Wednesday 24 January 2018

Chapter 35, Part 2: Going Over the Top.

Hi all! Thanks for stopping by. The usual warnings apply. This story has adult language and situations. It's a rough draft so expect any / all of the following: Grammatical errors, pacing problems, hackneyed dialogue, gratuitous swearing. If you find yourself actually enjoying the story, please consider sharing it.

Thanks! -S





“Oh fuck.” Stirling aimed his ass into a nearby plastic seat, it was either that or he’d have ended up sprawled on the floor.

“Yeah, you could say that,” Rebbecca agreed, but now in the discordant three-part voice of a thoroughly pissed off ghost. “This is what happens when you fuck with the sanctity of people’s credit cards, Stirling!” indicating to her ethereal form. “Congratulations, I’m dead.”

She came to a complete stop and stared at him. “What the fuck did you do to your hair?”

Stirling put a hand to his bare scalp. “It’s a disguise. Do you like it?”

“Don’t change the subject!”

“Becca…” he began.

“Rebbecca! My name is Rebbecca!” she practically growled at him through her teeth. “When you get somebody killed the least you can do is get their fucking name right!”

“Um,”

“Say it!”

“Rebbecca. Your name is Rebbecca.”

“You will fix this, Stirling, or by god, I will haunt your ass until the day you die, then I’m going to haunt your pathetic ghost.”

“But you’re dead, how am I supposed to fix that?”

“Not dead,” Lloyd put in. Our bodies are still at least partly alive.”

“And what am I supposed to do about it? I’m not Miracle Max.”

“You will try,” Rebbecca hissed.

“Fine. Where do you think I should start?” he asked.

“It’s not hard, we just need to be revived with a dab of Panacea, but that’s not going to be the hard part,” said Lloyd.

Stirling waved his hand in a gesture indicating that he should move it along.

“They started reviving people today but their spirits are still stuck on the outside. I think they spiked the revival dose with something that stole our place. It’s contaminated our bodies with some kind of spiritual taint.”

“Taint?”

Lloyd nodded earnestly.

“So I have to get rid of this taint?”

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do until it’s gone,” Lloyd confirmed. “We’re stuck outside of our bodies.”

“So, to clarify, you want me to destroy this guy’s taint?”

Lloyd was beginning to look confused. “Um. Yes.”

“Would you say then that you would like me to savage his taint until he squeals,” Stirling asked, trying hard to keep a straight face.

Rebbecca sighed and rolled her eyes.

“That would be great,” said Lloyd slowly.

“His taint won’t know what hit it,” said Stirling warming to the subject. “It’ll be like I took a cheese grater to his taint.”

Rebbecca looked at Lloyd, then at the grin that Stirling was unsuccessfully trying to keep from his face.

“Oh grow up.”

“Come on, it’s a little bit funny. He asked me to destroy some guy’s taint.”

“I was just murdered. My body is resting in a barrel of preservative crap in the next room. Not finding a lot of things chuckle-worthy today, Stirling.”

“Sure, you died, but here you are. It’s not all bad, you can still speak with me.”

“Well there’s the stormcloud to my silver lining, but now that we’re on the subject, why is that?”

“Why is what?”

“Why can I speak to you, you fuckwit!?”

“It’s a thing that I’ve been able to do for a while,” he said modestly. Even though he knew she was dead, he was having a hard time feeling as bad as he should. It was hard to grieve for someone who was yelling at him.

“He’s a Necromancer,” Lloyd helpfully put in.

“A what?”

“A death magician.”

Rebbecca turned to him. “Is that true?”

“Technically,” he shrugged. “I like to think of myself as a living-impaired magician. Death is so negative sounding.”

“When were you going to tell me?!”

“What? Was I supposed to have a coming out party to let everyone know that I’m the ghost whisperer?”

“Yes.”

“Of all the knacks, necromancy is the most hated,” said Lloyd. “He would have been hunted and killed by the Alchemists.”

“Yeah see, you aren’t the only one having a bad day,” said Stirling, pointing to his battered face. “See this right here? Alchemists.”

“Oh, boo hoo. You got jumped by a bunch of chemistry nerds and You’ve got a couple bruises that will be gone in a few weeks tops. I’m dead. I feel soooo bad for you.”

“Whatever. Let’s make sure the coast is clear then go and see.”

“Don’t you ‘whatever’ me… See what?”

“Your body of course.” He cast a glance at her. Unless you’re naked. You aren’t naked are you?”

“No!”

“Let’s go and see then. I can see what I’m up against. It’ll be like a thirty-second version of Stand by Me.”

“Not everything needs to be broken down into a pop culture reference, Stirling.”

“Since you’re dead you can be River Phoenix, and I think we both know I’m Wil Wheaton,” he continued blithely.

“You are so twisted.”

“No, twisted would be asking you to wanted to pet the leech.”

