Serial- Part 1 (OC)

Serial (Part 1)

Jal woke with the taste of blood and dirt in his mouth. His head hurt, the pain radiating from a spot on the back of his head. He tried to lift his gaze up but a sharp jab of pain in his neck ended that effort, he whimpered. He opened his eyes instead to a black world. He groaned and closed the inner lids of his eyes and suddenly it seemed as if the lights came on just for him, drawing shapes from the darkness in pulsing lines of green light. The room was unfamiliar; the ground bare dirt, the ceiling cobbled stone. Empty, save for an overturned bucket in the corner and a bulging black canvas bag shoved up against the far wall.

Alarm parted the initial cloud of confusion and pain. Where was he? He tried to move his arms and found all four of them were tied behind him. He grasped at his bonds, trying to feel out their shape. They were narrow, plastic and cut painfully into his mottled grey flesh. Worse, he felt, they seemed to loop around a metal hook moored into the earth. He tried to pull to loose it but each tug sent another shock of pain up his neck and soon it was all he could do to stop the room from spinning.

How had he gotten here? The last thing he remembered was coming home. Jal worked as a translator for the Consortium. He was late coming home after one of the new emissaries from the Wolan Collective decided that a briefing on Wolan Tariffs was a wonderful time to enter its reproductive phases and spray pollen all over the negotiation chamber. It had taken four hours for toxicology to unseal the room and after that nobody much felt like debating tariffs on the Wolan mushroom crop. He remembered the lights had been on and his mate had greeted him at the door and then? There was nothing, just a turning black void where his memories were supposed to be.

Another surge of panic came broiling up from his gut. His mate! Clearly someone had abducted him but if it happened when he was at home what had happened to Girol?

He opened his mouth, craning his long neck from side to side in an attempt to see the back half of the room, ignoring the pain that was inching closer to agony. “Girol,” he called, “Girol!”

Somewhere behind him a door flew open, banging nosily against the stone wall. Light poured into the room, blinding Jal for a moment before he retracted his inner eyelids. “Girol,” a voice called behind him, “Girol, Girol, Girol.” It was a strange voice. Deep yet sharp, like a thunder crack. “Girol?” the voice asked questioningly, “No, no I don’t believe I heard of her.” This last phrase was spoken in the Kelesh tongue, common speech of the Consortium.

“Who are you?” Jal demanded in Kelesh, again trying to crane his neck around but finding it too painful. “What have you done with Girol?”

"Nothing,” the voice responded. “She is asleep now. Asleep with not a thought in her head but… sugarplums.” This last word was unknown to Jal and it was most certainly not the lyrical tones of Kelesh. It was a guttural language, discordant to his sensitive ears.

"Who are you!?” Jal demanded, “How dare you attack a respected member of the-“

"Consortium?” the voice interrupted before breaking into a fit of jagged, clapping sounds. It took a moment for Jal to recognize it as laugher. “Yes,” the voice continued, the amusement clear in its tone, “the kind masters... Oh dear what have I done!? I admit I was so excited that I didn’t consider the consequences. Tell me, will I be branded? Banished? Fed to the fire wastes on Raljeak?”

"All of that and more if you don’t release me!” Jal demanded, but there was no force in the threat. Most Theolisans had no concept of mockery or sarcasm but Jal had been indoctrinated in the confusing double talk as part of his linguistic training. This thing, he knew, was mocking him. “Come out,” he demanded, “Come out and let me see your face.”

To his surprise, the thing indulged. It slipped into the periphery of his vision and appeared before him, nude and bowing low with a dramatic flourish, “Here is my lowly face, kind master. Please, don’t judge it too harshly.”

The thing was male, judging by the pink worm that dangled between his long, bare legs. He was thin, visible strands of sinew and muscle turning under pale and blotchy skin. His face, however, was too horrible to look at. It wasn’t the bulbous curve of his forehead or the ears which jutted out like wings. It was the eyes and the smile. Too many teeth, Jal thought, too many teeth in that grin and his lips were bright red. Unconsciously he found himself trying to push himself away from the thing, his four hooved feet scratching long ruts in the dirt. “What are you?” he asked.

The man said a word in that strange guttural tongue and Jal shook his head, “I don’t understand.” The panic had seized on him, cutting through the outrage and the pain. There was something wrong about the man, something feral and mad. It was the eyes, he thought. They were bright and blue and seeming to glow with delight. “Please, please who are you?”

The man sighed, “I am hurt, kind master. Don’t you recognize me? I am your bastard children.” He swept his hands wide, gesturing to the gloomy corners of the room, “I am the inheritor of your follies and the prince to this kingdom.” He laughed again, putting his whole body into the act, his stomach billowing grotesquely, “And what a shit hole it is.”

Jal blinked in confusion, “What does that mean? What planet are you from?”

The man sighed, “Oh a little blue world. You wouldn’t have heard of it. It’s dead now. But, alas I survived it and now here I rot, a custodian to its culture.”

"What do you want?” Jal asked. “I’m not worth much but the Consortium will ransom me if you keep your demands down.” He wasn’t actually sure about that. The Consortium tended to take a zero tolerance policy regarding aggression against its assets. They would be just as likely to bomb the building and consider Jal one of the noble dead as they would be to save him, not that this thing needed to know that.

The man made a clicking sound with his tongue, wagging his bulbous head slowly from side to side, “No no, I don’t want money. What use is money when all the goods are made for different hands than mine? No, I want to send a message. Everyone else may have forgotten but not me, not I, no sir. I won’t forget because they have to know what it is that the Good Masters have forgotten. Blood in the skies means blood on the ground.” As he said this he held his palms out towards Jal. They were slick with dark blood. “I’m sure you understand. I can’t be the first homicidal species you have encountered.”

Jal suddenly went numb. This man, this thing intended to kill him? Again he tugged at the hook, ignoring the pain that had become an inferno inside his skull, “Please,” he begged, “Please no, I have a mate. Please they will… they will kill you for this!”

The man turned his back and walked to the black bag in the corner. “There was an author on my planet,” the man said as he knelt, “by the name of Mark Twain. He said that the fear of death follows from a fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. Tell me, Jal, are you living fully?”

"Please,” Jal whined, his voice growing shrill. He had to get out of here. He felt the bonds begin to cut into his flesh, slicking the metal hook with oily blood.

"Because I know I am,” he said, tossing something to Jal’s feet with a wet plop. Girlo’s head came to rest at the edge of Jal’s foot, her mouth open wide and her small black eyes glossy. From her head her long neck extended just a foot where it ended in a jagged mess of bone and shredded flesh. Jal stared at it, disbelieving even as the man turned from the bag to face him. “Look who I found? She looks nice and peaceful, doesn’t she? Just like I said. It’s almost like she is happy.”

"W-why…” Jal whispered. He tried to remember the way she smiled. The way her hands would run down his chest as their necks coiled about each other. “How could you?”

The man sighed and rolled, crawling on hands and knees towards Jal until his face was just a foot away. “Because,” the man said, his blue eyes sparkling with a mad ecstasy, “I wanted to. Now, if you don’t mind, I am on a bit of a timeline and I have one last bit of my culture I wanted to share with you.”

The man reached behind Jal and produced a small machine. It was yellow with a curved plate of steel jutting from one end. “On my world, this is called a circular saw.”

The machine whirred to life and Jal began to scream.

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Hey guys! This is my first post to HFY (or any reddit writing community). I know this first part isn't very "Fuck Yeah Humanity" but I am hoping the larger scope of the story will be heading in that direction. If there is a good response I am hoping to keep going.

Part 2 is up: https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/4zqzbv/serial_part_2_oc/