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A little doodle that I started to write in study hall. Originally it was going to be a flash fiction, but I figured out a place it would fit nicely into for another story I'm planning, based on the Genesis album of the title of thread. I'll have two other parts up shortly (hopefully) to conclude what will be the first written chapter of Zephyr. So... yep yep.

Darkness…

The first thing he felt was a cold shot to his left temple. It was cool, refreshing for a second, then it was gone. He tried to cry out for it to come back, to stay awhile longer, but found he couldn’t. His whole body was numb, nonexistent. Gone.

He tried to think, but his head was scrambled. One word was all he could grasp from the torpid current of unsaid thought: Cliché. But he couldn’t process this; his mind was weak, melted like soluble sugar crystals.

Another cold shock, to the right this time.

There was a vibration from within, and he knew he had cried out that time. Still, no comprehensible thoughts could be processed. His mind was chaos, but what of his body?

His own physical being was unfamiliar. He felt weary, as if he had been beaten or raped. Where was he, and why couldn’t he see?

Next came the heat.

Feeling snapped back on, starting in his feet and hands. Or, to be more precise, his toes and fingers. The tips of his existence, he thought suddenly. Then he knew why he kept thinking cliché. He had seen this before, in books, movies, maybe even a song or two. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man stood out the best.

He had been in a coma; that was it. That must have been it. And the hospital was bringing him back. But why was he in a coma? He waited for more feeling to come on.

There was another vibration, from… from without this time. The outside. Another voice, he realized. It ran through his fingers, slowly growing as his nerves began to respond, and then there was the visual image of rust being shaken off metal gears. He was like a machine, coming back online.

Was it a car accident? Perhaps he had been shot? Another book came to mind: Johnny Got His Gun, by the writer with the funny name. Dalton Trumbo. He remembered that the main character of the book had been blown away by a grenade in World War One, and laid awake but without arms legs eyes ears or a nose to sense with. The thought of this scared

(Name, name, what the heck is my name?)

him, and he twitched his digits in relief. The warmth had spread all the way through his hands, and was making its way to his elbow.

Then there was another sensation, coming from somewhere between his ankles. Something wasn’t right. The heat flickered in his stomach, and he had a sudden feeling of sickness, as if he would throw up. The alien heat between his ankles, which felt odd and unfamiliar themselves, began to travel rapidly up between his legs, until another heat that was spreading through his spine reached it and they connected.

It was a tail.



(Wow... those are some short paragraphs.)