Harvels eyelids felt as if they were made of sand paper, his eyes an unfinished wood floor. He could see the white, occasionally yellow stained, ceiling of the pump station infirmary above him. Indistinct shapes of people, their faces blurred like an amateur watercolor painting, were moving around at the foot of his bed.
His back felt like someone had pounded on it with a hammer. The ribs on his left side weren't much better off it seemed. Every breath felt like he was pulling his ribcage open, then letting it snap back into place when he was done. His options were between being in pain, or being in slightly less pain. Not a lot of variety there, but the false sense of personal choice was nice to have.
After shining his eyeballs until they practically gleamed, he tried to speak. The anesthetic he was on must have been good because all he got out was: "Fughing thenipeeb." before he gave up and concentrated on breathing again. 'Fucking centipede' He finished, allowing his thoughts to include every drop of extra venom his tongue had denied him.
Through the haze, he allowed the uninhibited portions of his brain to meander along. This was a fine mess he'd gotten himself into this time. He had insurance, he knew, but it wasn't very good by any measure of the word. He was still paying off the bills from the solvent incident last year.
He could only imagine just how large the bill was going to be. How long had he been out? Just how fucked was his back? Would he even be able to go back to work at all? He heard the EKG machine begin to speed up as he let the possibilities swirl around in his brain.
The largest of the shadowy forms which had been previously shifting around the room, came into focus as it approached the machine. It didn't take more than the hint of yellowish orange skin for Harvel to know who it was. He was suddenly in much better spirits.
"Iddech!" Harvel flubbed, a goofy smile spreading across his face. He tried to shift his head using his limited motor skills, putting a little too much force into it and whipping his temple into the handrail. As things were this left him somewhat unfazed.
"Ok bud. Aaaalrighty then, lets just, uh huh, yep, just uh. There you go." Yiddek said, using his claws to gently shift Harvels head back onto his pillow. Harvel immediately undid all of his work, grabbing Yiddeks arms and pulling himself up.
"Buggy! Buggy? Bubby?... Waiy, no... Uh... Buddy! Thas duh won... I kiwd... a zenipeeb." He gibbered, spraying spittle on Yiddeks fingers.
"Yeah bud, you did didn't you?! You got that centipede well and good! Now, just lay down and stop giving me an impromptu shower." Yiddek replied, peeling Harvels hands away carefully and lowering him back onto the bed.
Harvel didn't quite understand his aversion. Personally, he would have really enjoyed a shower right about now. He had the sneaking suspicion that he was well overdue.
"I'm gonna lower your anesthetic a bit so you can talk. You gonna be alright with that?" Yiddek said, patiently waiting for his response.
"Huh? Oh... Oh yeh, I guesh." Harvel replied, giving an exaggerated nod. As much pain as he was in, he was starting to get annoyed with the feeling of being a set of eyeballs floating through the cosmos. Yiddek promptly started tapping away on the little console. As Yiddek was throttling his happy juice, another shadowy form entered at the far end of the room.
"Doctor Valez, Mr. Gillis' insurance agent wishes to talk to you." Said a voice that must have been one of the nurses.
"I'll be right there." He replied, pushing up the tiny reading glasses he wore on the tip of his snout. As he turned to leave, Harvel gave him a noodle armed salute.
"Goob lunk Docker!" He barked, his hand flopping back down onto the bed. Yiddek tried to hide a smile and failed.
"I'm gonna need it too. You've got a persistent one this time. She's from Central." Yiddek said, lumbering out through the doorway.
At this point Harvel was, for the most part, mentally functional. He just found his new partial speech impediment to be somewhat comical. But, seeing as the numb mouthed idiot shtick had pretty much run its course, he decided to settle down.
It had been long enough that he'd nearly forgotten Yiddek was now his primary doctor. He'd nearly torn Harvels head off when he had learned about the acid thing. The truth was, Harvel wasn't the smartest and had never asked if Yiddek could even take him on as a patient without the sufficient number of zeroes behind his yearly salary.
Being a member of a private care group, Yiddek primarily catered to the city's wealthier residents. Him coming down to patch up a seemingly random waste-walker was very out of the ordinary. Insurance agents didn't like out of the ordinary very much. It always meant extra paperwork.
After about an hour, Harvel was finally starting to feel his face again. He tried to let his mind wander, but his thoughts kept coming back to what had been watching him in the tunnel. He'd known it was there, but he knew he hadn't seen it. He'd felt it. In his mind he'd felt it, almost as much as he couldn't feel his face at the moment.
