Sunrazor
The Fly
This is ALL for Emily, because she threatened me with painful, gory death if I didn't end the suspense.
Sweet, isn't she?
No, actually she didn't. She was very nice about it. So here they are.
-4-
He awoke the next morning to the smell of warm oatmeal, and the creak of bedsprings as she sat down beside him. The smell grabbed him by his nostrils, pulling him out of a thick, dream-heavy sleep so quickly that he gasped and twitched violently. Pain shot through him; it was as though some cruel hand had dragged a red-hot poker up his thighs and over his hips. He screamed, and then clutched the blanket convulsively and moaned as the pain subsided into an angry buzz. Through a red haze, he could see Sarah, standing in a light pink robe, the bowl overturned on the floor behind her. Her right hand was balled into a fist, the knuckles pressed against her mouth. Her face was shocked and concerned. She moved swiftly to the bed, her hands pressing him back, holding him still. With one hand she pulled back the sheets and he could see the full extent of the damage.
It actually wasn't as bad as he'd feared, or rather, wasn't as bad as the pain had led him to expect it was.
His legs, although they were unquestionably broken, weren't the twisted, shattered lengths of bone he'd felt sure of. They were fairly straight, although they did bend in and jag out here and there, in very disquieting ways. They were splinted with smooth slender boards that looked as though they'd been cannibalized from some old piece of furniture. These had been wrapped and secured to his legs with bandaging tape, so that he looked, from the waist down, a bit like a mummy from one of those old horror movies. Im-Ho-Tep, he thought, and laughed roughly in spite of the still very present pain. At that, Sarah looked up, and the laughter fluttered and died in his throat like a small bird.
"What are you laughing at?" Her voice was harsh, suspicious. Her eyes were darkening rapidly, and he was reminded of dark storm clouds. Dark snowstorm clouds.
The storm is her, he thought crazily. The storm is outside, but it's still her. Last night it looked gone, but now here it is again. Larger that life, and twice as ugly. He almost laughed again, and then the calm, cautious voice inside him was awake, and whispering desperately at him.
Get control. For God's sake, GET CONTROL. I don't think there's any more debate needed. This woman isn't right.
"I'm? relieved," he said, which was actually very true. "I'm just so relieved? I thought my legs were going to be so much worse. They almost look normal." He smiled ingratiatingly at her, hating himself as he did so. "You did such a good job, I guess I needn't have worried."
She smiled at that, and warmth flooded back into her cheeks. The storm had lifted. He was safe.
"I was careful. After all, I don't want you to have to get onstage in a wheelchair for the rest of your life!" She laughed, and, grimacing inwardly, he laughed too. Hell, he could be an actor when he had to be.
She looked toward the overturned bowl on the floor, and frowned. "I'll go get you another bowl, and something to clean this up." She shot another sunny smile over her shoulder, and it struck him how pretty she could be, if she wasn't quite so pale. "I'll bring you another painkiller, too." She almost skipped out of the room, and Bono grinned a grin that felt more like a sneer. What sycophancy will do, he thought, and felt the self-hatred, already a black, bubbling liquid somewhere in his middle, foam higher.
She returned about ten minutes later, bringing another steaming, deliciously-scented bowl, and a floor-bucket and rag. She put the bowl on the nightstand next to him, and took a syringe out of the pocket of her robe. She injected him, then handed him the bowl, and kneeling, began to clean the spilled oatmeal.
He was hungrier than he'd thought, and wolfed the warm mush down in under five minutes. He put it on the nightstand, and turned to the window. The snow had begun to fall again.
"Where am I?" he asked softly.
She didn't look up. "Bremerton."
He looked over at her, surprised. He hadn't expected an answer. "Where is Bremerton?"
Still, she didn't look up from the floor. "A valley in the Cascades. Pretty far north. We're about twenty miles south of the Canadian border." She wrung out the rag, dipped it into the bucket, and started scrubbing again. "Don't get me wrong. We're not actually in town. But we fall into the general area."
"And how far are we from this town?"
"A ways," she murmured, distantly.
"I see." He considered pressing for more detail, then remembered the storm clouds and decided against it. Instead he said "When do you think the storm will be over?"
She looked up at last, peering out the window at the fat wet snowflakes that seemed to fall harder every minute. "I'm not sure. I can't pick up the weather on the radio anymore; must be the storm interference. But I shouldn't say more than two or three more days at most."
