The "Creative Writing" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
It's Halloween tomorrow, so it's obviously a themed thing:
===========================================================
Sarah Weston stared at her trembling fingers as they involuntarily wrung themselves around white knuckles. Distantly, she could hear a subdued whimpering that was probably coming from behind her own pursed lips, but summoning the self-control to stop it was beyond possibility.
With an effort, she pulled her gaze away from her hands and looked around the waiting room, eyes desperately searching for something to make her mind wander. But there was nothing here. The square room was deliberately neutral. Off-white walls surrounded modern, but inoffensive furnishings, themselves littered with an array of gossip-ridden reading material. Even the air was thick with a vanilla fragrance, an attempt to mask the stench of antiseptic that clung to much of the rest of the building. As for Sarah herself, she did not mind the smell of antiseptic. It was preferable to... the alternative.
She felt something touch her hand, and looked curiously at the wetness that had appeared there before unconsciously wiping the tears that had begun collecting on her face. I can't take this any more, she thought to herself.
At that moment, the door to her left opened, and a doctor whose face Sarah thought she ought to recognise stepped half way through. The trace of some unholy pungence carried itself in with him, and she felt her face contort, and had the sensation of something trying to force its way up her throat. The doctor was a handsome man, solidly built, and with a touch of grey at his temples adding to a look of intense maturity. The look was marred by an equal number of black and red smears that littered the front of his overalls. For a moment that did not last long enough, he simply stood there, looking down at her, his face filled with genuine sympathy, but after a moment, he seemed to gather himself in an effort to speak.
"Mrs Weston," he said, his voice tired, but still firm. The words held a deep calm that spoke of decades of delivering bad news, but his face told a different story. The man was human, after all. "It... appears your husband is entering the final stages."
He paused, looking for some reaction, but how could there be? Weeks of this torture had drained every ounce of hope from her heart. For some time now - a time she could not measure, as she had stopped trying to count the hours, when? She could not remember - there had been nothing left but the hope that soon it would all come to an end. And there was only one possible end to this nightmare.
"His remaining functions are beginning to shut down," he continued after a few seconds. "it will not be long now." She considered those words as though she were outside her own body, watching for a reaction herself. With the exception of a tear which took an age to fall the short distance from her chin to the floor, there was none. It took an effort that could have moved mountains to summon words in reply.
"Has he... asked for me?" It was a pointless question. Of course he hadn't. He'd not said a coherent word for longer than anyone dared recall. In response, the doctor - Carter was his name - frowned slightly and began studying his feet intently as though he expected them to steer him out of the room of their own volition.
"No," he muttered so quietly that Sarah wondered if she had imagined him saying it. "but all the same, you may want to be there. There may still be some part of him that will take comfort from his wife being by his side in these last moments."
She considered that. Chris - oh dear Chris - how she needed him now. How she needed the pillar of strength that had held her up what seemed her entire life. It was right that she should be there now, when he needed her. But she remembered the smell, and almost gagged. The putrid fetor that surrounded his bedside. The memory alone made her head spin. And then there was the fact that she would have to see him. Her eyes welled up with more tears at the simple thought of it. She did not want to remember him as he was now. It wasn't fair. God, what did we do to deserve this?
A wave of conviction ran through her, nonetheless, and she gave what she hoped was a perceptible nod in response to the doctor. Sighing, she forced herself to stand up. It took every ounce of strength she had left to command her legs to obey, and even then, she feared they might collapse beneath her at any moment. She wiped away tears from her face, and brushed her hair back behind her head.
She did not notice the doctor take her hand, but the next thing she knew, she was being led out of the room by the doctor, his other hand gently nudging at the small of her back. The next few moments were indistict, as though they were memories that had been experienced by someone else, or in a dream. There was an ante-room. The thick smell of antiseptic, stronger here than anywhere else. Gloves. A facemask. A firm hand on either arm that might or might not have been Dr. Carter's, a voice in the distance telling her to be strong that might have been his as well. And then the hand was gently prodding the small of her back again.
It was all a blur until she placed her shaking digits on the handle to open the door. A faint whiff of decaying flesh hit her nostrils through the antiseptic, and she blinked, startled. Distantly she wondered how she had even got here. But it did not matter. She was resigned to going inside now. But even with that thought in mind, there was a battle to gain enough control over her own hand to pull the handle down and open the door. It must have taken a good minute to do it, but who was counting now?
