Writing and Stuff
Not much to report lately (Except for the house ghost manifesting strong enough to try to drag someone out of bed through a circle of salt) So here's a chunk of my book. Rock out.
Nika’s entire body convulsed, a quick spasm that brought her halfway out of reliving nightmarish memories. Her eyes flew open as she was yanked from sleep in a panic. For a moment she was eight years old again, locked in The Casket, and the water was covering her. Panic swept wildly through her in a quick flash. Then as she faded back into her twenty year old self, she realized with a renewed surge of fear that water was covering her and that the walls were indeed pressing close around her body. She thrashed and instinctively cried out…or she would have, if a strange plastic device hadn’t been occupying her mouth, hissing out chill air that tasted nauseatingly like plastic. Confused and afraid, she looked around in bewilderment, pressing her hand along the walls of her enclosure in a vain search for a way out. Where was she? Why wasn’t she dead? And just what the Hell was going on here? She fought back fear and forced herself to examine her enclosure.
She was in a tank. At that realization, she forced herself to press down another swelling of old panic and focused on figuring out her situation. Her initial impression was wrong; this tank was filled not with water but a thicker, slimy liquid that suspended her in the center of the container. The plastic device in her mouth was giving her air via a tube, a breathing apparatus of some sort. And unlike The Casket she had feared, she was now being held in a cylindrical tank that appeared to be made of glass. As she looked through the murky liquid she was floating in and past the glass walls, she jerked back in surprise. There two figures on the other side, wearing white lab coats. They were staring back at her with equal surprise showing even through the cloudy soup she was currently in.
Nika’s eyes narrowed as surprise was replaced by indignation and anger. She still didn’t know why she wasn’t dead, but now she didn’t care. More important thoughts had just come to the forefront of her mind. Like the thought that she was being examined like a bug under a microscope. Her RNT Plug wasn’t active, and she got a good enough sense of the room she was in to realize that this was definitely not a Ragnarok facility. Her eyes closed down into a pair of burning slits as she looked down and saw that she was naked, and covered in nodes, sensors, IV tubes, and wires. She was away from Ragnarok’s iron grip for the first and only time in twelve years, and immediately someone else decided to start running tests on her, making her the main attraction at the freak show. Selling her back into slavery. Her mouth curled into a snarl around the breathing apparatus. Like hell.
She didn’t know who these clowns were and she didn’t care. She was leaving now, and God help them if they got between her and the exit. Nika pulled her knees up to her chest and braced her back against the rear of the tank. She saw the looks of horror on the faces of two men, watched with a derisive sense of amusement as they waved their arms about frantically, as if trying to ward off her next action. She took a breath, spat out the air tube, and grinned at them with bared fangs in a manner that was much more of a threat than a pleasantry. ‘So long suckers,” she thought, and kicked the wall as hard as she could.
Feet that delivered enough PSI to punch through a car door impacted the glass with a splintering thud. Apparently it was double paned or bullet proof, because it offered a brief instant of token resistance. However, it was no contest from the beginning, and the impact was followed a millisecond later by a loud boom as the tank gave way and burst open like a soda can left in the freezer. A torrent of slick liquid flooded out of the container and into the room, sweeping Nika out with it. Nodes ripped off of her skin and she felt at least two IV needles snap off in her flesh with a sharp jerk as she was washed into the room, but she didn’t care. She was getting out of here.
She slid out onto the floor like a yolk sliming out of a cracked egg, dripping with the mucus-like fluid she’d been suspended in. It took her a few seconds to scramble to her feet; the floor was a tractionless slick and her muscles felt sore, as if she had gone too long without using them. In the back of her mind she briefly wondered how long she’d been in there, but there was no time to consider it.
One of her examiners had been caught in the flood of goo and lay slipping and scrabbling ineffectually on the floor. A quick look showed Nika that he didn’t have a gun and was posing a minimal threat. The other man was more of a problem. In the seconds that had passed between him recognizing her intent to break free and now, he had run to a control panel. Nika found to her frustration that she couldn’t concentrate enough to use her powers; in all likelihood she was full of sedatives and God-knew-what-else and they hadn’t quite worn off. Regardless, she was going to have to do this the old fashioned way. She finally found her footing and jumped, but she already knew she wouldn’t be on time, and watched as he slammed his hand down on a garish, mockingly large red button. An alarm started blaring as she left the ground, and she cursed. That would make things more difficult.
The man looked up from tripping the alarm just in time to have her crash down out of the air onto the control panel inches in front of him. She kicked downward as she landed, crunching through buttons and paneling, obliterating the control board. The man cried out in surprise and fear, staggering backward, but Nika’s hand darted out like a striking snake and clamped down on his lab coat, holding him fast. She stood at her full height in the ruined control board, a dark, demonic silhouette backlit by showers of sparks. Her eyes were burning with blue flame.
“You security key,” she said in English. The voice issued from the hellish figure as a command. She leaned in a little, tail lashing with impatience. A low growl rumbled in her throat like thunder on a hot summer night. “Now.”
