Darkness.
Darkness upon darkness.
Nothingness upon nothingness.
Until, from the ether, a whisper:
He didn’t recognize the language, but he felt its meaning: Take care of your head.
Then a realization.
With a start, Rook sat bolt upright, clutching his chest, gasping for air. Except there was no fight in the air, it happily filled his lungs. And his chest was intact. Despite his sudden panic, and the lingering feeling of oblivion, all was okay. He put a hand over his bullseye just to be sure, and when he was satisfied, he let out a sigh.
Then came the sharp, excruciatingly throbbing pain in his head, and he grasped at it with both hands, put his head between his knees. The pain of the deathwound returned. The last thing he remembered other than the pain was the loud crack of his own skull reverberating out into the stadium. He had the feeling he would be hearing that sound rattling around in his small ear bones for eternity.
His hands felt a cloth. Someone had bandaged his head back together. But how–
The strum of a guitar nearby snapped him out of his stupor. “Well well well, what have we here? Another member of the family, recently departed.” A ghostly man played a few notes on his guitar before setting it aside to pour a couple glasses of rum.
Rook was still struggling to get his bearings. “Wha– Uh…Where? Who?” His throat was dry and raspy. He licked his lips.
“Wow, listen to you. Here, drink.” And he offered a small glass to Rook.
Rook hesitantly took the drink and looked at it. “What is it?”
The guitarist downed his in one go, let out a refreshing exhale and said, “The good shit.”
Rook watched him, then gently swirled his glass in thought, before shrugging and downing his too. A refreshing warmth filled his body, soothing his throat, caressing his head, and healing ills he wasn’t even aware he had. He couldn’t help but let out a couple coughs.
The guitarist chuckled and repeated, “The good shit.”
Rook patted his chest, then asked, “Where am I? Who are you? And who bandaged my head?”
“Damn, so many questions, and I don’t even know anything about you.” He picked his guitar back up and strummed a few chords. “Well, let’s start with the first one: Welcome to The Inbetween.”
Rook looked all around him. A dark, starless sky. Grassy meadows and uneven cobblestone streets. Warm orange lanterns contrasted the purple cityscape, which comprised of a mixture of medieval taverns and neon brut concrete uneven skyrises. Everything was dilapidated, but still functional. Spirits milled about everywhere. And Rook and the guitarist sat on the stairs of a half-pantheonic building of marble pillars and iron chains. Empty cages and tattered banners swayed above in the stale air.
“The Inbetween?”
“Or, y’know, The Interim, The Waiting Room, Limbo. Wherever former life has to queue up while the beaurocrats upstairs (or downstairs) crunch some numbers to try to figure out what to do with us.” The guitarist gestured to the building behind them. “And all of our ilk eventually ends up here at The Cage.” It almost felt like a theater stage to Rook.
“Ilk?”
He hadn’t noticed it before with so much around him to notice, but the guitarist turned his head to give a clearer look at his jutting profile. “You know, those of us who’ve been blessed,” he said sarcastically as he touched the tip of his pointed nose with a finger.
Rook’s eyes brightened. No one on Akabyssus shared his profile, and the greater universal society seemed hesitant to mark him down as a human, first trying to label him as some sort of avian - until none of the avians claimed him.
Rook scooted a little closer. “Are we…related?”
“By blood? Probably not.”
And then a sudden realization slapped Rook in the face. “WAIT. AM I DEAD?”
The guitarist idly fingered a few strings. “You catch on quick.”
“I can’t be dead! My heart–” And he looked down at his unpierced heart.
“Is that what the tat is about?”
“When I was a child, a seer couldn’t see anything about my future, except that I would be killed by being pierced through the heart.” Rook found this man easy to talk to. It felt like they were on the same level.
Picking up the thread, the guitarist made his own assumptions, “And then to add injury to insult, they drew a permanent bullseye on you?”
“Oh, no, I did that on my own accord.”
“Right on!” And then the guitarist let out a laugh. “But I’ll be real - you had that bandage on your head when I found you. I don’t know who did it.”
Rook felt his head again. “My whole skull was crushed, I have no clue how it isn’t anymore.”
“Mortal wounds tend to heal quickly here.” And then, as if remembering, he picked up the bottle of rum and rocked it. “A bit of the rum doesn’t hurt either.” And he poured two more glasses. “Might as well keep going!” He touched his glass to Rook’s and downed it.
Rook, feeling no need to keep going, just held his politely.
