The Uptake, The 704. 2|0|0|-. Book One, Chapter Eleven. Part 1 (Parts 2 & 3)
Tw: Limb injury.
A fresh yard site could provide a change of scenery to clear his head, right?
Every time he came home without Galen in tow, it became that much harder for Torber to keep from their family that he’d found Galen. For six months, the Miners believed Galen had left or died. For two weeks, Torber had known otherwise. Though he’d brought Galen a cake on his eighteenth birthday, Torber had not mentioned to him that the whole family had gone to the Pyre Block earlier that same day; in order to deliver the gift, Torber had cut out after their visitation under the guise of needing some time to himself. He wondered how much longer he could keep up what essentially amounted to a double life, how much longer he could keep lying to his family about something like this. But how could he explain to them what had happened, if he didn’t completely understand it himself?
The complex duplicity of his situation led to a lapse in concentration. A piece of rebar tumbled off the drift he was working. It slammed down on his hand. He failed to stifle hollering about it. A couple other stalkers called out to check on him. He called back an all-clear. He ignored the sharp, throbbing pain several minutes. But, his hand had begun to swell up, and he couldn’t move two of his fingers on that hand. He gnashed his teeth beneath his respirator, and mentally skirted the certainty that he’d broken it. He’d only been on site at that yard a few hours at best, but the pain was too much for him. Seeing Bell about it would cost more than it was worth. Clouded by spite he snatched up the rogue piece of rebar and headed home.
With his respirator and goggles pulled down around his neck, Torber ran down in his head what first aid he could toss together in the apartment. He struggled one-handed to lockpick his own front door, fumbling with his trifold to put the pick back in its place then return the wallet to his back pocket. Such a dexterous task was that much more difficult lacking the use of one’s dominant hand. Though he bee-lined it to the bathroom to dig in the medicine cabinet, briefly he reeled from the mental whiplash of momentarily perceiving the way his bed sheet had been wadded up to resemble Galen.
He flung the rebar down in the hall in a reverberating frustration that his stress was getting bad enough to be making him see things.
The medicine cabinet yielded a bottle of antiseptic to deal with the nasty grinding cut he’d gotten from the rebar, but he didn’t find anything bigger than bandaids, so he went to the nightstand drawer to locate an old shirt he could cannibalize for a bandage. As he dug absently in the drawer, he realized the bedding was neither the same color as what he’d seen in his peripheral nor in the same shape, and he instantly snapped to his feet at the sound of rustling in the living room. He caught Galen trying to sneak out the door unnoticed.
“--Hey” was all Torber could stutter out in startled objection.
Galen froze, relieved it had been Torber but still caught in the act.
“What ya doin’ home?” Galen asked sheepishly, pulling his hood down.
“Slag why I’m here--why YOU here!” Suddenly his hand didn’t hurt so much.
“I... I come by s, s, sometimes. Didn’t wanna fess it.”
“How long y’been comin’ around--?” Sooner than process the fact Galen was standing in their apartment right in front of him, Torber couldn’t help but catastrophize the train wreck of anybody else coming home to find Galen here, and he was fast to devising ways to hide him quickly.
“Jus, s,s usst a few times. I... I, maybe four times now.” Galen looked up at the door anxiously. “Can I go now?”
“Y’really wanna--” Torber trailed off, biting his tongue. Galen wasn’t ready to come home yet, but here he was coming home anyway. “Yeah, it’s fine. Y’stay much longer, y’likely t’run into the kids.”
Galen couldn’t help but feel guilty for being uncomfortable staying, and he lingered, eyes on Torber’s feet. He quickly noticed Torber’s hand.
“Ya dreg, I knew it was bad y’was home middle the day! What happened!”
“Ain’t nothin’, man. I’ll manage.”
“Nothin’ my ass. Lemme see.”
Torber hesitated, but held it up with a sorry look on his face.
“I was tryin’ t’find a bandage or somethin’ t’wrap it.”
“Gotta better idea. Do one better. ...Slag f’that don’t look broken.”
“I ain’t goin’ t’the Clinic, Gale.”
Galen’s internal speculations halted, whether his brother’s injury had been the byproduct of a negotiator fistfight, and his face tightened at the mere mention.
“Ain’t nobody goin’ back to the Clinic.”
Tone alone put the hairs on Torber’s neck on end; he knew better than to ask for clarification.
“What’s y’bright idea then?”
The metahuman discarded his chance to get out of the house and started digging in the still open drawer of the nightstand. He held up a tee-shirt.
“This one ok?”
