AWOL: A Character Lost (10 page)

“Just chucked it all and walked. I think it had to be at least sixty years ago by now. Memory gets a little foggy the older I get. I was a much younger man then.”

“Why?”

“I had enough. I was in a dead-end job. I had no goal in life. I had nothing, just a single man living a boring single life.”

Paul drew in a deep breath, exhaled, and started his story without waiting to see if the character wanted to hear it or not.

“I was driving home one night after work, and I hit a patch of ice on the road. The car went sideways twice; and I caught it each time, thought I had it under control, then it whipped around again, and that’s when I lost it. I tried the brakes, tried the steering wheel, nothing, the car was heading for a tree; and I was powerless to stop it. I think it was oak. Maybe it was a pine or a spruce. Was I in the mountains when it happened?”

Paul paused, as he tried to find the memories back on that deep dusty shelf he kept in his mind. Once he was sure he couldn’t remember, he decided to move on.

“It doesn’t matter anyway. What matters is that when I hit this tree, I hit it dead on. The front end of my car looked like a horseshoe by the time the tree stopped it. It was a horrible wreck, my fault, going too fast on a road like that, should have known better.”

Paul paused again, sip of beer, and back to it.

“The engine came back into the car, glass shattered, you know the details of a wreck that violent. Anyway, when I woke up, the steering wheel was pushed right into my chest, which cracked and broke a lot of things in my body, but it was the engine that did the most damage. When it came into the car, it crushed both of my legs, pinned them underneath it. Being it was hot; it also burned them pretty badly.” Paul, without realizing it, rubbed his legs as he talked. “I didn’t think I would walk again after, but as you see, I did.”

A seagull squawked nearby and drew them both away for a moment. Paul returned to his story in order to finish it.

“I remember, will always remember this part of it, no matter how old I get. I remember the smell, cooked flesh and blood. I still smell it to this very day.”

Paul paused again, trying to push those smells out of his head. He drew in a breath, exhaled, felt the nausea pass and continued.

“I was sitting there awhile on that deserted road, dying for all I knew, and then I saw this light in front of me. I could see it out in the woods, just appeared out of nowhere. I remember being comforted by this light even though it was so far away. I’m not sure if it was an angel or not, but it gave me something to focus on, took my mind off the pain. Eventually a car came, that was back before cell phones, of course, so you couldn’t really call out for help. You just had to wait and hope. The woman, who was in the car that found me, stayed with me as her husband rushed off for help. The light never left until the ambulance arrived, but the guy’s wife never noticed it. It was like that light was just for me.”

The character was stunned. He wasn’t sure what to say after this guy, this random stranger, told him such a personal story. The character let the man finish without saying anything.

“I woke up in the hospital six days later, and the nurse on duty was standing by my side. I knew right then and there I was going to marry her.”

“Where’s she at now?”

“Gone, but she didn’t suffer, so I am glad for that.”

Paul didn’t say any more about her and the character didn’t push it.

“Anyway, after waking up, I just sold everything, hit the road with my thumb and took three years off from life. When I decided I had gotten my peace I came back here, found out the nurse was single, took her out on two dates, and on the third I asked her to marry me. Our story is mostly told by the pictures you saw earlier this evening.”

The character thought about the pictures on the wall, and smiled. “So you are just being single now?”

“Single and dying that way. I can’t hurt like that again. I’m too old.”

The night was now black, the beers were gone, and both men suddenly realized they were tired.

“I don’t know about you Paul, but I am pretty tired.”

“I was thinking you could take my bed tonight. I’ll take the couch.”

“No way, I will take your hospitality, and your food, but not your bed.”

“I had a feeling you would say that. Let me get you some fresh linen for the couch.”

The two men stood up, and Paul went back into the house.

The character took a moment to soak it all in. He inhaled the salt air, felt the rush of the sea, and let it wash over him. This was just a perfect spot. He hated to call it a night, but he was tired, and needed to sleep. He took one last long glance, and then made his way inside.