“You know, you don’t look dead. You’ve got this glowing vibrance to you.” Rook’s brown skin did seem to glow in relation to the muted tones of the guitarist and the other spirits. He noticed the spirits’ glances tended to linger on him.
After a moment of thought, the guitarist continued, “I know what we can do,” before giving his guitar a loud reverberating strum.
At the sound of the strum, a dozen or so be-beak’d spirits appeared in the overhead cages and gently floated out of them to the ground below. They immediately assisted with emptying the bottle of rum, stretching out their limbs, pointing at Rook’s bullseye and grinning. There was already a fistfight.
Rook looked on at all of them, mouth dropping open, in complete disbelief of the collection of shared profiles in one place, where the only place he’d seen it before was in the mirror.
One of the spirits closed Rook’s jaw with a metallic hand. “Yes, I know, it’s quite concerning. I have a theory that we’re a sort of ontological necessity.”
“A…a what?”
“Like we’re one of the load-bearing pillars keeping the universe together somehow.”
Rook wasn’t convinced, and couldn’t see how he could have anything to do with something like that.
“But you’re right,” the one with the metal limbs said to the guitarist, “He isn’t dead. We ought to take him to the elevator before the sun rises. Let’s get moving.” And they all started walking or floating down the cobblestone streets.
“But I don’t get it, how am I here if I’m not dead?”
The guitarist replied, “Not a clue. We’re among some of the oldest spirits here, and we still don’t know how anything works. All we know is when the sun rises, before we know it, we’re back in The Cage, no matter what we were doing just before.”
“Do you think if my heart is pierced, I’ll end up like all of you?” And everyone simply shrugged.
“Guess we’ll find out.” And the guitarist flashed him a threatening smile.
After a long walk down the streets, up ladders, across rooftops, through apartment windows, down hallways, down stair wells, down sewer systems, through underground tunnels, a dimly lit grassy clearing in the dirt revealed a birdcage dangling from a chain in a lit vertical corridor.
With a moment of apprehension, Rook asked, “Have any of you used this before?”
“We can’t, too tied to another Cage,” the guitarist replied.
The one with metallic limbs spoke up, “When I perceived your vitality, this place came immediately to my mind. I’ve stopped questioning the reasons behind these things. Something in me knows this is meant for you at this moment.”
Rook knit his brows and nodded slightly before stepping into the cage, minding the hole beneath it, and closed the door. As soon as he closed the door, a series of metallic bangs overhead and the sound of creaking rust, and the cage started rising. They all watched as it rose until it was out of view and they started turning to make the pilgrimage back.
The guitarist was the last to turn away. “See you soon, pal.”
Gus lifted its goggles slightly to drain the stinging salty liquid from its eyes.
“You’re not sad about some hitchhiker, are you?” Ace asked in a quiet voice that failed to hide her own dejectedness.
The corpse lay on Gus’ operating slab, a white sheet over it. They were deciding on whether or not to make the long pilgrimage to transport the body back to Akabyssus. Or otherwise launch it out the airlock.
“How many times have we lost hitchhikers in the past?”
Gus’ voice was small. “This one felt different somehow.” It wiped its face with a pair of tentacles. Ace slowly brought a comforting clawed hand to rest on Gus’ bald head.
It helped.
In a shocking instant, the corpse sat bolt upright, clutching its chest, gasping for air.
Gus and Ace each let out a horrified shout, and Ace immediately fled the room.
The corpse gasped through its mouth, on its head, which was intact and connected to the rest of the body, as it should be. Panting, Rook instinctively looked down at his bullseye, put a hand over it, and sighed. He gave Gus a smile.
“WHAT, BUT, WE SAW YOU, YOU DIDN’T HAVE A” and Gus’ tentacles were already fully wrapped around Rook in an embrace.
“Hey to you too.”
Gus dropped to the floor again. “What the hell happened?!”
“I’ve got no–”
Ace burst into the room with a double-barreled shotgun. “DIE ZOMBIE!!” And gave a two-barreled shot to Rook’s head, exploding it again. His headless torso fell backwards onto the slab.
“ACE!!”
The two living crewmembers took a breath or two.
“WHEN WERE YOU GONNA TELL ME YOU HAD A SHOTGUN?!”
…
I said take care of your head.
…
Rook sat upright again, grasping his chest, then his re-bandaged head.
The guitarist sat at his side with two glasses of rum. “I didn’t think it was gonna be that soon.”