The stench hit her like a wave of airborne corruption. She had to cling to the door to avoid falling to her knees and emptying her stomach on the sterile floor. An orderly appeared as though from thin air and held her firmly by the arm until she nodded to indicate that she was able to stand on her own. The orderley took it as a signal to leave the room, and did so promptly. Sarah felt the vague sensation of the door swooshing quietly shut behind her. And she was alone. No, not alone. She was with her husband, or at least, what had once been him. She could hear the faint and irregular sound of breathing coming from the lone bed in the room.
She looked at him - what was left of him - but was not surprised when seeing him did not bring up a well of emotion that might have been hiding inside her. What she saw she could not relate to her husband. It bore no resemblance at all. They did not know what was wrong with him, all they had managed to puzzle out was that it was not contagious. Even so, nobody was taking too many chances. One day, without warning, his body had just started to... to rot. Internal organs, skin, muscle tissue, everything. It was as though he was dead, and he had not admitted it yet. At first it had been alarming, and then terrifying, before being tragic, hopeless and despairing.
He looked little more than a corpse now. The only sign of life at all being the slow rise and fall of his chest. Only his head, shoulders and arms were visible above the homogenous blue covers, and what they showed just made no sense whatsoever. It all looked wrong. Once, he had been covered by the most beautiful shade of light-brown skin. Now the skin - where it still remained - was a pale sort of yellow, and hung off him like rags. The rotting muscles exposed by the lack of skin were dark, almost black, and looked to have a texture like strips of beef jerky. Smears of black, red and yellow were all over the sheets, and more seemed to be oozing out of every part of him. His eyes were sunken, the eyeballs so rotten as to be theoretically completely incapable of function, and yet, somehow, he could apparently still see. The little hair left on his haid appeared in small tufts. Grey where it had once been the deepest hazel brown. Only half his lips still seemed to be there, exposing teeth that looked oddly white. Parts of his skull were also uncovered, and she could glimpse sections of bone across his collar and along his fingers. It all looked immaculately white as though recently polished. It didn't make any sense.
Stepping slowly, deeper into the room, Sarah took a chair, and willed herself to sit down on it at the bedside. She sat there for a while, wishing she could summon some small amount of pity. When it did not come, she sighed loudly, and as if on cue, Chris' head lolled to the side, black and yellow eyes staring right at her. It was an inhuman effort not to throw herself backwards off the chair. She met the eyes as best she could. The smell as he breathed was a sulpherous fume, but she held his gaze.
"I'm here Chris," she mutterd quietly, her voice trembling like a leaf in the wind. "Don't be afraid." Gingerly, she reached out with a gloved hand and placed it gently on top of what remained of his left hand. It felt as though it might turn to ash if she squeezed it.
Chris' head rocked gently before moving to set his gaze back on the ceiling. "Afraid." he said suddenly. His voice was nothing like it had once been. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard, but somehow seemed like only an echo of something else that she had not quite heard. "Not afraid." She stared at him. This was as close as anyone had come to a lucid conversation in weeks. Without warning, the wall holding her emotions shattered and she began sobbing uncontrollably.
As she felt fingers wrap themselves around her own, she heard herself say "I love you, Chris. I love you so much." Don't leave me. I can't make it on my own.
Without transition, his fingers stopped holding her own and she felt a grip take her wrist. Opening her eyes in startlement, she caught that deathly gaze back in her face again. His breathing had quickened.
"Go." He said, it sounded almost like a command "Not. Not safe. Sarah. Don't. Want. To hurt. You." There was almost some emotion in the screeching of his voice. "Not you." he continued, "Not you." And then her wrist was free again, and the gaze returned to the study of the ceiling once more.
No. He was as unintelligible as ever. She felt a look of pity finally cross her face as she rubbed the bruise growing on her wrist where he had held it. As she watched him, his breathing slowed back to the calm, irregular rhythm it had been before. No. It was slower this time. Slower still. Then he breathed deeply, filling his lungs one final time, and he was still.
Sarah's mind went black as she curled over and cried. She was not aware of Dr. Carter's hand as it appeared on her shoulder. She did not hear the words of comfort he directed at her in a practised manner. She did not see the orderlies come in and begin switching off the machinery that had been monitoring the health of her husband as he had defied all medical knowledge and rotted away before them.
But Chris saw it. He saw it and heard it all. He prayed that Sarah would take his advice. That she would go somewhere far away. He had been chosen. His body was to become the vessel of the Lich, and His armies would march across the world and usher in a new Age. An Age of the Dead. To Sarah, this was an end. The end of her marriage. The end of a love affair that had burned so hot as to make both feel as though they were the only two in the world who really knew what love was.
But to Christopher Weston, to the undead Lich, it was just a beginning.
