SIXTEENTH - The Aftermath

Stars, lots of stars. It was very nice to watch them, and the sky was clean and clear. Then the stars slowly begin to move left and right in a jerky motion, like she had vertigo, and finally started spinning around, faster and faster. Looking at it was like looking at an explosion, a deep abyss, a vortex. When it became completely unbearable she screamed so loudly that the dizzyingly rotating stars disappeared and were replaced by welcome, total darkness. For a while she floated gratefully in complete emptiness and silence, enjoying the serenity, until she felt some fresh, cool liquid refreshing her hot face. When she opened her eyes, at first she couldn't remember where she was or what had happened. It was dark around her and she could only see dots imprinted in the pale upholstered ceiling, quite low above her head. Where was she? Jasmine tried to stand up, but the dots above her head immediately moved and she gave up.

"Take it easy. Don't try to move. I'm not done with you. You're badly hurt and you have a fever." the voice was familiar and there was something soothing about it, something that made her trust him and relax again.

"I know who you are. I'll remember..." she said, closing her painful eyes as everything that happened was slowly returning to her sleepy mind. The sudden return to reality made her body jerk so hard that literally her every muscle ached. Sergei. His voice. He was here with her.

"What happened, Sergei? I can't remember? They attacked me and I locked myself in the van, and I know I did something terrible to... someone... who? And what?"

"Close your eyes. Do not move. Relax. I did everything so you are not in pain. You have very serious injuries."

"I don't like the sound of that. You are scaring me. What is wrong?"

Jasmine panicked and tried to move her arm, then her leg. The pain was bad, so bad that she blacked out for a moment, but at least she could move a little. At least she could feel her limbs and that was somewhat comforting. Pain means you are alive. Bad memories came with heightened awareness. The pain was increasing. It was everywhere, terrible pain, pain in both hands, in the left leg, it was tearing her apart, her entire insides were on fire, and with consciousness came more and more through the haze the memory that she had done something terrible to someone.

"Do not move. Some of your bones are broken. Ribs. Left lower leg. Bones of the left hand. You have a bruised pelvis and abdomen. The joint of the right hand fell out of its socket. Shellshock. There is more. You'll be fine, just take it easy. Close your eyes. Do not look."

"How did this happen? Did we have a car accident?" she realized that the accident must have happened when they were heading back from that business trip, and everything that happened after that, starting with the first unnatural event when she was bitten by the tongue of that horrible creature with the huge mouth, was is surely a dream. A nightmare that was born from unconsciousness brought by her injuries. A little reassured by that knowledge, Jasmine listened to Sergei, relaxed as much as she could, considering the terrible pain, and closed her eyes, trying to understand her situation. She was lying flat on her back on the blanket, as far as she could feel. The leather ceiling she saw above her could have been the upholstery of some car. Did her Yugo have such upholstery? She couldn't remember. But this couldn't be Yugo car, because due to the small space in it, she couldn't be stretched across the seat with her full body length. She was confused. Was it someone who stopped to help them, someone who came across her overturned car? If so, where are they now? Maybe went to get help?

Through her thoughts blurred by pain, Jasmine realized that something did not add up in that theory. She was too calm, she accepted the pain too easily, and judging by what Sergei listed as injuries, if he was telling the truth, the pain should be much worse than it was, she should be screaming in pain, she should be dead. A sudden, terrible but mercifully brief pain in her left shin made her scream and open her eyes, only to close them again.

"I should be in the hospital," she barely uttered, realizing with horror that her lungs hurt terribly, her left hand was almost unusable and burning like a candle, and she could feel her right hand but couldn't move it. Did she feel someone's hands on her right leg? Firm, warm, large hands that carefully and incredibly skillfully rubbed something into the painful, tender area around the broken bone, and then carefully immobilized that part of the leg? Sergei didn't have hands, at least not human hands, did he? She couldn't remember.

