Long wait huh? Needed a bit of a break, if anyone was following me you saw how much I put out on Vamzombie in like a month, something like 70 pages... O.o  anyways more regular updates until March (will do a month long vacation) Maybe I can get ahead on my writing and have updates ready for March.  Cross your fingers?

PS: This is the first chapter of this book that has never been seen ever before by anyone :)

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“I can see through you.”

“No, I can see through you.”

“Isn’t it funny?”

“What?”

“That we’re here?  I mean, don’t you think it’s funny we both ended up here after years of hard work?”

“Yeah, I guess I do. What was it, eight years of schooling only to get slaughtered by Gerry Six in the back of a warehouse in broad day light with ten thousand people watching?” I sighed, poking my finger through an apple in front of me and my best friend Kept.  She looked at the apple and her expression changed, she went to grab me but her hand went through mine.

We couldn’t even touch each other, she moved back to the other side of the table and frowned, “Ten thousand watched us die.  Ten thousand watched as the last moments of our lives were scared out of us and cut to pieces till our vision was painted red and blood smothered all four walls of that damn arena they jammed us in. What has this world come to?”

“Look at the upside,” I tried to comfort her, “I bet they didn’t expect us to not-quite leave.  We can haunt the shit out of them now!” A smile crept up my face as I looked into her ghostly eyes.

She looked back into my eyes and smiled.  The pair of men we were borrowing the table from got back from the bathroom and we both stood up.  Going through anything and getting dematerialized felt awkward, so we both avoided objects as much as possible.  As we both walked to the edge of the table we pushed the fuzz of our hands together, watching the mist wrap around itself.  Sound fused its way back into the busy cafeteria.  It was the place the brutes ate after they had a healthy hour of torturing and killing kids.

“We’ve been practicing for weeks now,” Kept said to me.

“We have,” I said back.

We moved away from each other, allowing each of our mists’ to fuse back into our own fingers and begun the dance of destruction. She looked at a cup and it slipped off the table, I forced a plate to slide into someone’s lap. A mug cracked on its own spilling hot coffee off a table.  The glass separating the food from the people in the cafeteria line shattered on its own.  The lights went out.  A can was lunged across the room.  As the grown men in the cafeteria stood up in a panic the doors on opposite ends of the room slammed themselves shut and locked.  A flash of light, a thunderous boom, and then we picked up to full force.

I let out my rage, my mist turning a light red that might actually be visible to the frightened peopel in the room.  A table unbolted itself from the floor and lunged itself at a group, smashing one of their heads while another man involuntarily shoved his finger into the eye of a friend.

She started, her mist turning a deep blue.  The light bulbs hanging from the roof shattered one at a time throwing glass projectiles over the room forcing several to drop in their own blood.  She forced pictures off the walls and lunged the heavy glass frames at unsuspecting victims.

As we worked we spun around each other mixing the red and blue into a purple center—throwing bodies, steel, and glass across the room all the same.  People banged on the door struggling to get out as we cut them down one at a time, one with a table, another with an unbroken light bulb, a third with the fallen body of another person.

We laughed together as we picked the room up into a tornado of metal and glass and ripped through the monsters one at a time.  Soon no more whimpers were heard, no more limps moved, and no more life was left in the room—expect us—if that counts of course. 

Suddenly images ran through my head, I pulled away from her, from Kept.  She was a monster, she slaughtered them!  I remembered.  I’ve done this before, hundreds of times before.  I’ve killed innocent men before—slaughtered them.  This wasn’t the first time. I didn’t get killed in a warehouse; I didn’t get slaughtered while ten thousand watched.  No, that was all a joke I invented myself. 

No, I’ve been dead for fifty years, I’ve killed tens of thousands, and no, no—I killed myself. Suicide with a jackhammer, a fucking jackhammer.  And her, that monster, she convinced me to do it right before she shot herself in the head with a fully automatic machine gun.  That monster!  That monster, she made me do this, she told me the lies, the lies!  I had to get away.  I had to flee—go to the other side of the world, I couldn’t ever meet her again, because, because, if I do… more innocent people would die.  I marked in my head, this is event number four ninety-seven.  I can’t let another happen, I can’t let her get near me again, or it will all repeat.  Four ninety-seven.  Four ninety-seven.  Four ninety-seven.

