Colony

by Spun Silk

Part fifteen: Mist

Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order.

–David Gerrold

Sandpaper...

That's a odd sensation... I feel sandpaper on my face...

My eyes opened. Edward R. Murrow was staring me in the eyeball, from a distance of an inch or so. His pupils were dilated wide open with concern. I closed my eyes again. How long had I been out? The cat continued licking my cheek, threatening to wear a hole in the skin with his rough tongue. I rolled over on my stomach, but remained prostrate. My mind finally cleared enough to be surprised; I was still alive.

How long had I been out? Was the sun lower in the sky than I remembered? Hell, what did it matter now? I let my eyes roll back into their sockets and gave myself over to the exhaustion.

The sandpaper returned. "Go 'way." I mumbled. "Go hunt mice. You'll do fine." But then Edward R. Murrow did something I had never heard before. He meowed. A long, high, lamenting cry. I opened my eyes again. That's when I noticed a smooth river rock that lay alone on the ground about 2 feet from my face. Huh. My eyes re-closed of their own accord. Like the stones the cairns are constructed out of…

…wait! My head lifted in surprise.

Then I saw it. Three of the cairns were scattered from my fall. It was like a bucket of ice cold water to the face; I was up on my feet in a second, more out of astonishment than energy. No trace of the fuchsia aura radiated. No note sang in the quiet Ether of the clearing in the woods. The remaining, intact, cairns stood there in their semicircle… as dead as stones.

The barrier was broken – the proverbial barn door was open! This was not the plan. A surge of adrenaline in my veins spurred me to motion. If the Miscreation were free to go, he would do just that, and not be held in place for the virus/bees to attack after I expired! He would be free to spread his foul self as far as he took liking to. Breathing in shallow pants, I began the Herculean task of re-stacking the fist-sized stones. Edward R. Murrow flitted anxiously around the scattered stones as I labored.

I finished one of the cairns with the stones that lay closest to me, all the while calculating in my head what the chances were that he had passed by over my head while I had been unconscious. But all seemed quiet in the dead-zone around the mine head. I scanned the far horizon for evidence he was free, but saw nothing. I started in on the second cairn, gulping shallow pants of oxygen. The second cairn was almost repaired, when the far-deepest reaches of my borrowed Ether-sense grabbed my attention.

I sensed motion deep below me in the mountain, from far deep in the bowels of the rock, something was slowly approaching – through a shaft chipped into the rock by human hands many decades ago. It was wild, black… and big. It held the form of a billowing dust-cloud, and radiated a huge aura that held no other sensations at all - except color. The color of its aura could best be described as 'Black Hole'.

I was awed by the size of it.

New energy spurred me to balance the last stone on the delicate top of the repaired second cairn, but no clean fuchsia aura appeared to ease my panic, no clean note sounded. It seemed this collection of cairns were an 'all-or-nothing' lot. I turned to gather the stones that had fallen farthest from the mine head.

All the while, with my borrowed Ether-eye I watched him ascend. He was hard to miss, once he was in range. I laid the base stones for the final cairn, and turned without pausing, for more stones. Like an octopus, the Troglodyte traveled up the shafts, tendrils of the cloud proceeded ahead of it, testing the air.

It sensed something was different. The cloud of Black Hole slowed as it approached ground level. This was no mindless killing machine… it was displaying caution. It undulated and flowed like fluid, and seemed to pause just out of sight below the opening.

Almost done, almost done, almost done…! Adrenaline surged in my blood, giving my torpid body the power of motion. I willed my muscles to respond to my will just a few more minutes. They protested loudly, the weight of the colony's appetite was staggering. In spite of them, I stacked stone on stone in slow motion. I called on the pig-headed cussedness that had served me well my whole life through; I needed every bit of it to complete the task.

As the last two stones were in my hands, a white fog suddenly appeared all around me, thick and muffling and blind. I dropped the stones in surprise and instinctively put my hands out protectively into the thick white mist. Edward R. Murrow hissed loudly and bolted, disappearing almost instantly from my view.

Damn!

All was silent. This fog was no normal fog. It was heavy and warm, and unnaturally opaque. And it stank. "Who's there?" I demanded, but I knew the answer. New adrenaline surged in my veins. No one answered.

I dropped to my knees and felt blindly around me, frantically searching the white fog for the last two smooth rocks, but the ones I had dropped were invisible to me in the white mist – not to mention the unseen delicate cairns that must have been out there within a few strides of me. Those, I could topple completely with the slightest clumsiness in the fog.

