Chapter 4 : "Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by..."
oOo
'Jingle bells thump, jingle bells thump, jingle all the way thump thump thump...'
His heart was beating, thump, thump, thump; it was playing jingle bells in his chest, but Rodney had no Christmas spirit to sing along.
He was wet; there was a nasty, sour smell, unmistakable and gross; he'd thrown up on himself like an infant. The smell was almost enough to start him off again, but he managed to swallow the nausea down.
What had happened? Oh.. yeah.. right. He fell, something fell with him and that something was now laying across his right leg.
Strange how it didn't hurt right now... he only knew it was there because he could feel the vague coldness of metal on his shin, could see in the periphery of his vision the huge bulk of the box. He could move his left leg; it was uninjured as far as he could tell.
He didn't want to see any more than that.
Sudden panic gripped him; oh God... was it off? Had he lost his leg? Maybe it didn't hurt because it was no longer... attached. He managed to raise his head a little, so he bit back horror and dread and steeled himself to look.
The planter had come down virtually straight and its leading edge, which happened to be its shortest, had slammed down into his lower leg, midway between knee and ankle. The dark blue of his pants was stained even darker; from the cold metallic face of the box, glinting in the half light, up as far as his knee. Whatever old crap had been in there, sustaining the plants at one time, had spilled out and mostly fallen through the grating beneath him. Some of it sat in piles on his clothing.
He thought his leg was still intact.. well, mostly intact; the fleshy part of his calf was untouched, it was his shin that had suffered the impact.
The fact that it wasn't actually severed - he could see that it wasn't - and that his other leg was unscathed, was a result of the box slewing into the railing, deflecting and ultimately stopping its downward motion.
He really couldn't see much, so with one trembling hand, he slowly pulled the blood-soaked and dirty fabric from the point of impact; it looked odd, like his leg had taken a bite of the planter.
A wave of sickness washed over him...
The edge of the planter was embedded in his shin bone, and it was only after realising this terrible fact, that the pain began in earnest. He spent a long time biting back the rising bile in his throat, gasping through nausea and faintness. Sometime after that, exhausted by the very effort of being awake, he thankfully lost consciousness.
oOo
A hazy moon was rising over the ocean. In the mess hall, citrus-free punch was being served, and strings of lights shone out through the windows and across the city.
Rodney didn't see them though... he still lay where he had fallen, under the sparkling dome.
His sweaty forehead was pressed to his upper arm, the lower part dangled over the side of the platform, in between it and the wall... his arm was numb. He was breathing heavily into the fabric at his left shoulder, now and again allowing a whimper to escape. He was laying twisted having clawed and squirmed against the pain for what seemed an eternity. He was embarassed to admit, even to himself, that he had chewed on this fabric more than once over the last few desperate hours. He could hear his own raspy breathing, and fancied that he could also hear the bump of the heartbeat in his right knee as it carried his life blood out of his body, to drip onto the floor below.
He wished he could have stayed unconscious, but pain and thirst had woken him eventually.
What time was it? He raised his wrist and blinked at his watch, willing the blurry face to come into focus. It didn't, and he let his arm flop back to the deck with a clang.
From the look of the light it was already seven... maybe eight o'clock.
Really, he wasn't doing so well...
He wanted to weep; he wasn't a baby, but this was just too much agony to handle and knowing the cause, made it even worse.
He daren't move too much, although the temptation to do so was almost unbearable. If he moved his lower body, the box could dislodge and the weight of the thing might take it all the way through the bone, and then...
Well, he thought, then... that would be the end.
He was breathing heavily, noisily... he felt hot, but chilled at the same time. His head was fuzzy and packed with a cold fog.
He'd never been delirious from pain... is this what it felt like? Like a dream, but not a dream... as if his mind had been hijacked, by unrelenting and strength-sapping agony.
Drifting as he was in this haze of misery, his senses seemed hyper-aware; he tasted the air that was sucked across his dry tongue, and smelled every detail of where he was; the damp cloth under his cheek, the dusty surface where he lay, the sharp and metallic tang of blood... the reek of sickness. There was such a pounding and a pressure in his head, he felt like his eyeballs would burst.
He was bleeding; he knew that. How badly, he couldn't be sure, but his injury was a severe one and time was not on his side. He could die here... today... now.. if he didn't think of something.
The others would come... eventually. But he might not have that long, and he certainly didn't want to wait that long.
There had to be something... something he could do.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small roll of tools. He dropped the canvas onto his chest and proceeded to unroll it carefully. There were screwdrivers, pliers, all manner of probes, spikes and files, but nothing that could possibly help him now. He crumpled and discarded it; it slid down the side of his chest and lay by his elbow.
His radio was useless here under the dome, but what he needed was a signal, a way to contact the others, bring them out here.
He opened his eyes, unaware that they had been closed.
At the other end of the platform, behind the planter, was the panel... the panel that controlled water flow; it was dangling by its coiled wire, barely four feet away. But it could just as well have been four miles, because there was no way he could get to it. If he had access to that, then he could tamper with the supply, cause disruptions. Someone would notice.
But it just dangled there, out of reach... laughing at him...
Bastard... get over here..., he ordered, wildly.
When had he started talking to inanimate objects? He wasn't sure. It was working though, and he watched fascinated and not a little smugly, as the panel began to swing slowly from side to side.
He could hear Jingle Bells again, and its ringing tune expanded to fill his head, like that foamy stuff they put between walls. It filled every tiny space with fluffiness, and he grinned to himself.
It swung closer now, tantalisingly near and he reached a wavering hand to catch it. Puzzled, he found his hand empty and he blinked at it stupidly.
He felt like he was moving, now... the platform swinging, swooping nauseatingly, again and again, and all the time the console would hover just out of reach.
A voice next, clear and strong, and familiar...
"He's not real, you idiot." He was in his sister's room... pink carpet and Barbie duvet cover. Tin foil snowflakes graced the walls; there was a stocking hanging at the foot of the bed.
"I saw him! I saw him - and - and - Mom told me it was him, you're a liar, Meredith McKay!", Jeannie squawked, red-faced and tearful.
He flashed a nasty smile at her and said,
"You really think, of all the shopping malls in all the world, he came to ours? Is that what you really think?", he looked down on the small blonde head of his sister.
"I feel sorry for you. You see what you want to see... it's not real", he added with a scowl.
Jeannie pouted.
"Meredith, I hate you!"
And the vision was gone, he was back on the cold metal of the platform, millions of miles from earth and years away from that shameful memory of childhood.
There was the panel, where it was before, where it had always been... out of reach. He let his hand fall to the metal of the platform; his head fell back too, and pain flared along with despair.
Fantasies can never help you. Life is hard and then you die... oh, yes, it's official.
"It's not real. You see what you want to see... it's not real", he whispered, suddenly so weary and frustrated he felt the prickle of tears behind his eyes.
Someone... please... find me.
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TBC and thanks for taking time out from your busy Christmas preparations to review!
Look out for more tomorrow - Christmas Eve.
