I decided to be a follower and post up a story I started. Its kind of weird, and kind of crappy, and kind of confusing because its not in chronological order. If you hate it, tell me you hate it. I dont like being falsely egotistical.
The Telling
"A foolproof way!" the billboard screamed at passerby’s. A ridiculously attractive painting of a man with too- white teeth and too blonde hair smiled down at the road, his body covering half, while the other side promised answers to all your problems, satisfaction guaranteed. No money down, and a complete refund if you are not absolutely pleased. "Buy this product, and be just like me" it practically oozed.
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A tiny breeze, indistinguishable at first, brushed across the wide expanse of water-deprived grass, barely making a sound. It blew through the deserted farmhouses, empty swings swaying lazily, shutters sweeping open, only to be slammed shut again. The normally raging river had gone quiet, bubbling like a stream, with hardly any noise at all. It was unnaturally hot out this early in spring, even for the heart of Saskatchewan. Crops had all withered and died, and the pitiful amount of wheat and barley left from the ravagement of weather was stolen away by locusts, or stray cats and dogs whose owners tossed them aside when money was low. The oil wells, it seemed, had all run dry as well, costing many their jobs. Most men had hardly enough to feed themselves, let alone the large families they tended to have. At this time in the year, the bluebirds should have been out, singing their chorus to cheer the deadpanned world, but even they had been chased out by the drought and dust storms.
A shrill scream broke the eerie silence, coming from the direction of a tiny village that had been affected greatly by the cursed weather. A stubborn few still remained however, keeping the town in order until the deserters remembered their roots and came back, or at least until the rainy season finally appeared. The cry came from an old woman, who had lived in the small town for all her life, just like her mother, and her mother before that. She was lying on her deathbed, an immense, canopied affair, in a stifling hot room, with heavy black curtains covering the windows. Her only visitor was the resident doctor, who stayed only out of loyalty to some of his patients, one being this almost invalid of a woman. She had showed signs of a minor illness mere days ago, but now it had developed into a full-scale disease. This completely baffled the doctor, because while she was never exactly a healthy senior citizen, he had never seen someone fall so deeply in sickness in so short a time.
Her scream came as quite a shock. The doctor had been downstairs, fixing some tea for the long day ahead, when he heard the woman shrieking at the top of her lungs upstairs. He rushed to her room at his top speed, to find a terrifying spectacle waiting for him. She was shaking violently in her bed, so hard the frame was moving across the floor, creating dents in the hardwood. Her eyes had rolled all the way back in her head to show the whites, and she was foaming at the mouth. The doctor knew that logically, it would take superhuman strength for one so frail to move that large an object like that, especially while sick, but in the heat of the moment, all he could do was stand and watch in horror as the woman finally went limp, most likely unconscious. When he crept over to the bed to check on her breathing, however, her eyes sprang open, and she sat up to grip his collar so tight he almost choked. In a frantic whisper, she choked out into his ear, "Watch your left leg, it will seem like nothing, but it could be fatal… and tell my daughter I love her." And with that, the woman fell back, never to speak again.
That night, after making the appropriate calls, he went to his own personal doctor and asked him to check his left leg. He was asked whether or not he had been feeling any pain there, and he truthfully answered that no, he hadn’t. The second doctor just gave him an odd look, and examined him anyway. As it turned out, he was developing a cancerous tumor on his left leg. Since it was detected so early, it could be easily removed. Left to grow, it could have killed him. After scheduling an appointment for surgery, the doctor went home feeling shaken. How, he wondered, could she possibly have known when even he did not?
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On the other side of town, Sheriff Wesley Browning sat in his desk with his head in his hands not moving an inch. A small buzz broke him out of his trance, and a voice came out of the speaker in front of him.
"Sheriff Browning, there’s a Mr. McNally here to see you." The falsely cheerful voice chirped at the other end. Wesley sighed heavily and rubbed his sweaty forehead with his hands. McNally, the local rent-a-cop, was here practically every day now. It was bad enough that he was being forced to babysit a still wet-behind-the-ears wannabe cop, but because he was transferred from the "big city", the stupid kid thought he knew everything about the real world. It was doubtful that he had ever seen a real live crime scene. The sheriff wasn’t too sure why he was being punished so, but he guessed it had something to do with the complaints he sent to headquarters. In this miniscule town, news traveled around fast, so when someone died, it was everyone’s business. At first, it was fairly normal, the young and the old. The weak, in other words. But after a while, it was the healthy, too. Wesley, although knew his way around a murder case, was absolutely flummoxed with what could cause all these deaths. He always sent the bodies for autopsies, but the scientists examining them could only tell it was some undiscovered virus, that caused flu like symptoms, until they just…keeled over. Not knowing what to do, he just called HQ, and instead of actually helping out, they sent him Mcnally. Joy.
"Thanks Katharine, send him in please," he said to the little black box, and with another huge sigh, sat back and waited for Mcnally to make his entrance.
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Behind a dumpster, on the outskirts of town, Valerie Smitt crawled in the dirt, eyes going in and out of focus. All of a sudden, she stopped, leaned over a bush, and vomited profusely into the plant. Head swimming, she dimly made out a person standing not so far away.