The thick mist cut off even my extra sense, the Ether view afforded my by the Colony bloom. In the count of a few seconds, not only my half-mile 'visibility' gone, but my normal eyesight as well. Quite a shift. Now I could only sense a small bubble just around my body, and that just with the six senses I'd been born with. I pivoted around on one knee, disoriented. "Who's there?" I repeated, but I knew the answer. Was he still confined? Which direction was the mine entrance? Had he passed by me already? Or was he just now coming out of the depths of his deep hole?

Fog moved lazily past me in the air. He was studying me, I was sure of it. Evaluating me. He would be able to see my magnetic force-lines in the Ether, and would not know what to make of me. I stood, and forced my spine straight. Bizarre as it sounds, sensing a confrontation, my mind switched into Odd-Stuff-Survival-Mode. (Old habits die hard.) But it was useful; I couldn't let him get suspicious. Not if he were free. I forced my affect back under my control. Everything was riding on this.

"Show yourself!" I demanded.

Nothing.

I was on my feet by means of un-cut adrenaline by this point. "Are you such a coward? Will you hide behind clouds?" The mist flowed lazily in front of my face. I had to keep him close, had to get him engaged. Keep him close to me. "Are you afraid of me?" I taunted. "Afraid of little ol' Carl?"

An audible growl sounded, one that came from disparate directions all at once, and set my very hair on edge. I sensed anger in the mist. Hatred too.

Silence again. He had to stay with me, not loose interest – and fly off free. I upped the ante; "Ha! What's this, then?! You all sizzle, and no steak?!"

A sneering voice finally came out of the mist, icily. "Laughable. No; I fear no human."

"Really! Huh. Then show yourself!"

But he sadly wasn't taking orders. "Show yourself!" I demanded into the blank whiteness.

Nothing.

"State your purpose," His voice was incredibly deep, I had the sensation I felt it more in my bones, than heard it with my eardrums. "What type of human are you?"

I smiled my most convincing smile. "What makes you assume I'm just human?" I replied saucily. "Are you blind to these force-lines?" I was sure he was blind my infection, or he wouldn't be hanging around there so calmly.

"I am not blind to them…" he answered my question as he studied me, his voice still coming from many directions. "You are human," he calculated, "Bone and sinew… blood and flesh… insect and victim… but you sense the Ether? As a human?"

No, I thought, Not at the moment, I'm blind as a bat. "That should be obvious." I lied easily.

"I've not ever encountered a human blessed with magnetism. What type of creature are you? A hybrid?"

"I'm… one of the 49," I said, making this up as I went along. "And you're hearing about me now. Have you ever seen a human seek out contact with you before? Have you ever had one open up your cage before?" I asked.

A pause. "No." He rumbled. "You really ARE just human," he concluded after his examination. "For all your foolish actions – still just human."

"I like to think of being human as more than 'just'," I replied, cocky. "I'm here to challenge you to a test of powers. May the best being win!"

Something akin to amusement twittered through the fog. "Ridiculous. You are no match for my kind. You have over-estimated the power the magnetism allots you, if you come to me in this way." (Now, that comment was one that would cause me many hours of pondering, later. What power? I had never seen the force lines as anything but a nuisance all my life.) "A serious mistake on your part…"

I grit my teeth against the exhaustion, to continue the charade. "That's not what I was told," I lied, "I was informed we would be quite well-matched.", now a touch of human hubris for good measure; "And I'm of a mind to have your head on my wall to show as a trophy!"

That did it. I had finally him. The white fog quickly retreated between myself and a figure that was composing itself into something solid, out of black aura, some 15 paces away.

The Troglodyte appeared to my eyeballs there in the clearing, some 9 feet tall. Although humanoid in the strictest sense, he looked like no human I'd ever seen. Unless it was in a jolly good nightmare. My wide eyes started at the ground level and followed him upward in amazement. Massive legs like tree trunks, unnaturally wide shoulders and arm wingspan. My eyes were drawn immediately to the shoulders, that sported irregular sharp protrusions like numerous mineralized rhino's horns. Like the exaggerated spikes of a hand-mace. Massively muscular arms that ended in hands with three claws and a thumb. The figure as he stood was hunched over to support a knobbed helmet-like head held low at mid-chest height. Tiny angry eyes, low-slung jaw, and most notable of all; a full set of sharp teeth. His spine was visible below the sharp projections, traveling it seemed along the outside of the body, and ended in a muscular tail, barbed at the end, which gave the creature graceful balance in-spite of his hunched stance.

