V-00001.1 – Life.
Water ran off my skin and slicked my hair to my nape. “Gods, I feel fucking filthy.” I grabbed my shirt and pulled it up over my head, stripping the sweat and vomit-covered sweater away before walking into the lake. Wading deeper until my upper body was completely submerged.
Running my hands over my chest, I marveled at my body, allowing myself a touch of vanity.
My knuckles were scarred and so was my chest an old stab scar fading into the tapestry of white claw marks that covered my chest as if an X had once marked the spot.
Scars covered my body, stabs and slices marred my arms; my back was covered in a large patch of burned skin where fire had licked my torso. After being lit on fire, I felt as if hell swallowed me and spat me back out as unworthy.
"Eh, I have to be honest, so far the apocalypse isn’t too awful; life treated me worse before the earth was nuked.”
“Oh the fuck it did; you picked up those scars over 18 years, in a few... Just a few days, several of which you’ve spent passed out, and you have been shot twice. Dug into like you were hiding doubloons in your chest cavity, and just for variety, you managed to let a coyote of all things eat a little piece of us.”
Sighing and walking out of the water, letting the soothing embrace of the lake go, I spoke aloud again. “Would it kill you to let me have just a smidgen of denial in my life?”
"Yeah, it would, Viktor; I live to fuck with you.”
“Fuck you very much.” Stepping away from the water, I felt a familiar sense of tension in my stomach. As nausea spread through me again, I swallowed several times, trying to force it back, uncertain what the sensation was coming from.
Involuntarily, I stooped over at the waist and retched hard as my stomach pumped itself, and I ejected a stream of red liquid that tasted like rotten iron filings.
My head throbbed, pulsing with a post-vomit headache as I spat the last remnants of vile acidic ichor from my mouth.
Jesus Christ, what the fuck... I thought Parasite took care of that shit.
I forced myself to stand straight and take a deep breath, trying to reconcile the weird state my body was in. I felt unnaturally energized from all the stamina and caloric energy Parasite had injected me with, and yet I felt follow and weak from the vomiting.
Walking back through the natural pathway between the trees back to where I had killed the coyote and dropped my back, I felt conflicted, not just by the state of my body in its weird swing between energized and weak, but I was of two minds.
The idea of going back to the city filled me with a sense of disgust and anger. There was a deep-rooted resentment within me that I wasn’t equipped to diagnose and tackle right now, but I was also drawn to it; that was where the reapers were, where Alice’s killers were, and I would be damned if they got off scot-free just because I didn’t want to go back there, and then there were all the tools and resources within... preserved food, water, fool clothing, and a hundred other things.
The woodlands, however, made me feel good. It was quiet and peaceful here. There was this electric sense of life and energy that invaded everything and made me feel as if there was something deeper, something more here, and that if I stayed, I could have my peace and I could learn so much. It felt similar to the draw I felt towards the Ranger Archetype, and truthfully, I had always loved the woods. Watching nature documentaries and survival videos on YouTube and learning to make my own stuff, like twine and rudimentary tools, had been a passion of mine.
Yet I could not justify just staying here and living in the woods; my pride and my emotions wouldn’t allow me to just forget my anger, my vengeful thoughts, and the subtle hatred I could feel in me towards the reapers had begun to spider web out branching to the rest of humanity. Suddenly these days it was like I just couldn’t ignore it anymore; I couldn’t find the will to not care about all the horrible shit I hated about the species I was a member of.
Digging out a small pit with my hands, I was briefly cursing my choice to not try and get the bone claw mutation instead when I realized how easily I was digging this. I had been absently working without feeling even a little bit tired or out of breath, long enough that I had hollowed out a foot-deep hole in the earth with my fingers.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Retreating back to my thoughts, I absentmindedly gathered sticks and dry leaves from around the trees and used my lighter to ignite them into a small and warm fire pit.
Maybe I don’t have to pick one or the other... It doesn’t have to be all or nothing, does it? I could try to live out here; maybe even build a small life for myself here while doing what I need to in the city. That could be quite lovely, and it would be nice to have somewhere this beautiful to call home, this clean and pure, especially considering what I’ll be doing within the city.
I laid myself back against the trunk of a tree, intent on letting myself get some real sleep. My eyes lazily hung half-lidded as I stared into the fire that protected me from the icy Alaskan air. I suppressed the shivers and chills with ease and let them bring me back to a simpler time, when I was just a kid sleeping on the dirty forest floor in Washington.
“Trust me, everything will be alright, Archie.” I said in a small childish voice, in a tone that carried smiles my voice hadn’t for years.
