Its going to the posted in two parts. Enjoy, and please please please comment! Also, to get the whole story, read the second part
Soot and Flowers
*REVISED twice!*
He stared incredulously at the brain scans that were appearing on his computer screen. The patient was showing signs of dementia and schizophrenia. He was only 15 and there were no signs that the kid should have any of these disorders. This was his eighth such case in two days. If this were some sort of strange epidemic, he knew of no way to cure it, as nothing had yet been discovered as the cause. He went back into the room where the kid and his parents were waiting. Looking over at the white placard with his name, Justin Darby, he started to worry about the possibility of the hospital letting go of that placard, letting go of him.
It was never much fun sharing such news with parents, they tended to yell and throw a fit much more often than the child. They were scared, that's all, he didn't blame them either. Entering the room it was clear that there wouldn't be any sort of good reaction.
“What is wrong with our son!” The parents shouted.
The father was turning red in the face, the mother was tapping her foot against the floor. Their comments were shooed out the door, they were silent.
The solid heaviness of a stethoscope. The strange comfort of gloves. Looking around, the only bit of decor was a picture of the ninth level of Dante's hell, and a replica of a medieval age sword hanging on the opposite wall to him. His coworkers all thought he was crazy.
Conveniently there was another test that could be performed, the stalling continued. Justin had no idea what he was doing. It must have been obvious, because questions continued to bombard him, even after they stopped being answered. Now there were threats of lawsuit included. “Well get you for malpractice! My lawyer can ruin you!”. “I'm sure he can sir, I however have done and am doing all that I....” He prodded the top of the boy's head with his finger, it. Suddenly he felt very dizzy, he should sit down. He closed his eyes. Attempting to hide the sudden illness, the dizziness was performed as though it were simply a shift in positioning. He poked at where he thought the boy's head should be, it was squishy and pulsating. Everything went black.
When he awoke, he was still standing-standing on a strange gelatinous surface. His eyes were still closed. When he opened them, the world around him was warped and bloated, about twice its normal size. Everything seemed oddly normal. Except for how it was puffy like an allergic reaction to a wasp sting. Its white chairs and white desk were on one side. The painting was all stretched, rounded in the middle like a beer-belly. God, the whole room was fat and white, like the padding in a mental institution. He needed to get out. Somehow his patient and the kid's family were gone. At least there was no need to explain his leaving. He was closing the door to his office when he remembered something. There was a sword on the wall: he should take it just in case, things were weird enough as is. As Justin was taking it off the wall, he noticed the rust covering the last fifth that had been facing the wall. Justin inspected the wall for a water mark. On the 10th story of the largest hospital in Houston, there shouldn't be any water. But things were weird enough for it to happen. The sword was bloated and slightly rounded like almost everything else...so it appeared more of a club than a sword. He still brought it with him, just in case. Justin decided not to take the elevator. The elevator was bypassed without much consideration, the cables and wheels that they ran on wouldn't appreciate being bloated.
Justin didn't see anything on his way down the stairs, not a soul. At the bottom of the stairs there was a large locked door. He had never taken the stairs before, so he hadn't known of it. He felt the deadweight called the sword that he was carrying. It went flying into the door, it splintered, the sword came at it again breaking through the door completely. The small shards of wood fell slowly, as though they were in water, or incredibly tired after a long day of work.
Justin stepped through the door, cautious of the shards of wood still hanging from it. He felt like one of those characters in the movies that always does bad-ass things like walk through doors that they just broke down.
If you kept on going down the stairs, you would reach the parking garage, but Justin continued down the hallway. The hallway led to the main lobby and receptionists desk. It had nice tile floors and ocean blue walls. Calming. There were a couple couches in the back of the room to the right. The doors out of this place were to the left, so he ignored the couches. Justin felt an intense wave of fear wash over him, like a dam had failed, letting loose every hateful thought that ever existed. Justin bent over, suddenly tired. Rise, continue. As he turned the corner into the lobby he saw in front of him a man, he was of normal build and height, fair hair and skin, normal in most every way. Standing in front of the glass doors, light streamed in all around the man. Evening light, red and purple light, filtered through the dust that filled the space around this man. Even though the man was wearing the clothing of a doctor, it gave him a dark red aura. One object, no hundreds, thousands of objects stood out on him however. Around his neck, arms, shoulders, waist, ankles, hung pennants and little symbols, the symbols of a thousand religions and faiths. He looked around, bored, as though he had finished a piece of work, and was waiting for a new task. He saw Justin move out of the corner of his eye, he turned slowly, bored. Justin hesitated, curious, this was the first person he had seen in the building. The creature looked him up and down, appraising him. Then he nodded and reached into the mass of objects hanging around his neck. Pulling a random one from the mass, he tossed it to Justin.
“Its yours.” The voice was harsh, unrelenting.
Justin caught it, looked at it once, and threw it back. “No.” One simple word, meaning so much.
“It does not matter.” The man replied casually as he drew a long rapier from thin air. His eyes turned a burning electric blue and the rapier was a sickly red.
Justin hefted his sword club again, the man grinned and lunged. Justin fell backward from the onslaught, caught by surprise by the ferocity of the attack. He was pushed backward until he reached the stairs leading down to the parking garage. He teetered on the edge of the steps, in limbo, and fell. He could feel it happen, he could feel his balance fail, he could see the laughing face in front of him. He threw out his arms and tossed the bloated sword away from himself. It flew through the air as the man leaned on his rapier, laughing. It flew and flew, and it smacked into the man's head. A bizarre scene unfolded before Justin's eyes at this moment in time. As the man fell, flowers burst forth from where his head used to be, flowing with vigor and color into the room. As they hit the floor they quickly seeded and spread. The fear went away, suddenly, the breach in the dam had been taken care of.
Justin scrambled to get away from the wave of flowers that was about to reach him, he had no idea if they were harmless or not, but he wasn't taking any chances. As he walked further into the garage he turned one last time to the still spreading flowers. “It matters.” He quietly responded. The recent events that had just unfolded would have, should have, put a normal person with their back against the wall. Too tired to go on, too shocked to more. But Justin had seen plenty of gore as a doctor, the thing that was getting to him was not having anyone to share the experience with. Just keep on going, one objective at a time.
Walking out into the wide, gray, open area of the car garage, Justin looked around expecting something strange to happen. Nothing happened. He walked around, checking behind a couple concrete columns. They can probably hide inside the damn columns the way things have been going so far. He walked over to his motorcycle that was waiting near the elevator. There didn't seem to be any point in walking across the garage if you could just park right on the sidewalk next to the elevator. But this almost religious belief hadn't been acted on in many years, ever since the the belief started to cost him several thousand dollars in fines every year. Although using the elevator had seemed like a bad idea before, there wasn't much of a choice when it came down to transportation. It just came down to hoping that the parts weren't ruined by expansion. I might as well give it a shot, whats there to lose at this point? Justin also had no idea where he wanted to go or what he wanted to do, but he thought that he should just go somewhere and see what happens, or he would go insane. Twisting the keys in the ignition he felt a rumble, then a roar as his bike came to life. Backpedaling with his feet, he turned himself around and sped out of the parking garage, he heading north, home.
. But you handled it well considering it's something out of the ordinary. Though it would have been nice if you could have explained a bit more about were your character was instead of what he was doing most of the time, you know, get a little use of imagery in there and connect with the reader a bit more. I wont say much because I do not know what your intentions were with this so I'll stop here.