Locus

Gerald wasn’t doing so well in the hospital.

The doctor said it was only a matter of time.  Gerald was suffering from extremely advanced radiation poisoning.  His skin looked burned, he twitched constantly in the hospital bed mumbling incomprehensibly and constantly.

“Truth be told I’ve never seen a case like this,” The doctor seemed flustered and unsure “At this point its only a matter of time, most cases this severe the patient dies within 48 hours, but your friend here seems special.”

“what?”

“I fully expect he could eat an nuclear reactor and probably survive the experience, but from what I hear from you, we are dealing with levels of radiation that really only have a theoretical existence.”

Rodger had decided to stay with him.  And two weeks had passed.  It was almost pitiable but Gerald had no relatives that the C.I.A. could find alive or dead.

And then suddenly the mumbling in the bed next to him stopped for the first time in two weeks.

A stone cold bony hand grabbed his shoulder and eyes that hadn’t focused in a very long time were staring directly at him, they looked dead.

“I CAN SEE HIM! I CAN SEE THE SPECTRE!” The rasp of Gerald’s voice was like the winds of hell itself entering the world.

Gerald raised a single finger and pointed at the end of the bed, a look of pure terror on his face that only seemed to intensify those dead eyes.  And again a rasp like the passage into another world.

“YOU!”

By the time Rodger looked back from the empty spot where Gerald had been pointing, he could already hear the steady flat-line whine of a heart rate monitor.

Rodger frowned at the sky before getting into his car, it seemed inappropriate for an occasion like this for it to be this mucky mess that could at best be described as “partly cloudy.”

He slammed his car door in a foul temper and drove away from the cemetery.

It all seemed wrong somehow; this was just not how things were supposed to go, Funerals especially.  The cemetery was empty except for him and the funeral home staff, who had forgotten about this occasion entirely.

He frowned and asked to nobody;

“For whom is it well?”  No answer came.

“For whom is it well?”  No answer, and under his breath he answered his own question.

“There is no one, For whom it is well.”

Later he arrived at Gerald’s house for one last search hoping to find a relative somewhere.

He was fruitlessly searching through Gerald’s computer which like the house was as personal as a hospital room.  Nothing, no installed games, no installed anything but the bare bones essentials for doing his job.

Frustrated he was about to turn the computer off when a folder caught his eye.

It was labeled “inventions.”