He could still feel it now, watching him, waiting for him to slip up. On what he wasn't exactly sure. He couldn't even walk at the moment. He still didn't know if it had wanted him dead, or hurt, or just plain terrified. Whatever it was, he couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't done with him. Not by a long shot.He knew that he wasn't done with it either. Whatever it was, it must have had something to do with the giant centipede.
'And another thing.' He thought, 'That goddamn centipede was huge. Most are the size of a couple davy ants at best, but that fucker must have been the size of one of those little trains my mum let me ride at the mall as a kid.'
He recalled it being a pleasant memory, until he'd soiled himself the same day. His mother had told him that, if he soiled his new Rat-Man underpants, he would come out of the nearest sewer to scold him. Her only mistake was underestimating just how much Harvel had wanted to meet Rat-Man. To Harvels dismay, she had decided to play the part of Rat-Man in his absence.
Two years ago, he'd almost fantasized that he would become Rat-Man himself down in the sewers. This obviously wasn't the case, but it had been a little dream of his either way. Rat-Man stood for justice and honor. He fought sentient and overtly sexual ant queens with big burly warrior ants for henchmen.
Harvel very well knew that this wasn't the reality. He'd helped exterminate a queen's nest in his first year and there had been a distinct lack of nearly exposed breasts and gogo boots. He'd mostly remembered the horrific smell and screeching noises she'd made when they'd melted her.
'And what have I fought in the last two years huh?' He thought, 'A big fuck off centipede, and the increasing urge to spray a can of solvent in my mouth. Some super-hero I turned out to be.'
As this last thought passed through Harvels mind, Dibbuk peeked her head around the doorway. Noticing that he was conscious she let the rest of her body follow.
"Good, you're somewhat among the living again." She said, arms wide in feigned surprise. Her smile slowly faded.
"You look sad. Why do you look sad? You just beat a centipede and death itself, why aren't you happier?" She asked, noticing his downtrodden expression.
"Uh, nothing, just some stuff I was thinking about. Did you say death itself? What's that supposed to mean?" He replied, looking around, a slightly hunted look about him.
"Well, you did. Medics said you flatlined on the way up. Yiddek said it happened again an hour after you got here. You just sort of stopped living for a minute, and then you were back. Like a switch flipping on and off or something. At least, that's what Yiddek said about it." She explained, watching his face for any sort of change.
There was an odd tone she was using that Harvel didn't particularly like. Whenever he shifted his weight her eyes would follow him, searching for some sort of irregularity. She had the same stern, focused, look as his 4th grade teacher had when she'd caught him looking at naughty photos, and knew he wasn't the one who'd brought them.
Harvel tried not to eye her too suspiciously given the circumstances. She knew something. Something about the incident he wasn't aware of. He knew he would have to coax it out of her somehow. He shot for over the top.
"I'm sorry, do you think I'm possessed or something?" He asked, calling on a few real fears of his involving elderly people and water aerobics, to carry him through the act. It wasn't what anyone would have called convincing, but he did his best.
Dibbuk relaxed a bit. 'What sort of ghost would have to be desperate enough to possess Harvel?' She thought, slumping back down in the two chairs she was currently occupying. This was all giving her a headache. She was far too tired for this.
"Shut up. I'm serious, there is something else down there. Something that's-"
"Watching me?" Harvel finished, giving her a knowing look.
"Yo- you know about it?" She asked, fumbling a bit. "You know about the thing in the dark?"
Harvel had assumed he was the only one who had noticed. "Yeah, kind of. I never saw it though. Only felt it. Like it was waiting for me or something. How do you know about it?" He asked, a grave look passing over his face. If it wasn't just him then it couldn't be pipe madness, the thought of which he'd previously entertained multiple times on his trek back through the tunnel.
Dibbuk recounted all the events that had taken place after the medics had carted him away. Harvel listened, stone faced until she had finished. There was something about her story that felt more out of place than the rest of it.
"Was it really that polite? When you heard it staring at you, I mean. Did it really say; 'thank you very much'?" He asked, genuinely puzzled. He hadn't remembered it being very polite when it was trying to kill him.
"Well, it stared at me quite... politely, alright?" She replied, a little confused herself. Had she heard it? No, she remembered feeling it or seeing it. It was less like a sound than it was a feeling, but she'd remembered the words. Somehow, she remembered the words.