"We can't get to the hospital." he said "And you'd be in agony with pain even if we could. Let me help you first."

With great care he took her right hand and now she was sure that Sergei had hands, real, large, human hands, which did not at all match her memory of his appearance. Did Sergei really have shell around his stunted, deformed body, or was he an ordinary man, and she had imagined something, mixed up reality and a pain-induced nightmare? When the joint slipped back into its socket, the pain was excruciating, but it only lasted a mere second. Whoever this man was, he was an expert at setting bones. For a while, he silently rubbed some sticky tar-like mass into the painful joint, which began to cool mercifully, and then he wrapped it in some cloth and tightened it with a strong leather strap to make it immobile.

Despite the warning, she opened her eyes, but saw nothing but that pale, leathery ceiling imprinted with numerous dots, still turning, turning, albeit a little slower than before. She closed her eyes again. If her aching ribs and crushed insides had allowed her to do so, she would have tried to stand up. But she couldn't move without feeling the sharp end of her rib digging into her lung. Now Sergei gently and cautiously pressed her ribs, one by one, until he came across one that even that small touch hurt so much that she screamed and opened her eyes wide. Before she passed out again, she saw him. She was sure it was Sergei, because it was his face. But this time, it was the face and body of a man. He was not as handsome as he claimed, he was, he was too thin and bony, square-faced with rather rough facial features. Despite that, that face had a certain boyish charm, a special cheerfulness of faces that retain something youthful and bright in them for a long time. As far as she could tell in those few moments, he wasn't very young either. He could be over forty something years old. His hair was fair, but gray, long and unruly. He had arms, lean, muscular and wiry, human arms. She could see that much, but she couldn't see the rest of his body. But she could see that he had no shell around his chest. After that, everything disappeared again.

His voice woke her up.

"I'm sorry. I made a mistake in my judgment. I'm sorry I hurt you.'

She moved carefully. She was covered with a blanket and there was darkness around her. It was not very comfortable, but tolerable. Her left hand was completely immobilized and useless, and her right hand was so immobilized that she could only move at the wrist, but she could move the fingers. She felt a tightness around her entire torso and realized that it was tightly wrapped in some fabrics and straps, which almost completely took away the flexibility of her body, but at least she could move relatively painlessly. When her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she realized from the cooling breeze that she was outside. She was lying on some elongated, narrow bed, and she could see the trees above her head. And the stars. Why isn't she in the hospital? Why is she still in this place? She turned to Sergei's voice.

He was next to her. And he had his shell again.

"But how did you…" she began in disappointment. She remembered that he had no shell, she remembered what he looked like when he became human again. What happened?

"Don't worry. You'll be fine. I know these kinds of injuries well. It will heal in time." he said as if ignoring her question.

"You didn't have your shell on a while ago. I saw you. I've seen what you're like when you don't have your shell on.''

"You had a fever. You are better now."

Was he trying to dissuade her? To convince her that she was hallucinating?

"No, I saw you, I'm sure. You have light, grayish hair, falling over your forehead and shoulders, you have blue eyes, a square face, strong, Slavic features. You are quite thin. I saw you."

He didn't say anything. He just pulled his head into his armor a little like he was thinking. Jasmine felt a pain in her ribs and fell back onto her improvised bed, which turned out to be seats from some vehicle. Those weren't seats from her car, so where were they from?

She knew there was no use arguing with Sergei, he clearly had no intention of telling her anything about himself. It was difficult to see through him, to understand his way of thinking, it was difficult even to read his expression. He had too complex personality for her, despite using very simple and short sentences and speaking very little, or maybe because of it. He had neither the reactions typical of a human being, or at least the reactions one would expect from a human being who remained irreversibly and unnaturally deformed for the rest of his, probably still very long, life.

"In horror movies," she said, rather absent-minded, "broken, badly injured characters like me, who can barely move, and have no ways to fight or even move properly anymore, they usually die right away, you know. I don't know how I'm going to drive the car wrapped up like this, and I don't even know where my car is. I won't be able to last long on foot."

