by Erik Hyrkas
Chapter 24. Max
John carried me to Tyler’s former quarters on the ship, but I hardly noticed the path or the destination. I was caught in the throes of pain I hadn’t felt before. Imagine your worst caffeine withdrawal headache pounding through your head and neck and then add in the sensation of drain clog remover eating through your digestive track while army ants nibble on your every nerve ending. I hoped for unconsciousness, but it didn’t come. Although I did experience various levels of awareness, aware of what was going on around me from the meta to quantum level, I never lost a sense of the pain that gripped every cell in my body.
I burned in exquisite ways. I spewed vomit; I thrashed; I screamed. None of it helped. My vision was red with the pain, and my tears seared my aching skin. Every hair follicle on my skin was the source of megatons of pain with the slightest contact of any fabric or any motion in the air. My throat and mouth burned from acid that was too vile to be from my stomach, and even my teeth roots betrayed me. My muscles contracted of their own volition and squeezed to the point of tearing tissue and separating joints, and even then the muscles did not release.
The pain might have been only equal to the worst torture. I was drowning in my own vomit, sporadically paralyzed, nauseous, dizzy, freezing cold in my limbs and burning hot in my head and chest. It was a messy affair of body fluids from every orifice and foul odors that might have been torture enough in their own ways. Each carried noxious toxicity, and in combination, they forced John to retreat.
I could only hope that my body would give out soon, I realized even as I noticed smaller changes like blood coming from my eyes and ears and my skin changing to a sickly black and blue. I assumed my organs must be dissolving to pudding, but somehow my nerve cells never quit, the pain signals to my brain unceasing. When I had nothing left to vomit, I was overtaken by dry heaves. I couldn’t tell which direction was up or down my vertigo was so bad, and the room spun out of control. I begged for death, but I was alone and there was no one to hear my begging.
When any other being’s body would have given out, my body regenerated, a painful process by itself but one that now lifted my suffering to the nth. I was aware when Miranda and John had extracted me from the room and stripped me of my clothes, carrying me to one of the holding cells, and I was aware when they sponged me off and put blankets on me. I became exhausted with sleep deprivation as hours turned to a day and then two. On the fourth day, I finally left consciousness, exchanging it for hallucinations and nightmares. Wendigo chased me, caught me, and ate me a bite at a time. Giant snakes swallowed and digested me slowly as I suffocated and burned in digestive fluids. Porcupine people stabbed me continuously and laughed at my pain. Eventually, I lay in a bed of hot coals and simply suffered.
When I woke, I was covered in sweat, blood, and urine. I shivered and convulsed. “I need a shower,” I croaked through dry and cracked lips.
“Don’t try to stand,” Miranda warned me.
I ignored her and rolled off the cot onto the hard floor. The cool floor motivated me to my feet. I stumbled past her back toward Tyler’s cabin, where I was sure I would find a shower and possibly some clothes.
She hovered near me but didn’t touch me or stop me. “Be careful, Max. You’ve been unconscious for a day.”
My steps were wobbly and weak, but I made it across the small ship to Tyler’s quarters catching a glimpse of Miranda’s hopeless expression as I shut the door behind me. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days.
I found the shower, as I expected, and stood in hot water. I lost all track of time. When I eventually came back to myself, I turned off the shower, dried off, and dressed in some of Tyler’s looser clothing. I had been nearly twice his weight, but that was before going most of a week without food, having my arm bit off, and being poisoned. Now, his clothes fit a little snug but were passable. I noticed his bed had been stripped and sanitized, but there were traces of blood and fluid on the floor. I turned my back on the room and stepped back out into the main corridor. Miranda was waiting for me in the cockpit.
“Better?” I asked.
She looked me over. “Where’s the flood?”
I looked down at the high-water pants. “I can take them off, if you’d like.”
Her eyes had circles under them and her hair was disheveled, but she gave me a smile. “Please strap yourself in. We’re going home.”
She pressed buttons on the flight console, and in a few moments, a pulse of blue energy shot out from the ship and tore a hole in space-time. We fell into the wormhole and back toward Earth.