Eyes open. Sweat beaded up on my forehead and for some reason I couldn’t get a number out of my head, four ninety-seven.  Where was I?  My hand reached up for something covering my eyes, but I stopped myself, remembered not to take it off.  Instead I felt around me, hay. So I wasn’t dead.  I lifted myself up and listened, silence.  No, a slight humming somewhere off in the distance.  It was a breeze humming through some crack in the building I must be in. 

I pushed my feet off the edge of the bed but they made contact with nothing, was I hanging in the air?  I swayed my feet around till I found a small plank just off the center of the bed.  I felt the plank, it was metal and only about a foot and a half across. On either side of the plank was nothing, no floor.  I wasn’t sure how far it dropped down.  I tried to find something to throw in order to test it, but after only finding hay I decided to just rest my feet on the metal landing. 

I waited, I had no idea where the plank went, how long it was, or how far down it was if I were to fall, and I wasn’t about ready to test it.  I figured it’d be best to just wait for someone to come to my rescue.  I figured I must somehow be in the Y Village, and that it must be placed far in the air, wrapped around the trees, to avoid the sharp-toothed monsters like the one that nearly ate me and Perry.

I figured this must be some kind of high tech steel city in the sky, metal wrapped around the steel colored woods and protruding just slightly up above the needle-like leaves.  The metal was the same colorless silver as the trees, blending almost entirely with the forest making it nearly invisible to the rest of the world.  Due to the expansive nature of the metal most the buildings lacked a solid floor, and instead buildings had various planks the entire population memorized.  These thin planks worked as a natural defense for the hidden city in the forest because they made it impossibly hard to navigate without prior knowledge of the city.  An invading force would merely tumble out of the city as the defenders laughed at their futile attempt at a serious assault.

I heard a door in the distance swing open and slam shut. A voice, “Hey, look at him!  I knew we shouldn’t have stuck him on the top bunk he’s stuck there without the ability to see!”

“Yeah, yeah, Jimmy—I know,” This one sounded like a girl, “but it was just so hard to get the bleeding mess of his friend onto the top bunk, don’t know why you guys had to stick him so many times, five or ten would have been enough with his weight.”

“Had to be sure, he was scared shitless by the Bono.  We all know adrenaline creates a natural resistance to the needles.”  I listened to the pair talking.

“Hey you!” I could feel the female directing the conversation to me, “You only took one needle ha! You shut yourself down after one poke. Quite convenient.”

I didn’t feel like talking just yet, still had that number running through my mind and I couldn’t figure out where it came from.  An arm grabbed my leg and pulled it down, someone caught me before I slid off the top bunk and set me down on the ground, “Come on,” the male voice said, “we’ll show you around our little village. Sorry about the Bono attack.  They showed up about a year or two ago.  They’re some kind of genetic experiment gone wrong.  I think they were supposed to be some conspiracy by the government to start a war.”

Yeah, like I didn’t see that one coming, “Really?” I decided to say instead.

“Yep!” the woman again.  I felt something clip onto my shirt, “So we don’t lose you. We’ll show you the city, well—tell you it since it seems you’ve taken a vow of blindness huh?  We have a couple of those in the city.  They come here cause we respect them, and that truthfully any sane person wouldn’t stay here long if they could see the city.”  She let out a light laugh then hollered, “Jimmy! Watch over the other one till he wakes up, he may be out for a while due to how many time you stuck him.” She maneuvered me out a door and my feet touched leaf-covered gravel.

“This little village of mine is known as Y.  It was founded about two hundred years ago as a rejection to advanced society, industrialism, and obsessive wars.  We long ago created a world in which we don’t need war to reproduce; we only need rage and someone to let that rage out on.  Watch out for the foot,” she moved and pulled on the string attached causing me to veer off course to follow it, “We get those every once in a while, but otherwise it’s a great village.” They get feet every once in a while? As in no longer attached to the body? Why?

“Can you describe it for me?” I asked, hoping to get my first real description of the world since Gene and the building raid.

“Well,” she pulled the string and I went around something, she was a lot better at directing me than Perry, she must have had some practice at guiding the blind around.  “Now we are in front of the cathedral, it’s a boxy structure, a light orange on the bottom and a darker brown on the top.  It has four towers, one for each corner, which shoot about fifty feet up in a swirling fashion.  All towers have steel bars going to a circular cage in the center.  Inside the cage is the cathedral’s bell, a bronze-colored bell with black paintings of men etched around the rim. 

