The Barrens (NaNoWriMo Day 7)

sofer (53)in #writing • 7 years ago

Previous days can be found here:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 6.5

Day 7 Word Count: 909
Total Word Count: 10,988
Goal: 50,000
Remaining: 39,012

Rasul stood up. He felt shaky on his legs, but the pain from his crash was draining away. He checked himself all over, and found that all of his bruises and cuts were healing.

What the fuck is happening.

The rain was beginning to lessen, and he caught a glimpse of the moon behind some clearing clouds. He looked around himself to get his bearings. The reservoir was behind him, and beyond that he could see the silhouette of his apartment building, dotted with lights from windows. He had made it to the other side of the reservoir, ringed with factories and buildings. To the east, he could see the city stretching towards the other districts. To the west, he realized he was closer to the edge of Avalon than he had ever been. Its outer dome limited the size of the city, but the illusion that created their false sky also created false horizons, and it looked as though there was countryside stretching out for miles, though Rasul knew that he was staring at a solid wall.

This area of the Forges was shut down. There had been an accident years before, with rumors of aether leaks and radiation from the element engine that sat below the reservoir. The building should be empty. There was a small raised area with a door in the middle of the roof, and Rasul opened it and went inside. The stairs led down to another door, and he opened it to find a hallway.

The hallway was straight and long. His eyes focused to the darkness, and he was able to see an open door at the end with a stairway leading down. There were doors along the side of the hallway, five on each side. Rasul walked slowly, carefully checking each door. Each one led to an abandoned office. The building was silent, except for an occasional clap of thunder and the constant drone of the rain.

I was flying.

It didn’t make any sense. Even saying the words in his head seemed absurd. He still wasn’t convinced that he hadn’t died, and that he wasn’t in some purgatory waiting for the beginning of his afterlife. But what other option could there be? He had fallen. He had stopped falling. Through little more than sheer willpower, he had thrown himself through the air, over the reservoir, and to the top of the silo offices. His wounds had healed. He could see remarkably well. Had he always been able to do these things?

Rasul sat down in one of the offices near the stairs to the roof. There were four desks crammed into the room. They looked almost the same as the offices in his foundry. He weighed his options.

The three men from the church would be looking for a body. With the darkness and the storm, he doubted that they would have seen him unnaturally careening through the air. Either way, they would be searching for him. He knew that it had to have something to do with the seizures. Presumably, they wanted to strap him to more machines and do more tests. Whatever they wanted, it was serious enough that they had no qualms about murdering Isaac.

Isaac.

The image of his friend lying on the floor, a hole burned into the side of his face, rushed back to him. He felt nauseous again, but the sickness was soon pushed aside by rage. If he had just gone to his apartment, he’d have been fine, Rasul thought. But then I’d probably be in church custody. That’s still better than this.

Rasul looked at his hands. The cuts from the glass were completely gone, and the blood was washed away by the rain. The weight of the night’s events felt crushing. The church would find no body, and they would start looking for him. He had few allies in Avalon, and few places to hide. This area was completely blocked off on the ground, so they would have no reason to suspect he was hiding in the silo.

He stood and walked to the stairway at the end of the hall. The stairwell was dark and empty, opening out to a small room with an elevator and stairs leading down. The door had no lock, but Rasul closed it. He grabbed a desk from one of the offices and pulled it, as if it weighed nothing, out into the hallway. He wedged it up against the doorknob. This was the only way into this level, except for the roof. He dragged another desk out and wedged it against the door leading to the roof. This would have to do until he figured something else out.

Rasul returned to the office. Rain pounded against the windows. The building was cold, and there were some jackets and a hoodie on a coat rack near the office door. As he scanned the room, he noticed that the whole place looked as if it had been abandoned suddenly. The desks were messy with papers and molded cups of coffee. He grabbed the jackets and made a makeshift bed on the floor, underneath one of the desks. As he closed his eyes, his mind replayed the images of the evening. Isaac’s body, the ground rushing up, the reservoir beneath him, the gash on his leg closing up and healing.

He squeezed his eyes closed as tightly as he could and let the exhaustion take him.

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