A continuation of my novel 40. This falls after the post 40: Vegas.5.
The drug-induced sleep, like a large leviathan, finally opened its mouth. I swam up from the dark pit of its belly and it took a few moments before I regained the strength to open my eyes and keep them open in the light that danced upon the seeming fluid waves above my head. I heard the voice of a gruff, yet concerned old man say "he’s come to."
Suddenly, the shadow of a man appeared over me. A bright yellow aura burst out from around his frame. His face drew close to my face. It was dark; seemed hot. His fingers kindly parted each of my eyelids so that he could cast a bright light into each of my eyes. I tried speaking, asking "why am I here?" but I don’t know how much of that actually found its way out of my mouth because my lips felt heavy and immovable.
I felt the man take a seat on the side of the bed, close to my shoulders. He looked at me and then back in the direction of the older man. Because of this, the light kept dancing around the contours of his face, sometimes making him appear as if his eyes were just black holes or that he was part human and part shadow. "Let me check this..." he said kindly as his large hand came up and touched the top of my forehead where I had found the stitches. "Yes, this is looking much better than before."
"Good." The older man replied. "A few more days then?"
"Yes." The shadowed man said convincingly. "We’re very close now."
His face drew close again. "What is your name?" he asked.
"Tanner." I replied.
"Tanner, is it?" the shadowed man replied questioningly as he turned his back to me in order to face the older man.
"What does this mean?" asked the older voice.
"That’s a good question," the man replied, fiddling around with something at the side of the bed. "I don’t know the answer to that right yet. What I do know, though, is that we are going to continue to mend this head injury. Maybe by healing that, we’ll resolve this predicament too."
The shadowed man turned toward me again. "Mark," he kindly started, "I need you to get some good rest so I’m giving you something to help with that. This shouldn’t hurt too much...maybe not at all."
And he was right. I felt a prick in my right arm, the arm closest to him; and I was still so far under from whatever they drugged me with the first time that I didn’t feel the pain from this shot.
"You’re in good hands, Mark," he said as he drew in close for one last time. "You get some sleep, okay? I’ll see you again soon."
I shook my head the best I could.
He got up from the bed and disappeared over to where the man with the older voice stood or sat. "He’s going to be out for most of the day. Just keep an eye on him. Let me know if his vitals drop."
"Oh, I will..." laughed the older man. And for the first time, the older man crossed into the periphery of my vision and stood there watching me. His face was narrow and lean. His eyes were as black as a crow’s. He pulled his sunglasses from off the top of his head of thick gray hair and dropped them in front of his eyes, as if he realized I was analyzing his eyes. "Be good, Mark Byatt," he said loudly. "Be very good."
He disappeared. I heard the movement of bodies, the rustling of clothes, walking away from me. The room went dark. I heard the heavy door to the room open and then close. Silence filled the room; it grew as heavy as the darkness. Ah, my new intimate companion, I thought.
I looked over to the window. Though the curtains were closed, I could see the glow from the immense city outside breaking into the room through the seams. And just as I was beginning to plot my escape, the clutches of the drug pulled me back down into the thick belly of the leviathan.