Nika’s entire body convulsed, a quick spasm that brought her halfway out of reliving nightmarish memories. Her eyes flew open as she was yanked from sleep in a panic. For a moment she was eight years old again, locked in The Casket, and the water was covering her. Panic swept wildly through her in a quick flash. Then as she faded back into her twenty year old self, she realized with a renewed surge of fear that water was covering her and that the walls were indeed pressing close around her body. She thrashed and instinctively cried out…or she would have, if a strange plastic device hadn’t been occupying her mouth, hissing out chill air that tasted nauseatingly like plastic. Confused and afraid, she looked around in bewilderment, pressing her hand along the walls of her enclosure in a vain search for a way out. Where was she? Why wasn’t she dead? And just what the Hell was going on here? She fought back fear and forced herself to examine her enclosure.
She was in a tank. At that realization, she forced herself to press down another swelling of old panic and focused on figuring out her situation. Her initial impression was wrong; this tank was filled not with water but a thicker, slimy liquid that suspended her in the center of the container. The plastic device in her mouth was giving her air via a tube, a breathing apparatus of some sort. And unlike The Casket she had feared, she was now being held in a cylindrical tank that appeared to be made of glass. As she looked through the murky liquid she was floating in and past the glass walls, she jerked back in surprise. There two figures on the other side, wearing white lab coats. They were staring back at her with equal surprise showing even through the cloudy soup she was currently in.
Nika’s eyes narrowed as surprise was replaced by indignation and anger. She still didn’t know why she wasn’t dead, but now she didn’t care. More important thoughts had just come to the forefront of her mind. Like the thought that she was being examined like a bug under a microscope. Her RNT Plug wasn’t active, and she got a good enough sense of the room she was in to realize that this was definitely not a Ragnarok facility. Her eyes closed down into a pair of burning slits as she looked down and saw that she was naked, and covered in nodes, sensors, IV tubes, and wires. She was away from Ragnarok’s iron grip for the first and only time in twelve years, and immediately someone else decided to start running tests on her, making her the main attraction at the freak show. Selling her back into slavery. Her mouth curled into a snarl around the breathing apparatus. Like hell.
She didn’t know who these clowns were and she didn’t care. She was leaving now, and God help them if they got between her and the exit. Nika pulled her knees up to her chest and braced her back against the rear of the tank. She saw the looks of horror on the faces of two men, watched with a derisive sense of amusement as they waved their arms about frantically, as if trying to ward off her next action. She took a breath, spat out the air tube, and grinned at them with bared fangs in a manner that was much more of a threat than a pleasantry. ‘So long suckers,” she thought, and kicked the wall as hard as she could.
Feet that delivered enough PSI to punch through a car door impacted the glass with a splintering thud. Apparently it was double paned or bullet proof, because it offered a brief instant of token resistance. However, it was no contest from the beginning, and the impact was followed a millisecond later by a loud boom as the tank gave way and burst open like a soda can left in the freezer. A torrent of slick liquid flooded out of the container and into the room, sweeping Nika out with it. Nodes ripped off of her skin and she felt at least two IV needles snap off in her flesh with a sharp jerk as she was washed into the room, but she didn’t care. She was getting out of here.
She slid out onto the floor like a yolk sliming out of a cracked egg, dripping with the mucus-like fluid she’d been suspended in. It took her a few seconds to scramble to her feet; the floor was a tractionless slick and her muscles felt sore, as if she had gone too long without using them. In the back of her mind she briefly wondered how long she’d been in there, but there was no time to consider it.
One of her examiners had been caught in the flood of goo and lay slipping and scrabbling ineffectually on the floor. A quick look showed Nika that he didn’t have a gun and was posing a minimal threat. The other man was more of a problem. In the seconds that had passed between him recognizing her intent to break free and now, he had run to a control panel. Nika found to her frustration that she couldn’t concentrate enough to use her powers; in all likelihood she was full of sedatives and God-knew-what-else and they hadn’t quite worn off. Regardless, she was going to have to do this the old fashioned way. She finally found her footing and jumped, but she already knew she wouldn’t be on time, and watched as he slammed his hand down on a garish, mockingly large red button. An alarm started blaring as she left the ground, and she cursed. That would make things more difficult.
The man looked up from tripping the alarm just in time to have her crash down out of the air onto the control panel inches in front of him. She kicked downward as she landed, crunching through buttons and paneling, obliterating the control board. The man cried out in surprise and fear, staggering backward, but Nika’s hand darted out like a striking snake and clamped down on his lab coat, holding him fast. She stood at her full height in the ruined control board, a dark, demonic silhouette backlit by showers of sparks. Her eyes were burning with blue flame.
“You security key,” she said in English. The voice issued from the hellish figure as a command. She leaned in a little, tail lashing with impatience. A low growl rumbled in her throat like thunder on a hot summer night. “Now.”