Paris's ears ring like someone had fired a gun next to his head before he woke. His eyelids feel heavy as he tries to look around. The smell of the woods pushes the blood aside. Above him is an empty blue sky. His hands ache and it's too warm for him to be wearing his thick coat.
He groans and sits up, weakly clawing off his coat. Under is his black long sleeve. The movement reminds him he has nothing in his stomach. He turns and vomits yellow into the grass underneath his shaking hands.
His weak arms let him collapse to the side, coughing until he can spit more bile out. He shakes with cold sweats. Sound comes back faster than he expects.
Poisoned! They took us! Run run run run. We want to die. It hurts! Pain pain pain. They whine and cry out as if the voices were the ones who were in pain.
"Hey! Hey, can you hear us?" The man kneels a few feet away from Paris, a small furrow in his brow of worry.
Paris shakes more, unable to move. "Home. Please." He rasps.
"I'll sober him up." Another woman's voice growls, just a touch deeper than Lena's.
Lena pipes up, "Wait, Misty. He has lost a lot of blood, maybe we should get him an IV first."
"Lena, Leon, take him then. I want to speak with him when he comes back to life. I don't talk to drunks." Misty says, stepping into his view. The woman is taller than most of the women he's seen. Her hair is a long and wavy dark brown and her eyes a light violet. She is nearly drop dead gorgeous. A woman not to fuck with, clearly. Her arms folded and her heeled boots don't make her any less intimidating.
"What?" Paris mumbles, trying to sit up. He falls to his back and the sky is still just as blue as when he woke up. Just as they close.
"I don't know what's happening! It was red and now it's black! It won't stop oozing. Go get Misty! Now!" Nurses shout as Paris comes-to.
His arms are restrained to the bed, an IV in one arm and a device on the other. The IV labeled with O- is black as tar. It leaks into the saline bag of the IV, tar creeping into the clear bag.
He looks at his arm, then to the bag. He kicks the blanket off, screaming and cursing. He tenses his arms and the tar seems to boil in the bag. He notices he's wearing a hospital gown, his legs open to the air, he calms down in embarrassment.
Lena and Leon step through a portal with Misty into his room. Misty snaps on her gloves and pulls up a chair to Paris's side. She removes his needle and moves the bags to the sink. She pulls a kit from her back pocket and syringes the black goop into the vial. She hands it to Lena, who portals away with it. Leon stands with his hands behind his back. He looks as if he is not pleased to be standing next to Misty.
"Inspect him, would you? I need to run to the lab and make sure we get this-" She motions to Paris, "fixed."
Leon nods and grabs a tool from the table. Misty leaves without another word and Leon gets to work. He looks in Paris's ears, nose, eyes, throat. He checks his pulse in his neck, making Paris's throat dry. He tries not to flinch back in fear as Leon presses a little harder with his fingers.
"You seem fine." He pulls his hand back and writes a list of notes on a piece of paper. "Nothing seems off. The only thing I can see wrong is the black stuff coming out of your arm." He points to the spot the IV was in. A small welt of black blood dries onto his skin.
Paris looks at the strange machine on his other arm, it looks like a potato bug on his bicep.
"That's sobering you up. It's a handy little machine. We use it on our people when they come back from missions." Leon explains as he peels it off.
Paris swallows, wetting his dry throat. "What am I doing here? Why are you trying to help me after you kidnapped me?"
Leon sits on the little wheeled chair and carefully unstraps Paris from the bed. "Me and Lena look for people like you-well sort of like you. You're just a little bit more different than we were expecting. People with taints, demons, curses, etcetera. Bad things that can't be allowed to walk the Earth. There's things like witches and vampires that you hear about as a kid. They also work for us." Leon's tone never changes, he sounds like he is repeating a short story from a paper in school.
"Anyway, Misty is the organization leader." He shrugs. "She has really taken a liking to Lena and has her help with everything. I'm just tag-a-long. So if you need anything, you ask either of them. I have no authority here."
Paris grabs the blanket he had kicked off and pulls it close. He doesn't look convinced. "I have a class to get to tomorrow. My roommate is probably wondering where I'm at. I need to get back home. So get this shit out of me and let me get back to my life."
Lena and Misty step through the black and yellow portal into the room. Misty holds up an empty vial and shakes it like she needs a sample. "You can go back when we remove this parasite from you. Now what did you do to the sample? Everything black disappeared the second we stepped through the portal. Explain yourself, boy."
"I have no fucking clue what's happening. I am a 24 year old man who was just going to get something to eat from the fucking store. Next thing I know, I have a migraine that gives me the worst bloody nose of my life and I get kidnapped by some portal-making twin." Paris tries to back farther into his hospital bed, pale and nervous. The voices sound just as worried in his head.
Wrap the blanket around Leon and strangle him. We have to leave! Kick the big lady and run out of here. Go go go go! Run John!
His complexion pales even more. The voices have never called him out by his first name before.
"Okay what in the actual FUCK is going on here?" His voice shakes.
Misty folds her arms, her patience wearing very thin. "You have a parasite and you need it removed. We just aren't sure how. Now, if you would calm down so we can run some more tests on you, we can get you out of here faster."
Lena steps forward with a bo-staff, pushing Paris back into his bed, not realizing he had leaned forward in his anger.
Leon pulls the bo-staff back and nods to Paris, "We'll get you back home as soon as we can."
Misty holds a scalpel in her fingers, the point threatening him from her hand. She grabs Paris's arm and makes a small and quick cut. Blood trails down his bicep and he yelps, smacking his hand over the wound.
"What the fuck dude! What parasite? What does this mean? Why in the hell did they call me by my name?"
"Who?" Lena demands.
Leon puts his hand up again, "Something we can't exactly remove, we will find a way to get you better. No one knows your name, who called you by your name? Do you know anyone here?" His calm voice convinces Lena and Misty to take a step back.
"What is your name?" Lena asks, a softer tone in her voice than before.
"John Paris Fullmer. I have been hearing voices in my head for my entire life. They called me by my first name, I go by Paris. This has got to be some sort of nightmare." Paris wipes the blood from his arm again, the iron stench filling his nose.
Misty collects another blood sample in a vial from the clotting bicep. "I will see if we can locate the parasite in your blood. If we can find out exactly what this thing is, the faster we can have it removed and you can go back to your normal life." She looks to the trembling man, "But, if we can't, we may need to keep you here longer… for scientific research."
Lena opens a portal of black and yellow, Misty steps through it, nodding goodbye.
Leon sets Paris's clothes on his bed, in a bag atop the neatly folded clothes are his phone, flask, keys, and some change. His wallet was left at home.
Paris grabs his under garments and pulls them on under a blanket. He pulls his hospital gown over his head and tosses it aside. He pulls on his long sleeve and catches Lena staring from the side.
His cheeks burn with embarrassment. "Okay, so am I okay to leave? Do I need to catch a taxi or Uber to get back to my dorm?"
Lena motions up and down, "You need to be fixed up. Your hair looks like a five year old got loose with some scissors. You're not going to want to be in that long sleeve all day, and you'll be here for a while, so we can buy you a week's worth of clothes." She opens a portal and motions with her head to the portal, "Then, once you're better, you will pay us back." She steps through and Leon follows, holding Paris's coat, encouraging him to follow.