“I don’t-- yeah, that’s fine.”
Torber watched passively as Galen helped him clean and wrap his dominant hand. Then Galen’s gloves came off and he wrapped his hands around Torber’s wrist. The pained concentration in Galen’s face left the elder brother speechlessly questioning what was wrong.
“Gotta work up a sweat,” Galen replied, reading Torber’s slack face. “Gonna make y’a cast.”
It didn’t take long before the metahuman managed to coax the stimulus to sweat, his forehead shining in a brassy high contrast to his pallor as liquid metal began to pour from his palms and saturate the torn fabric. The finesse with which Galen worked reminded Torber of someone sculpting very soft clay: Galen coated his wrist, hand, and index, middle, and ring fingers, but did so with an open, skeletal structure which allowed the skin to breathe. He stopped after he’d applied a solid layer, not more than a third of a centimeter, then held the arm out for it to dry. At first, the sensation had been cold, and now as it hardened Torber’s skin felt clammy. He shoved down the compulsion to comment on the sulfurous smell of the moisture evaporating from the layer of metal. As it dried, the metal took on a turquoise and white crust patina with sharp contrast flecks of a golden yellow.
Galen licked his hand clean, trying to compartmentalize the effect lapping up even those small smears of metal was having, to prevent himself from getting worked up over it; the thought process produced a detached demeanor to the instruction he gave next.
“Give it a couple more minutes t’set up nice, an’ we can wrap the other half of the shirt around it so it don’t look as weird.”
Torber turned his arm this way and that best he could, gawking admiringly at the makeshift cast as he adjusted his knit cap with his free hand.
“Dude I can see your fingerprints in it. This is so. Wow.”
“I didn’t figure I needed t’really smooth it out much.”
“--This’s copper, ain’t it.”
Galen choked up and withdrew from him, flushing deep blue in the face.
“I, I, I had t’leave mostuvit in the alley after, but. I. I. Yeah.”
Trying to diffuse the stupid question, Torber pulled him into a hug.
“Hey now, I don’t mean nothin’ by it. This is so chouay. Thanks.”
“I, I hope it helps.”
“It already feels a ton better, man.”
Galen looked up at the alarm clock in the bedroom, and reached into his pockets to retrieve his gloves with a resignation.
“It’s, like, not even fifteen minutes ‘til they get back from s, s, school.”
A long silence followed.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Gale, but I really don’t think y’should just be sittin’ here when they get here.”
“I’ll lea--”
“No, no, no.” Torber held onto him tighter to prevent him from squirming away. “I mean, I think I should talk to ‘em first. Give ‘em a little... context. The way y’came t’me, I figure it’d... Well, I don’t know how I’d set up some forewarnin’ or nothin’, but maybe not catch ‘em totally off guard any rate.”
“I, I, I, --I was real lost that night,” he apologized, swallowing hard at the reminder of how badly he’d screwed up the night he’d approached Torber. “Ss, still lost. Less, s lost now, but, s, still.”
“Bro, if I was still upset about it, y’think I’d a kept comin’ back t’see ya?” Torber laughed genuinely at his own pun: “Don’t sweat it.”
“That was bad.”
“Gotta smile outta ya, though.” He took Galen by the shoulder and started walking to the living room. “I think y’could hide out in the far end of the closet. ‘Til Dad gets home.”
“I, I dunno--”
“Y’can take a nap, maybe,” he continued, opening the left half of the folding accordion door and parting the hanging clothes. “It ain’t too cramped.”
Galen didn’t have any more time to object, panicking as he heard running footsteps bounding up the stairs and down the hall, and he shoved himself down into the corner as fast as possible. Torber practically slammed the door behind him.
Vana pushed the door open, holding it for her brothers as she continued her story.
“--an’ that’s why Jim is a jerk. I’m tellin’ ya, he won’t stop it even if y’tell Ms. Prendergast on him.”
“I’ll punch him for ya,” Orpi offered, tossing his backpack down against the closet door. “Oh, hey Torb. Y’sure are home early.”
“I, ah, yeah. Ha. I was a klutz and hurt my hand.”
“Is it broke?” The other two backpacks joined the pile.
“Nah. Got cut up pretty bad, though.”
“Y’don’t need stitches or nothin’?” Galen could see through the slats of the door that Vana was trying to get Torber to show them his hand, but he wouldn’t let them get very close. “What y’got on it? That’s real hard an’ it smells weird.”
“--I wrapped some yard junk on it. It’s clean, promise.”
“The door’s open.”