“In front of the cathedral is what we call a part-pit.  It’s the reason a lot of people don’t like coming here.  We try to reproduce with rage, but truthfully there is nothing better than war to create rage.  Our method is fairly successful—creating rivalries that grow so strong people get the same rage a war would recreate and reproduce with that.  But it’s tough, and it’s not a 100% guarantee.  So, we sometimes end up with body parts lying around the street.  You’re supposed to clean them up on a failed rage attempt—but you’ve got to know how people work—after you get a limb cut off picking it up and throwing it away in the right place isn’t your top priority.

“Cleaning up the fallen limbs really isn’t a top priority so they tend to get left behind for a days or even weeks till someone gets sick of them and throws them out.  In front of the cathedral the part-pit looks like it currently has three fingers, an arm, a toe, and—yeah—I think a chunk of someone’s neck.  It’s fairly empty compared to how it normally is. There’s nothing like a four hour morning in the cathedral to get your blood boiling.  It’s where people normally go to get their rage.… Moving on,” she continued to pull me down the street, “On the other side of the cathedral is a pair of matching green-colored houses and further along a small store where I normally go to buy all my food,” I felt my stomach rumble at the word food, I hadn’t eaten since getting aboard the Man Eater Six, and that must have been a day ago by now.

“I’m hungry,” I said without really thinking.

“Ah great! Half a block more and we’re at The Center-Store.  It’s a fairly famous restaurant in the center of the street; they actually managed to buy out the two inner lanes on either side of the road to build their restaurant.  They make the best pancakes and hamburgers around!” I debated on if I should tell her about my belly button or not, “It was founded forty-four years ago by Jimmy’s parents!  The building is surrounded mainly in glass with large reinforced metal bumpers on the four corners and long metal railings on the road-sides of the building.  Inside you can see the seemly random blend of clashing circular and square tables.  Last time I checked there were eighteen circular tables, eight red and ten black, and sixteen square tables, twelve red and four black.  It’s quite the sight alone when you’re driving by the place.”

My bare feet suddenly felt cool damp grass, “Now we’re on what the village calls ‘the lawn’ it’s the large grassland chunk on either side of The Center-Store.  The grass is a fairly popular place for picnics and other family outings.  Only downside is trying to cross the four-lane highway during a busy day, quite dangerous!”

“Uh, but my belly button…” I tried to tell her.

“Yes, I have one too—and look at that-” I hear a bell dingle as I’m pulled inside and my feet run across some kind of thick carpet, “The place is almost completely empty! What a surprise for this morning, normally it’s packed and the wait for food is upwards of half an hour!”

“How yeah doing Kept?” A voice roars from deeper within the restaurant.  Kept?  Her name was Kept?  For some reason a number floated in my mind, four ninety-seven.  “Would you like your normal table in the corner? You doing business? I can get the blinds set up in a minute,” I heard a hiss from next to me. The restaurant owner got what it meant. “Erm, or how about the one next to the bar?”

“That would be lovely. He’s new in town and has taken an oath of blindness just introducing him to Y.”

Heavy boots shuffled towards us and the voice, now right in front of us, said, “Ah, welcome to Y – right this way.”

The heavy boots took a few steps forward then turned to the left before continuing.  They then turned to the left again and with Kept leading I followed.  “Here is you’re table.” The voice hummed low and I heard something swish across the table, menus probably. The glass that was apparently right next to us rattled.

“What a great view, I just love seeing all the cars speed by, moving out of the fast lane at the last second to avoid the building.”  That’s not comfortable for me at all.  The windows rattled again and I heard something zoom by.  “That truck!”

Silence, except the occasional rattling.  I waited patiently for some kind of sign, something.  Nothing—why nothing?  The world around me was just empty, no one, nothing—there was nothing screwing with my eyes.  No ideas of this place slipping into my brain and no dreams, just a white blank room.  Kind of eerie.

“Burger and fries.”  Kept finally spoke, I didn’t realize the stomping man had returned or asked for our orders but there he was, he must have been if she was ordering.  “What about you?”

I looked down at the table in front of me and reached my hands out to feel a menu, so many choices, so many decisions.  I had no idea, they all looked good.  I looked back up at her, then back down at the menu.  I guess it finally clicked, “Oh yes, you can’t see.  Well, there are three kinds of burgers…  Dean, can you let us have a few more minutes?”

“Sure thing Kept.”  The stomping left.