*

Down in a sewer, there lived a small monster – a creature about four feet tall. Its face resembled that of a cat, kind of a misshapen oval, with a snout for a nose and razor sharp teeth. It had yellow eyes and pointy ears. Its body was hairless, covered in hard bumpy scales, and it had a big lizard-like tail. It had no claws, just human fingers with thumbs for gripping. It had human feet as well, and those feet were webbed so it could move easily on land or in the water. It made no noise or any kind of sound. It was mute, and no animal in the wild or domesticated for that matter, would ever approach it.

The heat and humidity of the sewer it lived in sustained its life and helped it to thrive. When it was born, it was one of those magical moments of mutation when a lizard’s egg fell into a small puddle of toxic waste.

Where did this waste come from?

Who knew?

It was there though; just enough in that sewer system to create an unnatural killing machine, and while this egg lay in this waste, the egg grew tentacles and a mouth. When something came close to it, it would grab the food and drain it, feeding the monster inside with the blood and flesh of living creatures. It was blood that this creature started to crave as it grew inside the toxic egg. So when the creature finally busted forth from its shell, it went on a rampage. It devoured all that it could find with a blood lust that was insatiable. Now, this monster lay dying, dying because it was about to give birth.

While it lay there, kicking, tail swishing in the rotted leaves of a long ago storm, its sides bubbled and writhed, birth was imminent. It let out a muted scream, and then it gave birth. From the top of its underbelly down to the end of it a small red line appeared, then this red line busted open with a leathery tearing sound. Little white worm-like creatures, no more than an inch long, busted forth from this monster’s body, ripping and tearing through the womb –
ravenous
– starved. There must have been thousands of them.

They first devoured their mother, leaving only bones. The sewer animals were next, crawling over them, feasting until there was nothing left but a white skeleton.

A problem quickly arose, and I think we all know what that problem was. There’s only so much they could feed on in that sewer before the food supply ran out. When that day happened, about a day or two before the character arrived in this story, they got lucky, the human race didn’t.

A lonely sewer worker, Fernando was his name, had come down to check out the pipes for one of the local buildings. He was standing in the darkness working away when this white swarm hit him; hit him hard enough to knock him down. Then they feasted on him, tearing, ripping, devouring, as he lay there screaming. When it was over, all that was left were tattered clothes, and white blood stained bones.

It was during this first human feeding frenzy that they learned one thing about the human host, other than the fact that their meat tasted sweet, and their blood had a nice sour taste to it. They found that the eyes were soft and warm, easy to penetrate. So that meant, they could crawl inside the eyeball and lay their larvae. Much like their devoured mother, these creatures weren’t meant for world takeover. It was their off spring that was supposed to change the natural balance; and, believe me folks, it was about to happen.

They went on a search, searching for more like poor Fernando, and they found it. Once these little critters reached street level they feasted well, mostly on bums who lived close to the sewer system; and then split up when they realized it was time to give birth, time to venture out on their own. They now had enough food to sustain them until they created their offspring.

Imagine, if you will, thousands of these little guys heading off to find the perfect host to raise their babies. Some of them stayed in the city, but others latched onto hosts heading out of town and ventured, far away from where they were born.

The world was becoming infested, and no one had a clue.

*

Mary stood about five feet tall, around the age of thirty six, with blonde hair and blue eyes. She was in good shape – a runner four times a week. She rarely got sick, so when she felt flu like symptoms, itchy eyes, upset stomach, headache, and general iciness’, she started to get worried.

She crawled out of bed and phoned work, her first missed day since she started there, one of only a handful of missed days she had taken in all her years of working. She hated taking time off, but she just couldn’t get her mind or body ready for a working day – too much stress on a very foggy brain.

After phoning the job, she made her way into the bathroom.