“I’m gonna be fine, Ruti.” Though accustomed to the phrase, Torber couldn’t not stare off at the closet door, and ultimately broke off to dig in the right side of the closet in the kids’ toys to diffuse his nerves. “Why don’t y’tell me what all y’did at school today? Vana, what’s your classmate doin’ that the teacher’s ignorin’?”
“She ain’t ignorin’ it. He ignorin’ her. He a jerk, Torber.” She dragged out her cars and loop-tracks, and started building a track while she talked. “He won’t lemme play with my other friends if they playin’ with him. Like, today. He told me he didn’t want a girl playin’ Space Force with ‘em. I wanted t’be Commander Gorsch! Dean an’ Patrick wasn’t bein’ mean about it, but the instant Jim says a word they clam up. An’ it’s always like that.” The sound of a car wreck punctuated her irritation.
“I told ya, I’ll punch ‘im if y’say so,” Orpi repeated, sitting at the folding table by the closet.
“I’ll punch him too,” Ruti seconded, sitting down on the floor next to him.
“Nobody’s punchin’ nobody,” Torber grunted, sitting in the other folding chair opposite Orpi. “Orpi, you especially. A teenager ain’t beatin’ up a slaggin’ eight year old, man. For shame.”
“He bein’ a dreg to my lil’ sis.”
Galen couldn’t handle hearing them all in such close proximity to him, not having heard their voices, seen their faces, in so long. He sank back against the back corner of the closet, as far back as he could, and buried himself in the hanging clothing again, trying to tune it all out while he mentally rehearsed for when he’d eventually reemerge. But, no amount of preparation felt adequate. He’d nearly drifted off, finally letting himself be comforted by the sounds of his family, to hear the front door swing open.
“Daddy!” Ruti ran up and latched onto his leg.
“Hey buddy,” Dolom smiled, patting him on the head and trailing off. “Torber, y’leave y’phone at home or somethin’? Been tryin’ t’raise y’all afternoon.”
“I, no-- Slag, I didn’t even realize y’texted me.” Torber shot up from the couch from where he’d been watching TV with the kids, and walked up to him. “I screwed up my hand earlier. Came home t’take care f’it. An’ there’s... somethin’ else, came up.”
“Are y’ok? I needed y’help with a deal, found a canister of Carbamex I need t’unload. Y’know how bad my nerve is, gettin’ ridda blacklist stuff.”
“--I’ll be fine, Dad. I’ll help ya unload it first thing in the morning. But about that thing that came up... Y’should probably sit down.”
“What? What is it?”
“--I found Galen.”
A long, heavy silence. Suddenly the father understood why Torber had been so severed from reality not to notice his phone getting blown up. Dolom’s head whipped around in concern at the younger ears hearing any more details.
“We can finally put him t’rest, then. ...Y’sure it’s him?”
Torber screwed his face up and threw his hat on the coffee table, starting to pace.
“--No, I found him. Guess it’s more accurate t’say he found me.”
“What! He ok?”
“Told ya he flaked,” Orpi muttered under his breath. Vana punched him in the arm hard. “OW! What’s that for!”
“...Thank you. That, I approve of. Galen had every reason t’flake. He, he was scared. An’ it’s... understandable. He... don’t quite look like himself anymore. --But he’s still Galen. An’ for however scared he is, last thing he’s wanted was t’scare us. I was scared at first, t’be truthful. So yeah. I found him. An’... he’s here.”
“Since when!” Vana cried out, exasperated. “We been home for two hours! Just us here!”
Galen took it as as good a cue as any to open the closet door and scoot forward through the clothes, making certain his hood stayed pulled down as he slumped against the frame of the door. He looked up anxiously to see everybody piled over the back of the couch, staring in shock.
Ruti was the first to unfreeze, running up to Galen and cramming himself up in his lap. Recovering from the near-tackle, he got a death-grip on his youngest brother and gnashed his teeth, sniveling.
“The slag y’doin’ in the closet, twip!!” Orpi roared, doubling over laughing at him. “Y’been in there half a year or somethin’!?”
“Sh’up, twip--” Galen choked out.
“--Galen where y’even been--” Dolom couldn’t hold it back anymore and stood, his approach prompting everyone to pile into the floor around Galen.
Torber stood off from the rest, still struggling with directing conversation. Reunions weren’t exactly something negotiators typically handled. Besides, he’d already had his reunion with Galen, and didn’t want to interfere with theirs.
“EW! Y’need a bath.” Ruti groaned with a fake snarl, playfully pushing him away. The roughhousing knocked his hood back, and suddenly they were all back to staring at him again.
