Surprisingly, the longer it takes to shake off the Veil’s effect, the more it says about the person. Show’s they’re stubborn, strong willed. Their mind isn’t willing to just accept the easiest answer to what happened. The more you know, huh?
I didn’t have long to watch this go on. I was sort of in the process of dying. Distractions, distractions.
Max had done his best to help me to our hovel in the corner. My body was in worse shape than I had expected, it wanting to shut down a few minutes after the attack.
Max dumped me on the moldy mattress where all the magic happens (Ladies… hint, hint) and went to work shredding the remains of my shirt off my back. The low whistle he gave wasn’t a sign he appreciated my good looks- The damage must have been bad.
I felt my eyes close as my body grew heavy, my lids feeling as if they were… well… made of hardened clay. My tongue felt clammy in my mouth. All of me just wanted to find a nice spot of dirt to lay down and fall apart into. It seemed like a nice thought at the time.
I vaguely recall hearing Max peeling back the floorboards. He let out a grunt as he hauled something up to the surface. I heard the pop of the lid, the rustle of saran-wrap, smelt the whiff of freshness, and felt my body shiver with anticipation.
Bliss. As soon as the clay touched my skin, I felt bliss. Like a part of me had finally been found, claimed, and indoctrinated. Sort of like finding a missing son or daughter after years of searching. Clay had that effect on me- I was a junkie for it.
Plaster could close a hole in me and allow my body to heal on its own with relative ease. Sort of like stitches or a cast for fleshies. However, much like fleshies, sometimes those thins aren’t enough. Sometimes, you need a blood transfusion and a team of doctors.
I had clay and Max to fill in said roles.
I felt the essence of the clay flow through my body like morphine travelling through a vein. It tickled and hurt at the same time. It moved throughout my body. Not the clay, mind you, but the essence of it.
I don’t want to say I let out of moan of ecstacy because that might give someone an idea to turn this into some sort of erotic fanfic involving me, Max, and a bucket of clay while ‘Unchained Melody’ plays in the background, but know the feeling I felt was akin to the best bite of steak you’ve ever had combined with the most sensual massage you’ve ever experienced.
It was a thing that made you happy to be alive.
My mind must have lost itself as the essence healed my body because it took Max slapping me on the back of the head again to get my eyes to snap open. I turned my gaze upwards, staring at him.
“Get up, Stone Hedge,” was all he said before he exited the tent. “People are shittin’ themselves outside.”
I tossed what remained of my torn shirt and replaced it with a t-shirt that told folks I was with stupid. And then I followed dump-truck Yoda outside.
Grid Eight was still in a panic, but it was that silent sort of panic that makes you realize things were bad. They had grouped together near the three old men in their rocking chairs. The three men were as silent as ever, swaying back and forth as if all this ruckus was beneath their notice. Two Gridites (Like what I did there?) stood in front of them, arguing. A man and a woman.
“Damn’it, Steve, I don’t care. I’m going out to search-“ A woman I vaguely recall being called Mary threatened. She was a stout woman, her stomach rivaling Max’s.
“Gloria,” Steve began-
Right- Gloria, I said that.
“We are going to look for the kids. But we should calm down, get our bearings, and come up with a plan,” Steve said as he looked towards the crowd for support. “Most likely, the kids saw us effected by gas and took off to the tunnels to find help-“
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?! You know what sort of dangers lurk in their!” Gloria shot back before just shaking her head. She moved away from Steve, heading towards the exit. “And the lot of us are just standing here doin’ nothing! I’m not going to just wait around until we hear one of them have been hit by a train.”
A kid screamed.
At first, I thought it might have been one of the children taken, screaming as they ran from the shadows where the Snake-Heads vanished. Not the case. I turned my head (Along with everyone else) and found a kid sporting a bloody nose. It was the kid I made the Medusa drop. On his face…
Butter fingers….
The kids parents were holding him close as he scream, his eyes darting around with an awareness that many of these people didn’t have- The kid remembered.
The thing about the Veil is that it relies on an understanding of reality. Sure, a grown up knows that fairies and goblins don’t exist, but a kid doesn’t. It takes years for their ‘switch’ to trigger, usually somewhere along puberty. This allowed for kids to catch glimpses through the Veil, knowing that true dangers do go bump in the night.