===========================================================
Sarah Weston stared at her trembling fingers as they involuntarily wrung themselves around white knuckles. Distantly, she could hear a subdued whimpering that was probably coming from behind her own pursed lips, but summoning the self-control to stop it was beyond possibility.
With an effort, she pulled her gaze away from her hands and looked around the waiting room, eyes desperately searching for something to make her mind wander. But there was nothing here. The square room was deliberately neutral. Off-white walls surrounded modern, but inoffensive furnishings, themselves littered with an array of gossip-ridden reading material. Even the air was thick with a vanilla fragrance, an attempt to mask the stench of antiseptic that clung to much of the rest of the building. As for Sarah herself, she did not mind the smell of antiseptic. It was preferable to... the alternative.
She felt something touch her hand, and looked curiously at the wetness that had appeared there before unconsciously wiping the tears that had begun collecting on her face. I can't take this any more, she thought to herself.
At that moment, the door to her left opened, and a doctor whose face Sarah thought she ought to recognise stepped half way through. The trace of some unholy pungence carried itself in with him, and she felt her face contort, and had the sensation of something trying to force its way up her throat. The doctor was a handsome man, solidly built, and with a touch of grey at his temples adding to a look of intense maturity. The look was marred by an equal number of black and red smears that littered the front of his overalls. For a moment that did not last long enough, he simply stood there, looking down at her, his face filled with genuine sympathy, but after a moment, he seemed to gather himself in an effort to speak.
"Mrs Weston," he said, his voice tired, but still firm. The words held a deep calm that spoke of decades of delivering bad news, but his face told a different story. The man was human, after all. "It... appears your husband is entering the final stages."
He paused, looking for some reaction, but how could there be? Weeks of this torture had drained every ounce of hope from her heart. For some time now - a time she could not measure, as she had stopped trying to count the hours, when? She could not remember - there had been nothing left but the hope that soon it would all come to an end. And there was only one possible end to this nightmare.
"His remaining functions are beginning to shut down," he continued after a few seconds. "it will not be long now." She considered those words as though she were outside her own body, watching for a reaction herself. With the exception of a tear which took an age to fall the short distance from her chin to the floor, there was none. It took an effort that could have moved mountains to summon words in reply.
"Has he... asked for me?" It was a pointless question. Of course he hadn't. He'd not said a coherent word for longer than anyone dared recall. In response, the doctor - Carter was his name - frowned slightly and began studying his feet intently as though he expected them to steer him out of the room of their own volition.
"No," he muttered so quietly that Sarah wondered if she had imagined him saying it. "but all the same, you may want to be there. There may still be some part of him that will take comfort from his wife being by his side in these last moments."
She considered that. Chris - oh dear Chris - how she needed him now. How she needed the pillar of strength that had held her up what seemed her entire life. It was right that she should be there now, when he needed her. But she remembered the smell, and almost gagged. The putrid fetor that surrounded his bedside. The memory alone made her head spin. And then there was the fact that she would have to see him. Her eyes welled up with more tears at the simple thought of it. She did not want to remember him as he was now. It wasn't fair. God, what did we do to deserve this?
A wave of conviction ran through her, nonetheless, and she gave what she hoped was a perceptible nod in response to the doctor. Sighing, she forced herself to stand up. It took every ounce of strength she had left to command her legs to obey, and even then, she feared they might collapse beneath her at any moment. She wiped away tears from her face, and brushed her hair back behind her head.
She did not notice the doctor take her hand, but the next thing she knew, she was being led out of the room by the doctor, his other hand gently nudging at the small of her back. The next few moments were indistict, as though they were memories that had been experienced by someone else, or in a dream. There was an ante-room. The thick smell of antiseptic, stronger here than anywhere else. Gloves. A facemask. A firm hand on either arm that might or might not have been Dr. Carter's, a voice in the distance telling her to be strong that might have been his as well. And then the hand was gently prodding the small of her back again.
It was all a blur until she placed her shaking digits on the handle to open the door. A faint whiff of decaying flesh hit her nostrils through the antiseptic, and she blinked, startled. Distantly she wondered how she had even got here. But it did not matter. She was resigned to going inside now. But even with that thought in mind, there was a battle to gain enough control over her own hand to pull the handle down and open the door. It must have taken a good minute to do it, but who was counting now?
The stench hit her like a wave of airborne corruption. She had to cling to the door to avoid falling to her knees and emptying her stomach on the sterile floor. An orderly appeared as though from thin air and held her firmly by the arm until she nodded to indicate that she was able to stand on her own. The orderley took it as a signal to leave the room, and did so promptly. Sarah felt the vague sensation of the door swooshing quietly shut behind her. And she was alone. No, not alone. She was with her husband, or at least, what had once been him. She could hear the faint and irregular sound of breathing coming from the lone bed in the room.