“I--”
“Told y’all it was gonna take some gettin’ used to,” Torber chirped flatly, uncertain how well things were going.
The Uptake, The 704. 1|0|1|-. Book 1, Chapter 2. Go to previous. Go to next. TW: suicidal ideations, needles, smoking, pica-bingeing, abduction. Minor revisions 2019.06.28.
Mostly alone in a stalking yard, Galen huddled in the shadow of a drift heap. All but a few trufflers remained at home to celebrate the holiday, and Galen easily hid from the few he encountered. Too, he appreciated that it had finally warmed above thirty degrees that morning. Sufficiently burrowed up under a sturdy drift, he unceremoniously pulled down his respirator around his neck, and produced his e-cig from the lanyard under his shirt. He depressed the button on the side to take a drag off it, and reflected on his behavior back at the apartment. He despised the total loss of control that had driven him to eat ornaments off the tree like unreal fruit, and unravel an entire string of lights off the tree to swallow it. He could only find solace in the reminder that he managed to get a hold of himself after glutting on the treats in the family’s boots, and that he hadn’t destroyed anyone’s specially-addressed wrapped gifts.
Still, the family could only have construed that kind of aftermath a few ways.
When the texture of the mouthpiece changed, he noticed he’d left the e-cig in his mouth while lost in thought. Removing the device from his mouth, thin melted strings drew off his lips. He squirmed, eyes wide. Out of compulsion he licked at his lips, and scraped off the residue with his front teeth. His nostrils imparted a mused, panicky breath as he ran his tongue over his teeth and stared at the partially disfigured e-cig.
Confused loathing aside, it only crushed him more to see it ruined in such a way. They’d found him naked where the tumbling drums had trapped him. The chemicals had melted away all evidence save his body and the spontaneous entire meters of snow. The device had only survived the accident from the dumb luck that he’d put it in his backpack for safekeeping and tucked the bag someplace hidden, before he’d tried to climb to where he’d fallen from and taken the whole haystack with him. The same with his Walkman, another survivor which his appetite had also dismantled soon after. Still practically brand new, he’d given himself the e-cig as a birthday present the year before. He only used it when he sneaked off alone, as part of a ritualistic attempt to dismantle his anxiety-depression. Even in the moderation Galen practiced, most Quarter folks considered sin taxables like smoking excessively selfish more than anything else.
He noticed that vapors hadn’t intermingled in his previous breath, and paired with what his saliva had wrought of the e-cig itself, he doubted he’d even taken in a fraction of the nicotine intended per inhalation from the now-defective comfort object. Frantic at the perception, he scooped up handful after gloved handful of the drift, and sifted frenetically through everything he put his hands on, to sort out and put in his mouth anything small enough, with little concern for the content or composition. In addition to the variety of small electronics commonplace to the upgrade dumping phase of the winter season, a mixture of characteristic Christmas present wrapping and various smaller toys often endeared as ‘stocking stuffers’ intermingled with the freshest top coat of the drift. Ribbons, plastic action figures, broken technological casing, busted cubes, brain teasers, the works--Galen shoved it all into his mouth, without the mind to linger on what he ingested, let alone chew it.
The longer he let his compulsions run unabated, the less he believed solely that anxiety, or the hunger independent of it, fueled the frenzy. Whatever perpetuated the snowballing desperation could not find what it sought in this drift. In trying to pinpoint his exact craving, he personified the hunger, distanced himself from it. It wasn’t him, craving these things. It was his stomach. Its hunger. He’d broken something inside himself, and his hunger sought to right it. But, it was all so wrong. How could bingeing solve anything? Locked in half-lucid terror, he could not process his fears--only power through the motions. He at least had the trifling forethought to tuck the e-cig lanyard back under his shirt so it didn’t get lost, before going straight into the side of the crumbling drift to eat with his face.
Nothing quieted the cavernous hunger. Trenchant and pathetic, the echoes deafened, only driving the decibels inside his head to implacability. Eventually he laid a hand on a box that halted him. Slowly, shakily, he pulled it up close to his face so he could inspect it with the half-light of the shaded cave he’d tunneled into the drift. Somehow, finding a chemistry set in the stalking yards felt ironic, nearly quaint. Opening it revealed only two vials missing. He tilted the box this way and that, watching in a dull hypnotism as the liquids and bottled powders shifted. It didn’t take long before he unscrewed the lids from each specimen and downed their contents like shots. With every addition, the aggression of the fumes and froth in his throat intensified and the flavors in his throat changed; and, unhindered despite this, he almost continued right back to eating the drift. He downed the the bottles, implements, samples of metal shavings, and any packaging that would fit in his mouth... and then the tightness in his throat throttled him to a halt.
