Chapter 2 What is it? (precious)
"Shit! What am I supposed to do now?"
In abject misery, he turned and walked north down Ruston Way, not halting, as if to keep walking would be a better thing to do than face the facts. With no car and no swimming, he had virtually no freedoms, the only things that kept him feeling like a prisoner. He walked for an hour until he looked up and realized he was surrounded by trees. He vaguely remembered Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium as he had walked straight past. In the midst of the woods, he looked around. He realized he is alone.
'The park closes after dusk, how did I even get in here?' he wondered, looking around at the deep shadows of the trees. With no light upon the trails, the trees dark, even in the day, were dark as the new moon. He felt the shadows wrapping around him physically and in the darkness, all warmth left his body. He felt like a corpse, a shell yearning for the light yet fearing it. Jeramiah looked up into the sky and wondered 'what is the point of all this? When will I be able to live? What does it mean to live?'
Lost in thought, he realized he was resting on the north point where the waves were rougher, and the sky is still just as beautiful. In the night, though obscured by light pollution, the vague outline of the milky way shines. The stars vast and the moon waxing towards full, shining brilliantly across the sound. He smiled up at the stars, and for once the darkness seemed almost comforting. Where could he find more of this warmth in the darkness? The cold biting through his sweatshirt seemed to cut less deep and he wondered why.
Standing up he went to touch the water, pondering if it was caused by the ambient temperature coming off the sea.
"Crap that's cold," 'it wasn't the sea, it was simply the comfort of the beautiful, empty, and distant feeling of space and the night sky.'
"Ha! I scored two out of three, well not like I ever wanted to be beautiful. Well, do I go back home?"
'Or not' he mused. He stood up and started walking back to the heart of the park.
After ten minutes of walking down Five Mile road, he is at the crossroads knowing that it would be infinitely faster if he took off down a trail. He felt a sense of expectancy as he stumbled in the darkness.
"Shit" he grumbled, spitting out the dirt he had so quickly eaten after he tripped on a nearly invisible tree root. Jeramiah shoved himself up angrily and anxiously took another step… and another… and another… and he fell.
"Great… just great. Could tonight get any worse?" he reached down to his shin where he had fallen on a particularly gnarly tree root and moaned "it's worse" (kudos if you get the reference).
He looked at the blood rushing from down his leg and smirked grimly. He stumbled on his hands and knees feeling his way through the pitch black. Instead of embracing the darkness, each movement is a war against it, each hand smothered in dirt and cut by rocks. He realized he was bleeding but not profusely meaning that he had not hit a major artery, but a vein must still have been punctured in his leg for such a continuous stream of blood to be leaking out.
'Well, they do it in movies. I don't want to do a complete tourniquet, but I'll just wrap my belt around it.' Reaching down, he started to wrap his belt tightly around his thigh just above the knee. The blood stopped pouring out and came out as a quick drizzle as he sat their semi-conscious drifting in thought.
Slowly, he climbed up a nearby tree trunk, the cedar bark ripping even more into his already bloodied hands. He leans there half-standing half-leaning peering into the darkness with a feeling of dread and misery at his 'blatantly, stupid idea' to go hiking at night.
"Moron, Idiot, Leer Kopf WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!" (German insult meaning to have no brain)
!THUD! He slammed his fist into the tree trunk violently leaving his hand numb with pain. He slowly slid back to the ground with a sense of hopelessness. The temperature which had been dropping from a measly 52 degrees was now barely scraping 34, knowing that without proper protection he would die of hypothermia, in the night. He got on his knees again and began to crawl. Inching his way out of the park, he is fighting for each foot wondering if he could possibly make it out of his predicament.
He heard a small explosion that woke him from his stupor of ignoring the sounds of the night. Suddenly, the cacophony of hoots and rustling was halted by a noise so broad that everything else was still. Looking around, he could see in the distance a small burst of fire. He went over to see what had happened with the brilliance of the tiny tongues of fire providing much-needed light for his path. When he finally arrived at the clearing, he noticed that for the most part the fire was going out but one bush, in particular, was slowly igniting.
He quickly dashed for the blazing branches and started to rip at the bush to shove it into the damp ground. 'Damp ground? Did it rain yesterday? It must have, although I do not remember that happening.'
He rushed to put the fire out messing up the soot that seemed to cover the newly formed clearing. Looking up, it seemed quite a few branches had been knocked out, although it only became noticeable if you looked hard enough.
He spotted a foot-long oval-shaped stone that, even in the dark, showed an almost orangutan orange with veins of what seemed like fire snaked across its surface.
"Great. I'm dreaming whoop dee doo that means I can't-"
"Ahhhhhh shit!" he grumbled as he collapsed to the soot-covered ground in agony.
'Why did I hit my leg like that, why am I such a colossal idiot?' He grumbled as he looked around and again found himself enraptured with the smooth surface of the stone. "Well, it's abnormal and possibly precious. The best move is to try and cover up the scene,' he grabbed at a fallen branch with his torn hands and started to wipe the soot off the ground and singed trees. Once he had cleared as much noticeable evidence as he could, he tiredly dropped the branch in the dirt.