She looked at him - what was left of him - but was not surprised when seeing him did not bring up a well of emotion that might have been hiding inside her. What she saw she could not relate to her husband. It bore no resemblance at all. They did not know what was wrong with him, all they had managed to puzzle out was that it was not contagious. Even so, nobody was taking too many chances. One day, without warning, his body had just started to... to rot. Internal organs, skin, muscle tissue, everything. It was as though he was dead, and he had not admitted it yet. At first it had been alarming, and then terrifying, before being tragic, hopeless and despairing.
He looked little more than a corpse now. The only sign of life at all being the slow rise and fall of his chest. Only his head, shoulders and arms were visible above the homogenous blue covers, and what they showed just made no sense whatsoever. It all looked wrong. Once, he had been covered by the most beautiful shade of light-brown skin. Now the skin - where it still remained - was a pale sort of yellow, and hung off him like rags. The rotting muscles exposed by the lack of skin were dark, almost black, and looked to have a texture like strips of beef jerky. Smears of black, red and yellow were all over the sheets, and more seemed to be oozing out of every part of him. His eyes were sunken, the eyeballs so rotten as to be theoretically completely incapable of function, and yet, somehow, he could apparently still see. The little hair left on his haid appeared in small tufts. Grey where it had once been the deepest hazel brown. Only half his lips still seemed to be there, exposing teeth that looked oddly white. Parts of his skull were also uncovered, and she could glimpse sections of bone across his collar and along his fingers. It all looked immaculately white as though recently polished. It didn't make any sense.
Stepping slowly, deeper into the room, Sarah took a chair, and willed herself to sit down on it at the bedside. She sat there for a while, wishing she could summon some small amount of pity. When it did not come, she sighed loudly, and as if on cue, Chris' head lolled to the side, black and yellow eyes staring right at her. It was an inhuman effort not to throw herself backwards off the chair. She met the eyes as best she could. The smell as he breathed was a sulpherous fume, but she held his gaze.
"I'm here Chris," she mutterd quietly, her voice trembling like a leaf in the wind. "Don't be afraid." Gingerly, she reached out with a gloved hand and placed it gently on top of what remained of his left hand. It felt as though it might turn to ash if she squeezed it.
Chris' head rocked gently before moving to set his gaze back on the ceiling. "Afraid." he said suddenly. His voice was nothing like it had once been. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard, but somehow seemed like only an echo of something else that she had not quite heard. "Not afraid." She stared at him. This was as close as anyone had come to a lucid conversation in weeks. Without warning, the wall holding her emotions shattered and she began sobbing uncontrollably.
As she felt fingers wrap themselves around her own, she heard herself say "I love you, Chris. I love you so much." Don't leave me. I can't make it on my own.
Without transition, his fingers stopped holding her own and she felt a grip take her wrist. Opening her eyes in startlement, she caught that deathly gaze back in her face again. His breathing had quickened.
"Go." He said, it sounded almost like a command "Not. Not safe. Sarah. Don't. Want. To hurt. You." There was almost some emotion in the screeching of his voice. "Not you." he continued, "Not you." And then her wrist was free again, and the gaze returned to the study of the ceiling once more.
No. He was as unintelligible as ever. She felt a look of pity finally cross her face as she rubbed the bruise growing on her wrist where he had held it. As she watched him, his breathing slowed back to the calm, irregular rhythm it had been before. No. It was slower this time. Slower still. Then he breathed deeply, filling his lungs one final time, and he was still.
Sarah's mind went black as she curled over and cried. She was not aware of Dr. Carter's hand as it appeared on her shoulder. She did not hear the words of comfort he directed at her in a practised manner. She did not see the orderlies come in and begin switching off the machinery that had been monitoring the health of her husband as he had defied all medical knowledge and rotted away before them.
But Chris saw it. He saw it and heard it all. He prayed that Sarah would take his advice. That she would go somewhere far away. He had been chosen. His body was to become the vessel of the Lich, and His armies would march across the world and usher in a new Age. An Age of the Dead. To Sarah, this was an end. The end of her marriage. The end of a love affair that had burned so hot as to make both feel as though they were the only two in the world who really knew what love was.
But to Christopher Weston, to the undead Lich, it was just a beginning.
Best read I have had in ages. Loved it.
Been meaning to read this since it went on. My apologies.
Anyway, for me, this was an excellent read. Didn't consider it rambling at all, either. Some of the descriptions reminded me of King's work.
Good stuff.
