Descent Book 1: Descent from Man
DESCENT
Book 1: Descent from Man
Written by Phil Geusz
Published by Legion Printing and Publishing, Inc, Birmingham, AL
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All right reserved. No portion of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without explicit written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
I
I hate driving rental cars. They’re full of squeaks and rattles, the controls grow loose and sloppy from long abuse, and though they probably do receive regular professional maintenance just as advertised you can tell just by looking that no one really loves them. Take the econobox I was sitting in at the moment. A clicking noise emanated from the right side of the dashboard at any speed over forty miles an hour. The driver’s seat leaned to the left, mute testimony to a past driver’s weight problem. For some reason it was hard to shift from second to third. And last night I’d discovered that half the dashboard lights were out. None of this reflected badly on the manufacturer, at least not in my opinion. The problems were the result of simple abuse. For example, my rental was just a little roller-skate of a car— no engineer could be faulted for failing to consider the possibility of a four-hundred pound driver levering himself in behind the wheel of such tiny vehicle. The second-to-third gearshift thing was most likely a linkage problem, probably created by some boy-racer type who gloried in speed-shifting. And, over the years I’d seen many rental-car drivers veer towards the deepest potholes they could find. “Look at me! I’m not paying for this!” the drivers’ grins seemed to declare after the resulting impacts. This sort of thing explained the dashboard rattle and failed lights quite neatly. No, the manufacturer wasn’t to blame for any of these failings. Besides, a skilled mechanic with simple tools could easily have fixed them all in mere minutes—heck, I could’ve done it! The real problem was that no one cared enough about the poor thing to make the effort.
Grinding my teeth in frustration, I carefully depressed the clutch (carefully, because the pedals had been designed for feet far smaller than mine) as traffic once more slowed and stopped. Normally, I enjoyed driving. But the evil combination of annoying rental car plus heavy traffic and hot weather were steadily sapping my patience. I was also still pretty keyed up about other things—it’d been a most stressful day. At least the car's motor ran smoothly and its air conditioning blew cold. Focusing as best I could on life's small blessings, I set the emergency brake and waited among the now-stationary vehicles, engine idling. Then the inevitable happened. A child riding in the van I was trapped behind noticed me and pointed. Soon an entire pack of five and six year-olds had their faces jammed up against the rear windows. I waved back, my newly-altered hands still feeling odd to me. I always tried to make time for kids, even on bad days. They were curious, was all; it came naturally to them. The children laughed in glee and waved back. Then traffic began moving again. Eventually the van rolled forward, and I let the distance between us increase until there was a large gap in front of me. A grateful semi driver ducked into the opening. He waved at me too. But this time the gesture was merely a ‘thank-you’. He didn’t stare, something for which I was deeply grateful.
Traffic sort of froze in place for a long time after that, and the back end of a tractor-trailer offered little in the way of entertainment. So, rather clumsily, I switched on the unfamiliar radio. In doing so, I finally discovered something bad about my rental that I could legitimately blame the car’s maker for. The left-rear speaker had an awful whine to it! It was probably far above the frequency range of most people’s hearing, but to me it was a painful dagger in the skull. I tried to mute the thing, but my new hands and I still hadn’t gotten to know each other very well yet so at first I made it louder. The racket was agonizing; I almost had bail out of the little car right in the middle of the highway. Finally I grabbed the key and twisted it, shutting off the radio along with the engine. Traffic still wasn't going much of anywhere, so I sat and practiced my deep-breathing for a minute or two until my heart slowed a bit—my therapist would’ve been proud of me. A horn blared out, but I ignored it for the moment. Only when I was certain that I was feeling better did I carefully turn the radio’s switch to the “off” position. Then I fired the little vehicle up again. The truck in front of me had advanced all of ten feet. I didn’t allow myself to grow angry at being honked at over such a trivial thing. Instead I nestled up close behind the big trailer again, then set the brake and toyed with the radio’s tiny controls. This time before switching it on I turned the balance knob all the way over to the right, effectively killing power to the screaming speaker. By now I was no longer in any mood for music, but every big town had a talk station that covered traffic problems.
This one proved easy to find. And I was lucky—the traffic report was in-progress. “…severe accident on Sixty-Seven,” a woman’s voice was explaining. “Northbound at exit ninety-two. There are no serious injuries reported, but long delays are anticipated as one of the abandoned vehicles is still underway and considered dangerous. Police on the scene suspect that pixie dust may have been a contributing factor in the accident, and are taking full precautions.”
“Oh, great!” I complained aloud, shifting painfully in my crooked seat. My spine and tailbone ached from the leftward tilt, and for once the orthopedic cushion I always used when driving wasn’t helping. But the only thing I could’ve done to ease the pain would’ve been to get out and walk around a little. Some of the other drivers already were, but I cringed at the very idea. Some days, especially after being startled by something, I felt terribly timid. The problem was worsening every day, and my therapists said it was something I needed to accept about myself and start getting used to. So I sat right where I was in my little car, trying to maintain a positive spin on the situation. At least I had air conditioning. At least I had a partially-working radio. At least I was going to go back home tonight to my own house and car. At least I was still pretty much myself, after what’d happened. Or so far as I could tell I was still myself.
That counted for something, didn't it?
Idly I listened to the rest of the news. The local mayor was fighting with the city council over school funding. Elf-wannabe environmentalist groups were blocking the construction of a new highway. It was intended to take some of the load off of Route Sixty-Seven, which everyone knew needed the help. But they were blocking it anyway. The city’s sanitation workers were threatening to strike. The home baseball team had lost last night, seven to four. And there was no end to the current heat wave in sight.
Just as the news was finishing up, a fire truck roared past me on the highway’s shoulder, siren wailing. The safest way to deal with pixie dust, I'd learned during my apprenticeship, was to flush it away with water. So even if the heat wave wasn't ending any time soon, at least the traffic jam would. For the next thirty minutes or so I sat patiently listening to a member of the local Board of Education discuss class sizes and teacher’s pay in a dull monotone. It was excruciatingly boring programming, but better than anything else I could hope for. So I sat and waited, trying my level best to concentrate on a subject which interested me not in the least.
Because I knew that the moment I let my mind wander, I’d start thinking about the fingers I’d lost forever earlier in the afternoon. And then weep for hours.