The Unwilling Necromancer 11-02-09
Well, before I go out and get smashed tonight as my first official night out since I made it through six months, let me post up the second part of The Unwilling Necromancer
Enjoy.
As he sat watching and worrying, a hand touched his shoulder.
"There was no answer at Maggie's. She's probably at work or on an emergency call. I wish we could talk to her before going to the doctor's." Diana sat down facing Hunter on the edge of the bed, clasping Arkady's hand in hers. At the touch he stirred a little.
"Mom?" His voice came dry through his throat and Hunter held the glass to his lips, helping him drink.
"Yes honey, I'm right here. And dad is too. How're you feeling?" Diana used the cool washcloth to sooth his neck and cheeks and then replaced it on his forehead.
"I'm tired, and hot." Arkady's voice did sound tired, and his eyes were red with fever as he looked at his parents.
"Don't worry kiddo. You'll feel better in no time. Mom's going to take you to Doctor Michaels in a little bit and he'll have you patched up in no time." Hunter reassured him.
"Okay," Arkady weakly replied. He fell back to sleep then, and after looking at their unconscious child they retreated downstairs to the breakfast table.
"I hate to leave you to take care of him, but it's too late to cancel everything with the Culloms." Hunter said, sitting down and pushing his plate away from himself.
"It's okay, really." Di said, hugging her arms to herself.
Hunter got up and moved over to his wife, hugging her to him. "Kade will be fine, and I'll keep in touch with you as much as I can. After I get them to sign the papers, I'll come back as soon as I can and watch Kade for the rest of the day."
Looking up, into the earth brown eyes that were filled with equal parts tenderness and worry, she sighed, "I know you have to go in to the office. Thank you for volunteering the rest of the day."
"The boss has two kids, he'll understand. If I'm lucky I might be able to meet you at the doctor's office." Hunter rested his chin on the crown of his wife's chestnut hair and slowly rocked them both back and forth.
If only things had been that good, he thought too himself, looking into there room where both his son and wife slept. The most important things to him in the world were in that room, and one was comatose and the other hadn't slept at all during the intervening time. Now they were both liking worse for wear. He certainly wasn't feeling too hot himself, and he wondered, not or the first time, if what his son had was contagious.
Arkady wasn't worried about that however. After the doctor's visit, which had been through an exhausting, he had slept most of the day under the influence of Children's Benedryl. Waking up once to relieve himself and drink the electrolyte drink his mother gave him, it had become impossible to rouse him for dinner, and he had slept through the night without a single movement. The next day, he had been so hot that, after another, more urgent call to Doctor Michaels, the Harrises had taken their sleeping son to the Hospital and had him admitted for observation and a whole slew of tests.
Now he lay on a hospital bed, unresponsive. No one knew anything about his fever. All tests had come back negative, and no one else had shown any signs of illness except for the exhaustion Hunter and Diana felt. And so more tests were ordered, and more questions asked, and the list of what this illness wasn't grew.
Reaching up for the next branch, Arkady pulled himself up after his friend, Brent. They were racing for the top of the maple tree across from the park, and already they were halfway up. Brent was a better climber, but Arkady wasn’t going to give up so easily. Besides, if he beat him, Brent said he would give Kade his latest Horrific Heralds comic book. So he strained and pushed, and pulled himself up a handful of leafy branches at a time.
As the boys, both sweating and puffing and they strove against one another, reached the top of the tree the branches began to thin out, and the wind swept them back and forth. Kade had managed to edge out Brent in the last five meters of the climb and he reached the last branch that would support weight seconds before the other boy. Looking down at his opponent, he let out a “Ha!” of triumph. But Brent wasn’t there anymore, and the tree was much higher than he’d remembered it to be. Staring down at the ground, so many, many meters away, he shuddered and felt a momentary twinge of vertigo. Clutching tighter at the tree, he wondered if Brent had fallen, or decided that it was worth losing the comic book to strand him at the top of a tree for laughs.
“Brent! Brent, where are you?” Arkady called down, searching amongst the branches and foliage. But he couldn’t see anything amidst them, and even the ground began to seem lost in the shivering, shaking world of green below him.
The cold, green leaves slapped at his face and body like flimsy hands, and the wind began to pick up, making the leaves chatter and whistle. Above him the sky seemed to be turning a darker blue by the minute, and his hands and face were feeling cold. So cold that he thought it might be a better idea to climb down and worry about Brent later.