There was a long beat before realization hit and her face twisted in disgust. “Ew!… that’s just… ew! What is wrong with you!?”

The spirits began tricking back into the lunch room. None of them could locate the homicidal duo, though with the uproar in the warehouse getting any information was difficult.

Stirling decided that would have to be good enough and began to move toward the door to the lunch room again, now with Rebbecca and Lloyd following behind.

On the other side of the door, the air was chill and rank with the smell of preservative and shit. Rows of barrels stacked two deep on heavy-duty steel shelving racks went from one side of the warehouse to the other. Most of the barrels were empty, their lids tossed onto the floor which was wet with a slurry of different coloured fluids.

Stirling nearly gagged at the smell. It was beyond anything he’d never hoped never to experience.
“I let my apartment get messy from time to time, but holy crap.”

Rebbecca led him to a rack on the far left side of the warehouse where a single plastic barrel remained sealed.

“I’m in there,” she said pointing to a blue barrel resting on a wooden pallet.

On the thick plywood shelf above it, there was an old-fashioned green bottle with a medicine dropper screwed onto the top.
Stirling grabbed the bottle and gave its contents a little shake. Whatever was inside looked black and viscous through the green glass.

“That’s the revival dose,” said Lloyd. “It looks like Panacea, but there’s something wrong with it.”
“Huh.” Stirling unscrewed the stopper and gave the bottle a sniff. What hit him wasn’t a physical smell, so much as it was a feeling of greasy decay and red hunger. The most worrying part was that it resonated through his entire being like his soul was a bass string being stroked by a broken bottle.

“Blah!” He moved his head back.

“What is it?” said Rebbecca.

“Smells like taint,” he replied. He put the bottle in his jacket pocket and zipped it shut.

“So this is you?” he said, gesturing down at the nondescript barrel.

Rebbecca nodded and Stirling wrapped his arms around the lid and twisted his whole body to break the seal. His head throbbed even worse than usual and he saw black spots in front of his eyes before he gave up.

“Fuck. I feel bad for laughing at women who struggle with pickle jars now,” he gasped.

 On his second attempt, the lid finally let go and he nearly fell over as he twisted off balance. Stirling rested his aching head on top of the lid, the fumes in the room were beginning to make him feel lightheaded. He lifted the lid off and could see the crown of Rebecca’s blue-haired head bobbing just above the level of the preservative.

“That stuff is going to be hell on your hair,” he predicted, looking down at the murky preservative.
It was only Rebbecca’s yelled warning that gave him time to crane his neck around to see the knife sink into his back. He didn’t cry out, but it wasn’t for lack of trying, he simply couldn’t. Every time he tried, the pain made him gasp and hitch in a breath.

“That was for Elanor,” said a voice in his ear.

Stirling barely heard the words, his world had narrowed down to the white pain in his chest and the effort to take in his next breath. He staggered around to face his attacker. It was the woman from the scene of the crash, still dressed in her grime-spattered outfit complete with courier bag strapped across her shoulder.

“Elanor? Who?” he managed to wheeze on a pair of outgoing breaths.

“I thought you might have been innocent. When you fought to save those people, I thought they might be wrong about you,” she said, not looking at him as she spoke.

Stirling’s brain finally put the pieces together and he remembered where he’d seen her. She was the cardio goddess who was fighting off the invaders at Strangefellows.

“You. Strangefellows?” he managed to gasp before staggering back to rest against the rack of plastic barrels. “Ow.”

“But then I followed you here, and I find you working for Knox,” she continued, staring down at the knife in her hand.

He shook his head in denial, “Friend,” he managed to get out, throwing out a limp arm to point halfheartedly at the barrel where Rebbecca’s body lay.

The courier finally looked up at him, “And that tells me all I need to know about you. The only friends Knox has are monsters.” She came at him again, but this time the impact was muted, almost like someone winged him in the side with a bean bag. Stirling thought that she must have missed until he looked down and saw the hole in the front of his jacket.

The courier stepped back again and stared at him. He shook his head. “Friend,” he gasped again pointing at the barrel. His legs were beginning to feel even more rubbery than they had, and there was a tickle starting in his throat, coughing was going to suck. He revised that opinion as she brought the bloody knife to his throat.

The sound of a heavy door scraping open echoed through the warehouse, breaking off any meaningful conversation they might have continued to have, like “That’s my throat, I need that part," "Quit putting holes in my jacket,” or “Call me an ambulance, you crazy bitch!”

Before Stirling’s brain could absorb what was happening, he was lifted with strong arms and stuffed into one of the newly-empty barrels. Between the stab wounds and the residual car crash injuries, he was introduced to whole new vistas of heretofore unimagined pain. He came to from his momentary blackout just in time to hear the lid twist onto his barrel, and for the last crack of light to disappear.
Rebbecca’s luminous face came into view through the side of the barrel. She examined him critically. “Fine,” she eventually admitted, “maybe you are having a bad day.”

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