"Help me" she managed to croak out, "help me someone..please!" Miraculously, the person heard her and ran over to see what was the matter.
"Jesus Christ!" exclaimed Peter Mcnally, bending over the fallen woman. She was bleeding from several orifices, and had also started foaming at the mouth. Assuming she was dead, he started to pick her up to cart her back to the station, when her eyes sprang open.
" Warn everybody!" she cried, "we’re all in terrible danger!" and with that, she fell back into Peters arms, dead.
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Browning jumped to his feet just as his office door smashed open. Before him was a sight he never expected to see, an extremely disheveled Mcnally holding up a corpse in both arms.
"What the hell is going on here?" He shouted at the cop, but Mcnally said nothing, just edged towards the desk and placed the body on top of it.
"I will not ask you again, Peter." He said through clenched teeth. "What is going on here?
"I found her by the junkyard down on fifth," Peter whispered, fatigue dripping from his voice. " I-I didn’t know what to do, so I brought her here…"
Wesley sighed again, anger forgotten. He felt bad for the kid, obvious youth shining from his eyes. He looked traumatized for like. The sheriff had been in the business too long to let one dead person faze him.
"Come on Pete," he said kindly, "let’s get you some coffee, and I’ll deal with this." Wesley fairly pushed him out the door, closed it behind him, and then slid to the floor. Another one, dead. Getting up, he examined the body more closely. Young, perhaps early twenties, what would have been a beautiful face, if it wasn’t so bruised and scarred. Whatever happened to her, it had been happening for quite some time. Her entire head was one mass of purplish yellow bruises, and one eye was closed from swelling. Her shirt was torn and bloody, and he could just make out something written underneath. Lifting up her shirt, he gasped in revulsion. For there, etched into her belly with fresh blood oozing everywhere was the phrase; "the Telling has begun".
He stood there, completely at a loss for words. Half of his brain trying desperately to think of some logical explanation, some rhyme or reason to the dead woman on his desk, and the steps it took to get it there, while the other half reverted to his childhood fears of the axe murderer hidden under his bed. Hoisting her up on his shoulders, Wesley walked outside the office building, placed the body in his backseat of his car, got in, and started to drive.
His white Mazda sped across the dusty dirt road, kicking up stones in its wake, as it fairly flew to the forensic lab where Wesley’s friend Steven worked. That was where all the previous bodies had gone. Wesley could remember back when the first mysterious death had occurred. It was an old woman, who had fallen ill and died, all in less than a week. There were others too. Perfectly healthy people who had just kind of..dropped. The scientists were all baffled as to the cause of this disease, all they could tell that it was some kind of virus. It was the rumors that caused shivers on your spine. It was never said out loud, but in dark alleyways, and whispered from neighbor to neighbor that before they died, the victims could, well, tell things. Things that normal people aren’t supposed to know. Like, if someone near them is pregnant, or about to die. If you are going to win the lottery, or have all your stocks crash to the floor. The sheriff, of course, believed all this to be hogwash, but the spreading story was almost too outlandish to be just a lie.
Wesley arrived at the building and stepped out into the bright sunshine, wiping the sweat off his face yet again. He walked through the door, and told Steven what had happened. Steven did not appear to be too surprised, which wasn’t abnormal, seeing as he had seen cases such as this one for the past month or two.
"I’m just going to look around for a bit while you examine this new patient, okay Steve?" Wesley called from the next room as Steven wheeled the corpse into his operating room, "Say, where are those other victims you’ve gotten, maybe I could check ‘em out!"
There was complete silence from his friend for a few moments, until a frowning Steven came out looking quite perplexed.
"What are you talking about?" He asked, " Someone who said he came from your office picked them all up yesterday."
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The air in the steel, boxed prison was freezing cold. Grey closed in on all sides, like an approaching storm cloud, giving off vibes of impending doom. The breath of countless women prickled the air and was instantly crystallized. A few feeble cries still rang the air, girls who had not yet given up hope of getting out alive. Most just sat in the corner, crying quietly, accepting their inevitable fate. The room in which they were kept was clearly labelled "Failures", and the scientists discussing outside made little effort in concealing that fact from their prisoners.
"I don’t understand it," said the first, " so many failures after so many successes! What could possibly be going wrong?"
"I believe it is some sort of allergic reaction." Said the second scientist, matter-of-factly, " If you will examine this patient more closely, you will find what looks distinctly like hives where the original puncture was made."
"Most intruiging." Replied the first. "And I have made a rather interesting discovery on the disposables. They have developed a new gift. It seems that when they are touching someone, they can send messages, pictures really, from their brain to the brain of the organism that are in contact with."
"Remarkable!" Exclaimed the other, "Most remarkable! I do believe with more testing we could have a new product on the line!"
Just at that moment, a bright eyed young boy in an oversized laboratory coat rushed into the room, and breathlessly announced that there was a new patient waiting for them in the entranceway.
In the front hall, a partially unconscious Valerie Smitt was dragged into a chair, while a long, thin, needle was injected into her arm.
