Excerpt from Husk by Stephen Landry

Excerpt from Husk
Novella by Stephen Landry
http://www.wattpad.com/story/5353245-husk

“Two cabs please,” She said before swallowing the last of her drink. At this time I think we had four or five drinks each. I was in no condition to drive and was glad Denton didn’t just kick us out. I think I felt my spine tense as we walked towards the door. I began to wonder if I would ever see this girl again. I was getting so nervous I felt like I was going to blackout. “By the way, my name is Azra.” She then took my hand again and wrote her number on it. I should have just put it in my phone but something about having it on my hand made me feel whole. I smiled “My name is Seth.”

That was the first time I died.

By 3:15 a.m. a taxi had already come for her. Of course I let her take the first one. I knew I would have felt anxious if I was riding away from her at least this way I could look like a gentleman. I even paid her fare upfront.

3:20 a.m. The second little yellow taxi had come for me. This one stunk of cigarettes and piss. It was a short stubby electric car. I was glad I did the gentlemanly thing letting her take the first one. Looking back maybe if I had taken that first taxi or ridden with her then things would have ended up different - but that didn’t happen. Never get in a cab that smells like piss. Lesson learned.

3:25 a.m. We were maybe seven minutes from my apartment, we were crossing the bridge. It takes 2 minutes to cross. There were twenty three people on the bridge when it hit the water. A bomb went off on the bottom of one of the bridge’s pillars.

I can still hear the metal tearing through my bone. The taxi driver screaming in a language I couldn’t understand. The rush as the back of the cab hit the water. Most of all I remembered the drowning sensation. The burning. Water filled my lungs, my flesh was on fire. Everything around me turned black. It was all over in an instant.

They said it would feel like a dream. Some war veterans had compared it to having a bad trip. One time a man came to my school. He had served in several wars. He said if anyone here ever wanted to experience death all they had to do was find a cow farm, suck on some shrooms from any pile of shit laying around then lock themselves inside the closest closet or black room. I’m still not sure how serious he was. Others said that it was like being reborn. Like waking up out of the womb. Like waking up and opening your eyes for the first time. They said colors were more vibrant, food tasted sweeter, sex was better.

For me it was miserable, endless pain. I felt like I was having my entire body pierced with nails. I felt like there were a dozen hands twisting and hammering my body with no remorse. I wouldn’t wish death on anybody (though I had heard in some places people would hunt each other for fun or sport, that certain people saw death and pain as a fetish, that they wanted to see how far they could go). For me there was no white light at the end of the tunnel, no angels telling me to hold on. No Godlike being taking my hand and walking me into the afterlife. There was nothing except the hiss of the hospital machines.

Tubes filled my lungs with air. Electricity and wires ran into my chest straight into my heart and another set ran into the back of my head into my brain, they ignited the spark of life into my new body. I could feel nano bots pushing the blood through my veins.. creating my pulse. Forcing me over and over again to breathe, to twitch. At times I felt like a fish out of water suffocating. Behold the power of the modern technology. In this world no one dies.

4 days ago  /  1 note