Zephaniah 1:17
"I will bring distress on mankind, so that they shall walk like the blind, because they have sinned against the Lord..."
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I yelped at the sudden sound of a voice booming in my ears, then tripped and tumbled down the hill I had just climbed up. Actually being able to hear the strange booming voice, my yelp, and the branches crunching under me was a welcome relief that was quickly spoiled by the fact that now I couldn’t see anything else beyond a blue box floating in a black void.
Any thought of being teleported somewhere was quickly dismissed by the lack of truck-kun as well as by my continual sense of touch, which was working perfectly fine as I had managed to catch myself on a tree with my back and shoulder. Nothing felt broken at least. I stayed still to listen to the message as a thousand-thousand thoughts blurred through my head. Not being able to see, too sore to immediately move. I’ll admit it. I thought of Casey and I prayed and tried to ignore the loud voice that seemed to come from every direction at once.
My prayer stopped shortly after being called out. The press of something paying attention to me cut off all thought. Once the gravity of whatever that was moved on, I tried to look around. I waved my hands in front of my eyes, then opened and closed them. No matter what I did, all I could see was the scrolling message in front of me, floating in a black void where my vision was supposed to be. I felt the ground again, just to make sure it was still there, and found that my surroundings hadn’t changed in the last 20 seconds. So I wasn’t in some void zone. That was now double-confirmed. And confirmed a third time as the sharp piece of wood sticking into my back came into focus. I just wanted to be extra sure. A man could hope.
It was just like when I had lost my hearing just before, an absolute void of sound. Now, that void had moved onto my sight. I wasn’t really in a state to comprehend the message or the too-loud voice that was delivering it.
Ok, I can do this, just breathe. I could still do that.
I finally started to settle myself as I reviewed the message, getting the gist. First thing, If I could believe the message that talked about piles of clothes, then that meant Casey got abducted. There was too much strange about the odd arrangement of her clothing or the lack of tracks. Spending some dedicated, uninterrupted thinking time, I did now remember the flash of light from behind me, roughly where Casey had been. My Duck.
At least she was safe. She was abducted and is safe. That made me pause. Wait, those were two entirely separate concepts. If anything, being abducted meant that she was less safe. That being said, despite wanting to do something about it, I really didn’t see how that would be possible. I was on the side of a hill, covered in bruises, and blind.
On the other side of the equation was a force that could remove any, or maybe even all of my senses whenever it felt like it, straight yeet people out of their clothes, and throughout the entire world could tell when one little person was praying on the side of a hill somewhere in California.
The more I thought about it, the more that the sense of dread passed through me. If you can’t do what you want, then do what you can. Thanks for that one, Pop. Getting Casey back was quickly feeling like more of a long-term goal. I didn’t even want to consider the other side of that argument. If she was in Heaven, would she even want to come back? Even with the message, I don’t know if I was ready to believe that. I certainly wasn’t ready to even begin unpacking that.
I felt my eyes opening and closing and still nothing changed. I was really expecting something different that time. It was incredibly disorienting. I’d read stories online about these things, it reminded me of a system, almost exactly like it, even up to the blue box.
“Status.”
Nothing.
“Quests.”
Nothing.
“Penitent System. Penitent System Online. Penitent System Status.”
Nothing, I tried a few permutations of that as well but nothing came back. Just that message and a timer for it.
Would I be able to access something at the end of it? Maybe I could just wait here until it did, perhaps there were increases in strength, a bonus for being trapped out in the wilderness even. But, could I stay here for an entire day? I debated if trying to make my way back to the truck was worth it. It’d definitely be more comfortable, that was, if I didn’t kill myself on a branch on the way down.
I tried to move my shoulder but a searing pain started to kick in as I felt my skin tug. Looks like I’ve already hurt myself. That settled it. If everything has gone to shit then I’m pretty damn far away from any help. I couldn’t spend a day with some random branch stabbing my shoulder, probably getting infected while I stayed here.
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A swirl of panic surged up at the thought of finding my way back in the dark. No, worse. Finding my way back in the dark, while blind. It had already been dark when I came up here. How the hell was I supposed to do this? I centered myself on the timer counting down next to the message. I started to think and try to decipher anything I could from the message, but stopped at:
“A day of darkness then it's going to rain harder than you can possibly imagine for a day and it’ll seem like it’s going to flood but it won’t.”
