09-06-2014, 12:36 AM
What did Elijah Poirot dream about? What were the things that had him on edge, had him tense and taught and distraught throughout his days?
Nothing.
--------
It started with breakfast.
Elijah sat at his kitchen table, nestled in the corner and poking his way through a bowl of raisin, date, and walnut oatmeal. he didn't particularly care for oatmeal, but it had been on sale. He remembered very distinctly that it had been on sale. His cell phone sat across from him, his constant companion. it made a plaintive chirp, insistent that he charge it soon lest it meet some withering death of electrical starvation. Poor cell phone. Poor, poor cell phone.
A different sort of chirp.
"Sonofabitch, really?" he grumbled. The young reached over and checked to see if it was that was making the ruckus, nodding when he looked at the message. The contents were irrelevant, but really when were text messages ever relevant?
The silence of the morning was interrupted by the sudden passing of morning into night. It was not the usual passage of time where the clock ticked forward. They moved to the next moment faster than it should have been possible, and he thought it strange that the sky went dark outside his window. The bowl of oatmeal still sat on the table, the clock on the microwave flashed 12:00 over and over again. He stepped onto the balcony, eyes going to the sky; there was no moon. There was no sun, not like the sun that Elijah knew. Just a burning ember in the sky.
the breeze blew and the air felt cold.
---
"This is physically impossible," Elijah grumbled. It had been a few days and the temperature in Denver had been steadily dropping. Infrastructure was damaged, people were panicked and his go-to source of information )the internet) wasn't exactly available to him as a reference source. Elijah poured over a stack of science textbooks, as though science would have some answer for the sun's end.
"What do you mean it's physically impossible?" Jenn asked.
They hadn't been able to keep the apartment warm. Nobody could keep their places warm, despite their best intentions. The air felt cold, cold enough that inhaling too deep in a stiff wind made your lungs ache. Being inside meant that they did not have to contend with an ever-present chill that still tried to come through the mediocre insulation in the apartment. The temperature was going to keep dropping; it was only a matter of time before the pipes froze.
"I mean, look, here? Wouldn't the sun explode or something? There is nothing in any of these books about this being possible, something is wrong here."
"Well, Elijah, clearly it is possible because it's-it's"
"Fucking freezing?"
"Exactly," Jenn laughed.
She laughed just long enough until she started crying. The sound was desperate. Elijah's stomach turned and all he could do was abandon the text books in favor of hugging Jenn. His arms wrapped around her smaller frame and he couldn't help but fixate on how warm she was compared to the cooling air in their apartment.
"Hey, don't stress," he said softly, "it'll work out."
Elijah hated lying to Jenn.
---
It took four days for all the plants in the apartment to die.
---
"The first stages of hypothermia are vague and characterized by shivering, hypertension, constriction of the blood vessels, and an increased rate of breathing. These are all physiological responses to preserve heat. As glucose consumption by cells and insulin secretion both decrease, tissue sensitivity to insulin may be blunted and result in hyperglycemia."
---
The stars were starting to go black. One by one, the stars in the sky started to dot themselves from existence. It had been over a week and by that time Denver was a frigid waste a mile above sea level. The pipes had frozen in the apartment, and Elijah was well aware of every bleeding leak in his apartment. He wracked his brain trying to think of what could cause this, what would make the stars black themselves from the sky. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. Something told him that the world wouldn't end like this, that something happened to cause the sun to just turn itself off and make everything fall into disrepair.
It had been twelve days since the sun blotted itself from the sky and once the temperature became so cold it hurt his lungs to breathe it in. They put on all their clothes, Elijah and Jenn, and concluded that they had to brave the outside. They had to go get extra food; by the time that nearly two weeks had passed there was nothing left in the apartment to eat. At least the ice cream didn't melt, Jenn had replied with a laugh. She cried a lot now. Stopped crying when the streaks on her face left her feeling chapped, but she laughed a lot, too. Elijah hated that she didn't feel warm anymore. he hated that all he could feel was an over-sized coat that wasn't quite built for this kind of weather; nothing was. Short of people prepared to hike Everest, no one was prepared for the kind of cold that came.