Anyway, for me, this was an excellent read. Didn't consider it rambling at all, either. Some of the descriptions reminded me of King's work.
Good stuff.
Haven't read it yet will soon.
I take it y'all didn't think much of this, then? I guess it did ramble on a bit...
It's Halloween tomorrow, so it's obviously a themed thing:
===========================================================
Sarah Weston stared at her trembling fingers as they involuntarily wrung themselves around white knuckles. Distantly, she could hear a subdued whimpering that was probably coming from behind her own pursed lips, but summoning the self-control to stop it was beyond possibility.
With an effort, she pulled her gaze away from her hands and looked around the waiting room, eyes desperately searching for something to make her mind wander. But there was nothing here. The square room was deliberately neutral. Off-white walls surrounded modern, but inoffensive furnishings, themselves littered with an array of gossip-ridden reading material. Even the air was thick with a vanilla fragrance, an attempt to mask the stench of antiseptic that clung to much of the rest of the building. As for Sarah herself, she did not mind the smell of antiseptic. It was preferable to... the alternative.
She felt something touch her hand, and looked curiously at the wetness that had appeared there before unconsciously wiping the tears that had begun collecting on her face. I can't take this any more, she thought to herself.
At that moment, the door to her left opened, and a doctor whose face Sarah thought she ought to recognise stepped half way through. The trace of some unholy pungence carried itself in with him, and she felt her face contort, and had the sensation of something trying to force its way up her throat. The doctor was a handsome man, solidly built, and with a touch of grey at his temples adding to a look of intense maturity. The look was marred by an equal number of black and red smears that littered the front of his overalls. For a moment that did not last long enough, he simply stood there, looking down at her, his face filled with genuine sympathy, but after a moment, he seemed to gather himself in an effort to speak.
"Mrs Weston," he said, his voice tired, but still firm. The words held a deep calm that spoke of decades of delivering bad news, but his face told a different story. The man was human, after all. "It... appears your husband is entering the final stages."
He paused, looking for some reaction, but how could there be? Weeks of this torture had drained every ounce of hope from her heart. For some time now - a time she could not measure, as she had stopped trying to count the hours, when? She could not remember - there had been nothing left but the hope that soon it would all come to an end. And there was only one possible end to this nightmare.
"His remaining functions are beginning to shut down," he continued after a few seconds. "it will not be long now." She considered those words as though she were outside her own body, watching for a reaction herself. With the exception of a tear which took an age to fall the short distance from her chin to the floor, there was none. It took an effort that could have moved mountains to summon words in reply.
"Has he... asked for me?" It was a pointless question. Of course he hadn't. He'd not said a coherent word for longer than anyone dared recall. In response, the doctor - Carter was his name - frowned slightly and began studying his feet intently as though he expected them to steer him out of the room of their own volition.
"No," he muttered so quietly that Sarah wondered if she had imagined him saying it. "but all the same, you may want to be there. There may still be some part of him that will take comfort from his wife being by his side in these last moments."
She considered that. Chris - oh dear Chris - how she needed him now. How she needed the pillar of strength that had held her up what seemed her entire life. It was right that she should be there now, when he needed her. But she remembered the smell, and almost gagged. The putrid fetor that surrounded his bedside. The memory alone made her head spin. And then there was the fact that she would have to see him. Her eyes welled up with more tears at the simple thought of it. She did not want to remember him as he was now. It wasn't fair. God, what did we do to deserve this?
A wave of conviction ran through her, nonetheless, and she gave what she hoped was a perceptible nod in response to the doctor. Sighing, she forced herself to stand up. It took every ounce of strength she had left to command her legs to obey, and even then, she feared they might collapse beneath her at any moment. She wiped away tears from her face, and brushed her hair back behind her head.
She did not notice the doctor take her hand, but the next thing she knew, she was being led out of the room by the doctor, his other hand gently nudging at the small of her back. The next few moments were indistict, as though they were memories that had been experienced by someone else, or in a dream. There was an ante-room. The thick smell of antiseptic, stronger here than anywhere else. Gloves. A facemask. A firm hand on either arm that might or might not have been Dr. Carter's, a voice in the distance telling her to be strong that might have been his as well. And then the hand was gently prodding the small of her back again.
It was all a blur until she placed her shaking digits on the handle to open the door. A faint whiff of decaying flesh hit her nostrils through the antiseptic, and she blinked, startled. Distantly she wondered how she had even got here. But it did not matter. She was resigned to going inside now. But even with that thought in mind, there was a battle to gain enough control over her own hand to pull the handle down and open the door. It must have taken a good minute to do it, but who was counting now?