His 'skin' looked rock hard and was the color of bad mustard. No clue what my color was at this point, but I'm betting pretty pale.

His beady eyes narrowed as he formed out of the black smog. Something about the way he stared at me called to mind the way Edward R. Murrow had looked at that mouse under his paw. I shook off the dread that rippled over me. End game.

Impertinent fool! he roared. I have existed from the Beginnings, I have waited millennia – I have held my power, and radiated my power. I have wrought carnage at a whim! What are YOU to compare yourself with ME?

I backed away from him instinctively. Blindly, I nearly twisted an ankle on a bundle that lay on the ground. My Mojo bag! I grabbed it and held it out defensively with my jaw set. "Stay back–" I warned. He chuckled again with real amusement this time.

"That trinket is useless against my kind," He covered 8 feet of the distance between us easily in two strides, and held his own clawed hand out towards me, empty and open. "You don't know what you're dealing with, insect." he hissed.

In-spite of the fact he was still too far away to touch me, I felt a fizzing sensation in the air around me. "What black magic is this?" I demanded.

"No black magic at all. Simple metaphysics." Suddenly I lurched. I felt a sudden, deep… chasm open up under me; but none was there – the scene around me did not change to my eyes at all. Of course, I knew my eyes were not capable of reporting everything that went on around me... The Ether contains many mysteries. My heart rate quickened and my breath grew shallow and quick. My eyes and my logic center frantically told my brain that there was no danger. but my mind was having none of it.

His expression was half smile/half grimace at my discomfort. I seemed to be teetering on the very edge of a long dark chimney that I could feel but not sense. It seemed... bottomless, endless. With a slight confident nod, he dramatically and slowly closed his grip into a fist and I gasped. Something in me was pulled taut. The very edge of where "I" started and stopped… seemed to blur.

I had the sensation I was about to spill out of myself. Darnedest sensation I've ever felt… and that's saying a lot.

"This was hopeless from the beginning, fool. Here you learn the punishment for Pride!" he sneered, obviously enjoying himself. I did not answer. I could not answer. I was mentally scrambling for a toe-hold as the solidness that supported me in the universe itself, eased away from me.

He chuckled again at my helplessness, and with an evil smile began slowly twisting his fist.

I cried out at the sensation that hit me now. Every nerve in me –physical and metaphysical– exploded in white pain. I was totally disoriented for a second, couldn't have told you up from down. My vision eventually returned, only to find him amused, watching me. Once he saw my eyes focused on him again, his empty fist twisted farther. It hit me again, and I fought to keep from blacking out.

Once more he let me recover. I tried desperately to think, to find an exit, an escape from him, but he held me fast. I realized in a flash that I was no better off than the mouse the cat had been playing with; I was now a source of entertainment for him. 'Just put it out of its misery!' I had scolded the cat, back then in Horace's Papi's house.

I had spent years slipping out of death's clutches. By hook and by crook, with luck, brains, and folk knowledge I had cheated death. But suspended here between forever and the Troglydite, death didn't sound so bad just now. How long would this torture have to go on?

The troglodyte had his claws in me somehow – not sure how, I wasn't even clear on what exactly he had ahold of – but although I still had command of my body, the mental insides of me were pinned in place like a bug to a species board. It was wildly disorienting. Again he twisted.

I flailed, and in a blind panic, I lunged at his fist to stop the motion of it – enfolded it with my arms and upper body – then held on for dear life. My only thought was to stop the twisting; stop the tearing. I clamped down on his fist with my upper arm and dug into his massive elbow with both hands. The twisting stopped mercifully. Our eyes locked, his dark and menacing, mine wide with fear.

That's when my sight fractured.

Starting around the back of my head and swirling forward around me on my left side, my perception changed. I seemed to be seeing through… well, a bunch of soap-bubbles is the best word for it. I saw thousands of copies of his face in miniature, all presented in geometric frames that nestled together like a honeycomb. At the same time a vibration started deep in me – not in my physical self, deeper than that, but it threatened to shake my back molars loose just the same.