She stayed like that for some time, staring at the falling snow with mismatched eyes, eyes that looked increasingly empty, and once more Bono thought This woman is not right.
Suddenly she started, as if coming out of a deep daydream, and looked so normal again that Bono dared to hope that a daydream was all it had been. She stood, picking up the bucket, and walked over to the bed. "I'm going to go do some reading now. You try to get some sleep." She brushed a lock of hair out of his face, her expression almost maternally tender, and words echoed through Bono's mind.
Not right not right not right at all
"I'll be back to give you another dose in about five hours."
She left, and he slept, and dreamed of Egyptian mummies with wooden legs.
When he woke up, the snow had stopped again, the light said it was late afternoon, and a man was standing over his bed.
**************************************
The violence and Bono torture begins in earnest right around here. Beware. Yellings of "Waahhhh!! The sick woman's WEIRD!!!!!" will be dealt with gleefully.
-5-
This is a dream.... It HAS to be.
For a moment, neither man said anything. They just stood frozen, regarding each other. Time seemed to slow to a crawl, and Bono saw the man was young, mid-twenties, and slender, even small. He was wearing a green parka and jeans, and looked cold. He had blue eyes, sandy hair, and a very pale face, a startled face, a face that was rapidly filling with amazed recognition.
The young man's lips trembled, and one word slid out of him like wet paper.
"You..."
It was the only word Bono heard him speak. It was the last word anyone heard him speak.
There was a wet sort of *thunk*, and the man's breath exploded out of his chest in a moist-sounding rush. His eyes widened in an almost comical look of surprise. He staggered, his arms twitching, his fingers opening and closing spasmodically, then fell forward. His head hit the bedframe with a sickening crack, then his head hit the floor with another. As he fell, Bono saw a dark slit in the back of his parka, and then he looked up and saw what had caused it.
Sarah was standing behind him, breathing fast, her hair coming loose from its bun and flying around her head in a blond halo. Her cheeks were flushed, and her forehead was beaded with sweat.
Her eyes were absolutely dead.
Clasped tightly in both hands was an axe, its blade smeared with red.
Bono stared at her. Part of him was screaming and gibbering that this wasn't happening, it was a terrible, horrific dream, just thoughts that he didn't dare think in the daylight, and if he could just wake up, just FUCKING WAKE UP OUT OF THIS...
And another part of him, a deeper part that the fear and the shock couldn't touch, the part that the calm, cautious voice came from, felt only one thing. A tired, sad knowing.
It was just a matter of time, really. Just count yourself lucky that someone else took the axe for you.
He licked his dry lips, forcing moisture into his throat. "Sarah... what are you doing?"
Her head jerked up in his direction, startled, as if seeing him for the first time. Then a low groan drifted up from the floor and all the life left her eyes again. She hefted the axe, raised it.
"NO!" He didn't even realize he'd screamed. "NO! DONT-"
The axe went down. Bright red arterial blood sprayed upwards, splattering her face, which remained distant, impassive. Bono moaned softly and turned away, dimly aware that he was about to vomit. He looked back at the terrible scene unfolding to his right, praying that it was over, only to see her raise the axe again. Its flashing blade was not just smeared now; it was dripping. And down it went again. And again. And again. Each time more of her hair came loose and wild, and more blood splattered her face and shirt. Each time her only reaction to what she was doing was a soft grunt as she raised the bloody axe. The dead look did not leave her eyes.
He was screaming. Screaming, and pleading, and crying, and he had no idea of any of it. He was mad, fear-crazed. Only that one cool spot in his mind remained untouched by his overwhelming terror, and that part was observing the activites with a cold, tired detachment almost as horrible as the coldness in Sarah's eyes as she destroyed the thing on the floor.
So this is panic.
Panic was the total loss of the self. Panic is a temporary insanity. Panic is a numbing wave that obliterates concious thought and leaves only pure animal instinct.
He was quite sure that if he couldn't regain control of himself, one way or another the panic would kill him.
Just then, she stopped.
Just... stopped Stood quite still, regarding the horrid thing on the floor with almost mechanical coldness. Then she turned to him and he was sure he was about to die.
She paused, simply studying him, and the coldness was still there, but there was something else besides that.