"Your car won't run anymore. But this van can now."

"Van? Are you a car mechanic now too? Are you saying that everything with those mutants and those people I met here with that van of theirs, that all that really happened?'

She paused. Sergei was silent. The last thing she could remember before regaining consciousness for the first time was the van flipping over, falling on its right side, the glass crunching under her body and the big, heavy driver's seat falling right on top of her. She held out her hands to stop it before it crushed her to death. Is that how she broke one arm and dislocated the other? Is that how she bruised her whole body and broke her leg, and not in an ordinary car accident? Finally, through her mind a new knowledge flashed through the electric shock, the final memory of what she had done that was so terrible and to whom she had done it.

"Please find me a stick, Sergei, I want to get up."

"Wait a minute. I gave you one of my medicine. When it's fully working, you'll be much better."

He must have done something, something much more than today's medicine knows, she knew it even if he didn't say it. If what he had said about her injuries was true, and she suspected it might be, she shouldn't have been just in uncomfortable pain and feeling like she'd had a nasty concussion. She should have been a bruised, swollen and broken mass of pain in agony. She didn't know what it felt like to break a bone, but she was sure the pain must be excruciating. Whatever Sergei did with her injuries for that matter, she was grateful. For a moment she suspected morphine or some similar narcotic, but she didn't feel sleepy or relaxed enough. She felt weak, every movement hurt her and when she calmed down for a while, she didn't even feel when she fell into a deep sleep. She woke up after an indeterminate amount of time, and Sergei, thank God, was still there although still in his standard form with full body shell.

She moved carefully, which wasn't easy at all, because even though the pain was now negligible, her body was quite stiff with some strange incredibly complex structures that held her broken bones in place. The moon was up again, full and round, and under its meager, sickly light she could see somewhat how marvelous these structures really were.

"I look like some character from a cyber-punk novel," she said, laughing.

There were wires, metal and plastic buckles, leather straps, various fabrics, pieces of wood, metal, and incredible combinations of materials that she could never have imagined could fit together so perfectly. Everything seemed perfectly fitted and incredibly precisely put into place. In that perfect entanglement, she recognized parts of her own clothes, bandages and leather belts, but also parts of musical instruments (she remembered that the guys she met and who helped her were actually a band and that they were returning from one of their gigs), guitars, drums, even cables and some car parts. How the hell did Sergei fit all of this together with his restrictive physique? She looked up at the calm face watching her from under the shell with a perfectly vague expression and tried to imagine him adjusting her bones and making the complex structure that would hold them in their proper position. It didn't fit at all. Very slowly and carefully she straightened up in a semi-sitting position, as much as the complex structure around her torso allowed, wrapping herself in a blanket.

"You really do have a human body under that shell, don't you?"

Sergei was silent, watching her carefully with his clear blue eyes, and then he said something rather unexpected:

"You didn't leave him to die. He wanted to leave you die."

"Boris." she shuddered as she felt a wave of horror as she remembered what she had done to him. How she left him to those beasts.

"You're not." Sergei said gently "He's become one of them. They see him as their own. Not you and me. You couldn't help him. They would just kill you.''

"How did Boris become one of them? How come I didn't become one too? How did you get me out from under the seat, and how did you make these immobilizers, and how did you fix the van? Where did they go..." she almost said "mutants" but quickly corrected herself "...those creatures that attacked me?"

"They didn't leave. We left," Sergei said simply as if it went without saying.

"But the van was... It was torn apart."

"Jasmine, there are other ways of moving here."

"Great, then let's use it and get out of here for good."

"It's not that simple."

"Do you think we can help the others? Do you know where Mariana is and... that tall guy, Mickey as it? Can we help Boris? He helped me when I was hurt. Sergei, I can't just leave them behind!"

"We won't leave anyone behind," he said calmly, looking her straight in the eyes.