The stench hit her like a wave of airborne corruption. She had to cling to the door to avoid falling to her knees and emptying her stomach on the sterile floor. An orderly appeared as though from thin air and held her firmly by the arm until she nodded to indicate that she was able to stand on her own. The orderley took it as a signal to leave the room, and did so promptly. Sarah felt the vague sensation of the door swooshing quietly shut behind her. And she was alone. No, not alone. She was with her husband, or at least, what had once been him. She could hear the faint and irregular sound of breathing coming from the lone bed in the room.
She looked at him - what was left of him - but was not surprised when seeing him did not bring up a well of emotion that might have been hiding inside her. What she saw she could not relate to her husband. It bore no resemblance at all. They did not know what was wrong with him, all they had managed to puzzle out was that it was not contagious. Even so, nobody was taking too many chances. One day, without warning, his body had just started to... to rot. Internal organs, skin, muscle tissue, everything. It was as though he was dead, and he had not admitted it yet. At first it had been alarming, and then terrifying, before being tragic, hopeless and despairing.
He looked little more than a corpse now. The only sign of life at all being the slow rise and fall of his chest. Only his head, shoulders and arms were visible above the homogenous blue covers, and what they showed just made no sense whatsoever. It all looked wrong. Once, he had been covered by the most beautiful shade of light-brown skin. Now the skin - where it still remained - was a pale sort of yellow, and hung off him like rags. The rotting muscles exposed by the lack of skin were dark, almost black, and looked to have a texture like strips of beef jerky. Smears of black, red and yellow were all over the sheets, and more seemed to be oozing out of every part of him. His eyes were sunken, the eyeballs so rotten as to be theoretically completely incapable of function, and yet, somehow, he could apparently still see. The little hair left on his haid appeared in small tufts. Grey where it had once been the deepest hazel brown. Only half his lips still seemed to be there, exposing teeth that looked oddly white. Parts of his skull were also uncovered, and she could glimpse sections of bone across his collar and along his fingers. It all looked immaculately white as though recently polished. It didn't make any sense.
Stepping slowly, deeper into the room, Sarah took a chair, and willed herself to sit down on it at the bedside. She sat there for a while, wishing she could summon some small amount of pity. When it did not come, she sighed loudly, and as if on cue, Chris' head lolled to the side, black and yellow eyes staring right at her. It was an inhuman effort not to throw herself backwards off the chair. She met the eyes as best she could. The smell as he breathed was a sulpherous fume, but she held his gaze.
"I'm here Chris," she mutterd quietly, her voice trembling like a leaf in the wind. "Don't be afraid." Gingerly, she reached out with a gloved hand and placed it gently on top of what remained of his left hand. It felt as though it might turn to ash if she squeezed it.
Chris' head rocked gently before moving to set his gaze back on the ceiling. "Afraid." he said suddenly. His voice was nothing like it had once been. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard, but somehow seemed like only an echo of something else that she had not quite heard. "Not afraid." She stared at him. This was as close as anyone had come to a lucid conversation in weeks. Without warning, the wall holding her emotions shattered and she began sobbing uncontrollably.
As she felt fingers wrap themselves around her own, she heard herself say "I love you, Chris. I love you so much." Don't leave me. I can't make it on my own.
Without transition, his fingers stopped holding her own and she felt a grip take her wrist. Opening her eyes in startlement, she caught that deathly gaze back in her face again. His breathing had quickened.
"Go." He said, it sounded almost like a command "Not. Not safe. Sarah. Don't. Want. To hurt. You." There was almost some emotion in the screeching of his voice. "Not you." he continued, "Not you." And then her wrist was free again, and the gaze returned to the study of the ceiling once more.
No. He was as unintelligible as ever. She felt a look of pity finally cross her face as she rubbed the bruise growing on her wrist where he had held it. As she watched him, his breathing slowed back to the calm, irregular rhythm it had been before. No. It was slower this time. Slower still. Then he breathed deeply, filling his lungs one final time, and he was still.
Sarah's mind went black as she curled over and cried. She was not aware of Dr. Carter's hand as it appeared on her shoulder. She did not hear the words of comfort he directed at her in a practised manner. She did not see the orderlies come in and begin switching off the machinery that had been monitoring the health of her husband as he had defied all medical knowledge and rotted away before them.
But Chris saw it. He saw it and heard it all. He prayed that Sarah would take his advice. That she would go somewhere far away. He had been chosen. His body was to become the vessel of the Lich, and His armies would march across the world and usher in a new Age. An Age of the Dead. To Sarah, this was an end. The end of her marriage. The end of a love affair that had burned so hot as to make both feel as though they were the only two in the world who really knew what love was.
