A bit later than I wanted this week, I love me some writing, but sadly, it doesn't pay the bills. The usual warnings apply. This is an unedited draft so expect grammatical errors, hackneyed dialogue, dropped plot lines and general fuckery. Thanks for reading!
It came as a shock when Stirling woke, not because he was alive, but because when he did, there was no pain. One eye wouldn’t open—from the feel of it though, it was just gummed shut with dried blood. About the worst he could say of his current condition was that it felt like he had the mother and father of all chest colds.
“Holy crap, you’re alive?” the front of Rebbecca’s head was mere inches from his nose.
He flinched back from her glowing face and tried to speak, but in the process only managed to wheeze. He held up a finger and coughed out what seemed like an imperial gallon of partly clotted blood.
“Ewww. That’s so nasty.”
Stirling took in a deep gulp of air, even in the stuffy, stinky barrel, it felt wonderful to be able to completely fill his lungs. Judging from the oxygen-deprived tingling at the tips of his fingers, that elation would be short-lived if he didn’t get out of the barrel soon.
“Is there anyone out there with you?” he croaked. “Psychotic bike couriers? Homicidal giants? Sadistic size queens? Anyone like that?”
Rebbecca’s head disappeared briefly, then reappeared. “Nope, the coast looks to be clear.”
In a rare case of good luck, the lid of the barrel was irregularly-shaped moulded plastic with indentations for spigots that made for useful finger holds. Once he got it moving, the top twisted off easily and cold air flooded into the barrel.
He trusted Rebbecca at her word but was still cautious as he slowly lifted off the lid and looked around. The room was quiet but for the hum of the lighting fixtures and the dripping of preservative from nearly empty barrels. Rebbecca was the only spirit he could see. He rose to his feet and stepped out of the barrel.
“You look like you’ve been through the fucking wood chipper,” she commented.
Stirling looked down at himself. His entire front was blood-soaked and there was a ragged tear in his jacket where he’d been stabbed. He ran his hands over his torso looking for holes but only found sticky blood and unbroken skin. As a matter of fact, the headache and bruises from the car accident were all missing as well. He felt oddly energized, as though he’d spent a full week’s rest on a beach drinking oat grass smoothies and doing yoga, or whatever it was that really healthy people did.
He took out the medicine bottle and looked at it again. It was still half-full. He’d barely touched it to his tongue and now all of his injuries were healed. He’d need to keep this stuff on hand for future emergencies. Lloyd claimed that it was somehow adulterated, but beyond it tasting like shit sauteed in cat vomit, it seemed to work as well as he could hope.
A door opened somewhere in the warehouse behind him and the sound of voices and footsteps echoed through the open space, growing closer by the moment. Stirling looked around in panic and Rebbecca gestured frantically at his vacated barrel. It clearly hadn’t occurred to her yet that, beyond Stirling himself, nobody could hear her.
He got a single leg back into the barrel, nearly catching a testicle on the rim of the barrel in his hurry before he remembered the medicine bottle. If whoever was coming started looking for it… He considered his options for a long beat before reluctantly placing the bottle back on the steel rack where he’d found it.
He ducked down into this barrel and wished he hadn’t. As bad as it might be to be standing in the dregs of someone else’s preservative fluid, their barrel wouldn’t have globs of coagulated blood clinging to the sides and bottom.
He grimaced and tried as best he could to get comfortable in the confined space. As he settled in, his stomach twisted uncomfortably. It didn’t feel like hunger.
Rebbecca’s head appeared above him looking down into the barrel. “I can’t see anyone yet,” she whispered to him. He nodded resignedly. She’d get used to the living not being able to hear her soon enough.
Something twinged in his belly more violently. It felt uncomfortably like something was wriggling around inside of his abdomen. What the hell?
“It’s that couple who grabbed me!” she hissed into the barrel. “What’s their names? Mister Bones and that bitch-face… Rag.” Her head disappeared from view again.