“There’s the spicy, regular, and barbeque, they also serve soups and steak, oh they have a really good pot roast here.  They also have…”

Don’t get the pot roast. A man’s voice appears, quite loud, like someone just whispered in my ear noisily.

“What?”  I said.

“Huh?”  Kept replied, “I said there is a salad bar in the middle if you decide to eat that.”

“No, not you, the other guy.”

She can’t see me idiot, just don’t get the pot roast, it’s terrible.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I’m Kept, introduced myself to you when you woke up… took you here, hello?”

“Not you!” I said again.

Does it really matter who I am? Just don’t get the pot roast. Get a… burger, those are pretty good.

“But my belly button.”

“What about your belly button?”

“Not you Kept.”

“Who are you talking to?”

“I have no idea. You can’t see him?”

“See who?”

Me.

“Yeah, him.”

“Who?”

The belly button thing is an issue, isn’t it? Maybe you should get the pot roast, at least that’s ground up so you can stick it in easily.

“That’s reassuring.” I said.

“What’s reassuring? What the hell are you talking about?  Are you crazy too?”

“I’m not crazy.”

“Four ninety-seven.”

Everything, all of my focus goes right in front of me.  Forget the man, forget the food, forget the menu in my hand and every item Kept just spat out at me as a suggestion to order.  “What did you just say?”

“Your finger hasn’t left that one spot in the middle, item four ninety-seven.  The chowder.”

Ooh, that’s a good pick; you sure have an eye for the perfect item.

“Four ninety-seven.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll take that then.” Four ninety-seven, why is that number so damn familiar?

“Dean!” I heard Kept shout, “we’re ready now.”

“Comin’!” Dean shouted back and his thick boots clomped over to our table.

“He’ll take the chowder.” Kept said a few moments later.

“Got it Kept, one burger and fries, one chowder.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Kept—”

“Shh!”  I said, sticking one of my remaining fingers up into the air in front of the voice of Kept.

I already said, does it really matter?

“Yes it does.”

“Who are you—”

“Shh,” I waved my finger back and forth silencing Kept once more. 

I heard her stomp on the floor and hit the table with her fists, “Fine.”

Come to think of it, I don’t really know, I guess you can call me… Bernard, that sounds cool.

“Bernard, why can’t anyone see or hear you but me.”

“Who is Bernard?”  I heard Kept, but quietly to herself, like she’d given up really trying to talk to me.

Probably because I’m not there, but here.

“Where?”

Everywhere. This wasn’t helping at all. 

The table and windows rattled more than the normal and I felt Kept grab onto the table and pull it towards her a bit unintentionally, “Whoa, that was a big one.”

Color, ten thousands colors flood in front of me at once.  First they were just random shapes jumbled and confused but eventually the colors dwarfed into more recognizable shapes.  A square of grey next to me, orange and blues in front, cylinders form, one above me, one below me, I’m sitting on half of circle.  Across from the booth I’m apparently in was a tall series of pillars all cooped up into the inside of a circle.  A chair.

Suddenly that chair was no longer empty.  It was occupied by, by a… moose.  A moose with two legs on the ground and sitting upright.  A moose with crab-like hooves that seemed to be holding taught to a cup of green and blue fluid.  The moose turned right for me and its eyes narrowed as if it was about ready to pounce for the kill.  I pressed my back against the cushion and slowly gulped.  Well, I metaphysically gulped being that having a metal throat that breathed for me didn’t allow me to actually gulp.  Well, fuck it—it was the thought that counted.

I slowly looked around the rainbow world, most things kept static but there were just as many that wavered and moved like the tides in a pond.  We were swaying, perpetually swaying.  Earth to the hairless one, anyone home?

I snapped my head back to the moose and replied, “Yeah, I’m here.”

You zoned out there for a bit.

“I… saw something.”  Correction, I still see it.  But that was beside the point.

You can’t see anything you’re blind.

“Tell that to my eyes.”

The moose crossed its arms together and huffed.  Obviously angry I was talking to the ghost in my head.

“So… Kept, does this happen often?”

“What?”  The moose’s lips moved, but not in sync with the words coming out. 

“Voices.”

“We have more than a few crazies here.”  That was great; she thought I was a crazy.

You’re not crazy.

“I think I am.”