Watching each step, he slowly backed down the tree. Placing his feet on solid crooks and making sure the branch in his hand was thick enough to hold his weight, he made progress backwards. Each time he looked up to check his handholds though, the sky was becoming blacker and blacker. Thinking that it must be getting later than he though, he picked up his pace. Suddenly, his hands, which had been getting colder and number as he progressed down, slipped their grasp. He swung backwards and out from the tree, tumbling into the next branch down and then the next one after it. The impacts pushed the air from his lungs in a sharp shriek of panic, and then each collision brought stars and flashes of black and red across his vision. Desperately he flung his arms out to grab something, anything to stop his fall, but they met nothing but slapping leaves and stinking branches. Then suddenly blackness enveloped him with a cracking, splintering thud.
Darkness. It was all around him. Shivering overtook his slight form as he became aware of the cold, and so did pain. Excruciating pain. For a time, that is all that he knew, as the shivering subsided though, so did the pain. But not completely; it left him with a memory of itself, dull and angry inside. And he was left with the cold, and the dark. Shifting, he found that he could hear himself move, but he couldn’t feel anything. Sound and icy, infinite space were his only companions, and the dull pain throbbing deeply inside his mind.
“Hello?! Help! Is anyone there?” Kade yelled as loud as he could, and the sound vanished into the solid black abyss. There was no echo, there was no rustle of leaves stirred by the wind. There was only the scraping rattle when he moved and the sounds of his own breathing and yelling. “Hello?” He kept calling as he tried to figure out where his body was, where his hands were in relation to his face. Because he could hear himself moving, he knew he wasn’t paralyzed, but he wished he could feel his body. Maybe it was numb with the cold, but then he wouldn’t be able to feel the cold either, would he?
Slowly his moving brought feeling back into his limbs. A tingling began in his chest and spread outward, bringing with it the pain. It exploded, pinning him to the ground; arching his back, he flailed his arms and screamed a wordless, heart-shredding howl. Stabbing, grinding, crushing pain filled his existence until he couldn’t even remember his name. Then it ebbed, taking with it all feeling, leaving behind the cold, the shivering, and the echoing silence. Numbly, he lay without thinking, without anything. Without consciousness.
Zephyrs blow across the valley. Funneled by the rounded peaks of the Appalachians, they push clouds before them like shepherds and their flocks. Below, the lights of a small city twinkle and sparkle as trees shudder and moan like wounded troops facing insurmountable odds. Above, stars peek out from the clouds to glance down at their earthbound brethren, and everywhere, there is silence. Midnight in Morrisburgh on a school night. A few errant teenagers, some late night workers, and transient souls just passing through are all that can be found to enliven the witching hour.
Hunter and Diana Harris sleep the sleep of the exhausted in their two story prefab home. It seems empty without the sound of a third, much smaller breath filling the darkened hours. Although they spend their time in shifts at the hospital, they still go home to sleep, keeping the phone next to the bed in case something should happen.
In Morrisburgh Memorial Hospital, Arkady Harris lays in room 307, his fever burning brightly against the cool of the air-conditioned compartment. Machines record everything about his physical state, but nothing can record the torment going on inside the fevered dreams of the young boy.
Arkady awakens once again, again to the cold, the darkness, the pain. And again it subsides after an impossible eternity, bringing with it a blessed steely ice. His arms and legs are like lead; unable to feel them, he drags himself over onto his face. Knowing he has to do something, and unable to tell if he’s still unconscious the same day, night, or whatever, he tries to move himself into some type of upright condition.
Pushing with everything he can think to muster, he feels himself move, and is blocked by something against his back. He can feel it, somehow. Even though there is nothing to feel, he knows the pressure of something against his spine. Straining with everything, he grunts and struggles. Icy daggers of agony lance his arms, his chest, his legs, and he moves the pressure back and up. The howling scream of pain he can feel building inside him is stifled by the sheer desperation he feels. He’s trapped somewhere, and he has to get out. He has too. He knows if he doesn’t, then he may never, ever see anything again. Not his mother, not his father, nor any of his friends. And he forces that pain into action, that scream into rage, the fear into strength.
Heaving with everything, with his entire being concentrated into pushing whatever his trapping him down off of his back, he lurches upright. Blinding spears of pure white brilliance flood his being, and he thinks once before the darkness crashes down again, that there is nothing as beautiful as the radiant face of the full moon.
I'm mostly caught up. I'm 800 words behind on my other story, Enas Tonmi, but I can catch that up tomorrow. Today was a writing block day. It took me forever to get through it and complete what I did on TUN, and that meant a lot of rewriting. Rewriting is against the NanoWrimo code, but it just wasn't working. I had to find some motivation for my characters, because otherwise, they become grumpy and stagnant. Luckily, the electric prod of doom helped and we're in business again.
As for not finishing Enas Tonmi for the day, that's because I'm just feeling too damn lazy right now.
