Jack was blinking already when he woke up. That was weird—waking up to yourself blinking, and not just blinking, but painful blinking.
Ow. Ow. Ow.
“It hurts when I blink,” he found himself saying out loud. “Why does it hurt when I blink?”
“It probably hurts when you do just about anything right now,” said a voice on the other side of him. Jack undertook the excruciating activity of turning his head to the other side in order to see who had spoken.
It was a tiny person.
Or at least that’s what Jack would have called it. In years of exploring miles and miles of Nymia — of seeing countless strange beasts and creatures anyone would describe as wonderous, he hadn’t ever seen anything like the small thing that was standing next to him.
It looked like it had skin, but there was also fur, and… machinery? Jack risked the pain of blinking a few more times to clear his vision.
Ok two arms and two legs, that’s not so abnormal.
Except one of the arms was a fleshy little appendage with four fingers and the other seemed to be made of whirring bronze-colored gears and rivets. The legs he couldn’t see well but one of its feet almost looked… hooved? Jack laid back down with his eyes closed.
“Is this it?” he asked. “Is this me being dead finally?”
“Fortunately no,” the little voice said. “Or unfortunately I guess, if you happen to be suicidal. Whether you’ll become dead is a matter of me getting this fixed up so don’t move.”
Jack hadn’t noticed the stinging pain in his left side. Everything had hurt so much on its own that he hadn’t even been able to differentiate the small pricks of radiating from his ribs. Whatever this weird little thing was, it was giving him stitches.
“This one's pretty deep,” the thing said. “But I already got a few other wounds on your back and one on your shoulder. This should all hold long enough to get us out of here.”
“Out of here?’’ Jack repeated. “And where is here?” He opened his eyes again to look around but the little thing laid a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down. It was startlingly strong.
“I’m nearly done, I’m nearly done!” it said. “Calm down, no one can see us here.”
“I’m confused,” Jack said, grimacing. “I was in the classroom and… that man… Mr. Haynes…”
“Professor Haynes,” the little voice interrupted him. “Or we could call him Professor Hiney, which is funny right? Is that funny to you? Professor Hiney? Forgive me, I just learned English.”
“Uh… yeah. It’s funny.”
“Good. The language you speak here is strange but simple. Took me an entire minute-and-a-half to learn it.” The little thing continued with its stitching. “Some languages are harder than others. Some are easier but stranger, like English — it has German, French, and Latin influences. It’s not really one language, it’s four languages pretending to be one language.”
“I’m confused,” Jack repeated, venturing a look down at his ribs. There was a nasty gash and the creature was sewing him up alright, but not the way he had expected. There was no needle and thread, instead, its mechanical arm moved like some sort of sewing machine and it was hastily pulling his skin together like it was discount fabric. He started to raise up on his elbows.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“What the—!”
“Relax,” the creature said, placing its fleshy hand on his shoulder again. “It’s the most efficient way,”
“Why doesn’t it hurt?” Jack tried to lie still. He didn’t know what else to do.
“Aaaaaaaand finished.” The little person nodded and stepped away to admire its handiwork.
“And that folks is how it’s done.”
“Uh, where’re my clothes?” Jack asked. The creature looked up at him and Jack became suddenly very aware that it had only one large eye, which made it huge proportionally to the rest of the thing’s face. The pupil was dark and oily and Jack was close enough to see that even though it looked like an organic eyeball, the iris seemed like it was made out of metal plates that slid together and apart like a mechanical aperture inside of it.
“Garbage,” the creature said. “They were very bloody.”
Jack looked down. “Even my pants?”
“Especially the pants.”
“Ah. Well. Thanks for taking care of that I guess.” Jack slowly looked up and after his vision focused painfully he noticed they were in an alleyway, tucked away behind a couple of trash cans. “Are we downtown?” He pressed his palms against his eyes for a moment and looked again.
“We are indeed in the town,” the tiny creature said. As it spoke its mechanical arm began clicking and shifting. “As for being down, ideal circumstances would require you to be bedridden for about three days, but we don’t have that kind of time.” The arm clicked open to reveal what looked like a large syringe with a nozzle.
Jack shrunk back. “Um, what’s that?”
“Disinfectant,” the creature said. “This place is very unsanitary.” It pointed the nozzle at Jack. “Or at least it’ll work as a disinfectant if what I gathered about your biology is correct.”
“What do you mean my biology?”
The sting of the spray made him gasp. It completely enveloped him and there was nothing he could do but writhe on the ground as it felt like needles were being jabbed into multiple places on his torso and legs. He had a lot more cuts and bruises than he had thought.
“Ow!” he yelled. “Owch, OW!”
“Definitely a disinfectant,” the creature said. “Good. Now eat this.”
Jack – soaked, slimy, stinging, and completely naked – looked up to see the little person holding out half of a banana nut muffin.
“You’ll need your strength,” it said.
Jack pointed at the muffin. “Is that from the trash?”
The thing slowly pushed the muffin into Jack’s mouth. He was too caught off guard to resist.
“Calories are calories,” it said, pushing the whole thing inside his mouth and then turning around to face the entrance to the alleyway. “Now it’s just an issue of escaping the professor and getting to the gateway before it closes.”
Jack choked on the muffin, “I’m sorry?”
“I suppose you’ll need some new human clothes,” the little thing said, beginning to pace.
Jack tested putting his weight on one of his arms. “Could you uh… just explain what’s going on?”
“And I’ll have to make some sort of distraction.”
Jack tried the other arm. “Could you just—”
“One big enough to throw him off our trail.”
Jack tried interrupting again. “I would love to know what’s going on.”
“And if we time it right he’ll be trapped in this world.”
Jack sat up fully. “Listen, please just tell me—”
“Which, of course, will only slow him down.”
“WHAT ARE YOU?!” Jack surprised even himself with his yelling. The little thing suddenly stopped talking, turned around, and faced him. There it stood, in all its two-and-a-half-foot glory — bits of it machine, bits of it organic, and none of it making any sense. It had the one fleshy arm, the mechanical one, the huge eyeball, two hoofed legs, and Jack just noticed for the first time that it was wearing what looked like a tiny flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up and baby-sized jean shorts.
“Oh come on,” it said. “You’ve done this sort of thing before, haven’t you?”
“This sort of thing?”
The creature seemed to take a half-exasperated breath. “You're a Wayfarer and so am I. My name is Orvalys. I’m a homunculus, and I’m taking you to another world.