“Are you sure?” replied a young boy with tanned skin and long, curly blonde hair.
Looking down at the boy from a branch high up in a beautiful wise oak tree that stood firm against the frost on the edge of a frozen lake, I replied. “It’s just a tree, Archie, its not going to hurt you... Well, unless you fall, but I’m here. I promise I won't let anything bad happen; if you fall, I'll make sure you're okay and get help.”
I spoke with youthful confidence, certain I could handle any problem the world threw at my seven-year-old self. My confidence and the elation in my voice at sharing this view with my friend must have been infectious, as soon after Archie began to climb the tree, scaling its bark exterior and pulling himself up the branches.
Reaching down, I grabbed his hand and pulled him up to the high branch I was sitting on. The wood swayed slightly under his weight but quickly steadied, and I took a certain delight at the awe in his eyes as he looked at the world from the shoulders of an earthen giant.
The forest was beautiful, with a crisp layer of frost covering the vegetation, mixtures of white and blue as moss froze over and dark waters turned to a shade of ice blue. "Woah!” came a small voice from Archie as he climbed up to the branch just above mine and scooted towards the edge to hang over and look down on the lake. “I never knew how beautiful the forest could be,” Archie said, and I watched a smile creep up his face to match my own when suddenly a crack hit our ears, and I watched his eyes go up in shock so fast the smile hadn’t yet faded from his mouth when he started falling.
The branch hit the ice, cracking its frosty surface before skittering away, and a second later, Archie’s yelp that had been cutting through the air went silent as he crashed into and through the ice being submerged in the water.
A thought rang out in my head as adrenaline surged into me, and I started climbing and jumping down the branches as fast as I could. I made a Promise… I made a promise… It’s a promise… I promise you.
With every iteration of the thought, my voice was different—older, wiser, more detached, and jaded—until it sounded like my own did as an adult. I ran towards the ice and dove into the hole, scraping my ribs against the jagged glass-like ice. Cold attacked every millimeter of me; it dug into my skin, my eyes, and penetrated my bones, trying to seize me.
But the adrenaline surged like fire in my blood, urging me forward. I kicked and dug through the water like a mole to earth, and seeing a shape in the black, I reached out and grabbed hard, digging my fingers into Archie’s floaty blonde locks. I pulled on him hard, wrapping my numb fingers around his wrist. I began swimming.
Light streamed into the water through the narrow hole in the ice, and I pushed Archie upwards through it before the winter sun scorched my eyes as I broke out from the water moments later.
Lifting myself up out of the hole in the ice and dragging Archie the rest of the way up, I examined him. His hair was soaked and sticking to his pale skin, and as his chest was heaving erratically, Archie was trying and failing to draw breath into his lungs through his blue lips.
Frantically, I reached out, patting him down and digging my hands through his pockets as my conscious mind provided the word for what was happening to him. He’s having an asthma attack.
My head turned back to the hole in the ice as my hands came up empty. The inhaler he carried everywhere was horrifyingly absent. My mind warred with the decision to run and try to get help and hopefully make it back before he ran out of time, or to dive back into the frozen depths and maybe find his inhaler.
I watched him for a moment longer, desperately trying to draw air into his lungs and failing before I pushed him hard, sliding him off the ice towards the tree, and I sprinted back to the hole, jumping in.
Inky cold blackness enveloped me, the invasive chill attempting to distract me from my task. I swam and felt around the water for god knows how long until my head pulsed and pounded in my ears and my chest felt like it was about to explode. Panic was beginning to force me back to the surface as all the mental walls and coping mechanisms my father had beaten into me for resisting stress and fear fell away.
Just before I broke out of the watery prison for the second time, I felt something plastic and metallic bobbing against the ice where my hand was grasping the edge of the hole, grabbing on it. As I leapt out of the ice, I saw it was a blue plastic contraption with a cap and a metal cylinder placed within it—a crushed metal cylinder.
I rushed back towards Archie, sliding on the ice and pressing the plastic mouthpiece to his lips, and desperately I tried to make the cylinder of medicine seat properly and dispense his medicine, but the twisted can of metal wouldn’t fit.
His hand grasped mine, and I could see the terror and blame in his eyes as he slowly stopped struggling to breathe and his eyes dilated. The forest went still.
My throat was dry and ached as I awoke from the memory, and I felt like shit inside and outside, especially after my dreams had clearly decided they had to make up for giving me one night of peace by reminding me of the death I bring to everything I care for.
I stared up into the forest canopy with a hunger and a renewed sense of purpose to get shit done before winter comes.
I need to get ready because life isn’t going to wait.