and crawling over the stained and worn carpet. It hopped
around a bit, almost as if it was searching for something, before stumbling
into the bottle of scotch near the head of the mattress.
Thunder grabbed the bottle and was suddenly in a sitting position,
hunched over as if to protect the precious fluid from surrounding armies.
He slowly, and so very carefully, unscrewed the lid and took a long
draught.
The mornings were always the worse. It wasn't that he awoke with
a hangover. It'd take more than one night's sleep for him to sober up
enough to suffer that particular malady. It was as if he woke up with a
hangover from life. The last few... however long it had been... were fogged
from the alcohol, but the time before that he could remember with a clarity
he always ran from.
Disjointed days, empty of eating, sleeping, empty of all the simple
things he saw others doing and assumed were part of normal life. It wasn't
that those frames had been cut from the film of his mind, it was as if the
movie had never been made. Every morning his life flashed before his
eyes in stereo sound and living colour, and it wasn't just the things that
weren't in the movie that distressed him, it was the things that were.
Disjointed days, full of darkened streets and blackened lives.
Hunting men in the moonlight. The cries and pleas of a hundred lonely
children falling unheeded on his ears. Corpse upon corpse, pallid and
palling, piled high in his mind.
And before that?
The past beyond the pain was but a dream of mist and smoke
fading in the sunlight, dandelions blown in the wind. He had no childhood.
He had no life. He had only a waking nightmare that filled his mind with
terror. Fear of what he had been, uncertainty of who he was and both
hope and despair of what he might become.
He shivered and threw back the remainder of the bottle, drowning
his daily reminiscence the only way he knew how.
The mornings were always the worst.
"You quite finished there?", an unexpected voice called
derogatively from behind him. Thunder spun to see a tall, spindly young
man in a moth eaten t-shirt with the words, "Save Ferris" printed on it in
emboldened letters. Little more than a boy, no threat.
He visibly relaxed and shrugged, "Got any alcohol around here,
kid?"
"I'm not a kid. The name's Opportunity."
"Opportunity? Sure.", he shrugged doubtfully, "OK Kid, whatever
you say. Got any whisky?"
"Nup. Never touch the stuff."
"Well, it was nice meeting you, Kid. Thanks for the bed, but I'll be
going now.", Thunder lumbered into his coat and started to limp towards
the door.
Opportunity frowned. This wasn't quite going the way he'd planned.
Thunder half-smiled as the kid seemed to reconsider, "I think there
might be a bottle in one of the other rooms. I'll go have a look.", the gangly
youth vainly attempting to stride forcefully from the room. It was amazing
how easy it was to bring people around. Still, he wondered what the kid
wanted. It wasn't as if anyone would shelter a drunk without a VERY good
reason. "Opportunity", as he called himself, seemed to think he was quite
capable of taking care of himself. Not that it mattered. It wasn't as if he
was planning on hurting the kid, his mind recoiling, suddenly filled with
images of the myriad he had hurt. Callously, maliciously, almost as if he
were a machine, devoid of human emotion and decency.
He looked around the room slowly, taking in the enormous clutter.
Piles of junk of various descriptions, stacked in some bizarre filing system,
adorned every bit of space. The mattress he had obviously been sleeping
on seemed almost out of place in the random collage of potentially useless
material.
Decaying old newspapers, yellowed and crumbling, from the time
they were printed on paper, and a figurine of gold standing with arms
crossed over a pile of discarded and obsolete records. In that corner was
an electronic device of no particular function, with numerous flashing lights
and fiddly bits covering it's every surface. Over there was a faded poster
advertising some kind of extravaganza and stuffed under this precariously
piled stack of compact disks was a marble bust of some once famous,
now dead, individual.
Carefully leaned against the wall in the corner, behind the heap of
surprisingly well conserved woman's magazines, was a finely crafted
acoustic guitar that seemed to draw him towards itself. Getting closer,
Thunder noticed a scrawled signature along the bottom, "Elvis". He
reached for it and sat himself on the bed once more.
The feel of the fine grained wood beneath his fingers seemed to
calm his demons, and thoughtlessly he began to pluck the strings,
effortlessly tuning the guitar while humming softly to himself with a beatific
smile on his face. Seemingly satisfied, his fingers began to dance over the
strings, at first hesitantly, then with more and more confidence, till the
music flowing from Thunder's hands took a mind of it's own.
The notes, clear and precise, ran together, resonating strangely in
the room's peculiar ambience, and the mind of the player fell into the eye
of the storm. The vortex of emotions raging about suddenly stilled and the
memory of another squall, long ago, slipped into it's place. The night he
had taken his name. His eyes clouded with tears, yet seeing more than he
had since he knew not when, he raised his face and began to sing.
"Midnight black as hell around.
About stars fall, the tempest sounds.
