A Trucker Cab Bunk - 04.24.06
It's dark again outside. I feel like it's been dark for so long now. And granted there is something that stills in you in the night. I've been out cold for almost a day now, or so Randy says. Hard to imagine being that still for that long, but I guess when you have a necrotic you pull itself out of your skin and go running off like something outtofa fuckin' Alien movie, it kinda takes the day out of you.
I'd been trying to get that shit out of my back from day one, but once I figured out a little bit about it, I wasn't sure anymore. Sure, it was going to eat me alive eventually. Maybe it was a curse caused by my fucked up childhood and inability to let go of a sometimes fucked view of doctors, but I was going to be damned if that was the thing that would kill me. I felt it, the same way I felt everything else. Something just a little tougher, but not the end.
It'd been bugging Randy though. Hell, it'd bugged a lot of people. And yeah, I worried sometimes about it too, but there's no point in hanging onto shit if you can't do anything about it. So when I stepped into the power plant's base and heard that voice go off in my head calling me Daughter, I knew something was going to hit the fan soon.
I have a feeling there was more to it than that too, but from all the information we'd gotten, I just had no reason to not change it back except to be a pissy kid about it, and frankly, the shit was fucked up. I've had my body fucked with a hundred times before and I don't really care to have it done any more than that. So the idea of some ghost getting it in his head that I should join his death cult is... well, I don't have that much a morbid curiosity.
I'd gone down there, or tried to several times but something always just fucked the whole situation over. Maybe the Diamond, maybe other people in there, maybe just people too concerned with their own questions, but I wasn't getting anything done or answered until Randy and Vassar decided to tell everyone else to fuck themselves and for me to go down on my own prerogative. Which was shortly after finding out I was a pretty big link into the Silver Collective.
The Silver Collective... we didn't even figure out what the hell that thing was either. Everyone was too busy with shoving sticks just a little farther up their asses to ask. All I know is that when we ported down there, we ended up not in that Geiger love-nest but in a steel cubed room with a monitor and wires; one door.
You know that feeling when you know everyone's got their eyes on you, expecting you to make the next move? Yeah, that's exactly what happened here. Not a one of them had the computer skills I did. Of course, I didn't exactly call a hack filk phone call. I just had people I trusted some. Me, Randy, Dr. Prospero, Unitas, and my number one, Yorrick. If I could have gotten away with smuggling others, believe me, they would have been there. As it was, we wanted to keep this small. Still, though, some things you're just never prepared for.
I'm not a diplomat. I'm not good with speaking in an intelligent manner. I say things bluntly, and I say them at about the same time they go through my head. It gets me into trouble, but it helps a lot more than it doesn't. So I guess what I'm saying here is that after I woke up the system on the wall by plugging my own into it, we should have had our shit more ready for what went down. But honestly, who the fuck expects an AI to show up on the fly? I sure as hell didn't. I went with it though. I just started talking. Obviously we got here for a reason, because between me, Randy, and Yorrick, shit wasn't going to go randomly.
I start talking, trying to get across that I wanted my body back to the way it was before Pain fucked it up. Well, I got it across, but... fucking hell if I didn't regret it about ten seconds later.
Okay. Think of a plate of metal. Now, imagine someone taking that metal and setting a plasma arc to it until it turns that deep tangerine orange right before it liquefies into that electric yellow and starts seeping down in a magma honey drip that could burn through some stones. Now imagine that being inserted in your skin so deep that you can feel it burning through your insides until it finds a place to seep out. And you're feeling the scream that leaves you moving through your body with that heat so fast that you can feel your lungs flaking off with every second that breath hasn't finished moving. And you're praying at that point for anything to kill you faster, if only it can. And with that prayer the heat leaves you... and leaves you, until you do think you're dying again. You can't feel anything, but you can hear the sick crunch as a part of you breaks off like those roses you see at a science show, dipped in pure liquid nitro and then shattered on the table.