But to Christopher Weston, to the undead Lich, it was just a beginning.
===========================================================
Sarah Weston stared at her trembling fingers as they involuntarily wrung themselves around white knuckles. Distantly, she could hear a subdued whimpering that was probably coming from behind her own pursed lips, but summoning the self-control to stop it was beyond possibility.
With an effort, she pulled her gaze away from her hands and looked around the waiting room, eyes desperately searching for something to make her mind wander. But there was nothing here. The square room was deliberately neutral. Off-white walls surrounded modern, but inoffensive furnishings, themselves littered with an array of gossip-ridden reading material. Even the air was thick with a vanilla fragrance, an attempt to mask the stench of antiseptic that clung to much of the rest of the building. As for Sarah herself, she did not mind the smell of antiseptic. It was preferable to... the alternative.
She felt something touch her hand, and looked curiously at the wetness that had appeared there before unconsciously wiping the tears that had begun collecting on her face. I can't take this any more, she thought to herself.
At that moment, the door to her left opened, and a doctor whose face Sarah thought she ought to recognise stepped half way through. The trace of some unholy pungence carried itself in with him, and she felt her face contort, and had the sensation of something trying to force its way up her throat. The doctor was a handsome man, solidly built, and with a touch of grey at his temples adding to a look of intense maturity. The look was marred by an equal number of black and red smears that littered the front of his overalls. For a moment that did not last long enough, he simply stood there, looking down at her, his face filled with genuine sympathy, but after a moment, he seemed to gather himself in an effort to speak.
"Mrs Weston," he said, his voice tired, but still firm. The words held a deep calm that spoke of decades of delivering bad news, but his face told a different story. The man was human, after all. "It... appears your husband is entering the final stages."
He paused, looking for some reaction, but how could there be? Weeks of this torture had drained every ounce of hope from her heart. For some time now - a time she could not measure, as she had stopped trying to count the hours, when? She could not remember - there had been nothing left but the hope that soon it would all come to an end. And there was only one possible end to this nightmare.
"His remaining functions are beginning to shut down," he continued after a few seconds. "it will not be long now." She considered those words as though she were outside her own body, watching for a reaction herself. With the exception of a tear which took an age to fall the short distance from her chin to the floor, there was none. It took an effort that could have moved mountains to summon words in reply.
"Has he... asked for me?" It was a pointless question. Of course he hadn't. He'd not said a coherent word for longer than anyone dared recall. In response, the doctor - Carter was his name - frowned slightly and began studying his feet intently as though he expected them to steer him out of the room of their own volition.
"No," he muttered so quietly that Sarah wondered if she had imagined him saying it. "but all the same, you may want to be there. There may still be some part of him that will take comfort from his wife being by his side in these last moments."
She considered that. Chris - oh dear Chris - how she needed him now. How she needed the pillar of strength that had held her up what seemed her entire life. It was right that she should be there now, when he needed her. But she remembered the smell, and almost gagged. The putrid fetor that surrounded his bedside. The memory alone made her head spin. And then there was the fact that she would have to see him. Her eyes welled up with more tears at the simple thought of it. She did not want to remember him as he was now. It wasn't fair. God, what did we do to deserve this?
A wave of conviction ran through her, nonetheless, and she gave what she hoped was a perceptible nod in response to the doctor. Sighing, she forced herself to stand up. It took every ounce of strength she had left to command her legs to obey, and even then, she feared they might collapse beneath her at any moment. She wiped away tears from her face, and brushed her hair back behind her head.
She did not notice the doctor take her hand, but the next thing she knew, she was being led out of the room by the doctor, his other hand gently nudging at the small of her back. The next few moments were indistict, as though they were memories that had been experienced by someone else, or in a dream. There was an ante-room. The thick smell of antiseptic, stronger here than anywhere else. Gloves. A facemask. A firm hand on either arm that might or might not have been Dr. Carter's, a voice in the distance telling her to be strong that might have been his as well. And then the hand was gently prodding the small of her back again.
It was all a blur until she placed her shaking digits on the handle to open the door. A faint whiff of decaying flesh hit her nostrils through the antiseptic, and she blinked, startled. Distantly she wondered how she had even got here. But it did not matter. She was resigned to going inside now. But even with that thought in mind, there was a battle to gain enough control over her own hand to pull the handle down and open the door. It must have taken a good minute to do it, but who was counting now?