There was snow piled high. Cars were buried in snow drifts, but there was a gas station two blocks from the apartment and maybe they would have some kind of food there. Provided everyone else didn't already get to it. Elijah didn't have a plan, but when given the option between freezing and starving, he chose freezing.
They walked.
His hand was in hers, and though they had gloves on it was hard to tell that they were holding hands at all in the storm. not that one could even call it a storm, it was just a fact of what was. The winds were starting to finally die down and whatever precipitation was to come had since dumped mounds and mounds of snow on the streets. Elijah paid attention to where his hands were. Paid attention to the fact that Jenn's lips were turning blue and he wasn't sure what direction he was going or where he really was. He was not a spectacular navigator. neither of them were experienced survivalists, but both of them needed food.
Her skin was pale. He couldn't been his hand within hers. His body did not want to move any further, and Elijah stumbled briefly, lost his footing and fell to a knee. When he looked back, he realized he wasn't holding her hand anymore. Jenn Laurent was nowhere to be found.
---
As one's temperature decreases, physiological systems begin to falter. Cellular metabolic process begin to shut down; muscular coordination, difficulty speaking, and walking becomes almost impossible. A person will often engage in seemingly bizarre behaviors, the least of which causes the patient to remove clothing as their hypothalamus begins to malfunction. At this stage, major organs begin to fail.
Clinical death occurs.
---
He didn't know what time it was. He didn't know what day it was, only that the stars were gone from the sky and he didn't remember night time being so long. his brain refused to place that it wasn't night, but rather, that there was no sunlight left in the world. That it was cold and dark and familiar like a place he'd heard so much of before. Like a place he'd heard voices from.
The young man stumbled again, tripped again, but this time in his walking, he looked down in time to see what he had precisely dripped over. He didn't recognize her at firs. Skin blue and snow-flecked. What he noticed were her tattoos, that she wasn't wearing half of her clothes and, instead, had curled up in a ball on the concrete beneath him.
"Jenn?"
There wasn't any answer. His hand fell to her body and he pushed, felt nothing. Could barely feel her skin beneath his hand and he pressed again, shook her body but to no avail. He looked around quickly, finding no one but himself. There was nothing but a backdrop of white snow on a matte black sky. No stars, no moon, only an oppressive darkness around him. Words were difficult to form and he felt something run across his spine. At first he cared not to notice, only instead to curl up next to the body on the ground.
Giving up? the voice asked. Something smooth like aged whiskey, a voice unfamiliar.
"Bring her back," he insisted, his eyes closed tight and Jenn's lifeless frame pulled against his. She felt like stone against him.
That comes with a price, the voice told him.
"I don't care," he choked out. The world was ending around him, the sun was gone.
My, we should be more careful, shouldn't we? The things we sell… the things we buy…
He could feel her body start to stir, a sleepy and deceptively innocent thing, but she stayed stone hard. She felt like granite beneath his touch. bones cracked and Elijah noticed as the world started to fade out. the first thing he lost was the scent of the air around him, the frigid cold no longer burned like ozone in his lungs and the last thing he remembered was sulphur and the way it tasted. The last taste that stayed on his tongue was that unfamiliar, almost acidic burning. He watched as the body of his friend stepped away from him, struggled to her feet too solid and her footsteps felt like a mountain moving. He watched as her hollow eyes came back and stared t him. her head cocked to the side at a near inhuman angle.
he didn't want this-
Oh, but you did, you said bring her back, you said you didn't care
Elijah's heartbeat raced as the world started to fade out, as the price he paid for his friend's life became too much. He waited in stillness, feeling his body freeze and wither beneath him and feeling the world be replaced by unabiding coldness, followed, finally, by nothingness. She was the last sight he saw, alive as any abomination could be.
The things we sell… the things we buy… All gravel and glorious threat. A warning from something near as great as whatever being he'd made his bargain with.
