Kirsten
November 27th, 2005, 05:41 AM
((bleh, another strange short story. sorry. x.x; ))
It was early in the morning when they brought me in. I could see the disbelief on their faces. I could not blame them; I would not believe me either. It had been maybe twenty minutes ago that I had the incident with the homeless man.
I had been on my home from work. I was working the third shift at the radio station. They called it the night crew post but there were times that I wondered if any body was out there listening. I would play music and give my ideas on the way that life was here in the land of the backwards river.
Chicago the third largest city in the USA. It had its problems like any other place. That was what I talked about, the problems. On this early morning between two and three in the morning I had talked about two different things that were on my mind, toxic waste and the homeless. Sound like a strange combination, I would agree, but if you walked to work on the same route that I did then you would understand.
The radio station was seven blocks from my apartment. As you would guess I passed by the river and homeless people on the way. There was one place that I passed that always made me cringe. That was the bunkers, a place of ramshackle homes where a band of homeless had made their residence. The bunkers were located on what used to be a chemical plant that made genetic pesticides. In 1986 the plant went bankrupt and closed down. One week after that it burnt to the ground. It was "undetermined" as to what caused the fire. The Chicago Tribune ran an article saying that not all of the tanks had been cleaned out prior to the fire. The lot stayed vacant for the next five years.
I would pass by the place in the summer; it smelled faintly like folmaltohide and disinfectant or mold. In 1991 the homeless moved in and called it home. They were able to have this place because no one else wanted it. There were about twenty families living there. So you could see how I would come up with these two topics. I asked the public what they would thought we should do with the bunkers, they had been there for seven years now; but a textile company had brought the lot and was planning to put their new plant on it. Most people said that the homeless should leave. "They don't own the land it is not theirs. They should go to the shelters, that is where they would get help not on some vacant lot." Besides, that was not a safe place for people to live. There had been some unexplained deaths there. People would die from apparently no known cause. Not like the authorities pursued it anyway. After all they were only "homeless people".
As I came to the end of my time I got one last call. It was from a man who called himself T.X. He said that the people found dead were the mutations that didn't work, and that we should look out, for the people did take to the ground. I could feel his anger through the phone line. He was mad at what happened to these people . . . to him. So I asked him "T.X., are you one of the people that took to the ground?" He answered "Perhaps, we will see." And hung up the phone. With that the show ended, a little eerie I must admit.
I got out of the booth and called a cab, there was something about T.X. that made it hard to walk home this early morning. The taxi dropped me off in front of my home. I looked around . . . All seemed normal. But, as I walked up the steps, it was evident that was not the case. There was a man there. Tall, thin, his clothes hung on him like on a hanger. He was standing right next to the door. I mustered up my courage and walked right up and turned to knob. The man made no move; quite honestly I was beginning to wonder if he was even alive.
As I started to go in I felt a faint scraping on my hand. The door shut and the man was standing on the outside of it. The back of his hand was pressed on the glass, on his thumb was a little bit of blood. He shouted through the glass "We shall see!" I looked down at my hand I could see what he meant. The scrape that I felt was his thumb and the seed that he had planted in my blood was growing. The cut, a jagged curve across the top of my hand, was oozing blood and mixing with what could only be described as toxic waste. It invaded my blood stream and changed my genetic code. With the change thoughts started to invade my head. I was to give this blood to every body I could, we should all learn from the ground.
That was absurd of course, what ever I got from this man would just kill me and they would find my body. They would call the cops and they would take me to the morgue in one of those neat little bags. But there was that thought again, give people the blood. Next, I could swear that I was not in my body. I was looking at me from above. I watched myself walk out in to the street in front of a car. The driver tried to stop but hit me anyway. Someone must have called 9-1-1, because about two minutes passed by, and an ambulance came and they strapped me into a gurney. That was when I came back to my self as the paramedics lifted me into the ambulance.
"Don't touch me," I said in what I thought was a calm voice "I'm toxic." The paramedics looked at each other and then at me I could tell that they both thought that I was off the deep end. "My blood it will take you over, let me go, I refuse medical treatment!" "We are very sorry, but you have a broken pelvis and some internal bleeding. There is no way that we can let you go." So that is how I ended up in the emergency room. I watched the doctors' faces as the paramedics told them about the accident and what I had told them in the ambulance. They put on their "lets work with the crazy" face and started to work on me. All the masks and goggles where not going to save them. This new form of life would find a way.