This was it, wasn’t it. He hadn’t wanted to be right. Just as his appetites had found the technological survivors of the accident and done them in all the same, these compulsions sought to finish what the chemicals had started. Soon his throat closed up on him, and he clutched at his rapidly swelling neck. In total opposition to a survival instinct, he kicked himself further back into the drift as to cave it in on himself. No one could see him like this. Shoving his shoulders hard into what lay piled up behind him collapsed the whole thing. Somehow the total darkness calmed him, the claustrophobia familiar. The top layer of the drift still did not crush him, in the merit of not having packed down densely atop him. The cave-in had left an (un)fortunate air pocket of sorts.
Everything shrank, constricted. He couldn’t tell how much of the moisture on his face was tears or leakage from the strata of garbage he’d so recklessly disturbed. Something in that chemistry set reacted with his body, in that set explicitly, not anything he’d indiscriminately eaten prior, was still reacting. He knew it. Soon he could hear his clothing succumbing to the swelling, and he thanked being spared the sight of such a thing by the grace of absence of the light by which to see it. But in what state would they find his body? His head rang, and ultimately he could feel little else save resignation, tormented by the tactile imagery of the bulging masses swelling up all over his neck and armpits. Relief of finality washed over him as he let himself slip unconscious.
He next noticed how the moisture clung to him. Dark. Humid. Heavy. Sulfurous. His head swam so thick he couldn’t get his bearings to even guarantee his spatial relationship with gravity. Reaching out he met resistance, and closing his hand around the solid, crinkly darkness, he understood stalking yard debris surrounded him. Was he dead? After his recollection of what he’d done, he couldn’t fathom any other explanation. Surely, it couldn’t be anything short of half-right. He picked a direction and burrowed, so the drift might eventually surrender him. When he breached the layers of garbage, the contrast of light physically pained him, and he scooted himself back in his self-made tunnel a ways so his eyes might adjust.
No, he wasn’t dead. He strained to understand what had taken place. He vividly recalled the choking and tightness, as his gloved hand absently traced his jawline down to his collarbones and sternum. He looked down when his fingers tangled in a large hole in the fabric of his shirt. Inspecting the tattered shirt he found the collar and armpits of his jacket had also been rent apart.
He did his best not to linger on the recollection of that swelling sensation.
Galen mustered the will to disinter himself in full; and, though a few stalkers in the yard noticed him, they did not get involved since he did not appear injured or unsteady. Had he been aware of them, he would have appreciated their indifference from involvement. His hoary hair clung to his face, and his breath shrank from the cold, producing no fog. He probably smelled worse than he looked, he thought. He let out a weak laugh.
Ambling out of the yard and starting down the street, the wind caught the moisture of his clothing and he could feel every hole the binge had torn, down to the leg portion of one of his calf-high utility boots and a good length of one side of his inseam. Somehow, the cold itself didn’t really bother him, despite it being ten degrees Fahrenheit at best. He only really noticed that it was cold, more upset at feeling exposed. Though he very much disliked the thought of how much replacing the clothing would cost, a much greater distress plagued him.
The compulsion to eat no longer especially nettled him. Things around him looked and smelled appetizing, but the impulse to pursue them was now near-absent. He wondered if this were some affirmation he truly was dead. Either the urges of self-preservation had ceased, or the urges of self-destruction had succeeded. He embraced the notion of a disembodied state when passersby ignored him altogether despite his dishevelment. The heaviness, thickness, enervation kept his head from belonging to him, even less so than before he’d buried himself in the yard drift. Nothing had been right since his accident, but for as much as he’d inured himself to the weight of an impending void upon his shoulders, this felt different. The tension had been cut. How long had he lain unconscious in the drift? The memories of what had just transpired escalated his terror enough to spur him in one specific direction.
But, if Galen showed up empty-handed, they’d turn him away unseen. He, like many stalkers, was loathe to deal with the Clinic, but what other option did he have? Whatever chemicals had drowned him had to have been verbot, evenmoreso than his act of trespassing into the dump site where they’d been left to rot. And who could know such things better than the Good Doctor?
