Nine: Lab In The Kitchen Floor
Lab In The Kitchen Floor
The lid on the oval-shaped eye inside the greygg raised, revealing the living room ceiling of Richard’s house. A surge of excitement filled Faustus. He punched through the transparent membrane of the lens. The cap of the greygg splintered, opening to the world outside.
Springing forward, he rolled out onto a carpeted pathway he thought he’d not see again. Distantly, he was aware of the ceaseless soft ding of the outer door alarm. As his bifid tongue flicked the air, he turned, following the heavy scent of blood in the air.
Verd lay just inside the door on the floor. The light in the foyer blinked through the narrow windows on either side. The lower half of the dress she wore was soaked. Worrying into her unresponsive face as he whispered a spell Richard taught him meant to keep her unconscious. Scooping her up into his arms, he cradled her. A pang pierced his heart as the reality that Verd was all grown up now settled in. Then his toes squished into the wet carpet, and he looked down. There was a dark circle wider than her backside on the carpet.
He ran to the lab below the kitchen floor. In truth, Faustus didn’t know the details of how dangerous the curse was to undo. All he knew was gleaned from sitting inside the greygg. The only part of it he understood was discovered while creating the keyhole. The mechanism was designed to be tripped if he exited the greygg while she was conscious.
Unconscious was the safest state for her to exist while he figured out how to remove it. Faustus knew nothing about what the trigger released and was too afraid to find out while in the greygg. He was banking on examining it from the outside to explain how to remove it. The lab door on the floor banged open in anticipation of his impending arrival. He turned into the kitchen, hugging Verd tight against him as he descended the stairs two at a time. Crossing the lab to an examination table with a drain in the floor below it.
He’d picked up enough incantation knowledge from Richard to successfully keep her asleep but not to stop the internal hemorrhage. He tapped the floating orb above him, illuminating her on the table. He walked to the medicine cabinet to the right of the table and opened the door. He picked up one of the tiny bottles of Richard’s healing concoctions from the shelf and flicked the stopper from the top with his thumb. He gently hooked his finger in the corner of her mouth and poured the runny liquid in before he let go.
Nine agonizing seconds later, the color came back to her face, and she inhaled in a gasp before her regular breathing pattern returned. Faustus drew back the sheet and set the bottle down in front at her feet. Drawing her ankles together, he gently pushed her legs upward until they formed a diamond and lifted her skirt. The bleeding had stopped. He straightened her skirt and pulled the sheet back up to her waist.
His relief allowed him to focus on the trap in her chest. He waved the remains of the top of her dress aside. Exposing an oval-shaped obsidian object filled with a luminescent green fluid. Jagged edges lined a hollowed-out grey eye at the top. The greygg that held him captive all this time was no bigger than his pinky nail. Eight spidery legs jutted out from the sides, buried into a surface layer of stony necrotic tissue surrounding her beating heart.
Loosening the legs and lifting them from her skin was his first goal. As Faustus stepped into the shadows and opened the standing cabinet door, the dinging from the foyer stopped. Heavy footfalls overhead trailed around the living room until they paused at the lab door. The Guardian smiled. His wish may come true after all.