She was thinking, considering options and actions. Considering him.
God, he thought. Please let me faint. Just please let me faint. I want OUT of this.
He did not faint, and so he simply stared back at her, waiting. He couldn't have tried anything even if it had occurred to his fear-crazed brain to do so. The fear had frozen him.
Then something in her eyes shifted. In one swift motion she raised the axe, spattering droplets of blood onto his face and the sheets.
Bono's vocal cords came unstuck with an almost audible snap and he screamed.
"NO! OH GOD SARAH PLEASE DON'T-"
The axe came inexorably down, and he trailed off into a wordless shriek.
Then just inches before it hit, she turned it sideways, and the flat of the blade came smashing down on his already mewling legs.
For a fraction of a second, although to him it seemed more like a full minute, his mind simply could not wrap itself around the pain, and he felt nothing at all.
Then it slammed into his brain like white fire and he threw back his head and howled.
I had no idea there was pain like this in all the world.
This one coherent thought behind the rest of his mind, which had degenerated into a writhing, shrieking mess. His body jerked, twisted as though in the grips of a demon. His head whipped from side to side, tears streaming down his face, veins standing out in his neck and temples.
Sarah stood and watched him.
At last he went limp, panting, crying, shaking, trying not to shake because it hurt to shake, and shaking anyway.
"Are you done?"
He looked up at her through a white haze of tears and pain and realized that he could kill. Not only kill; he could take pleasure in the deed.
She nodded, apparently satisfied that his fit had, for the moment, passed.
"I need to clean up this mess. Then I'll come back and we'll decide what to do with you."
She left, and he lay there in a vicious cloud of pain, trying to pass out and remaining stubbornly concious.
Oh God, I am in so much trouble.
*********************************
There ya go. Love me.
------------------
"It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything." - Fight Club
"Here's where it makes the most sense. You need it so you don't forget. Forget that there are places in the world that aren't made out of stone. That there's something inside that's yours, that they can't touch. That's the beauty of music. They can't take that away from you." - The Shawshank Redemption
"All God wants is a willing heart and for us to call out to him." - Bono
"Ohh!!! Egyptians!" - Me, on AOL IM
[This message has been edited by Sunrazor (edited 08-29-2001).]
Sweet, isn't she?
No, actually she didn't. She was very nice about it. So here they are.
-4-
He awoke the next morning to the smell of warm oatmeal, and the creak of bedsprings as she sat down beside him. The smell grabbed him by his nostrils, pulling him out of a thick, dream-heavy sleep so quickly that he gasped and twitched violently. Pain shot through him; it was as though some cruel hand had dragged a red-hot poker up his thighs and over his hips. He screamed, and then clutched the blanket convulsively and moaned as the pain subsided into an angry buzz. Through a red haze, he could see Sarah, standing in a light pink robe, the bowl overturned on the floor behind her. Her right hand was balled into a fist, the knuckles pressed against her mouth. Her face was shocked and concerned. She moved swiftly to the bed, her hands pressing him back, holding him still. With one hand she pulled back the sheets and he could see the full extent of the damage.
It actually wasn't as bad as he'd feared, or rather, wasn't as bad as the pain had led him to expect it was.
His legs, although they were unquestionably broken, weren't the twisted, shattered lengths of bone he'd felt sure of. They were fairly straight, although they did bend in and jag out here and there, in very disquieting ways. They were splinted with smooth slender boards that looked as though they'd been cannibalized from some old piece of furniture. These had been wrapped and secured to his legs with bandaging tape, so that he looked, from the waist down, a bit like a mummy from one of those old horror movies. Im-Ho-Tep, he thought, and laughed roughly in spite of the still very present pain. At that, Sarah looked up, and the laughter fluttered and died in his throat like a small bird.
"What are you laughing at?" Her voice was harsh, suspicious. Her eyes were darkening rapidly, and he was reminded of dark storm clouds. Dark snowstorm clouds.
The storm is her, he thought crazily. The storm is outside, but it's still her. Last night it looked gone, but now here it is again. Larger that life, and twice as ugly. He almost laughed again, and then the calm, cautious voice inside him was awake, and whispering desperately at him.
Get control. For God's sake, GET CONTROL. I don't think there's any more debate needed. This woman isn't right.
