Journey to Psitharis

Chapter 11

The lack of jacket was probably the reason I wound up deathly ill a few days later. I walked for miles that day, in forty-degree weather. I was so emotionally numb I never felt the chill in the air. I thought a lot, mostly about my sister and mother in the house comforting each other. But I also thought about my grandfather, who would have been here at the drop of a hat to help me and take care of me. My grandmother who, though a wonderful woman, would never be the hero my grandfather used to be. I thought of my dad who never cared, the other grandparents who had dropped me even though they thought I was their granddaughter. Thoughts of how crappy my life had been up until now had come to mind, and the nagging voices of my mom and sister kept chiming in, telling me to "lose weight", "change clothes" or "put on make-up". And in the far reaches of my thought I thought about Psitharis, and I wondered if my experiences had somehow tainted the world I loved so dearly, that used to be my refuge. By the time I got home I was frozen from head to foot.

And by the time Monday came I could feel the first symptoms of illness raging in my body. And on Tuesday I was down for the count, left at home on my own with a bottle of NyQuil and a variety of medications, such as acetaminophen and diphenhydramine. Too weak to get out of bed but too stuffed up to consider sleep, I spent hours in bed staring up at the ceiling, waiting for the blessed release of a medication-induced respite. Every now and then I would crawl out of bed to go to the bathroom, and after a while the ceiling got to be too boring for me so I chugged another dose of NyQuil straight out of the bottle and moved into the living room so I could watch television as I convalesced. As Extreme Couponers played on the television I could feel myself getting unusually drowsy, even after taking a dose of medicine. Trying to focus on the lady who just purchased 175 cat treats for forty-five cents, I counted back to my last dose and realized my fatal error. It had only been two hours since I took my last dose. I wondered if one could die of a NyQuil overdose just as I lost consciousness.

It was dark. All symptoms of illness had left me, which was unfortunate because the air had an unpleasant tinge to it, enough to turn my stomach. As I looked around I could see steam tunnels all around me, and the air was hot and musty. There were corridors everywhere I looked, and from somewhere unseen I could hear the sound of people working. It reeked of sweat and the oil of grinding gears. I could see the catwalk under my feet, small perforations forming a pattern in the metal; through the small holes in the floor I could see people, countless people, heads bent down over massive pieces of machinery. Beaten down men were hunched over massive wheels, turning them with handles that protruded from the wheel itself. That wheel turned a large series of gears that extended above it. Down the line women sat hunched over old fashioned sewing machines, sewing what seemed to be endless streams of colorless fabric together. Walking along the aisles of wheels and sewing machines were huge, menacing thugs, each holding a small staff that emanated a blue tinge of electricity from the tip. Some sort of cattle prod, I surmised in my head. The whole scene was a terrorizing steampunk vision.

One of the women got a thread tangled in the fabric, seizing up her machine. Frantically she pulled at the thread, pulled at the fabric, trying to free them without ripping the material. Her desperate moves didn't save her though. Out of nowhere one of the thugs brought one of the cattle prods down on the poor woman with all the force he could muster, not only electrocuting her but also forcing her to her knees from the force of the blow. Dazed, the poor woman tried to stand but couldn't. "Stand up and get back to work!" the thug yelled behind her as he shocked her again. Regrettably that stirred the short-fused, thoughtless part of me to react.

"Stop it, asshole!" I screamed before I thought. I clapped my hand over my mouth, common sense finally catching up with my mouth, but too late. The man looked up and spotted me. At first he looked angry, then something akin to recognition hit his tiny pea brain and his frown turned into a huge, black-toothed smile. He resembled that guy in the park who had knocked Roland unconscious. As a matter of fact all the thugs could have been twins, they all looked exactly alike as they all focused their gazes upon me. The thug started toward the stairway that would lead directly to me.