heaven's journals

...I'll try to know me. You'll try to understand me...

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

A deluded man

Dan's adversary had knocked the side of the head on a chair in the fall, and now was lying helpless in the middle of the living room.
Dan lifted himself with difficulty, feeling pain in his right leg and picked up the fallen gun, with an uneasy feel.
Then he lifted the unconscious Vincent, and sat him on a polymer chair, and quickly proceeded to tying him with duct tape, kitchen strings and strips of a sheet he saw in the kitchen. There, he noticed the shelf with the test tubes, which probably was hidden in a cabinet. The parsley smell didn't come from them: when Dan picked a tube and brought it near his nose, it had a more bitter scent. What was the purpose of these liquids, poison ? Whatever it was, surely it wasn't nice.

And, strangely, nobody got out of the rooms to see what happened. They made enough noise to wake up everybody in the house, and probably in the next one. Vincent surely had lied about the other inhabitants. Or if there were others, they would be his accomplices, and Dan had to be very careful. But he couldn't hear anything, the house was silent as always and nobody came to help the lunatic, so it should be the former. After that, Dan rested for a while too: he was beat and had the impression of running out of breath, so he leaned against a sofa.

That night was simply going completely astray of anything he had anticipated. A few hours ago, he was in a train carriage, half a sleep, bearing with an old lady. Now he was in a living room, with an unconscious madman, in the outskirts of a forsaken town, holding a gun in his left hand. He himself was having a hard time believing the unfolding events. He went to the kitchen, opened the sink's tap, and drank a bit of the running water. He then spat the remaining in his mouth in the sink, and went to the refrigerator, where he picked a soda. He opened it, swallowed a big gulp, and returned to the living room, where he threw the remaining liquid to the prisoner's face. He shook a little bit, and then woke up.

His face was even paler under the living room's lights, (the only lights on besides those of the kitchen), with stoned eyes, almost colourless, and his head was leaning towards the right side and a grin surfaced in his mouth, in an hallucinated fashion.
He seemed a maniac, beginning to laugh insanely, despite being tied-up. Dan had to question him, though:
- What were you doing ? What is that pink liquid? Is it some kind of drug? And what about the people in the town? In the trip here, I found a huge crater blocking the railway. The ground was literally missing; do you know why?
- Siblings apart, the treatment they should start, my medicine isn't tart, and I must do the chart...
- Where is she, my sister?
Vincent talked now in a really deranged voice:
- Soon... You'll just have to wait. We're still in the Summer. Ahahah
- WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HER?- Dan was more nervous than ever. The mere thought was unbearable - do you know what that growl that echoed earlier was? It was you doing it, wasn't it? Or... there's something outside, isn't it? SPEAK!
- The night is now young. Yes, now is the time. The sun is down and they will rise. They will come looking for food. Yes, now is their feeding time. They like nothing more than fresh meat.
Then he started laughing hysterically.
- Nothing is normal. What is happening here, you demented... ?
The subject stopped laughing, and to Dan's surprise, he broke into convulsive tears. As if he was coming out of a shock. As he was weeping, he babbled:
- I... died... ten years... agooo! - and started crying harder. He definitely had some intense grief inside him.
- What ? - replied Dan. The guy still hadn't made any sense at all.
Then he began speaking with another, more harsh tone, as if arguing to himself:
- Why were so happy then, if you knew what was about to happen, huh Vincent ?

He was clearly a basket case, and the worst part was that he probably wouldn't relay any more important information. Dan resolved to go explore the rest of the house, taking the gun and a camping flashlight he found in the cabinet. For some reason, he was afraid to turn the lights on.
- You better pray that I find her, or else it's game over for you - he said to the prisoner, on his way out of the living room.
Dan searched in the pantry next to the kitchen and, inside a package, he found shells for the pistol he had picked and a description pamphlet of it: "Beretta T44L 9mm, aka 'Hummingbird', a steady and reliable hand gun; an enhancement over the Beretta G92 Custom".
Dan had never picked a gun before, but now he had a certain feeling of security. He felt that now he could handle the dangers that could arise.

The rooms upstairs were silent, and the three rooms at his right had plastic doors that fitted completely in the corresponding crack; he couldn't peek to the other side. He couldn't also hear anything suspicious. He forced his entrance through the second door, since it appeared that the smell of the parsley seemed to come from there; he was so jilted when he passed next to it a few minutes ago that he never realized. But when Vincent took him to Autumn's room, he hadn't sensed the scent. He entered and focused the flashlight around the room.