Searching For a Friend

(fiction challenge story; week19. copyright 2007. all rights reserved.)

The urge to vomit struck John suddenly as the texture of the sky above him began to shift color and texture in a rapid pattern. Forcing both eyes into a narrow squint, John carefully studied the ground rolling below him. The monotonous dips and curves and vegetation on the ground made it hard to stay focused. John found himself wondering what would happen if he let himself vomit while flying.

“John! Do NOT allow yourself to be ill!” Agamemnon’s deep baritone burned into John’s mind. “Your physical form is not even really here!”

“Are you some kind of bloody mind reader?” John shouted verbally to the large winged creature gracefully slicing through the air to John’s right. John knew perfectly well that even the highest host of Angelic Celestial could not read minds. But he felt compelled to say something in order to cover up the fact that his own appearance must have betrayed his feelings of nausea.

“I cannot read minds, as you well know,” the deep voice felt like it was physically scratching the inside of John’s skull. “But I know well the look of green that your astral form carries.”

“Listen up you big pixie!” John shouted to his right with all the volume he could muster. “I’ll not stand for you taking that kind of tone with me! I’m right as rain, so you can bugger off with that talk of being sick!” Even as the final word exited John’s mouth, he found himself clamping his teeth together and swallowing hard. Trying to look over at the winged creature, while the wide sky framed his graceful movements, had clearly been a mistake.

“So be it,” the Agamemnon’s voice boomed inside John’s head. “Just be sure to see to it that you maintain your declared end of our agreement.”

“Don’t worry. I have no doubt that I’ll know that energy vibration the minute it crosses my eyes.” John was not sure, but he thought he could telepathically hear the angel sigh. John knew that Agamemnon had plenty of reasons not to believe John, but this time John was being one hundred percent honest. Both times he had encountered the demonick energy vibration had been borderline disasters, and both times John found himself astounded that he had survived the encounter.

“I can sense the panic in you all the way over here,” Agamemnon chided telepathically. “You need not be concerned, John. All we need is to find the vibration, and assess the maker. We shall have your fragile form back in your body in the blink of an eye.

Somehow, John found that Agamemnon’s words made him feel worse instead of better. At the same time, he did not have the energy to try to argue with the angel. John decided that the sooner he found the energy again, the sooner he would be free of Agamemnon.

John squeezed his eyes closed for a second, and inhaled sharply, only to carefully exhale for twice as long. He deliberately repeated the breathing exercise for a dozen heartbeats, before letting his eyes slowly open a fraction of the way. The ground was still a scrolling canvas of greens and blues far beneath him, but he found his stomach felt a little better. Letting his attention spread out in front of him, John intentionally kept his mind from focusing on any single thing. He pictured his focus going blurry as he tried to take in the energies for miles in every direction. Casually John let his attention spread further and further.

A pinprick of red energy flared some distance to John’s left. John ignored it. Relaxing his mind he let his focus drift even further. A flash of green flared to his right, and a splash of pink echoed behind him. John managed to ignore both energies, and kept his focus blanketed. A shrill gray tore into his focus from somewhere behind him. His mind reflexively reached out to study the energy, and his entire focus began to crumble.

John let out a long sigh, and let his eyes open again. After a quick evaluation of the ground beneath him, John managed a quick glance to his side to check Agamemnon. The winged man was swaying gently with the pull of the wind. John found himself momentarily envious of Agamemnon’s ability to fly. Even though John was able to astrally travel in a fashion that was very similar to flight, John still wished that he could physically experience the pull of the wind or the smell of the air. His astral form was pretty much restricted to visual experiences only. Unfortunately the visual experience was obviously enough to make John nauseous.

“DOWN!” Agamemnon telepathically shouted at John, as a blur of white cloth and wings tore across the sky in front of John. John reflexively willed his form in the direction of the ground, but allowed his eyes to follow Agamemnon’s flight. The speed that the angel moved was literally awe inspiring. John found that his eyes could barely track the white streak slicing through the sky. Moving his eyes ahead of the blur, John could see a number of dark blue specks moving in a similar fashion in his direction.

“Well, fuck stick,” John mumbled as he swallowed hard, and began to drop more rapidly toward the ground. He had no idea what was approaching, but he was guessing that Agamemnon had sensed danger. Danger was the last thing that John had time for at the moment. The ground, which was rapidly rushing up to meet John, began to take on more and more detail. John carefully studied the physical structures that might offer him some sort of shelter, or, better yet, protection. He quickly assessed that there were no churches, cemeteries, or schools in close proximity, but there were a number of family houses attached to farms.