You can't see anything, but you can hear it and you can hear the reactions of those behind you. Of those who are holding you down because you're convulsing, and just now out of that cracked skin just came a hand like yours, but not yours. Out of that scar came an arm and then a shoulder. And then you're blind and dying and there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it as the rest of a full body pulls itself out of yours. You but not you. And leaves you dying on the floor, bleeding to death as the heat and the feeling comes back to you, draining out of your ears or back or whatever. And then you feel hands inside you and a voice screaming in your ears, but you can't hear them because the blood is too thick in them to know who it is. That is until she turns you over with the rest. You can still feel your insides bleeding a little, but the bigger gaps are closed. You know you're not going to die, but you almost wish you had, because you'd know what to do then.
No. That's when you find yourself somewhere else entirely. And you aren't sure where, but you know his hands in yours and you know her eyes, so like yours, watching you. And you know the scent of his coat on your shoulders. There's only one name on your tongue when your life's on the line. One name that you know you trust that can save you and take this away. You don't want the doctors or the hospitals because you also remember them and what they did to you so many years ago. All the pain and the death.
And when you finally see him, he takes your pain, and it's the first time in a long time you can remember letting it go so easily. And you see the look in his eyes as he feels as you feel, in that moment where Legba opens the crossroad to where you meet him and you both share it, know it. The woman near you knows it too. She can't exist any other way. Her eyes tell the story. And then it's gone. Just as it came, it's gone.
There is a peace in that where you can hear the river moving against the boat, see the dark eyes glimmer and grin, the coin bright in his hand. Waiting. Waiting. Not your time and you know it. He tells you, like it's a joke only you can share. Waiting.
That's when you feel life. That's when you feel yourself stand and meet him, and the blood doesn't matter. The scent of the pain is leaving. He will stay in those moments. And you'll know you did him wrong years ago. You know you have to say it before that feeling of being one leaves. That's the only time you'll move as one body and speak as one voice long enough to say it. Say you're sorry for it. If for nothing else than to be more human than you were before, less dead.
Yes, that is when I exist and nothing in the world will change it. At least not until the river tells me it's my time. But that's not today. Not tomorrow. I'll be fine. This is nature, and she's rarely tasting so sweet. I live it up. All too soon I'll be unconscious again. But we got it out.
This isn't the end of this, I'm sure, but right now I just don't give a fuck and the world will turn without me for a few.
I'd been trying to get that shit out of my back from day one, but once I figured out a little bit about it, I wasn't sure anymore. Sure, it was going to eat me alive eventually. Maybe it was a curse caused by my fucked up childhood and inability to let go of a sometimes fucked view of doctors, but I was going to be damned if that was the thing that would kill me. I felt it, the same way I felt everything else. Something just a little tougher, but not the end.
It'd been bugging Randy though. Hell, it'd bugged a lot of people. And yeah, I worried sometimes about it too, but there's no point in hanging onto shit if you can't do anything about it. So when I stepped into the power plant's base and heard that voice go off in my head calling me Daughter, I knew something was going to hit the fan soon.
I have a feeling there was more to it than that too, but from all the information we'd gotten, I just had no reason to not change it back except to be a pissy kid about it, and frankly, the shit was fucked up. I've had my body fucked with a hundred times before and I don't really care to have it done any more than that. So the idea of some ghost getting it in his head that I should join his death cult is... well, I don't have that much a morbid curiosity.
I'd gone down there, or tried to several times but something always just fucked the whole situation over. Maybe the Diamond, maybe other people in there, maybe just people too concerned with their own questions, but I wasn't getting anything done or answered until Randy and Vassar decided to tell everyone else to fuck themselves and for me to go down on my own prerogative. Which was shortly after finding out I was a pretty big link into the Silver Collective.
The Silver Collective... we didn't even figure out what the hell that thing was either. Everyone was too busy with shoving sticks just a little farther up their asses to ask. All I know is that when we ported down there, we ended up not in that Geiger love-nest but in a steel cubed room with a monitor and wires; one door.