Some of them had started leaving me. How many new colonies had they divided into? Mathematic or geometric increase? The closeness of him was suddenly a great relief, I clung to him with everything I had. Next step; inoculation, Sucker…

Clueless to all this activity, he snarled"Don't toy with things you were never meant to understand, human," his face a distance of just a few inches from my own. "I can rip your very aura by the roots from your pitiful body. I have all power over you!"

My aura? That's what he had ahold of? I panted for a bit before I attempted speech. "Your... aura shots–" I breathed, "up-to-date?"

"What?"

"Your shots. My aura's... got... Colony..."

His body tensed under my grasp at the mere mention of the word. But then he rumbled a lustful laugh. "Impossible! A human aura?"

"That's what they tell me," I panted, "I'm contagious at close range."

He said nothing, but eyed me, evaluating my words cautiously. His gaze danced through the air around me. I spoke through gritted teeth. "It was attracted to me by these magnetic force lines like every other damned creature in the Ether." I was getting seasick from the swirling viewpoint I had. The whole lot of them were definitively agitated.

"What foolishness! Colony––" he hesitated, then continued "– can't live on human aura!"

"Oh, they're trying to learn. On me, they're trying to learn. You really want to rip my aura from me?" I managed a weak grin into his wide-eyed mug. "You may come away with more in your hand than you bargained for!"

In an instant he released me. But I held on, and did not fall away from him.

What happened then… Well, I've tried to piece it together, later. But really there was too much happening for any human to catch all of it. The vibrations had increased to a fever pitch, and seemed to feed on their own momentum. Memories came spewing from my past like a gusher; accompanied by an audio cacophony of garbled language, sounds, screeches, and music, I tasted pepper in my mouth, in my chest, in my ears and sense of touch, right down to my fingertips and toes. Pepper that tingled, hurt, burned. For a moment this that was all I could focus on. The troglodyte had broken free of me and was bringing both palms up defensively, what he had in mind with that got lost to my seeing altogether – as my fractured vision suddenly swirled with grainy orange.

I was picked up bodily by things invisible and spun in the opposite direction. My skin burned with fire, or maybe it was pepper. At the point where blacking-out threatened, I suddenly felt a violent recoil (a recoil? a what?) and landed hard on the stoney ground. The troglodyte roared and morphed into black cloud of smoke – a cloud that was one with an equally large cloud of agitated orange.

My fight-or-flight had me on my feet again before my mind could clear, for all the good it did me – I dropped again to my hands and knees, as the ground itself started to roll under me. The hillside ground and buckled and jerked, as if the planet itself were being torn apart. The white mist disappeared in a flash, which opened up the full action to my eyesight. The motion of the hillside pounded out a loud staccato rhythm, like a woodpecker hammering a tree. Huge oak trees at the parameter groaned their displeasure at having to move, their limbs stiff from having held their rigid pose so many decades. The ancient trees whipped back and forth like saplings, raining branches down onto the ground around me. I could do no more than roll into a fetal position and hold down my hat with both arms. Every tree on the hill side clung onto the land – land that seemed intent on casting them off.

Then… silence.

As if the ground had worn itself out in its adolescent tantrum, it lay still. Stiller than it had before. The breeze had stopped dead. Hell; the air itself had stopped dead. My arms slowly released their strangle-hold on my head.

When my eyes stopped spinning, I heard it. Wailing… deep in the cave. A hopeless, desperate wailing almost outside my hearing spectrum. I shook my head trying to clear it. The Miscreation was gone. He had fled back into the only lair he knew, to hide.

I lay on the ground in shock. My mind spun in confusion, but my body was clear. I had the odd sensation of being fully in contact with the ground for the first time in years. In spite of the bruises acquired in the quake, I felt surprisingly like a million bucks.

Wait. What?

I felt suddenly... good. Energetic, light, great. I felt like gravity had suddenly been cut by a factor of 50. As my brain came back online, it dawned on me what just had happened. Colony had jumped ship. It had swarmed. It had chewed long enough on me to be convinced human auras are not an easily acquired taste, and when it saw a better meal close at hand – not to mention getting all riled up when he grabbed and twisted their little swimming pool – they had made the jump to greener pastures without even moving through the particulate phase!

Full bloom transfer.

Lady Vet had said, "It's not pretty."

I didn't even look to see if she had been right. I got up, quickly gathered the scattered stones to rebuilt the cairns complete – closing the barn-door again – and fast as my legs would carry me with my new-found energy, made myself scarce.