The stench hit her like a wave of airborne corruption. She had to cling to the door to avoid falling to her knees and emptying her stomach on the sterile floor. An orderly appeared as though from thin air and held her firmly by the arm until she nodded to indicate that she was able to stand on her own. The orderley took it as a signal to leave the room, and did so promptly. Sarah felt the vague sensation of the door swooshing quietly shut behind her. And she was alone. No, not alone. She was with her husband, or at least, what had once been him. She could hear the faint and irregular sound of breathing coming from the lone bed in the room.
She looked at him - what was left of him - but was not surprised when seeing him did not bring up a well of emotion that might have been hiding inside her. What she saw she could not relate to her husband. It bore no resemblance at all. They did not know what was wrong with him, all they had managed to puzzle out was that it was not contagious. Even so, nobody was taking too many chances. One day, without warning, his body had just started to... to rot. Internal organs, skin, muscle tissue, everything. It was as though he was dead, and he had not admitted it yet. At first it had been alarming, and then terrifying, before being tragic, hopeless and despairing.
He looked little more than a corpse now. The only sign of life at all being the slow rise and fall of his chest. Only his head, shoulders and arms were visible above the homogenous blue covers, and what they showed just made no sense whatsoever. It all looked wrong. Once, he had been covered by the most beautiful shade of light-brown skin. Now the skin - where it still remained - was a pale sort of yellow, and hung off him like rags. The rotting muscles exposed by the lack of skin were dark, almost black, and looked to have a texture like strips of beef jerky. Smears of black, red and yellow were all over the sheets, and more seemed to be oozing out of every part of him. His eyes were sunken, the eyeballs so rotten as to be theoretically completely incapable of function, and yet, somehow, he could apparently still see. The little hair left on his haid appeared in small tufts. Grey where it had once been the deepest hazel brown. Only half his lips still seemed to be there, exposing teeth that looked oddly white. Parts of his skull were also uncovered, and she could glimpse sections of bone across his collar and along his fingers. It all looked immaculately white as though recently polished. It didn't make any sense.
Stepping slowly, deeper into the room, Sarah took a chair, and willed herself to sit down on it at the bedside. She sat there for a while, wishing she could summon some small amount of pity. When it did not come, she sighed loudly, and as if on cue, Chris' head lolled to the side, black and yellow eyes staring right at her. It was an inhuman effort not to throw herself backwards off the chair. She met the eyes as best she could. The smell as he breathed was a sulpherous fume, but she held his gaze.
"I'm here Chris," she mutterd quietly, her voice trembling like a leaf in the wind. "Don't be afraid." Gingerly, she reached out with a gloved hand and placed it gently on top of what remained of his left hand. It felt as though it might turn to ash if she squeezed it.
Chris' head rocked gently before moving to set his gaze back on the ceiling. "Afraid." he said suddenly. His voice was nothing like it had once been. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard, but somehow seemed like only an echo of something else that she had not quite heard. "Not afraid." She stared at him. This was as close as anyone had come to a lucid conversation in weeks. Without warning, the wall holding her emotions shattered and she began sobbing uncontrollably.
As she felt fingers wrap themselves around her own, she heard herself say "I love you, Chris. I love you so much." Don't leave me. I can't make it on my own.
Without transition, his fingers stopped holding her own and she felt a grip take her wrist. Opening her eyes in startlement, she caught that deathly gaze back in her face again. His breathing had quickened.
"Go." He said, it sounded almost like a command "Not. Not safe. Sarah. Don't. Want. To hurt. You." There was almost some emotion in the screeching of his voice. "Not you." he continued, "Not you." And then her wrist was free again, and the gaze returned to the study of the ceiling once more.
No. He was as unintelligible as ever. She felt a look of pity finally cross her face as she rubbed the bruise growing on her wrist where he had held it. As she watched him, his breathing slowed back to the calm, irregular rhythm it had been before. No. It was slower this time. Slower still. Then he breathed deeply, filling his lungs one final time, and he was still.
Sarah's mind went black as she curled over and cried. She was not aware of Dr. Carter's hand as it appeared on her shoulder. She did not hear the words of comfort he directed at her in a practised manner. She did not see the orderlies come in and begin switching off the machinery that had been monitoring the health of her husband as he had defied all medical knowledge and rotted away before them.
But Chris saw it. He saw it and heard it all. He prayed that Sarah would take his advice. That she would go somewhere far away. He had been chosen. His body was to become the vessel of the Lich, and His armies would march across the world and usher in a new Age. An Age of the Dead. To Sarah, this was an end. The end of her marriage. The end of a love affair that had burned so hot as to make both feel as though they were the only two in the world who really knew what love was.
But to Christopher Weston, to the undead Lich, it was just a beginning.