The crushing weight on his torso abated, followed by, “I got one!” An animal yelp of pain accompanied the first man’s boast. “Grab the other little one. This guy is useless.” Clayton got a kick to his ribs, guessing that he was ‘this guy’.
His vision went hazy at Tommy’s cry of pain. Something deep inside his head throbbed sharply—that same nagging sensation of otherness he’d never fully outgrown—trying to get his attention. But he didn’t have time for it, so he pushed it aside.
Useless? How dare these complete strangers assume Clayton was useless? Just because he was shivering in a ball on the ground and moaning in pain didn’t mean he was useless.
He pushed himself to his knees and grabbed the second man’s leg, stopping him before he could run after Merry. This would be the perfect time for the roof to cave in.
He waited expectantly, but nothing happened. “Oh, come on!”
He gritted his teeth, tasting the faint hint of blood. Sure, his affliction loved to follow him around all day, every day, spilling paint cans on him, tearing his trousers, giving him concussions, but when he needed it, where was it? “Not even a single falling brick? How about a rat stampede? Is that really too much to ask for?”
The owner of the leg he was clinging to seemed to think so, or at least that was how Clayton decided to interpret the look of irritated confusion on the man’s face.
Leg Owner pulled back a fist, and pain flared in Clayton’s brain. He hugged the man’s leg, moaning.
“Wait, I haven’t hit you yet,” Leg Owner complained.
Clayton’s mind exploded. The faint throbbing he’d been shoving back all day had become a raging inferno of colors spanning the entire spectrum—some of which he’d never seen before.
Clayton could still feel the world around him, the rock digging into his knees, the squelching in his shoe where it had leaked, and Leg Owner’s leg clutched in his arms, but Clayton’s mind was not in the Real.
This was new. His affliction had never made him hallucinate before.
Clayton got an impression of something vast laced with a hint of fond exasperation, and then he was racing toward a point somewhere in the infinite distance.
A voice. No, not a voice. A sense of familiarity, of homecoming. A song.
Then nothing.
Dark, warm, safe.
This was a good place. Clayton couldn’t remember ever feeling so peaceful and at one with himself.
“He’s not here. Why isn’t he here?!” A feminine voice jarred Clayton’s tranquility.
It was laced with fear, and instinctively, Clayton tried to sit up, searching for the voice’s owner. Unfortunately, he seemed to have misplaced his body. He could panic about that, but something about the voice was hauntingly familiar and drew him away from his bodiless quandary. He couldn’t quite put his finger on where he’d heard it before.
It had a strange accent he wasn’t familiar with. Come to think of it, it was using a language he wasn’t familiar with, either—there were a lot of long vowels involved and a cadence strangely reminiscent of the odd smell the small army of men who had landed on him moments ago exuded. Would Clayton be sneezing right now if he had a body?
Fortunately, Clayton had never met a language he didn’t understand. It was his one real talent outside of baking and likely the only reason he’d been accepted into the Guard in the first place.
“How can he not be here? Where else could he have gone?” This voice was masculine and was speaking the strange language as well. It was also painfully familiar.
It’d be nice if Clayton could see. But he supposed that, with having no body, he should be grateful he could hear.
Amusement rippled around him. And it wasn’t his.
:Oh my little traveler, how much fun you are. I would love to keep you, but something tells me you won’t stay.:A voice whispered through him, touching the core of his being and making him shiver.
“Stay? Stay where? Am I in an actual place? Because I thought I was having an episode.” Clayton sometimes thought his entire life was one long, drawn-out psychotic break, but this was taking things to the next level.
Laughter shimmered and winnowed its way through him, swirling his consciousness around like flower petals in a breeze.
Clayton didn’t recommend the sensation.
:Part of you is here… and part of you is there. Vis wouldn’t give you back quite so easily, after all. They and I don’t get along very well, you know.:
Before Clayton had a chance to even begin to unpack that statement, the familiar feminine voice howled in grief, and the sound shook Clayton to his core.
