Today's Polyphemus

by WrtierJC

A reclusive three eyed doctor from an older time awakens again. Someone with the power to move nations or turn a city upside down in one night, and he wants to heal the pains of the common man. Oswald's simple goal of treating the hurt and sick isn't so easily accomplished, of course, as less merciful things of the night wish for mankind to suffer.

1. Chapter 1: Awakening

Muffled shouting alert centuries-old ears, and joints worn and old twitched to life.

Eyes opened again, and searched through the dark for reason or pattern. Instead, they found dead old wood, and closed so he could listen.

A singular voice echoed out among the rabble of men. A young woman, perhaps, called out with pleading and desperation, and as he listened, memories of old return. Slowly, this maiden's voice of begging brought distant memories of longing to his still heart.

His eyes opened once he felt his empty stomach come alive, and he uttered the whisper, "Mildred." The name of who calmed his starvation in the past, and with that word came the memories of who he was and why he was buried there for so many countless years.

He listened and did not move as the rabble-mouthed voices moved away from his prison of wood, and the woman approached. A soft rapping came to the wood before him, just below his heart.

He recalled the rap-rap-tap, and a sad smile came to his dry lips. He returned it as he had done hundreds of times, and heard a gasp of joy. Then a thud.

"I found you, oh I found you, Master Oswald, I'm so excited..." The voice sounded as if it was straight against his coffin, and he felt his sad smile twitch up into a happier smile. She was hugging him

He knocked the knock again, and she stepped away. "Yes, sir, oh, boy..."

The girl ran away, and Oswald was alone to himself for the moment. He closed his eyes, feeling the exhaustion of a hundred years rest return to him again.

The streets of London were his oldest memory, of the time he was alive. The days he walked, the studies he made effort on, the friendships and rivalries. All so trivial now, so many unknown years later, but still the memories returned to his mind as his eyes closed and darkness came back to him.

The illnesses he left behind, the filth in the streets and the royal rich who had no business with the poor like him and his old mates, it was all so trivial now. Coming to America was exciting, but why was he awoken?

As his mind drifted further into the dark of torpor, Oswald recalled the good and the bad of his older home, and faintly he recalled the trip he took to this west coast. The New World was untouched by the monsters of London... But would it still?

He feel asleep into the dark torpor again with that lingering question.

Did he awaken into the same Jyhad he left in London?