To his recollection, he had only visited Bell a couple of times in his whole life, but he did know the common asking price for an exam: Kloranamine. He approached the first negotiator he encountered on the streets, and a quick but hesitant exchange of the tobacco cartridge from his now-useless e-cig landed a jar of the stuff in his hands. From there he simply had to get from the North end of Margate Street to ascend to Level 3 by high-volume lift. The last of his cred paid for a ten minute transit by bus to Level 5. He fidgeted absently with the then-empty card, and by the time he stepped off the bus he had swallowed it without noticing.
City limits began at Level 5, an even more stark contrast than the residential and commercial areas of the Level 1. Like the thirteenth floor on an elevator, Level 4 remained chiefly support architecture for everything that came above it; no high-volume lifts traveled between Levels 3 and 5. Tri-City’s denizens considered anything beneath this particular expansive concrete foundation a no-man’s land, a ceiling which sealed the Quarter in the South end away from the rest of the city. The neon veins of the thriving city pulsed even in the daylight, the shadows of the city above him requisite of a composite of halogen and Wolfram glow. The residential and commercial districts of the Quarter felt holographic by comparison. Too deep in the bowels of the metropolis for the concrete buildings to receive the solar excitation the postbrutalist architecture required to power its illumination, buildings within city limits instead retained their charge solely from the advertisements which flickered across their surfaces. Galen never could get used to the traffic up here, the handful of times he’d been up top. Vehicles only moved in the Quarter before daybreak, for dumping purposes; no stalker was a stranger to travel on foot or by bicycle. But the city crowded with all manner of cars, trucks, and buses, both by tread and by air.
Galen got vertigo just looking up into the city, especially within city limits. There was just... too much of it. Too much city. Too much... everything. In his school years he’d been told the skyscrapers of Tri-City--the fusion of Jersey City, Newark, and Elizabeth--reached beyond the mile-high point, but he reeled at the mere thought of it. Why not build outward? Why constantly build upward, on top of itself? Every few hundred vertical feet lay yet another foundation upon which a new level was erected. The stalker could only ever in his life feel like the Quarter was the city’s scar, and no amount of scabbing would seal it off out of the city’s mind for good.
Galen’s Quarter was enormous, sprawling, by comparison to many. Worse than the municipal landfills of the Twentieth Century, it came as no surprise that the entire metropolitan population would rather forget the Quarter even existed. Most fusion cities around the world had their own quarters, e-cycling hubs powered by stalkers with nerve enough to brave dealing with hazardous wastes on a daily basis. But, Tri-City’s was something special. It was The Quarter. Tri-City sat on a state line, and received e-waste from most of New Jersey, and also New York City across the Hudson. And with that many players contributing to the pot, there came the guarantee the namesake professional stalker could find just about anything that didn’t belong in a haystack of illicitly dumped wastes, even if a body wasn’t even trying.
The All’s Well Clinic resided on an acute corner, a stern, dull, and unwelcoming three-story façade. Galen entered without pause. He stood stony at the receptionist’s window and waited for the girl to acknowledge him. The Clinic saw all manner of Quarter misfortunes, but when the thirty-some lady finally picked her head of tight curls up from the program on the small Web screen at the corner of her desk, and caught the look in that wretched face, she very well could have seen a ghost.
“--I, what are you--”
He set the jar on the counter and pointed at the lock on the sliding glass. A gravelly, cracking tone belied his resolve, and he winced into his stutter.
“I’m here t’see Bell. It, it-- it can’t wait.”
The window slid open and she took the Kloranamine from the sickly stalker, then quickly shut it again.
“He doin’ surgery right now, but ain’t nobody else waitin’ after he’s done.”
“How long.”
“Dunno.”
“Find out. An’ tell. T, t, t, t--” His jaw tightened in exasperation, eyes distant and unblinking. “T, tell him he gotta dead man walkin’. Nn, no jokes.”
She darted down the hallway at that. Moments later the electronic lock on the waiting room door chirped, and uneasy she emerged to escort him back to an exam room on the third floor. He took to the exam table as she closed the door behind them.
“--He finishin’ up, but I’m gonna get y’vitals down. What happened?”
“Died a week or two ago.”
She started to type it into her tablet-reader, but stopped short.
“Why didn’t y’come in then,” she snapped. His apparent derangement unsettled her.
“I did. Bell said I was just... upset. Things’ve got much worse since.”
“...I see.” She reached for the thermometer on the wall behind him, but he simply stared at her and didn’t move to make it easier for her. “Well?”
“You’d rather I didn’t.” He screwed up his face and grunted, unable to finger a coherent explanation. “What day y’say it was.”
“20th.”
His face slacked, slow to accept it.
“...Of January. Please say just January.”