You know that feeling when you know everyone's got their eyes on you, expecting you to make the next move? Yeah, that's exactly what happened here. Not a one of them had the computer skills I did. Of course, I didn't exactly call a hack filk phone call. I just had people I trusted some. Me, Randy, Dr. Prospero, Unitas, and my number one, Yorrick. If I could have gotten away with smuggling others, believe me, they would have been there. As it was, we wanted to keep this small. Still, though, some things you're just never prepared for.
I'm not a diplomat. I'm not good with speaking in an intelligent manner. I say things bluntly, and I say them at about the same time they go through my head. It gets me into trouble, but it helps a lot more than it doesn't. So I guess what I'm saying here is that after I woke up the system on the wall by plugging my own into it, we should have had our shit more ready for what went down. But honestly, who the fuck expects an AI to show up on the fly? I sure as hell didn't. I went with it though. I just started talking. Obviously we got here for a reason, because between me, Randy, and Yorrick, shit wasn't going to go randomly.
I start talking, trying to get across that I wanted my body back to the way it was before Pain fucked it up. Well, I got it across, but... fucking hell if I didn't regret it about ten seconds later.
Okay. Think of a plate of metal. Now, imagine someone taking that metal and setting a plasma arc to it until it turns that deep tangerine orange right before it liquefies into that electric yellow and starts seeping down in a magma honey drip that could burn through some stones. Now imagine that being inserted in your skin so deep that you can feel it burning through your insides until it finds a place to seep out. And you're feeling the scream that leaves you moving through your body with that heat so fast that you can feel your lungs flaking off with every second that breath hasn't finished moving. And you're praying at that point for anything to kill you faster, if only it can. And with that prayer the heat leaves you... and leaves you, until you do think you're dying again. You can't feel anything, but you can hear the sick crunch as a part of you breaks off like those roses you see at a science show, dipped in pure liquid nitro and then shattered on the table.
You can't see anything, but you can hear it and you can hear the reactions of those behind you. Of those who are holding you down because you're convulsing, and just now out of that cracked skin just came a hand like yours, but not yours. Out of that scar came an arm and then a shoulder. And then you're blind and dying and there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it as the rest of a full body pulls itself out of yours. You but not you. And leaves you dying on the floor, bleeding to death as the heat and the feeling comes back to you, draining out of your ears or back or whatever. And then you feel hands inside you and a voice screaming in your ears, but you can't hear them because the blood is too thick in them to know who it is. That is until she turns you over with the rest. You can still feel your insides bleeding a little, but the bigger gaps are closed. You know you're not going to die, but you almost wish you had, because you'd know what to do then.
No. That's when you find yourself somewhere else entirely. And you aren't sure where, but you know his hands in yours and you know her eyes, so like yours, watching you. And you know the scent of his coat on your shoulders. There's only one name on your tongue when your life's on the line. One name that you know you trust that can save you and take this away. You don't want the doctors or the hospitals because you also remember them and what they did to you so many years ago. All the pain and the death.
And when you finally see him, he takes your pain, and it's the first time in a long time you can remember letting it go so easily. And you see the look in his eyes as he feels as you feel, in that moment where Legba opens the crossroad to where you meet him and you both share it, know it. The woman near you knows it too. She can't exist any other way. Her eyes tell the story. And then it's gone. Just as it came, it's gone.
There is a peace in that where you can hear the river moving against the boat, see the dark eyes glimmer and grin, the coin bright in his hand. Waiting. Waiting. Not your time and you know it. He tells you, like it's a joke only you can share. Waiting.
That's when you feel life. That's when you feel yourself stand and meet him, and the blood doesn't matter. The scent of the pain is leaving. He will stay in those moments. And you'll know you did him wrong years ago. You know you have to say it before that feeling of being one leaves. That's the only time you'll move as one body and speak as one voice long enough to say it. Say you're sorry for it. If for nothing else than to be more human than you were before, less dead.
Yes, that is when I exist and nothing in the world will change it. At least not until the river tells me it's my time. But that's not today. Not tomorrow. I'll be fine. This is nature, and she's rarely tasting so sweet. I live it up. All too soon I'll be unconscious again. But we got it out.
This isn't the end of this, I'm sure, but right now I just don't give a fuck and the world will turn without me for a few.