The Chronicles of a Wizard [ Part I ]
Zusynoid
When you keep waking up with a headache every day, you eventually decide to stop sleeping.
It was Monday, as I recall. I've been awake for almost eighty hours. I've got so much coffee coursing through my system, enough to keep a small community awake and bouncing around like children on a sugar high for a couple of days. I've been sitting in my room; listening to music, watching movies and reading books.
I had just gotten back from work and I was about to take a shower. In the city -in the summer-, you don’t need hot water; especially if you’re living in an old building like mine. The weather is already hot enough, and during the day the sun heats up the exposed water pipes so the water is already lukewarm. And lukewarm in the summer -in the city- is scorching hot. I felt a bit sleepy after that shower. The lukewarm water felt different somehow. But I didn't give it much thought.
I had finally decided that I would sleep.
Tuesday morning headache was reminiscent of all the eighty reasons I haven’t slept earlier that weekend. It felt like someone heated up a sharpened metal rod and drilled it -slowly- from the right side of the back of my head. Skewing my brain and coming out from the left side of my forehead. And then, that someone twisted the rod left and right for a while.
I tried getting out of bed, a process that took thirty minutes. As soon as I opened my bedroom door, Syd — my cat — swooshes in and starts jumping around. He’s always excited in the morning, because he had probably been bored all night, sitting alone in the sink in the small room between the bathroom and the kitchen.
But something felt different and strange…
I could sense as though my eyes were fading in and out of a different spectrum of light. Colors are varying in intensity and everything seemed cell-shaded for a while. Then the flash goes away and I’m back to focusing on my headache.
I washed up and got dressed as fast as I could. I was already running late for work and I had a lot of issues to handle. I was packing my bag when suddenly the electricity went out. The phaser is right outside the apartment door, and sometimes it overloads and clicks. I walked across the hallway, into the living room and out the apartment door to flip back the phaser’s switch. But as soon as I touched it, a massive surge of electricity zapped me, throwing me down on my back. Painlessly, it electrified me. I was awake for a few seconds after that but couldn't move, and then I passed out.
A couple of hours later I woke up; distorted and unbalanced, I pulled myself up and dragged my feet back inside. Two steps across the corner of the living room and into the hallway door. I froze in place.
A huge monstrosity of a cat stood there, with a face void of expression. Its paws were as huge as my face. Its rounded head and back-pointing ears looked familiar, but not too familiar. Its eyes gave it away. Something had happened while I was passed out, something very strange. I mustered some courage as the big cat stood there, still, expressionless. I walked up towards it, and just when I got close enough, it dropped on its back and lifted its paws. A grin twirled upon my face as I reached out to pet Syd, like I always do.
As soon as I touched his neck a strange kind of energy — a green colored energy — zapped out from my fingertips caressing Syd’s fur. Syd didn't seem to be feeling any pain from it. Before I can understand what was happening, I felt the whole house shake.
Syd pounced up straight and growled with such ferocity which made the hairs in the back of my neck stand up. The loud sounds and vibrations were coming from behind us, from the lateral walls of the living room facing the street. The walls came crashing down, ripped by some massive metallic pipe falling down from above. The opening of the pipe stopped at our living room floor. Three tall, built and weird looking creatures walked out. They were clumsy looking too; as clumsy looking as that green alien fellow from “Futurama” — an animated series I used to watch a couple of years ago — but with an intent to kill; one I could sense the moment I laid eyes on them.
I jumped sideways through my bedroom door to grab my pocket knife, but Syd had already charged them. Everything was happening too fast but I could not stand still. It was obvious that these creatures are here to get me, but I had no idea why, I’m no-one.
The creatures had special suits on. They wore teal-colored overalls, jammed with blinking lights. Gold-colored markings and tracks spread across their suits; it was as though the suit was bound to their skin and the markings are etched on both the suit and the skin beneath it. It looked like a suit made out of a computer’s motherboard, only way more complicated. I tried to notice where those markings lead and how they are connected as fast as I could just as Syd pounced on the first creature facing him. Clawing its head clean off. Syd dropped the creature and stood on top of its mangled body.
He growled at the remaining two creatures that seemed very unaffected by the beheading of their companion. The creature’s body, upon which Syd stood, started twitching. Syd pounced backwards, alarmed, only to clear my field of vision to the part of the suit I was not able to see earlier; the bottom of the boots. On the bottom of his left shoe, there seemed to be a metallic square block where all the gold lines end up. I assumed it must be the main unit that controls the suit. As I made that realization, the creatures’ head -on the other side of the room- disintegrated and the creature started growing a new head.
My first reaction was to throw my pocket knife straight at that metallic block, but something inside my head stopped me. Something told me it won’t be enough. That moment, I felt a surge in my right arm again, right then and there, like the one I felt when I was petting Syd a while ago. My shoulder itched and glowed green as streams of green electric threads channeled down my arm and into my pocket knife. I threw the knife instantly towards the metallic block. The knife flew across the hallway, yet the green threads were still connected to my arm. It smashed the metallic block, and the creature’s body instantly disintegrated.
The knife swoops back, as though those green threads suddenly became elastic, and it landed back in my hand. I walked up next to Syd, staring down the other two creatures that now stood in awe. I drew that grin again, as Syd and I charged forward.