“January, yeah. Y’said real certain of y’self two weeks, but y’wasn’t sure what day it is?”
“...I-- Two weeks,” he uttered, crazy-eyed. “Y’not slaggin’ with me here.”
“What day y’think it was.”
The Clinic didn’t pay her enough to put up with this interrupting her Web program.
“Seventh at most. --’Piphany already--” The longer the conversation went on, the more it pained him.
“Yeah...”
As she annotated his ranting as an acute memory blackout, and also his refusal to her taking diagnostics, a knock came at the door. A head of short, peppered chestnut brown hair peeked in. The Laotian doctor entered soon after, his aged heart-shaped face drawing slightly agape at recognizing the patient.
“You look like you’ve certainly felt better,” Bell remarked as he let himself in.
“He’s real upset, Sir. Trust you’ll have better luck with him’n me.”
She handed off the reader and excluded herself from anything further, to return to her Web drama.
After he closed the door again behind her, Bell took to the stool opposite Galen.
“Salammonica told me you feel like death.”
“I-- Where do I even start? I just lost the last two weeks. Don’t, don’t feel dead. I am dead.”
“I see.” Bell’s eyes narrowed to suppress sarcasm, and he moved to skim Salammonica’s notes on the reader. “You wouldn’t let her get your temperature and blood pressure?”
“N, nn, not so much won’t than can’t.”
After a pause, Bell retrieved the thermometer where the technician had failed, and he looked at Galen sternly.
“I can’t help you if you continue being so cryptic, Galen. Please tell me what you’ve been going through since I last saw you. Be specific. Detailed.”
Galen shifted uncomfortably, words difficult even when not pressured. Ultimately, the implement in the doctor’s hand jogged his tongue.
“For starters? You’d gotta get a new thermometer if y’used it.” He fished the empty e-cig out from under his ripped shirt, and slipped off the lanyard to hold the thing out for the doctor to inspect. “Look what my spit does t’plastic now, Doc.”
Bell took the cigarette from him and turned it in his hand, straining to grasp how mere saliva had so warped the plastic mouthpiece.
“Your saliva did this.”
“An’ that’s just the most recent part. That ain’t even the weird stuff. I... I been eatin’... things. Things ain’t food.”
“Here.” Genuinely intrigued, Bell poised the thermometer for oral use. “Show me. I want to get your temperature, but I’m more interested in seeing the rate at which you’re implying this melting effect occurs.”
“Suit y’self.”
The thermometer produced a warped beeping sound in under a minute. As the doctor removed it, slow strings of plastic drew from Galen’s lips. The metal cap and latex probe cover had melted away completely, and the silicate components sluiced from the missing last third of the device. A black crust tinged the edges of what remained of the probe cover. As Bell stared at what used to be a thermometer, awed, Galen chewed at his bottom lip at length. His appetite hadn’t left for long.
“Ss, ssseein’ as I wrecked it, an’ it’s useless now, can I--”
“How aren’t you dead by now?”
The question came out less pointedly than it had been in Bell’s head. He doubted only briefly whether to hand over the junk, only reluctant in disbelief, and let Galen have it as further demonstration.
“Things that aren’t food. You’ve been ingesting plastic?”
Galen hesitated with the junk in hand, reminded of how it had gone last time to eat these kinds of things in front of another person. Anxiety and compulsion crawled along his back. Before he even had a conscious thought to follow through with eating it, he noticed he’d already long since done so, and fell distant with a hard swallow.
“Stomach acid’s stronger’n the spit. Eaten bigger. Eaten sharper. Drank worse. Don’t know what’s happenin’ t’me. ...Regular food makes me sick now...”
“And you believe your accident is the cause of it?”
“...Words in my mouth, maybe, but yeah. I didn’t mention it before, c--‘cause I was scared. Am scared. But... I don’t think those drums were empty.”
Bell didn’t like the sound of this whatsoever.
“What makes you think that? From the eyewitnesses, and the people who pulled you out, the lot was dry as a bone.”
“I... I dunno--”
“--Here, let me try the infrared thermometer.” Bell retrieved it from another room in the hallway and returned with it. He quickly waved it over Galen’s forehead and squinted, incredulous, at the results. “Twelve and a half--?” He dismissed the device and put a bare back hand to Galen’s cheeks and forehead only to shake his head in concern. Galen had been indoors a good half hour by then. “Do you feel cold?”
“...Not ‘specially, no.”
