byCarmine

With my hideous coat under one arm, I turned about on my heel and picked the nearest passage and started to walk hastily towards it. I would say that it was the East, or the West or the like, but to be honest, I had long since lost track of which direction was what. And I’m not one of those people with an innate sense of direction. I kind of expected him to grab my arm, or protest. But he didn’t and I stormed off.

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“You know, you weigh a bloody ton.”

“It’s all coat. Though… feel free to put me down and STOP with the kidnapping.”

To my surprise, he obliged. Immediately. Dumping me on the floor of the maze of sewers we had entered some half hour ago like the sack of potatoes he had carried me as. I mentally considered my options as I looked down the passage we had turned into and tried to see if my memory was good enough to see me back to the entrance. It wasn’t. So I stayed put.

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A small smirk pulled at his thin lips, obviously amused at my flustered state.
“Where’s Jarek?”
“Not here.” Even I was surprised at my bluntness and curt tone.
“I can bloody see that darlin’. Where is he?”
“If you were meant to know that, he’d of told you.”
My words were met with an angry glare, and after a few seconds of looking into those smouldering dark depths I was almost ready to give in. Thankfully though, he spoke again before I did.
“Here’s how it usually works. I speak. People do what I say. Does your tiny little brain comprehend?”

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PS. Comments there would make my posts a lot less lonely ;p

So that people can more readily tell when what writing is the story and what writing bits are ‘real life’, I’ve created another blog. Hopefully now, people won’t be thinking I was in a coma

The new story blog is here: http://bycarmine.com/story/.

Enjoy! And please leave comments. I’m curious to know what you think.

I’ll post here with a link each time I do an update. I’m working on one now which should be up later tonight.

For the last year, since my 18th birthday, I had been working in a book store, simply unimaginatively named “Books”. Not one of the many chain-stores that have sprouted up all over Seahaven, but a small independent shop run by a friendly Tir couple, Liella and Jarek.

The fact that they were Tir did not put me off, I’m very pro-Tir. They’re a fun-loving people, and since their re-introduction to society a decade ago, I’ve been ever curious about these beings that everyone believed extinct for nigh on three centuries. How could they just so completely disappear and reappear again? Where did they go? Did the Skrel’eth and the other mythical races go with them? Why did they not return too?

Not everyone shared my sentiments about Tir, and in truth, very few left the reservation set up for them. Well, the term reservation is perhaps an overstatement. They were outcast to the Eastern wilderness, beyond the borders of Milford shortly after their return. We humans have never been the most accepting of species and since we became the only sentient race on Heas, we have only gotten worse.

Tir did not look quite the same as we did. Their most distinguishable feature was their elongated ears that extended up to just above the tops of their head. Ears that frequently flit from front to back. Ever twitching. Quivering and I found it impossible not to watch. Like Elves from the myths-of-old.

Liella and Jarek weren’t married. Tir do not normally believe in such commitments, but prefer a much more… free erm… loving way of life. Often involved with several people at the same time. Males, females. It didn’t really seem to matter to them. But despite that, for as long as I had been working at Books, there had only been the two of them. But despite my curiosity, I’ve never quite found the courage to ask them, ‘what’s up with that?’

Standing in front of my aunt’s floor length mirror (my own room was devoid of one), I surveyed my appearance.  Hair … red. There really is no other word for the color. Just… red. Straight to just past shoulders with a blunt fringe across my brow. I wore it loose in an attempt to conceal a scar that crossed the base of my throat. Three inches long and obvious to me even against the paleness of my winter skin.

I grabbed a grey woolen scarf and wrapped it loosely about my neck, before flicking ends back over my shoulders. There, no one could see evidence of that stupidity. But still, I always know that it’s there.

Really, it is quite embarrassing. I wish I had a more interesting story to tell people when they inevitably asked me how I got it. Rather than that I had been gone for a bit of a bush walk and faced with a barbed wire fence, between me and the forest I wanted to explore, decided to climb it. Of course, my foot slips. As it always does, and next thing you know I have blood all over me and a rather nasty gash at the base of my throat.

Luckily, my idiocy was not without an audience and a local farmer heard my scream and got me bandaged up.  I survived it and the evidence of it was hidden from my mirrored view beneath scarf and hair.

The rest of my body was similarly hidden from view beneath a thick shapeless woollen coat. It was a horrid brown. Not a nice warm russet brown. Not a beautiful pale fawn. But a sort of mottled brown that looked like something degad. It isn’t that I didn’t want to dress nicely, but with money as tight as it is, it was a choice of wearing hand-me-down clothes from my aunt (who is twice my size) or give up my studies and work full time.

So. Ugly shoes. Check. Over sized coat. Check. Ragged scarf. Check. Bag… on table downstairs. Ready to go.

What they say about comas, it’s not true.

Read an encyclopedia and it’ll tell you that it is a state of unconsciousness from which you cannot be roused. Well, the last part is right, there’s very little that can be done to awaken someone once they’re out to it.

But I can assure you, that I was entirely conscious for the six and a half weeks that I was comatose. It is not an experience I will soon forget and it was an experience that would change my life.

And like the phoenix rising from the ashes, I opened my eyes; reborn. But not just me, the world arournd me too. But I get a head of myself.

The moment my lashes raised, I immediately sensed something was wrong. Correction. I KNEW something was wrong. At first just a feeling, but soon, as I gathered my wits and took in my surroundings it was confirmed. I was in trouble. And whilst for me, this isn’t entirely unusual (I was forever stumbling over my two left feet or saying things before I had started up my brain), this was different.

Where one would expect to awake from a coma to find a hospital bed beneath them, with an over-hard mattress, starched sheets and that distinctive smell of antiseptic. There was not. Instead something way to luxurious and soft to be found in any but the most expensive of hospitals and I know I’m not made of money. What little money I got from working part-time in the local bookstore (just barely) enabled me to make ends meet whilst studying. But the job had some rather nice perks, with my love for books, a twenty percent discount was nothing to be scoffed at.

Certainly it was not enough to afford … silk?! sheets? A deep red. Like blood. Blood. Not something I really wanted to think about. There was more than enough blood right before this whole coma thing started. And that, right now, I wanted to forget.

I’ve always been a bit suspicious. Paranoid, maybe. And I just knew this wasn’t good. Parting the delicate ivory lace curtain that surrounded the four-poster bed, revealed more opulance of the antique kind that only comes to those with a few thousand to spare. Thousands. Millions. For me, just having a spare twenty in my pocket made me feel rich. Anything more than that was beyond my comprehension.

Still, there was a nagging feeling at the back of my head telling me to get out of there. The need to run was foremost in my mind as I lept from the bed intending to get out of this all-too-rich place. Through the window if necessary. Ideally without breaking any bones. Did I mention that I’m not good with blood?

My legs, however, had a different idea. Not yet having found the capacity to stand, they crumbled beneath me to leave me sprawling on the way-too-soft sheep skin rug.

Naked. That can’t be good.