“Admitting is the first step, that’s always progress.”  Two loud clunks hit the table and I looked down.  Our rainbow surface had a pile of shit sitting on her end and a bowl of either worms or small snakes on mine.  That can’t be right.  I blinked, like it would matter.  I closed my eyes.  I opened them again.  I closed them again.  It was the same picture no matter what.  Seemed I couldn’t avoid the visions.  I was crazy.

She stuck her hand directly into the smoldering brown pile of shit and lifted it up to her mouth.  The moose opened its jaw slowly and stuck only the very end of it over the pile of shit taking a respectably small chunk out of it. I looked down at my bowl of snakes, they slithered around in circles, but none actually left the bowl.  I was quite hungry now, but unsure how this should pan out. 

I tilted my head and picked a two-pronged object off the table.  I used the object to stab at the bowl, one of the snakes hissed and wrapped itself around the, fork of sorts.  After the snake finished its coiling it went stiff.  I lifted my fork up and looked at the limp noodle.  Why does the chowder have noodles in it?  This wasn’t right at all.

I wanted to just stick the slithering beast into my mouth, to chew and taste its disgusting slime.  I bit down on the metal pipe and gulped so that I could feel its steel in my throat.  I couldn’t.  I slowly lifted up my shirt instead.  The moose bends over the table at me lifting my shirt, “You eat through that?”  she asked.  I slowly nod my head up and down.  “That’s fine, we get all kinds of customers here.  Dean!”  She shouted across the restaurant. No, don’t tell everyone in the damn place about it, “Get one of them feeding tubes for me will yeah?”

“Sure thing!” Great.  Now everyone knows I’m a failure at life and have to eat though my belly button.  The hulk comes over to our table, I look away.  I already have to deal with a moose, the pile of shit, and the bowl of snakes.  I don’t need another retarded creature to cloud my mind.  Not to mention Bernard, whoever the hell he is.  “Here you go buddy, just stick it in wherever you eat from, fill the top with food, and squeeze.  Easy as that!”

“Uh, Thanks.”  I said, as I waited for him to stomp off.  Once he was gone I turned back for the food.  God damn it.  I picked the bowl up and looked down at the cylinder that was handed to me.  There was a black cap on the clear cylinder.  I assume I fill, cap it off and squeeze so the shit will come out of the other end like frosting out of a tube. 

I dump some of the chowder into the cylinder and seal the top.  Well, at least my eyes are nice enough to have this make sense.  Even if the feeder seemed to have snakes in it.  I stick the nozzle into my belly button and look up at the moose, “Sorry, I’m a noisy eater.”  I pushed the nozzle and it clipped in, the little machine inside my stomach turned on and the motor made enough ruckus it seemed to silence everything else around me.  Like with the potato man, my stomach machine sucked everything out of the tube and once the tub was empty detached it. 

I looked up at Kept with a half-smile.  She only said, “You do eat loud,” and went back to her pile of shit.  No surprise?  No gasping? No upheaval?  This must be something common.  Maybe I’m not an outcast after all, maybe I’m normal.  I gladly filled the feeder up a second time.

Gods fear me, the mighty force known as the Devourer.  I eat everything.  Feed it directly to my core.  They thought they could beat me, that they could win.  But really I gobbled up the Gods all the same.  They lost half their invincible army in a fortnight before giving up the war and leaving me to roam the surface of this planet uncontested.  I looked down at myself.

I was a globing mess of rot and death.  I’ve devoured so much moving has become task on its own.  I stomped slowly forward and pop my massive black belly out in front of me.  I’m so powerful I could mow over a city without as much as turning my head, no one can touch me.  I look down on a pathetic human city.  They called it the city that never sleeps, the big apple.  Well that apple will be one large feast when I’m done with it.  I planned to devour at least a million souls.  I take another step and looked into the setting sun.

My stomach rumbled with the need for food and my lips salivated with the idea of eating everything in sight.  Glutton, the black hole of my stomach.  I will kill them all. Eat them whole. Eat them raw.  I’ll let my stomach acid slowly melt their flesh and burn their still beating hearts.  The best kind of dinner, live.  

I take another step and my stomach ripped opens, thousands of fangs start rotating as the flesh peeled away to reveal a massive gaping black hole.  I let out a deep sigh and after a moment of silence suck in everything.  I don’t use my mouth, I use my stomach.  The entire world in front of me turns into a vicious whirlwind and spirals right into my stomach.  First there was screaming, one or two as the bodies got sucked into my massive chest.  Then hundreds, thousands of them start spiraling towards me.  A viscous spiral of death.  The screams of death become a generic blur indistinguishable of one another. 