"Is there anything I can wear? It's cold and I can't walk around like a character from some erotic cyber-punk movie."

"Quiet, Jasmine. I think I heard something." he lifted his head out of his shell and now she could clearly see his entire face, bald head and neck. Even though there was no more hair and even though that face was somewhat deformed by the changes all over his body, it was the same face of the man she had seen before she fainted, Sergei's real face, before the changes.

"I know it was you." she said, carefully wrapping her body in the blanket she was covered with, and trying to make a sort of body wrap out of it "I don't know how you did it, but you had a different body, without this shell. I saw you."

"Quiet, Jasmine. Someone is nearby.'

"Those mutan… the ones who attacked me?" she asked quietly.

"I do not know. We should hide.'

He was right. Someone was nearby. She heard the rustling of bushes a little lower from her position between the trees. She tried to get to her feet, but it was very difficult.

"Take the stick I made for you. It will help," said Sergei, still listening.

She looked for the said stick and found it leaning against her improvised bed. "Stick" was absolutely too modest a name for that device. It was a solid and stable but elastic piece of wood, about one meter long, which actually consisted of several thick sticks carefully joined together and fixed. At the top it had a horizontal handle, carefully upholstered and lined with fabric with a string of several leather bracelets attached, each of a different size and width. There were also several handy, skillfully crafted parts that held the structure in one piece and allowed it to be flexible exactly where it was intended, and strong and inflexible where it needed to be. Jasmine took this thing in her hands. She was in awe.

She flinched when she heard another rustling from the bushes. Someone, or something, was coming towards them between the trees, sneaking through the brush. She took the "stick" and carefully began to fasten the straps around her right arm.

"Left hand, Jasmine," Sergei admonished her quietly. He looked calm even though he was still listening intently "The cane is for your left side of your body."

"Yeah," she said. Logically. Her left lower leg was broken. She quickly began to fasten the straps around her left forearm. It was easier than she thought. She noticed that the "stick" had some other attachments that had their own special purpose, and she wanted to ask Sergey how to use them, but a rather quiet, clearly human grunt came from the bushes in addition to the rustling. Forgetting about additional buckles and straps, she managed to secure her forearm and, encouraged, carefully lifted her body off the makeshift bed. Although she probably didn't set it up correctly, the "stick" worked great, beyond any optimistic expectation.

"Jasmine," Sergei called her. She turned to him, "Jasmine, remember, I won't leave you. I will never leave you, unless you want me to. Don't forget that."

Before she understood what he wanted to tell her, a very loud rustling came from the bushes, now already at the very edge of the road and very close to where she was standing. Someone was cursing from the bushes. It sounded like an ordinary human being. Quite encouraged, with a lot of hope she slowly approached the place from where the rustling and was coming from, leaving Sergei, the improvised bed and the blanket she was covered with behind.

Suddenly, a shaggy head emerged from the bushes, cursing like a sailor and shaking the prickly branches away from him with his hands. Jasmine flinched, but remained in place, standing as straight as her tortured body would allow her, leaning slightly against the 'stick', right in front of where the unknown man had suddenly emerged.

"Fuck you Bentley and your plans with sneaking through bushes..., and what the hell do I have to sneak through these fucking bushes and get poked all over, when there's no one here anyway..."

He saw her. He was relatively young, maybe around thirty years old, with light brown long, messy hair and a charming, boyish face. She had never seen him before. He stared at her with a funny expression, mouth wide open, speechless. She got a little worried when she realized that the guy was starting to choke. His face turned pale, almost purple. He looked like he was going to have a heart attack. Jasmine could not kneel, or even bend down to help him, so she stood helplessly, thinking whether to call Sergei. Sergei was nowhere to be seen and that was strange.

The guy looked like he could hardly catch his breath. Before he tripped and fell back into the bushes he barely managed to wriggle out of, she heard him say, "What the hell???!"