'Where did I find the energy to wipe the evidence away like it's some kind of crime scene or wild west campfire? Is it from watching Sherlock Holmes or reading Louis Lamour?' Jeramiah looked over at the strange impact indentation the stone formed on the ground and started to grab what was left of some smaller branches and shoved them around the stone.
He was putting the last green branch nestled upright against the stone, when suddenly, the back of his knuckle brushed against the hollow rock, "or is that egg."
'No, it couldn't be. This is not some fantasy novel. This is real-life. Magic and mystical creatures don't exist, just our boring regular lives. He groped at the oddly smooth stone. 'Yes, it's a stone,' he bitterly forced himself to believe.
He grabbed the orb and wrapped it in his arms while letting its brilliance, which came almost as a glow, give a faint light to the ground below him as he took painful lumbering steps down towards the trail. In his rush to reach the orb, he had shredded his sweatshirt and his arms. His jeans were even torn, leaving the cold to again begin seeping into his bones. He smiled oddly at the newfound energy that he couldn't describe and the warmth emanating from the e… stone that is only warm where his hands were.
"So, it's some kind of revolutionized survival gear that is designed to help people who are lost in the middle of needlessly large public parks. I swear this genius technology must be worth a fortune; it's genius."
'Revolutionary rocks! I' completely stupid. I must've hit my head. How is possible to be this dumb?'
'Or is it simply easier to believe that it's an egg to some mythical beast. What if it's a Nundu from Harry potter? That would mean that crazy lady Rowling is some kind of squib... NOPE, not possible there are no such things as wizards.' The light provided by the orb was just enough to keep him from losing his way through the woods he eventually came again across a Five-mile road. He felt something within him urging him to hide the orb.
Without thinking suddenly even more dirt was inside of his clothes and the orb was hidden behind a tree, under a fern, wreathed in kindling, and smeared with dirt. Realizing how much effort it had taken to hide it, he took to memory the aquarium parking lot. Jeramiah urged his body forward towards highway 163 and the roundabout to exit Point Defiance Park. The light of the moon now apparent without the dark awning of the trees he was able to clearly follow the road without incident.
He urged his aching bleeding body back towards home. Looking down, he thought 'When did I stop bleeding. I had more abrasions than skin yet now I'm not even bleeding out of my shin?' Reaching down, he lifted his jeans to check, and low and behold a scab had somehow magically formed over the once open gash. ' I'm no longer coated in bloody wounds, but the dried blood probably won't be doing me any favors.'
After minutes of his thoughts wandering and losing coherency: 'what does it take to push a shovel to the sea?' (right, loony bin for you pal) he saw headlights in the distance.
He reached up to his hand and shouted "HEY Over hee...e…" his voice quickly losing volume as he dropped to his knees and losing any form of consciousness finally collapsed.
At 4821 E Shirley Rd (4826 E Shirley Rd is across the street) A stress-ridden 42-year-old man is anxiously pacing in his brightly lit marble dining room. Everything is orderly with well-finished wood and a 6-month-old stove. He paced in front of his wife who was sitting with her head in her hands sobbing. Mr. Andersons' chocolate brown with only tinges of white hair is anxiously being run through by his hands. He paced rapidly as a frenzy accident report was clenched in his right hand. He remembered the police sergeant's words as he first knocked at the door.
"Excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Anderson. It appears your son's vehicle was in a hit and run, I first must ask: do you currently know where he is?"
"No, and WHAT ON EARTH DO YOU MEAN OUR SON WAS IN AN ACCIDENT!"
"I am deeply sorry, but your son's vehicle was totaled while parked at Ruston way public park. Looking around we have seen no sign of anyone except for this," he announced lifting an old 100 dollar watch with green hands and rim. "Is this your son's?"
Mrs. Anderson immediately started sobbing, and Dylan Anderson reached out to take the watch while nodding.
"Ah I see," he said while handing over the accident report, "we'll alert you if we find anything related to his whereabouts. Again, I am terribly sorry but there is still hope…"
Four hours later, he is in the kitchen pacing, fresh-made bean dip on the counter where no one had made a move to either eat or refrigerate. It was 1 a.m. when suddenly they heard a phone call from the urgent care saying they had a Jeramiah Anderson in their emergency care ward but with very few actual wounds… "Bring a change of clothes. I doubt you'll want to keep the ones he's wearing."
Dylan and Jessica Anderson rushed to the emergency care clinic, tears streaming down their faces during the entirety of that agonizing car ride. Before Dylan could even put the car in park, Jessica opened the door, jumping out of the car.
"Honey! Wait!"
Jessica paid no mind to her slow husband as she sprinted through the automatic doors of the building. Stopping, she frantically looked around, searching for the only face that did not seem blurry and unrecognizable. Bed after bed her eyes scanned, until finally settling on one towards the back of the room, where no people stood.
She forcefully takes her husband's shaky, clammy hand and drags him straight to her precious baby boy. Within a split second, Jeramiah notices them, his crying mother not hard to miss. When Jessica makes it to the side of his bed, she grabs his hand and drops to her knees sobbing. She takes this time to kiss her only child's hand, thanking the Lord that she didn't have to say goodbye just yet.