(( o.o;;...tee hee... ))
.::Edited::.
It was early in the morning when they brought me in. I could see the disbelief on their faces. I could not blame them; I would not believe me either. It had been maybe twenty minutes ago that I had the incident with the homeless man.
I had been on my home from work. I was working the third shift at the radio station. They called it the night crew post but there were times that I wondered if any body was out there listening. I would play music and give my ideas on the way that life was here in the land of the backwards river.
Chicago the third largest city in the USA. It had its problems like any other place. That was what I talked about, the problems. On this early morning between two and three in the morning I had talked about two different things that were on my mind, toxic waste and the homeless. Sound like a strange combination, I would agree, but if you walked to work on the same route that I did then you would understand.
The radio station was seven blocks from my apartment. As you would guess I passed by the river and homeless people on the way. There was one place that I passed that always made me cringe. That was the bunkers, a place of ramshackle homes where a band of homeless had made their residence. The bunkers were located on what used to be a chemical plant that made genetic pesticides. In 1986 the plant went bankrupt and closed down. One week after that it burnt to the ground. It was "undetermined" as to what caused the fire. The Chicago Tribune ran an article saying that not all of the tanks had been cleaned out prior to the fire. The lot stayed vacant for the next five years.
I would pass by the place in the summer; it smelled faintly like folmaltohide and disinfectant or mold. In 1991 the homeless moved in and called it home. They were able to have this place because no one else wanted it. There were about twenty families living there. So you could see how I would come up with these two topics. I asked the public what they would thought we should do with the bunkers, they had been there for seven years now; but a textile company had brought the lot and was planning to put their new plant on it. Most people said that the homeless should leave. "They don't own the land it is not theirs. They should go to the shelters, that is where they would get help not on some vacant lot." Besides, that was not a safe place for people to live. There had been some unexplained deaths there. People would die from apparently no known cause. Not like the authorities pursued it anyway. After all they were only "homeless people".
As I came to the end of my time I got one last call. It was from a man who called himself T.X. He said that the people found dead were the mutations that didn't work, and that we should look out, for the people did take to the ground. I could feel his anger through the phone line. He was mad at what happened to these people . . . to him. So I asked him "T.X., are you one of the people that took to the ground?" He answered "Perhaps, we will see." And hung up the phone. With that the show ended, a little eerie I must admit.
I got out of the booth and called a cab, there was something about T.X. that made it hard to walk home this early morning. The taxi dropped me off in front of my home. I looked around . . . All seemed normal. But, as I walked up the steps, it was evident that was not the case. There was a man there. Tall, thin, his clothes hung on him like on a hanger. He was standing right next to the door. I mustered up my courage and walked right up and turned to knob. The man made no move; quite honestly I was beginning to wonder if he was even alive.
As I started to go in I felt a faint scraping on my hand. The door shut and the man was standing on the outside of it. The back of his hand was pressed on the glass, on his thumb was a little bit of blood. He shouted through the glass "We shall see!" I looked down at my hand I could see what he meant. The scrape that I felt was his thumb and the seed that he had planted in my blood was growing. The cut, a jagged curve across the top of my hand, was oozing blood and mixing with what could only be described as toxic waste. It invaded my blood stream and changed my genetic code. With the change thoughts started to invade my head. I was to give this blood to every body I could, we should all learn from the ground.
That was absurd of course, what ever I got from this man would just kill me and they would find my body. They would call the cops and they would take me to the morgue in one of those neat little bags. But there was that thought again, give people the blood. Next, I could swear that I was not in my body. I was looking at me from above. I watched myself walk out in to the street in front of a car. The driver tried to stop but hit me anyway. Someone must have called 9-1-1, because about two minutes passed by, and an ambulance came and they strapped me into a gurney. That was when I came back to my self as the paramedics lifted me into the ambulance.
"Don't touch me," I said in what I thought was a calm voice "I'm toxic." The paramedics looked at each other and then at me I could tell that they both thought that I was off the deep end. "My blood it will take you over, let me go, I refuse medical treatment!" "We are very sorry, but you have a broken pelvis and some internal bleeding. There is no way that we can let you go." So that is how I ended up in the emergency room. I watched the doctors' faces as the paramedics told them about the accident and what I had told them in the ambulance. They put on their "lets work with the crazy" face and started to work on me. All the masks and goggles where not going to save them. This new form of life would find a way.
(( o.o;;...tee hee... ))
.::Edited::.