Vampirony

The nails in the board screeched in complaint as they were pried from the crate. She’d had to chip into the board to get enough clearance for the crowbar’s edge. Once she freed one end, she went to work on the other. It was slow work undertaken in the dark of her hotel room in her dubious mental state. With each board removed, she flung it aside and peeled back some of the protective canvas covering to reach the cloth underneath. A small flexible flashlight clipped to her shirt, she pushed up the cloth to reveal the surface underneath. A muscled calf.

“Not marble, “ she shook her head. Her fingers wandered up the lower part of leg only halting when she hit the limit of another board.

She picked up the crowbar again and worked on the next board, mumbling, “Not granite. Maybe if I can reach…”

Another fifteen minutes and a knee was visible. But she needed something to cut the pant leg away. She rummaged and found an utility knife in her trunk. She returned, carefully slashing at the fabric to free the leg.

She tilted the flashlight slightly away, the light indirectly shining off the deep red hued stone. Brick red. Some splotchiness in color with some grey, brown, and black hues. She took in a breath and tapped the metal blade against the leg. Nothing happened. She sighed, “Hardness, maybe a 7? So not howlite.” She stood and went back to her laptop, tapping furiously for a few minutes. She looked back to the crate and then returned, carrying the laptop. Kneeling again, she set the laptop aside, adjusted the flashlight again, and flicked the light over the leg. “Not translucent so not carnelian.”  

She tapped a few more keystrokes into her search engine to broader her results. Red stone.

She expelled a breath and sat back on her heels. She turned back to the crate. “It can’t be.” She took a few measured breaths. “Can it?”

As her eyes began to water, the resulting page seemed to mock her idiocy with a spectacular sense of the metaphysical:

Brecciated Jasper is known as a detoxifying stone because it can get rid of unhealthy energies or vibrations in your body, heart, mind, and spirit. It can support your body in recovering from a traumatic experience, and it can boost your sagging spirits so that you will feel optimistic again about life. And then: Brecciated Jasper is form of Jasper, which the multi-colored layers are enclosed together with a grey substance. It is a form of Jasper that consists of Haematite. Haematite is a grounding stone, which makes this stone an excellent gemstone for assisting you to make your feet on the ground and for endorsing feelings of stillness and wholeness, as well. Also, it has a stirring, revitalize energy that is said to support mental simplicity and profound happiness. It is also believed to take up off-putting energy, which allows you to expand a positive outlook on your life.

“Naw, just a scratch…or two. Oh, see. Already on the mend.” The memory crawled back into her head, as if she could reach out and brush her fingers against the stubbled chin.

She brushed the top of her hand against her eyes to expel the moisture and the vision. Tapped a few more keys to prove the hypothesis incorrect, met with immovable fact:

Jasper is a variety of quartz that may contain up to 20 percent foreign materials or inclusions, including organic material and mineral oxides, which determine the color, pattern and appearance of the stone. Brecciated jasper contains hematite, an iron compound, which gives it both its red tones and the dark bands. It is primarily deep red–veined or patterned with brown, black and beige–and sometimes has clear crystal inclusions.

She put her head in her hands. A stone specifically formulated of impurities. She had thought if she might identify an injury, a place where a foreign material like the glass of the cabling used to tie him up had been embedded, she might find an answer to his continued Rigor Dormitus. And might have a chance to fix it, to free him. The form was meant to help heal when she’d been allowed to see it.

But as it was, she had no idea if this was normal for him; she doubted he’d ever shown it to anyone.  She hadn’t known he could fly; had even challenged him when he’d reacted to the assertion that it was a myth.  The limits of her knowledge about his ability had multiplied tenfold last night and still left her stupefied as to who or what he was. It just showed in dry empiric relief that he was a stranger to her.  

“Shit.”

After a long stretch of time when all the logic of trying to puzzle a way for him to be freed had evaporated, she did the only thing that would give her any ease. She picked up the crowbar and worked another board free, fished under the canvas until she found it. His hand. She had piled up her pillows and a blanket and she laid back down, ignoring the odd angle of her shoulder and the splinters digging into her skin so she might squeeze his hand of brecciated jasper and hope against all hope that he’d find his own way back to her.

When sleep finally came, it was with the roar of a gaseous magnitude, a celestial glowing that set fire to all things and turned her hopes to ash and cinders that only a deluge of emerald fabric could salvage.

This entry was posted on June 6, 2021 at 7:39 pm and is filed under Vampirony. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.