The city turns black, the world turns red and more and more fat builds on my chest.  I could become massive.  I could become the biggest living thing in existence.  I am the Devourer.  I will consume everything. 

Do you always play with your food?

I look down at the feeder.  Somehow, and I’m not sure if this is an illusion or if I really did it, but the cylinder feeder had wings on it.  It had white angel-like wings arching out from either side as if it was some type of bird flying its beak into my feeding hole.   In other words, they were made of napkins.  I sighed and pushed the end against my belly button while trying my best to block out that horrible machine’s noise.  I sucked the last of the tube dry.  That was the last of the snake chowder.  Now what?

I looked up at my moose friend.  Who was now more like a white duck with fingers and a very, very yellow beak.  Kept finished her, what now looks like hair, and was looking at me.  Silence.  We didn’t talk at all during the entire eating.  In fact I haven’t talked to her at all.  For a while now it had just been me and Bernard—whoever the fuck that was.

“You know, I think you’re cute… Even without hair.” 

Well, that came out of nowhere.  I looked over at the duck as she folds her wings under her beak and rests her joints on the table.  “Uh, thanks.”

“I sure wish you could see me, that we could look into each other’s eyes.  I’d love to see that, I really would.  Could you break your vow… for me?”

I shook my head. “No, I can’t…”  Really, according to the Mind Reader if I saw the world it would disappear, then she’d be gone.  That’d really suck.

I took a long stare at my cute little duck.  I knew she wasn’t really there, or at least she wasn’t really a duck.  But that was what I saw so that was what I can perceive.  My duck looked a lot cuter than the moose, so I was grateful for that.

You look cute together.

“Not now Bernard.” 

“Who is Bernard?” Kept asked

“Oh, the voice in my head gave itself a name.”

I’m not a voice in your head.

“Yes you are.”

“Oh okay, that seems normal.” Oh, voices with names are normal.  That’s good to know.

You really have the worst of luck don’t you?  It seems if something bad were to happen It’d happen to you, tough.

What the hell was Bernard talking about?  There’s nothing happening right now.  “Wha—”

“Move!” I heard Kept shout.  I of course didn’t.  A deafening crash, quite similar actually to the one when the train got hit by the raiders, filled the room.  But with this one there was no screams, instead everything went silent and I felt my body being lifted up into the air.  I’m an angel.  The colors around me flew into a thousand directions before getting entirely confused and turning white. 

Ghosts.  Nightmares. Wind.  A bird chirps and my mother’s voice flowed on the breeze, “sweetie, sweetie… sweetie...” My body hit the asphalt back first and skids before rolling and being thrown back up into the air.  Glass and metal sound off smashing into the road around me. Chaos.

Bad things seem to always happen to you…

I roll part-way over and lay flat on my back.  Sounds around me seem to move slower as the machine attached to my chest struggles to chug away.  My breaths become short and ill-regulated as the rotating parts begin to deteriorate in speed.  The white all around me faded before sparking a new determination.  Colors blasted my face as a rainbow flowed over me.  Polls appeared of swirling green and a distant hill of purple comes into sight.  A yellow haze seemed to fill everything before my duck pops its beak over my sight.

“Holy shit!” The duck spoke, looking at my lain-out body in its full glory.  “I think if you didn’t have that breathing machine on you woulda died right there, that contraption saved your life by taking the brunt of the blast.  The breather sped up and gave me some much needed oxygen before decreasing its speed once more. 

I reached my hand up to the duck and it reached one of its feathered wings down at me.  Instead of feathers I felt thick fur as Kept tried to pull me back to my feet.  My body was less that cooperative here and searing pain splinted through one of my legs as I tried to move.  I let go of my grip and let myself fall back onto the asphalt.  Speak, I had to tell her, “Fix it.”  The box in my throat spoke.  “Fix it, can’t breathe.”

The duck looked down at my chest then back up at me, “It is completely smashed.”

“Hibernate, fix it.”

“You want me to turn it off?”

The machine speed up and pushed air into my lungs almost too fast, “Yes, fix it.”  This is one time I want them to shut me down, when off maybe it’ll work better and maybe they can get me to a repair shop to fix the damn thing.

“We’ll fix it, you’ll be up on your feet in no time!”  She reached down and pushed the button on the front of the breather. 

Nothing.  Nothing… nothing.  Stillness.  End.