"I'm? relieved," he said, which was actually very true. "I'm just so relieved? I thought my legs were going to be so much worse. They almost look normal." He smiled ingratiatingly at her, hating himself as he did so. "You did such a good job, I guess I needn't have worried."
She smiled at that, and warmth flooded back into her cheeks. The storm had lifted. He was safe.
"I was careful. After all, I don't want you to have to get onstage in a wheelchair for the rest of your life!" She laughed, and, grimacing inwardly, he laughed too. Hell, he could be an actor when he had to be.
She looked toward the overturned bowl on the floor, and frowned. "I'll go get you another bowl, and something to clean this up." She shot another sunny smile over her shoulder, and it struck him how pretty she could be, if she wasn't quite so pale. "I'll bring you another painkiller, too." She almost skipped out of the room, and Bono grinned a grin that felt more like a sneer. What sycophancy will do, he thought, and felt the self-hatred, already a black, bubbling liquid somewhere in his middle, foam higher.
She returned about ten minutes later, bringing another steaming, deliciously-scented bowl, and a floor-bucket and rag. She put the bowl on the nightstand next to him, and took a syringe out of the pocket of her robe. She injected him, then handed him the bowl, and kneeling, began to clean the spilled oatmeal.
He was hungrier than he'd thought, and wolfed the warm mush down in under five minutes. He put it on the nightstand, and turned to the window. The snow had begun to fall again.
"Where am I?" he asked softly.
She didn't look up. "Bremerton."
He looked over at her, surprised. He hadn't expected an answer. "Where is Bremerton?"
Still, she didn't look up from the floor. "A valley in the Cascades. Pretty far north. We're about twenty miles south of the Canadian border." She wrung out the rag, dipped it into the bucket, and started scrubbing again. "Don't get me wrong. We're not actually in town. But we fall into the general area."
"And how far are we from this town?"
"A ways," she murmured, distantly.
"I see." He considered pressing for more detail, then remembered the storm clouds and decided against it. Instead he said "When do you think the storm will be over?"
She looked up at last, peering out the window at the fat wet snowflakes that seemed to fall harder every minute. "I'm not sure. I can't pick up the weather on the radio anymore; must be the storm interference. But I shouldn't say more than two or three more days at most."
She stayed like that for some time, staring at the falling snow with mismatched eyes, eyes that looked increasingly empty, and once more Bono thought This woman is not right.
Suddenly she started, as if coming out of a deep daydream, and looked so normal again that Bono dared to hope that a daydream was all it had been. She stood, picking up the bucket, and walked over to the bed. "I'm going to go do some reading now. You try to get some sleep." She brushed a lock of hair out of his face, her expression almost maternally tender, and words echoed through Bono's mind.
Not right not right not right at all
"I'll be back to give you another dose in about five hours."
She left, and he slept, and dreamed of Egyptian mummies with wooden legs.
When he woke up, the snow had stopped again, the light said it was late afternoon, and a man was standing over his bed.
**************************************
The violence and Bono torture begins in earnest right around here. Beware. Yellings of "Waahhhh!! The sick woman's WEIRD!!!!!" will be dealt with gleefully.
-5-
This is a dream.... It HAS to be.
For a moment, neither man said anything. They just stood frozen, regarding each other. Time seemed to slow to a crawl, and Bono saw the man was young, mid-twenties, and slender, even small. He was wearing a green parka and jeans, and looked cold. He had blue eyes, sandy hair, and a very pale face, a startled face, a face that was rapidly filling with amazed recognition.
The young man's lips trembled, and one word slid out of him like wet paper.
"You..."
It was the only word Bono heard him speak. It was the last word anyone heard him speak.
There was a wet sort of *thunk*, and the man's breath exploded out of his chest in a moist-sounding rush. His eyes widened in an almost comical look of surprise. He staggered, his arms twitching, his fingers opening and closing spasmodically, then fell forward. His head hit the bedframe with a sickening crack, then his head hit the floor with another. As he fell, Bono saw a dark slit in the back of his parka, and then he looked up and saw what had caused it.
Sarah was standing behind him, breathing fast, her hair coming loose from its bun and flying around her head in a blond halo. Her cheeks were flushed, and her forehead was beaded with sweat.
Her eyes were absolutely dead.
Clasped tightly in both hands was an axe, its blade smeared with red.