Water walls crash thunderous down,
Foreign shores in a friendly town."
The ethereal sound flitting around the room, alive and twinkling in
the half-shadows of an alien landscape.
"The crystal city on the other side,
Sea breeze calls, come take a ride.
Flickers of fire leap into the sky,
Mist fades into smoke, maybe I can fly."
His voice deep and sombre, infused the words with emotion,
complementing the wash of chords that were forged and struck on the
anvil in his hands, as the tempo shifted and the song became a lament of
grief and mourning for things that could no longer be.
"Everything I touch turns to dust and slowly drifts onto the floor.
Loneliness with no end in sight, no-one wants my love no more.
I drink myself to sleep each night, it's the only thing that dulls the
pain,
A whirlwind of voices in my head, just drivin' me insane.
Waiting on daylight, all I can do.
Nothing to say, till it all comes true.
Waiting on daylight, the peace that I've found,
Watching the carnage, standing my ground.
Waiting on daylight.
When I wake up I need something, just to get me through the day,
I need a reason just to live, I can't go on this way.
A hundred reasons flash through my brain, I'm not afraid to die.
Gazing out at the waves below, I think maybe I could fly."
What could only be the chorus made itself heard once more,
overlaying the fermenting pain with a watchful hope, before turning into a
final plea for something, anything, and an assurance of a future to come
should patience only win out in the end.
"Waiting on daylight, all I can do.
Nothing to say, till it all comes true.
Waiting on daylight, the peace that I've found,
Watching the carnage, standing my ground.
Waiting on daylight.
I don't want to end this way, I don't want to die alone.
Fatigue dragging at my feet, no place to call my own.
I'll go on, day by day, in hope, against the tide.
Till I'm finally free at last, when hell and high water collide."
With tears streaming down his face, Thunder rested his head on
the guitar and stared sightlessly as Opportunity stopped leaning on the
door and tried to recover from the shock.
He hadn't heard that song in years.
***
The old man smiled kindly, "You've got to understand, Mrs Steele, I
don't like it anymore than you do. I intended this place for the healing of
the sick, and the encouragement of their families. It was meant to help,
and so it did... for a while. But all the greatest visions must die in the face
of financial concerns. I put it off for as long as possible, but the bank kept
pushing until I had no other choice but to deal with those demons."
Shannon sat, rigid backed, in the chair, hands clenched around her
purse.
"Your husband filled out one of those organ donor cards, didn't he?
So when he didn't come out of the coma within three weeks they were
legally within their rights to appropriate him. I agree, you should have been
contacted first, but they prefer to avoid confrontations and often claim
their... uh... property at the earliest possible opportunity and leave us to
clean up the debris. There's nothing you can really do. Ever since the
definition of clinical death was changed to include those who would, in all
probability, never regain consciousness, the law has prevented us from
leaving people plugged in and pseudo-alive, their bodies alive even
though their minds have gone. I suppose it's kinder in a way, but the
decision about who lives and who dies was taken out of our hands. After
three weeks have past everyone gets turned off, whether their family can
continue to afford to pay for their care or not. You're better off trying to
come to terms with it, and getting on with your life, my dear.", he tried to
smile reassuringly, but he failed to even fool himself.
Barely restraining her anger and her tears through gritted teeth,
Shannon murmured, "A name. Just give me a name."
The old man smiled ruefully, as he scribbled something on a piece
of paper, "I admire your spirit. I still think you should keep out of this, you
don't know what you're getting yourself into, but here's something you
might want to look up."
Shannon took the paper with trembling hand and rose to leave.
"Thank you. I don't really care what I'm getting into.", a smile as cold as the
ice in her eyes touched the corners of her mouth for only a moment, "I
have nothing left that I could possibly lose."
As he went to close the door, watching her disappear around the
corner, the old man frowned and whispered barely audibly, "Be careful,
Mrs Steele... And good luck. You'll need it more than you could know." He
laughed at some private joke and murmured the words, "...dealing with
demons...", with a mouth quirked in resignation.
Returning to his oaken desk he picked up the phone and, a look of
regret on his face, proceeded to dial a number, "Hello? This is
Frederickson. I think in the last shipment you may have acquired a little
more than you bargained for..."
__\/__
. / ^ _ \ .
|\| (o)(o) |/|
THUNDERFOOT#-.OOOo----oo----oOOO.-------#---Immortality-for-sale,--
The # Evan "ThunderFoot" Gibson. # Lifetime Guarantee!
Legend # ECSCEG@lust.latrobe.edu.au #
Continues # gibson@latcs1.lat.oz.au # Old Immortals never die.
#____________Oooo.___________# They just.... DON'T...
Certified .oooO ( )
Caffeine ( ) ) / "Dancing on air, just over the edge,
Addict. \ ( (_/ and it's only a matter of time till
\_) gravity notices." - Me
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