Journey Home

Speech warbles hazily into his consciousness. He can hear the quick steps of feet, or maybe hooves, on tile. There’s some sort of tone going off near his ears. Or maybe it’s far away.

Burnt skin crackles as he stretches a maimed hand towards the source of the noise, and it gets more insistent. The voices become more distinct as pain lances through layers of obfuscation, spearing awake near-dead neurons.

“I’m not going to lose him!”

“Ma’am, do you know this... uh, man?”

“Of course I do! How could I not? Just get his heart going again, now!”

Thudding movements tear into his ears and brain as he recognizes a stillness in his chest that shouldn’t be there. The entire world feels like it’s been filled with sandbags tied to everything, making it heavier. Words lay heavily on his strangely whole lips, but stand just out of reach.

Thinking to himself, he ponders what the first voice, whose sound reminds him of “girl”, could have meant. After an agonizing eternity of a second, he realizes that the trembling pain and heaviness is his lack of a heartbeat.

The beleaguered organ shifts in its charred ivory cage, and pumps, again, and again, as it slowly re-establishes a rhythm it hasn’t faltered on in a very long time. Crispy, dry flakes of muscles and organs shift, and fall to the sheets below. A single rib, standing out from the structure it’s supposed to be a unified part of like an obelisk in a field, snaps under its own weight and the barely noticeable beat of the near-zombified heart below it.

The fragment bone smashes to the ground, and the room goes silent for a moment, save for a steady, if faint, ‘beep... beep... beep...’

“That was too close. I expect you to keep a better eye on him in the future. I will not lose this patient, understand?!”

“Of course, ma’am, we’ll take better care of him.”

“I need some alone time... I think he’ll talk again, soon. I want to be here for that, again.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The sound of a door closing slams across the not-quite-a-corpse’s hearing, and the rattling breath of a punctured lung and innumerable burns resumes.

“Dear god, what the hell happened to you? Please, please tell me...”

The voice fades into echoes and underwater sounds. He can’t tell what she’s saying anymore, and it’s much nicer in his memory, anyways. Now, where was he?...