Eternity passed in silence and darkness before Elijah woke up again.
Nothing.
--------
It started with breakfast.
Elijah sat at his kitchen table, nestled in the corner and poking his way through a bowl of raisin, date, and walnut oatmeal. he didn't particularly care for oatmeal, but it had been on sale. He remembered very distinctly that it had been on sale. His cell phone sat across from him, his constant companion. it made a plaintive chirp, insistent that he charge it soon lest it meet some withering death of electrical starvation. Poor cell phone. Poor, poor cell phone.
A different sort of chirp.
"Sonofabitch, really?" he grumbled. The young reached over and checked to see if it was that was making the ruckus, nodding when he looked at the message. The contents were irrelevant, but really when were text messages ever relevant?
The silence of the morning was interrupted by the sudden passing of morning into night. It was not the usual passage of time where the clock ticked forward. They moved to the next moment faster than it should have been possible, and he thought it strange that the sky went dark outside his window. The bowl of oatmeal still sat on the table, the clock on the microwave flashed 12:00 over and over again. He stepped onto the balcony, eyes going to the sky; there was no moon. There was no sun, not like the sun that Elijah knew. Just a burning ember in the sky.
the breeze blew and the air felt cold.
---
"This is physically impossible," Elijah grumbled. It had been a few days and the temperature in Denver had been steadily dropping. Infrastructure was damaged, people were panicked and his go-to source of information )the internet) wasn't exactly available to him as a reference source. Elijah poured over a stack of science textbooks, as though science would have some answer for the sun's end.
"What do you mean it's physically impossible?" Jenn asked.
They hadn't been able to keep the apartment warm. Nobody could keep their places warm, despite their best intentions. The air felt cold, cold enough that inhaling too deep in a stiff wind made your lungs ache. Being inside meant that they did not have to contend with an ever-present chill that still tried to come through the mediocre insulation in the apartment. The temperature was going to keep dropping; it was only a matter of time before the pipes froze.
"I mean, look, here? Wouldn't the sun explode or something? There is nothing in any of these books about this being possible, something is wrong here."
"Well, Elijah, clearly it is possible because it's-it's"
"Fucking freezing?"
"Exactly," Jenn laughed.
She laughed just long enough until she started crying. The sound was desperate. Elijah's stomach turned and all he could do was abandon the text books in favor of hugging Jenn. His arms wrapped around her smaller frame and he couldn't help but fixate on how warm she was compared to the cooling air in their apartment.
"Hey, don't stress," he said softly, "it'll work out."
Elijah hated lying to Jenn.
---
It took four days for all the plants in the apartment to die.
---
"The first stages of hypothermia are vague and characterized by shivering, hypertension, constriction of the blood vessels, and an increased rate of breathing. These are all physiological responses to preserve heat. As glucose consumption by cells and insulin secretion both decrease, tissue sensitivity to insulin may be blunted and result in hyperglycemia."
---
The stars were starting to go black. One by one, the stars in the sky started to dot themselves from existence. It had been over a week and by that time Denver was a frigid waste a mile above sea level. The pipes had frozen in the apartment, and Elijah was well aware of every bleeding leak in his apartment. He wracked his brain trying to think of what could cause this, what would make the stars black themselves from the sky. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. Something told him that the world wouldn't end like this, that something happened to cause the sun to just turn itself off and make everything fall into disrepair.
It had been twelve days since the sun blotted itself from the sky and once the temperature became so cold it hurt his lungs to breathe it in. They put on all their clothes, Elijah and Jenn, and concluded that they had to brave the outside. They had to go get extra food; by the time that nearly two weeks had passed there was nothing left in the apartment to eat. At least the ice cream didn't melt, Jenn had replied with a laugh. She cried a lot now. Stopped crying when the streaks on her face left her feeling chapped, but she laughed a lot, too. Elijah hated that she didn't feel warm anymore. he hated that all he could feel was an over-sized coat that wasn't quite built for this kind of weather; nothing was. Short of people prepared to hike Everest, no one was prepared for the kind of cold that came.