“They took them! The snake people!” the kid cried as he held onto his mother. Naturally, kidnapping is a hell of a way to gain a crowds attention. No sooner did he speak those words the crowd was surrounding him, shouting questions.
“Shut up! Shut up of of you!” bellowed Steve as he pushed his wirery frame through the group. It took some energy, but the crowd finally shushed enough for him to concentrate on the kid. He kneeled down, offered the kid a smile that would send Dentists crying, and tried his best ‘buddy-buddy’ tone. “Hey, Little Buddy, what do you mean people took them?"
The kid sniffed, buried his head into his mom’s arm, and decided that he didn’t like being the center of attention. Steve looked around nervously before reaching out to take hold of the kid’s arm.
“Kid- Come on, give us a break here-“
The kid let out a startled cry which brought his father to Steve’s face.
“Get you hands off my son, you bastard!” He growled. He had a good growl- Solid. If I had bowels, something would have shifted.
Steve wasn’t one to back down, though. Kudos to him. He stepped forward, raising a finger to the man’s face. “Listen here, Kyle. Our kids are missing and I don’t want to hear any bullshit-“
"My son don’t need an asshole grabbing his arms after-“
And the argument continued, building. Soon enough, Steve and Kyle were pushing each others, the other occupants of Grid Eight trying to split them up. And just to show me I have the greatest luck in the world, the few second that wasn’t filled with noise was when the kid decided to look at me and ask “Why didn’t you save them too?”
Everyone silenced at this and turned towards me and Max- Actually when I turned my head towards Max, I saw that he had taken a few steps to the side. Right. On my own.
“Listen,” I began as I held up my hands, trying to play the role of good-natured bystander. “ I was out of it like everyone else.”
“Liar!” the kid hollered. It was almost comical how everyone’s head turned in unison to focus on the kid and then back to me. Desperation from the parents of the missing children grew to anger and a few of them took steps towards me.
“Whoa- Hey, guys, settle down. I don’t know the kid’s problem. I was-“
“Where you and Max disappear too after the lights came back on, huh?” Gloria said as she led the pack towards me. Her sausage like fingers coiled into hams of destruction. “I saw you both stumbling into the tent! I paid it no mind until now- What was goin’ on?”
Max seemed to get that his ass was now in the fire and stepped closer to me. Either to defend myself or get behind the ‘muscle’ if this turned badly. He puffed out his chest, trying to match Gloria’s girth like some territorial blowfish. “Hold on there, Gloria! What me and Emmet do in our tent is our own business!”
Well, that sounded awkward.
Max continued.
“The reason we were running into the tent was because Emmet here was pretty banged up! Woke up and found him swaying drunk!”
The eyes returned to me and I offered up the traditional defense of a simple shrug.
“Didn’t seem right in the head,” Max explained as he slapped the back of my scalp. “Like he was drugged. Like we all were drugged. Maybe Emmet didn’t go out like the rest of us? Maybe he can’t remember what he done.”
“He fought the Snake-Men!” The kid exclaimed again. I gave the kid a look that adult could read as “Shut the hell uP” but apparently, the kids reading level wasn’t high enough yet.
“Damn straight, he did! Apparently, who ever took the kids couldn’t get them all. I’d wager Emmet was the reason,” Max said before slapping, this time, on the back. I stood still, look around, trying to read everyone’s expression. Slowly but surely, they all faded from anger and returned to just plain worried.
“Listen- I don’t remember. I woke up with bruised knuckles and a bruise on my back.” I said, taking my cue.
Steve was the first one to bite. A natural leader. “Guys- Emmet’s been good to us in the past. Always sharin’ his good. Come on! We can’t be turning on folks. We gotta think. If the kids were really taken, we have-“
“We need to go to the police,” Someone said.
“We can’t go to the police- When have they ever helped anyone?”
And so the argument began again. I slinked back a few steps with Max.
“Police don’t come down to Grid Eight,” Max mumbled.
I nodded.
“Even if they did, I doubt they’d be equipped to handle the sort of thing that hires Medusas.” I said as I watched the panic spread though the families and friends that I’ve grown to know down here. If I had a heart instead of programming, I’d have felt something, I’m sure.
And yet the only thing I felt was an intense urge to find those kids. To keep them safe. To bring them back. Like a computer opening up a file when an icon was clicked on a desktop.
Programmed morality. And I was destined to follow it.
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