John picked out a fair sized three story farm house, and began to glide down in that direction. Focusing on the house John could sense that there was a family of six living within the house. For a brief moment John considered the moral implications of involving innocent bystanders as camouflage for his own craven defense. After all, if the incoming creatures were able to sense John’s astral form, and they could track it to the small farm house, John would probably be placing the family in some degree of jeopardy. At the same time, John reasoned, that very same family might be the perfect energy needed to mask’s John’s astral form.

Tilting his head back, John strained his eyes trying to make out the form of Agamemnon or the dark blue speck on the horizon. From his vantage point near the ground, John was unable to spot anything. He directed his dissent so that he came to a stop inches above the ground, directly in front of the farm house’s front door. John began a simple incantation so that he would be able to peacefully enter the unknown family’s house. As the last syllable of the last word rolled off his tongue, John waved a three finger gesture in front of the door. John cast one last glance up toward the sky, and noticed a streak of light quickly approaching the house. John squinted and strained his eyes to make out the image, but the time it took for him to squint was enough time for the farm house in front of him to explode into a hailstorm of flying splintered wood and furniture.

John flew backwards through the air and realized that the streak of light had struck the house the moment in had exploded. Regaining a degree of composure and focus, John willed his form to stop. He righted himself vertically, and began to frantically search the ground for any sign of the six people that he had sensed in the house. Near a china cabinet that had been crushed by a fire laden couch, John spotted a pair of small legs. He slid across the air over to the spot to find a small girl lying crumpled in a sickeningly grotesque heap. John found himself hoping that the small girl was dead, because he did not want to imagine the kind of pain she would be experiencing if she was still breathing.

“JOHN WILLARD AQIL!” a gravelly voice boomed.

John spun, shocked at the use of his full name. At first John could not see the source of the voice. He panned his head to the right and the left trying to make out some kind of figure. Perhaps the voice had been telepathic, John thought to himself. Although he was pretty sure he had heard it externally.

“HOW DARE YOU FORM AN ALLIANCE WITH THE CELESTIAL!”

This time John was sure that the voice was not being telepathically projected into his head, although he still had no idea where the speaker was located. John’s eyes tightened, and he consciously made sure he was breathing in measured intervals through his nose.

“I DEMAND THAT YOU ACCOUNT FOR YOUR ACTIONS!”

This time, the voice was accompanied by a sharp fiery sensation rapidly tearing through John’s left arm. The pain intensified and spread from the front of the arm straight through to the back. John’s eyes flew wide with shock, ad he realized that the speaker was with his physical body.

“WELL JOHN?” the voice boomed, “I WILL NOT REMAIN THIS PATIENT FOREVER!"

John frantically tried to focus past the pain in his arm, and come up with some kind of lie that he could tell the speaker. The hard part was he had no idea who, or what, he was speaking with. The only thing he figured he could infer was that the speaker was not a fan of Agamemnon. Unless, John reasoned, it was another Celestial upset by human interference!

“I, uh, well, I. . .” John stammered trying to buy himself enough time to invoke a ward of protection. His mind conjured the pieces he would need, and he began to run the numbers in his head to activate the ward. Just as his mind was locking down the last variables of the ward, a second pain exploded in John’s left arm. The components of the ward slowly fell apart and away.

“WHAT ARE YOU AND THE CELESTIAL SEEKING, JOHN?!”

The pain doubled and John found himself starting to panic. To make things worse there were distinct dark blue forms rapidly approaching his astral form’s position amongst the farm house’s rubble.

“Lis- Aaaagh. Listen!” John managed to say through the various points of fire arching around and through his left arm. “I swear to answer your inquiries face to face, but first I have to deal with some things here!”

“YOU CANNOT STALL. YOU CANNOT ESCAPE!”

A shower of dirt and wooden debris shot up into the air as the first dark blue form slammed into the ground near where the house stood. The long narrow membrane lined wings slowly folded in toward the body of the scale covered fairy, as it loped toward John on all fours. As the creature neared John’s astral form, it reared up unto two legs and lunged at John. A numbing explosion tore through John as the acrid creature passed through him to land hard on the ground behind him.