So this is only going to last a day then. At least the blindness and then I’ll be able to see. I watched the timer continue to tick downward. Too slowly. I had to get back to my car. “Going to rain harder than you can possibly imagine?” Visibility will be crap during that too. It might even be worse, how weak would I be after sitting here for a day having had nothing to eat or drink? How bad would my shoulder be then? I reached a hand to feel it and jerked my hand away as I hit the branch that was inside me. I gritted my teeth and reached back again, this time more gently, and followed the branch to my shoulder. Oof, it was in there alright. It didn’t seem like it was at any weird angle, but it did feel like a boulder was lodged in there. Realistically, I could figure out that it was a small branch that had broken off and, what remained, was a shard of wood jutting out from the main trunk. That I was attached to. Either way, this was going to suck.
I started to pull off of it, then stopped. I needed a plan, but more than that, I needed an order of operations. Blind and now that pain was starting to settle in and get nonconsensually comfortable I really couldn’t afford to wait here for 24 hours. I did the math with the message timer to further settle myself. 23 hours, 46-ish minutes. Ok, I had a plan. Get myself off the branch, make my way down the hill, get to and into my truck, treat the wound. Okay. Time to move.
I took a deep breath and clenched my teeth as I pulled myself forward. I gasped as sisyphus’ took back up his burden and his giant boulder was dislodged from my shoulder. The wounded muscles spasmed as I fought the pain before forcing myself to relax. I stopped fighting the pain and dove into it, letting it wash over me. It almost felt like I would be consumed by it for a second, but I knew I wouldn’t be. My mind reformed from the void of pain as it settled into a stinging throb. I squeezed around the edge of the wound and tried to push out more blood, it didn’t feel like it was bleeding a lot. I didn’t know if that was good or bad, but I remembered hearing somewhere that making a wound bleed more was supposed to be helpful with infection. I wasn’t sure if that was exactly true but it kind of made sense. I squeezed the edges of it until it started to seem like a bad idea. I carefully moved to stand up when the thought hit me.
Wait, which way was the truck?
The knot of fear started to worm its way up, that’s a lie. When that thought hit, it nearly knocked me off balance and further down the mountain. I barely held it back, balancing anxiety and pain against each other. It was holding. For now. What wasn’t holding was my balance, I reached out desperately trying to catch myself before I took another tumble.
Everything being dark would have been okay if I didn’t have this blue message in my damn face the entire time. It made it hard to focus on what I needed to, like being properly blind.
“Dismiss. Dismiss message. Clear screen.”
I sighed then started to plumb and raid my memory like never before, strip-mining it for all its worth, forcing rusted gears to clank and move. I wasn’t sure if it was my effort or the desperation but my efforts were rewarded. A few things stood out. First, it wasn’t far from my car to the base of the hill. I also remembered from earlier in the day that there was an abandoned road before a steep drop into the valley itself, where we had fired our guns. On the other… I didn’t know what was on the other side. It might have been just a drop. Shit, I should have been paying more attention. I should have used my flashlight when I was still able to see. My first instinct was to blame this on ‘reverse miracle bullshit’ and that’s why I wasn’t ready to be blinded. I took a deep breath. I’d assume that the message was all 100% true, at least for now. Car now, blame later.
Shit, I was putting it off. I promised that I would pay more attention, no, I would have more situational awareness if I made it out of this. What did Casey say? ‘God helps those who help themselves’? Well I definitely was going to help myself and if he wanted to help then he could be my guest. But if the message was actually true then it didn’t seem like he really cared much anymore.
Wait, not ‘he’, ‘He’, if I was assuming this was real then I better start capitalizing and putting some respek on h… His name. Dammit. I was procrastinating again.
Okay, the last way was the one I wanted, toward my car. That was down the hill, between the unknown option and the old road and certain death. It had maybe 10-20 feet of fairly thick shrub and trees and then my car in the clearing.
If I hit the road then I would be able to go right and follow it back to my campsite. Easy. If I hit shrubbery then it was a 50/50 shot between toward my campsite and complete unknown. It would take longer but the road would actually be the safest bet.
I grinned, feet don’t fail me now. I almost took a step forward then crouched and decided that a dirty ass was better than stumbling off into more sharp branches. Damn, my shoulder was hurting. In a moment of not-quite-divine inspiration, I remembered my handgun. I tapped around for it then expanded my circle. Shit. Survival tip #1: Don’t lose your gun.
I took Duck’s gun from my pocket and looped my belt through the holster, securing it to my hip. At least I still had a gun. I thanked Casey, wherever she was, that she was still wearing it when she… was taken? Ascended? Swept away? Raptured? I reached for it to try and build whatever muscle memory I could in a few moments.
Shit! Okay Tom, enough. Stop delaying.
I planted my ass and slid down feeling forward with my feet. A leaf brushing across my eyeball was enough to remind me to keep them closed, especially if I wasn’t getting anything from them. Then my blood froze mid-beat as I heard it.
*AROOOOOOOOOOOO*
*AR AR AROOOOOOOOOO*