Bono stared at her. Part of him was screaming and gibbering that this wasn't happening, it was a terrible, horrific dream, just thoughts that he didn't dare think in the daylight, and if he could just wake up, just FUCKING WAKE UP OUT OF THIS...
And another part of him, a deeper part that the fear and the shock couldn't touch, the part that the calm, cautious voice came from, felt only one thing. A tired, sad knowing.
It was just a matter of time, really. Just count yourself lucky that someone else took the axe for you.
He licked his dry lips, forcing moisture into his throat. "Sarah... what are you doing?"
Her head jerked up in his direction, startled, as if seeing him for the first time. Then a low groan drifted up from the floor and all the life left her eyes again. She hefted the axe, raised it.
"NO!" He didn't even realize he'd screamed. "NO! DONT-"
The axe went down. Bright red arterial blood sprayed upwards, splattering her face, which remained distant, impassive. Bono moaned softly and turned away, dimly aware that he was about to vomit. He looked back at the terrible scene unfolding to his right, praying that it was over, only to see her raise the axe again. Its flashing blade was not just smeared now; it was dripping. And down it went again. And again. And again. Each time more of her hair came loose and wild, and more blood splattered her face and shirt. Each time her only reaction to what she was doing was a soft grunt as she raised the bloody axe. The dead look did not leave her eyes.
He was screaming. Screaming, and pleading, and crying, and he had no idea of any of it. He was mad, fear-crazed. Only that one cool spot in his mind remained untouched by his overwhelming terror, and that part was observing the activites with a cold, tired detachment almost as horrible as the coldness in Sarah's eyes as she destroyed the thing on the floor.
So this is panic.
Panic was the total loss of the self. Panic is a temporary insanity. Panic is a numbing wave that obliterates concious thought and leaves only pure animal instinct.
He was quite sure that if he couldn't regain control of himself, one way or another the panic would kill him.
Just then, she stopped.
Just... stopped Stood quite still, regarding the horrid thing on the floor with almost mechanical coldness. Then she turned to him and he was sure he was about to die.
She paused, simply studying him, and the coldness was still there, but there was something else besides that.
She was thinking, considering options and actions. Considering him.
God, he thought. Please let me faint. Just please let me faint. I want OUT of this.
He did not faint, and so he simply stared back at her, waiting. He couldn't have tried anything even if it had occurred to his fear-crazed brain to do so. The fear had frozen him.
Then something in her eyes shifted. In one swift motion she raised the axe, spattering droplets of blood onto his face and the sheets.
Bono's vocal cords came unstuck with an almost audible snap and he screamed.
"NO! OH GOD SARAH PLEASE DON'T-"
The axe came inexorably down, and he trailed off into a wordless shriek.
Then just inches before it hit, she turned it sideways, and the flat of the blade came smashing down on his already mewling legs.
For a fraction of a second, although to him it seemed more like a full minute, his mind simply could not wrap itself around the pain, and he felt nothing at all.
Then it slammed into his brain like white fire and he threw back his head and howled.
I had no idea there was pain like this in all the world.
This one coherent thought behind the rest of his mind, which had degenerated into a writhing, shrieking mess. His body jerked, twisted as though in the grips of a demon. His head whipped from side to side, tears streaming down his face, veins standing out in his neck and temples.
Sarah stood and watched him.
At last he went limp, panting, crying, shaking, trying not to shake because it hurt to shake, and shaking anyway.
"Are you done?"
He looked up at her through a white haze of tears and pain and realized that he could kill. Not only kill; he could take pleasure in the deed.
She nodded, apparently satisfied that his fit had, for the moment, passed.
"I need to clean up this mess. Then I'll come back and we'll decide what to do with you."
She left, and he lay there in a vicious cloud of pain, trying to pass out and remaining stubbornly concious.
Oh God, I am in so much trouble.
*********************************
There ya go. Love me.
------------------
"It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything." - Fight Club
"Here's where it makes the most sense. You need it so you don't forget. Forget that there are places in the world that aren't made out of stone. That there's something inside that's yours, that they can't touch. That's the beauty of music. They can't take that away from you." - The Shawshank Redemption
"All God wants is a willing heart and for us to call out to him." - Bono
"Ohh!!! Egyptians!" - Me, on AOL IM
[This message has been edited by Sunrazor (edited 08-29-2001).]