As two more scale covered fairies dropped to the ground around him, John realized that the creatures did not know that he was an astral projection! That meant the speaker was not working with them!

“ANSWER ME, JOHN!” the speaker boomed again, redoubling the pain in his arm.

John barely managed to will himself straight up into the air, as the two new fairies bound toward his position.

“Please,” John said letting the agony he was feeling echo in his voice, “I can’t talk through the pain!” John glanced beneath himself, and saw the three creatures had taken flight to pursue his astral form. “Please!” John pleaded again, assuming that he was not going to get any sympathy from the mysterious speaker. “We were looking for. . .” John let his voice trail off into a broken rhythm of painful cries. At the same time he pushed his astral form to fly as fast as he knew how. The surrounding began to blur as his speed increased, and the three creatures still seemed to be gaining ground. John was desperately running down a mental list of options when he felt the pain in his left arm drastically dull.

“GO ON, WHAT WERE YOU SEEKING?”

John let his eyes slip closed, and cleared his head of everything. He pictured the geographical location of his physical body in relation to the abstract of his astral form, and tried to conjure a formula that would let him create a short cut. The instant it became clear in his mind, John realized he could smell the fetid odor of decay. He opened his eyes, and found that he was back in his wooden chair. He let his head drop and studied the circle of sand carefully placed above the chalk etchings on the floor. As his head panned from right to left, he noticed four two foot razor thin wires pushed all the way through his left arm. Fighting the urge to scream he felt his head being lifted by a moist hand. The smell of decay doubled as the hand brought up his gaze.

Standing in front of him was a long dead corpse, missing large portions of skin and organs. John soured his face and cringed at the overwhelming odor.

“MANAGED TO RETURN?” The corpse said loudly in an almost surprised voice that echoed through out the small apartment. “GOOD. GOOD.” John still did not know what was motivating the body, but he was hoping that he would figure something out in the next minute and a half.

“Listen Sicko,” John said through hard fought gags, “The Celestial will be back in a blink, so how bout you bugger off?” The pain instantly returned in his left arms, and the smell of smoldering flesh added to the already overwhelming stench of decay.

“LIES. LIES. WHAT WERE YOU SEEKING? WHAT DID THE CELESTIAL WANT?”

John clenched his teeth and found his head reflexively swaying to fight the pain. He tried to focus on the corpse, but the pain, coupled with the smell, made it impossible to concentrate. The pain began to spread into the rest of John’s body, and John began to feel light headed.

“ANSWERS!”

“Listen,” John harshly uttered, “to the,” the words became a scream. John clamped his mouth shut, swallowed and finished. “Wind.” The corpse actually cocked its head to one side in confusion. In that instant the pain receded back into just John’s left arm, and decreased in intensity. John weakly gestured toward the roof with his right hand. The corpse noticed the hand, and with exaggerated confusion followed the gesture toward the ceiling. For a few moments the creature looked at different parts of the ceiling, and then returned his gaze on John. For the first time John noticed that the eyes seemed to have a hint of yellow energy to them.

“FOOL,” the corpse spat with a chilling laugh. “NOW YOU. . .”

The words were cut short as three dark blue forms tore through different places in the ceiling to land around the apartment. The corpse quickly looked from winged fairy to winger fair, and finally back to John. Even with the extreme pain, John felt a grin grow across his face.

“Toodles,” John whispered as the defenses he had carefully imbued his apartment with finally reacted to the new arrivals. A pulsating energy synchronized itself with each of the three creatures, which was followed by the rapid sound of three ear splitting POP sounds. The corpse, which was mostly outside the chalked diagram on the ground, crumpled limp into a pile.

The silence that followed rang in John’s ears with terrifying intensity. John stood, looking down at the wires still protruding from his left arm. His gaze shifted from his arm to the corpse lumped in front of him. He let his right foot strike the crumpled corpse in front of him. He heard a farting sound, followed by a cascade of noxious fumes, as his foot tore open the corpse’s chest. Obviously the speaker had used a very decaying corpse in order to circumvent John’s defenses. In truth, John realized that he was impressed with the ingenuity, and made a mental note to make sure that nothing would be able to duplicate the action.

John’s shuffling feet broke trail through the layer of ash and scale that covered the floor of his apartment. Reaching the small door to the bathroom, John realized that even the sink had debris from the exploded intruders in it. As he turned the faucet to full, he found himself wondering if he would be able to talk Agamemnon into cleaning.