The movement inside of him became more insistent, it wasn’t painful, it was like something was trying to shove him aside from the inside for more space. As much as he wanted to convince himself it was just gas, he knew on a deeper level it wasn’t. Something was badly wrong.
A cold sweat sprung out on his brow and he let more of his weight fall against the bottom of the barrel. He suddenly felt terribly weak and it was all he could do to keep his head up.
As the voices drew closer, he was able to pick out words in the echoes. “…the gate. Every last one of them.”
This was followed by a basso profundo grunt that could only have come from Bone’s chest. The footsteps began to grow fainter as Rag and Bone passed their row of barrels.
“Hey, what’s wrong with you? You look bad. I mean you looked bad before but now you look worse.” He raised his head to see Rebbecca staring down at him.
He shrugged and felt an uncontrollable shiver run through his body. His teeth chattered uncontrollably and the inside of the barrel vibrated like a drum.
“You know, you really suck at this rescue thing. You show up after the princess has been eaten by the dragon and spend most of your time hiding in a barrel.”
A few moments later, Rag’s voice rang out through the warehouse. “The time has come, my little ducklings! Follow me to the loading dock and file into the back of the moving truck. There are a lot of you, so feel free to pack in as tight as you can. We’re all friends here, no need to be shy.”
There came the shuffling sound of many feet on the concrete floor.
“The new one too,” came Rag’s voice from close-by. "Himself wants them all."
“Not awake yet,” came Bone's voice.
“Dose her and put her in the back with the rest. She’ll be up by the time we get to Memorial Park.”
There came the sound of gushing liquid as the barrel next to him was tipped over.
“Stirling!” Rebbecca wasn’t whispering now. Her face was panicked as she looked at something happening beyond the edge of his barrel. “Help me! They’re putting something in my mouth!”
Stirling tried to sit up, but all he managed to do was to flop around weakly in the slippery bottom of the barrel.
The sound must have been enough to alert Rag because a moment later her head replaced Rebbecca’s at the opening.
“Well goodness me, Mister Bone, what a nice surprise! Come see who it is! I could hardly recognize him under all the lovely blood.”
Bone’s face appeared next to Rag’s and regarded him. From Stirling’s angle, gravity made the flesh on Bone’s face look more jowly and threatening than usual.
“It’s him that keeps getting away from us.”
“Indeed it is! Though from the looks of it, his running days are done.”
Bone nodded in agreement. “Someone’s done for him. Maybe that one we chased off. Thought she smelled like blood.”
Rag nodded and turned her attention back to Stirling. “It’s a shame, really, Himself was so looking forward to meeting you.”
She put her head closer to the opening and lowered her voice as though sharing a confidence with him, “I too was very much looking forward to a conversation about some unkind things you may have said to me.”
Stirling clenched his teeth to stop them from chattering and did his best to glare at her. If they wanted to believe that he was still dying, he wasn’t about to disabuse them of the idea. Actually, he wasn’t sure that wasn’t still the case. He felt wrung out and wretched. Still, he let his breath wheeze in his throat.
“That’s a brave face, Pet. It’s all water under the bridge now though, isn’t it? It’s not like I can kill you twice, more’s the pity. You may have heard, but Mister Bone and I quite enjoy watching people die. You might even say it’s a hobby of ours, but we’re a bit pressed for time today.”
“Are we?”
“Sadly, yes, Love,” Rag said putting an affectionate hand on Bone’s cheek. “No time for the lovely japes today. We’ll have ever so many corpses to make in Asphodel though.”
Bone smiled revealing yellowed teeth the size and shape of tiles from a kindergarten mosaic.
“We’ll leave you to it, then,” said Rag with an encouraging smile. “It shouldn’t be too long now, I’m surprised you’re still with us at all.”
Something ratcheted tighter inside of him and he groaned.
“A cough, a gush of blood and it’ll be all over,” she said reassuringly.
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