The night sky was just breaking towards dawn, so she could see inside the medicine cabinet without turning on the light, which was good because she was in no mood to have a harsh bathroom light in her face.

She rummaged around inside for a moment, trying to get her eyes to see through the gloomy light, looking for some kind of relief. She found a couple of flu pills and popped them.

She closed the medicine cabinet door and stopped.

She noticed something, something about her left eye that wasn’t there the night before. Something that just wasn’t right.

She flipped on the light switch and winced at the light; didn’t matter, she had to see what she thought she was seeing.

Her left eye was swollen shut and yellow puss was starting to ooze out of it. This was an eye that was perfect the night before. While she looked at her eye, the puss went from oozing to a small flow. It started to run down her cheek, heading towards her mouth.

She reached for the alcohol in order to sterilize her eye, and that was when she first saw and felt the movement. Something was crawling around behind her closed eye lid, bulging up the fabric of the flesh, like a snake underneath a blanket. She watched this thing move from side to side like it was swimming.

She grabbed a cotton swab and felt immense pain move across her eye to the nerve endings, and then to the brain. She doubled over until the massive brain quake subsided. The pain was so intense that for a moment she almost puked. When she was able to hold back the vomit and focus, she opened the alcohol bottle and soaked the cotton ball full of liquid. The pungent smell made her nose run and her good eye sting, but it was nothing compared to the pain she was feeling in her bad eye.

She drew in a deep breath, exhaled, and then pushed the white ball onto her swollen left eye. A screech of pain reached her ears, almost enough to provide permanent hearing loss.

She fell down to her knees on the hard tile and vomited blood across the floor from the next brain quake. This time it was at least a 14 maybe a 15 on the brain Richter Scale; and she didn’t just vomit once, but she vomited until it felt like her insides were going to come out.

She fell back against the wall, sweaty, tired, and sore. Then it happened, birth, life; the creature had decided it was time to be born.

The creature burst forth with such velocity that the entire left side of Mary’s face exploded. Bits and pieces of her left side covered the walls, the medicine cabinet, the sink, the shower and shower curtain, the ceiling, the light, the tub, the commode, the window and the window shade. Most of her teeth hit the wall with such speed they stuck like white darts. What was left of her face, after the creature exited, was a gigantic crater, which stretched from the top of her scalp to the top of her lower bottom teeth.

Now this little critter was out and about – a creature about town. It writhed on the floor and hissed, pissed at the openness and coldness of this new world.

This critter looked like a seven inch white snake with a forked tale and a nice round body, kind of like an evil hot dog, one of those plump ones that you get at the ball park. The thing had two red eyes, razor sharp teeth, and two arms. At the end of these arms were hands with five fingers on each one of them – each finger ended in claws that looked like long pointy knives. It had scales all over its body, and it had a forked tongue that lapped up the precious juices of Mary on the floor. The juices, though, weren’t enough; so it set its sights on her now dead body, slumped over, going cold. It slithered across the room and into the bottom of one of her bare feet. It burrowed in and then it ate, ate her from the bottom to the top; and much like its parent and its grandparent, the only thing it left were the bones.

Once it was done, it shook violently and screeched, started to grow, started to move into the next stage of its life.

This was the first birth.

This was the first step in a new evolution.

Across town, across states, across the world, more births were taking place at this time; and those that weren’t yet born were getting close.

Mary lived two blocks away from Paul.

*

Paul rolled out of bed and slipped into his house shoes, steadying his legs like he was on a boat at sea. He was dizzy, and he felt flushed. His right eye was itching like a madman; and, when he touched it, the eye just felt wrong. It felt swollen, and shut, like he had been in a bar fight and taken one in the eye socket. In the living room he could hear the TV on, but it wasn’t very loud. The character was watching something music based, videos perhaps on one of the channels. It sounded like a song by the group Motorhead, but he wasn’t sure if he was right or not in the condition he was in; plus it had been many years since he had listened to anything that remotely loud and heavy.