Going out with a friend, Kai, and purplehaze9 for drinks and fun. Might end up meeting up with some other folks if they're out around Samsan-dong.
Enjoy.
As he sat watching and worrying, a hand touched his shoulder.
"There was no answer at Maggie's. She's probably at work or on an emergency call. I wish we could talk to her before going to the doctor's." Diana sat down facing Hunter on the edge of the bed, clasping Arkady's hand in hers. At the touch he stirred a little.
"Mom?" His voice came dry through his throat and Hunter held the glass to his lips, helping him drink.
"Yes honey, I'm right here. And dad is too. How're you feeling?" Diana used the cool washcloth to sooth his neck and cheeks and then replaced it on his forehead.
"I'm tired, and hot." Arkady's voice did sound tired, and his eyes were red with fever as he looked at his parents.
"Don't worry kiddo. You'll feel better in no time. Mom's going to take you to Doctor Michaels in a little bit and he'll have you patched up in no time." Hunter reassured him.
"Okay," Arkady weakly replied. He fell back to sleep then, and after looking at their unconscious child they retreated downstairs to the breakfast table.
"I hate to leave you to take care of him, but it's too late to cancel everything with the Culloms." Hunter said, sitting down and pushing his plate away from himself.
"It's okay, really." Di said, hugging her arms to herself.
Hunter got up and moved over to his wife, hugging her to him. "Kade will be fine, and I'll keep in touch with you as much as I can. After I get them to sign the papers, I'll come back as soon as I can and watch Kade for the rest of the day."
Looking up, into the earth brown eyes that were filled with equal parts tenderness and worry, she sighed, "I know you have to go in to the office. Thank you for volunteering the rest of the day."
"The boss has two kids, he'll understand. If I'm lucky I might be able to meet you at the doctor's office." Hunter rested his chin on the crown of his wife's chestnut hair and slowly rocked them both back and forth.
If only things had been that good, he thought too himself, looking into there room where both his son and wife slept. The most important things to him in the world were in that room, and one was comatose and the other hadn't slept at all during the intervening time. Now they were both liking worse for wear. He certainly wasn't feeling too hot himself, and he wondered, not or the first time, if what his son had was contagious.
Arkady wasn't worried about that however. After the doctor's visit, which had been through an exhausting, he had slept most of the day under the influence of Children's Benedryl. Waking up once to relieve himself and drink the electrolyte drink his mother gave him, it had become impossible to rouse him for dinner, and he had slept through the night without a single movement. The next day, he had been so hot that, after another, more urgent call to Doctor Michaels, the Harrises had taken their sleeping son to the Hospital and had him admitted for observation and a whole slew of tests.
Now he lay on a hospital bed, unresponsive. No one knew anything about his fever. All tests had come back negative, and no one else had shown any signs of illness except for the exhaustion Hunter and Diana felt. And so more tests were ordered, and more questions asked, and the list of what this illness wasn't grew.
Reaching up for the next branch, Arkady pulled himself up after his friend, Brent. They were racing for the top of the maple tree across from the park, and already they were halfway up. Brent was a better climber, but Arkady wasn’t going to give up so easily. Besides, if he beat him, Brent said he would give Kade his latest Horrific Heralds comic book. So he strained and pushed, and pulled himself up a handful of leafy branches at a time.
As the boys, both sweating and puffing and they strove against one another, reached the top of the tree the branches began to thin out, and the wind swept them back and forth. Kade had managed to edge out Brent in the last five meters of the climb and he reached the last branch that would support weight seconds before the other boy. Looking down at his opponent, he let out a “Ha!” of triumph. But Brent wasn’t there anymore, and the tree was much higher than he’d remembered it to be. Staring down at the ground, so many, many meters away, he shuddered and felt a momentary twinge of vertigo. Clutching tighter at the tree, he wondered if Brent had fallen, or decided that it was worth losing the comic book to strand him at the top of a tree for laughs.
“Brent! Brent, where are you?” Arkady called down, searching amongst the branches and foliage. But he couldn’t see anything amidst them, and even the ground began to seem lost in the shivering, shaking world of green below him.
The cold, green leaves slapped at his face and body like flimsy hands, and the wind began to pick up, making the leaves chatter and whistle. Above him the sky seemed to be turning a darker blue by the minute, and his hands and face were feeling cold. So cold that he thought it might be a better idea to climb down and worry about Brent later.