There was snow piled high. Cars were buried in snow drifts, but there was a gas station two blocks from the apartment and maybe they would have some kind of food there. Provided everyone else didn't already get to it. Elijah didn't have a plan, but when given the option between freezing and starving, he chose freezing.
They walked.
His hand was in hers, and though they had gloves on it was hard to tell that they were holding hands at all in the storm. not that one could even call it a storm, it was just a fact of what was. The winds were starting to finally die down and whatever precipitation was to come had since dumped mounds and mounds of snow on the streets. Elijah paid attention to where his hands were. Paid attention to the fact that Jenn's lips were turning blue and he wasn't sure what direction he was going or where he really was. He was not a spectacular navigator. neither of them were experienced survivalists, but both of them needed food.
Her skin was pale. He couldn't been his hand within hers. His body did not want to move any further, and Elijah stumbled briefly, lost his footing and fell to a knee. When he looked back, he realized he wasn't holding her hand anymore. Jenn Laurent was nowhere to be found.
---
As one's temperature decreases, physiological systems begin to falter. Cellular metabolic process begin to shut down; muscular coordination, difficulty speaking, and walking becomes almost impossible. A person will often engage in seemingly bizarre behaviors, the least of which causes the patient to remove clothing as their hypothalamus begins to malfunction. At this stage, major organs begin to fail.
Clinical death occurs.
---
He didn't know what time it was. He didn't know what day it was, only that the stars were gone from the sky and he didn't remember night time being so long. his brain refused to place that it wasn't night, but rather, that there was no sunlight left in the world. That it was cold and dark and familiar like a place he'd heard so much of before. Like a place he'd heard voices from.
The young man stumbled again, tripped again, but this time in his walking, he looked down in time to see what he had precisely dripped over. He didn't recognize her at firs. Skin blue and snow-flecked. What he noticed were her tattoos, that she wasn't wearing half of her clothes and, instead, had curled up in a ball on the concrete beneath him.
"Jenn?"
There wasn't any answer. His hand fell to her body and he pushed, felt nothing. Could barely feel her skin beneath his hand and he pressed again, shook her body but to no avail. He looked around quickly, finding no one but himself. There was nothing but a backdrop of white snow on a matte black sky. No stars, no moon, only an oppressive darkness around him. Words were difficult to form and he felt something run across his spine. At first he cared not to notice, only instead to curl up next to the body on the ground.
Giving up? the voice asked. Something smooth like aged whiskey, a voice unfamiliar.
"Bring her back," he insisted, his eyes closed tight and Jenn's lifeless frame pulled against his. She felt like stone against him.
That comes with a price, the voice told him.
"I don't care," he choked out. The world was ending around him, the sun was gone.
My, we should be more careful, shouldn't we? The things we sell… the things we buy…
He could feel her body start to stir, a sleepy and deceptively innocent thing, but she stayed stone hard. She felt like granite beneath his touch. bones cracked and Elijah noticed as the world started to fade out. the first thing he lost was the scent of the air around him, the frigid cold no longer burned like ozone in his lungs and the last thing he remembered was sulphur and the way it tasted. The last taste that stayed on his tongue was that unfamiliar, almost acidic burning. He watched as the body of his friend stepped away from him, struggled to her feet too solid and her footsteps felt like a mountain moving. He watched as her hollow eyes came back and stared t him. her head cocked to the side at a near inhuman angle.
he didn't want this-
Oh, but you did, you said bring her back, you said you didn't care
Elijah's heartbeat raced as the world started to fade out, as the price he paid for his friend's life became too much. He waited in stillness, feeling his body freeze and wither beneath him and feeling the world be replaced by unabiding coldness, followed, finally, by nothingness. She was the last sight he saw, alive as any abomination could be.
The things we sell… the things we buy… All gravel and glorious threat. A warning from something near as great as whatever being he'd made his bargain with.
Eternity passed in silence and darkness before Elijah woke up again.