Galen didn’t understand what the number meant, but knew from the doctor’s confusion that it meant something was in fact genuinely wrong. Bell took his blood pressure as well, but didn’t even seem to write it down despite getting meticulous with annotating something on the reader. The doctor rose from where he had leaned on the counter, and moved to exit the room.
“Bear with me a moment. I need to go get something.”
Left alone in the exam room with just the thoughts in his head, Galen soon skimmed for food. Too preoccupied combing all the drawers and cabinets for anything made of glass, plastic, or metal, anything small enough to swallow, he did not notice the doctor had been gone over twenty minutes. By the time Bell returned, the patient had ingested nearly everything from the entire case of disposable aural speculum covers to the bottle of iodine.
Bell caught him completely unaware upon return, and he did not return alone. Before Galen could process it, a pair of firm hands took hold of him from behind and a needle gun went to his neck.
Book I: The 704
Book II: The world was beginning to fluoresce into wounds.
Book III: With Symbiotic Self-Indulgence
Book IV: The Sarpashana Solution
[[[[[ Chapter list updated 2019.06.28. Taking a revision pass. ]]]]]
In 2050, slums termed stalkers’ quarters locally commodify e-waste; but, not only obsolete technology gets dumped at ground level in skyward-sweeping metro-cities. Galen Miner, a stalker in Tri-City, New Jersey, suffers an accident in a toxic waste dumping site the day after Christmas, only for increasingly bizarre developments to transpire. (Pica warning on just about every single chapter.)
The 704, 1|0|0|- (Revised 2019.06.28; 5123 words)
As Epiphany approaches, Galen tries to go about family life as normal. Dr. Bell insisted the sequelae of Galen’s accident wholly stem from PTSD, but Galen isn’t so sure.
TW: graphic illness, including emetophobia
The 704, 1|0|1|- (Revised 2019.06.28; 3697 words)
To a breaking point, Galen’s increasingly convinced he didn’t survive the accident.
TW: suicidal ideation, bingeing, needles mention, abduction
The 704, 2|2|3|W (Revised 2019.06.28; 5253 words)
When medical professionals come up empty handed in attempts to help him, Galen is handed off to the care of a pair of industrial chemists.
TW: forcefeeding, emetophobia, medical diagnostics, needles, abusive dynamic
The 704, 3|0|0|OX (Revised 2018.08.10; 4323 words)
Torber is desperate to determine what became of Galen.
TW: stages of loss of a close family member, robotic gore technically?
The 704, 3|2|3|W (WIP added 2018.11.25)
The chemists of Fulton Catalytics continue testing Galen’s limitations.
(Future) TW: human experimentation, hard emetophobia, gore, body horror, psychological and physical abuse
The 704, 2|1|1|RAD (Added 2018.12.13; 2464 words)
Galen eats something that disagrees with him.
TW: body horror
The 704, 1|1|1|- (TBA)
Nothing’s making sense for Galen, but he tries to make do.
TW: suicidal ideation, hard substance abuse attempts
The 704, 3|0|0|- (Revised 2018.01.14; 5337 words)
Torber receives a cryptic message.
TW: incest, necrophilia, body horror
The 704, 0|0|0|- (Revised 2016.04.27; 4270 words)
Torber makes a return visit to prove he’s not scared.
TW: NSFW, necrophilic incest, emetophobia
The 704, 0|1|0|- (Revised 2016.08.21; 5122 words)
Chess pieces and half a ton of copper pipe.
TW: NSFW, necrophilic incest, emetophobia mention, dysmorphia
The 704, 2|0|0|- (Revised 2018.01.27; 8663 words)
Galen tries to prove that he can make family life work.
TW: limb injury, gun
The 704, 3|0|1|- (WIP; Revised 2018.01.11; 2410 words)
Galen gets lost in the Journal-Holland access tunnels; Torber, and the family, falls apart; some college kids do a little urbex, but find Galen instead.
TW: body horror, suicidal ideation, hard dissociation; character death, necrophilic ideation; ???
The 704, 4|1|1|CRYO (Drafted)
Saurer shows Blausen Fulton’s favorite pet.
TW: physical and psychological abuse, permanent character disfigurement, assault, we just don’t know
The 704, 2|0|1|BIO (Drafted)
Fulton and the EPA assess what use Galen is to industry.
TW: human experimentation, dehumanization
The 704, 0|1|1|OX (Revised 2017.01.25; 3774 words)
The week before Galen starts his job, he tries to reconnect.
TW: NSFW, incest, emetophobia, dysmorphia, gore, body horror
The 704, 2|0|0|MET (TBA)
Galen’s first day of work.
TW: psychological snap