Watching each step, he slowly backed down the tree. Placing his feet on solid crooks and making sure the branch in his hand was thick enough to hold his weight, he made progress backwards. Each time he looked up to check his handholds though, the sky was becoming blacker and blacker. Thinking that it must be getting later than he though, he picked up his pace. Suddenly, his hands, which had been getting colder and number as he progressed down, slipped their grasp. He swung backwards and out from the tree, tumbling into the next branch down and then the next one after it. The impacts pushed the air from his lungs in a sharp shriek of panic, and then each collision brought stars and flashes of black and red across his vision. Desperately he flung his arms out to grab something, anything to stop his fall, but they met nothing but slapping leaves and stinking branches. Then suddenly blackness enveloped him with a cracking, splintering thud.
Darkness. It was all around him. Shivering overtook his slight form as he became aware of the cold, and so did pain. Excruciating pain. For a time, that is all that he knew, as the shivering subsided though, so did the pain. But not completely; it left him with a memory of itself, dull and angry inside. And he was left with the cold, and the dark. Shifting, he found that he could hear himself move, but he couldn’t feel anything. Sound and icy, infinite space were his only companions, and the dull pain throbbing deeply inside his mind.
“Hello?! Help! Is anyone there?” Kade yelled as loud as he could, and the sound vanished into the solid black abyss. There was no echo, there was no rustle of leaves stirred by the wind. There was only the scraping rattle when he moved and the sounds of his own breathing and yelling. “Hello?” He kept calling as he tried to figure out where his body was, where his hands were in relation to his face. Because he could hear himself moving, he knew he wasn’t paralyzed, but he wished he could feel his body. Maybe it was numb with the cold, but then he wouldn’t be able to feel the cold either, would he?
Slowly his moving brought feeling back into his limbs. A tingling began in his chest and spread outward, bringing with it the pain. It exploded, pinning him to the ground; arching his back, he flailed his arms and screamed a wordless, heart-shredding howl. Stabbing, grinding, crushing pain filled his existence until he couldn’t even remember his name. Then it ebbed, taking with it all feeling, leaving behind the cold, the shivering, and the echoing silence. Numbly, he lay without thinking, without anything. Without consciousness.
Zephyrs blow across the valley. Funneled by the rounded peaks of the Appalachians, they push clouds before them like shepherds and their flocks. Below, the lights of a small city twinkle and sparkle as trees shudder and moan like wounded troops facing insurmountable odds. Above, stars peek out from the clouds to glance down at their earthbound brethren, and everywhere, there is silence. Midnight in Morrisburgh on a school night. A few errant teenagers, some late night workers, and transient souls just passing through are all that can be found to enliven the witching hour.
Hunter and Diana Harris sleep the sleep of the exhausted in their two story prefab home. It seems empty without the sound of a third, much smaller breath filling the darkened hours. Although they spend their time in shifts at the hospital, they still go home to sleep, keeping the phone next to the bed in case something should happen.
In Morrisburgh Memorial Hospital, Arkady Harris lays in room 307, his fever burning brightly against the cool of the air-conditioned compartment. Machines record everything about his physical state, but nothing can record the torment going on inside the fevered dreams of the young boy.
Arkady awakens once again, again to the cold, the darkness, the pain. And again it subsides after an impossible eternity, bringing with it a blessed steely ice. His arms and legs are like lead; unable to feel them, he drags himself over onto his face. Knowing he has to do something, and unable to tell if he’s still unconscious the same day, night, or whatever, he tries to move himself into some type of upright condition.
Pushing with everything he can think to muster, he feels himself move, and is blocked by something against his back. He can feel it, somehow. Even though there is nothing to feel, he knows the pressure of something against his spine. Straining with everything, he grunts and struggles. Icy daggers of agony lance his arms, his chest, his legs, and he moves the pressure back and up. The howling scream of pain he can feel building inside him is stifled by the sheer desperation he feels. He’s trapped somewhere, and he has to get out. He has too. He knows if he doesn’t, then he may never, ever see anything again. Not his mother, not his father, nor any of his friends. And he forces that pain into action, that scream into rage, the fear into strength.
Heaving with everything, with his entire being concentrated into pushing whatever his trapping him down off of his back, he lurches upright. Blinding spears of pure white brilliance flood his being, and he thinks once before the darkness crashes down again, that there is nothing as beautiful as the radiant face of the full moon.
I'm mostly caught up. I'm 800 words behind on my other story, Enas Tonmi, but I can catch that up tomorrow. Today was a writing block day. It took me forever to get through it and complete what I did on TUN, and that meant a lot of rewriting. Rewriting is against the NanoWrimo code, but it just wasn't working. I had to find some motivation for my characters, because otherwise, they become grumpy and stagnant. Luckily, the electric prod of doom helped and we're in business again.
As for not finishing Enas Tonmi for the day, that's because I'm just feeling too damn lazy right now.
Going out with a friend, Kai, and purplehaze9 for drinks and fun. Might end up meeting up with some other folks if they're out around Samsan-dong.