Debts To Be Settled

33

A heavy weight seems to slide off his chest, the impression left behind as nothing more than a feeling. He breathes in deeply, expanding his chest. Like a wind blowing away dead leaves, the breath clears away the felt accrued in the space between his brain and his eyes.

As this heavy softness ebbs away, thought starts to circulate more naturally through his mind, and he starts to register other sensations, both within his body and outside of it. His heartbeat, for instance, is slowly picking up in a way that confirms he was just deeply asleep but has now woken up.

As for external stimuli, he can hear a rhythmic dripping sound somewhere relatively close to his head. Tommy forces his eyes open, blinking as the blackness is chased away by the dim light of the room. The ceiling above him is extremely dirty, yellow-brown spots creating a mosaic of oddly shaped monsters and wretched vanquishers. The space between each stain is a white-gray that casts tiny shadows with each indentation in the material. Other than that, the ceiling is still relatively normal, with no added features that would allow Tommy to determine where he is. The one clue he has is that the ceiling isn't familiar, and that only serves to place a disquietude in his heart.

Tommy's eyes get used to looking, so he uses them to expand his search of the room. The distant walls seem to be made from wood, but the indentations where the boards interlock make Tommy think the wood isn't that thick. These vertical boards cover the entire room save for a door made from a lighter shade of wood and a window frame with peeling white paint. The world outside the window is so bright that Tommy can't see any details beyond the white light, so he looks away from it before it starts hurting his freshly in-use eyes.

This leads Tommy to look at what is right beside the bed he believes he is currently lying on given the half-firm sensation underneath his shoulder blades and the thin blanket held between his clenched fingers. There is a stack of boxes that tower over the metal headboard, the marker writing across the cardboard surface illegible from both age and the writer's own inadequate handwriting. On top of the boxes, a blue-gray basin most commonly used in hospitals sits, a couple of faded rags hanging off the side, dripping with dampness.

In front of the boxes and directly beside the bed, Phantasm stands in his the supervillain outfit Tommy designed himself. His blue-tinged hair is pushed back, and his long overcoat has been removed. His eyes are as dim as the rest of the room, and Tommy can barely call them green. He thinks, for a moment, that they might actually be brown, but he pushes that thought away when Phantasm shifts, letting the green coloration grow brighter. Tommy must be imagining things.

The dripping noise comes from Phantasm. He is holding a rag over the basin, wringing it out to turn it from wet to damp. When the rag is to Phantasm's satisfaction, he tosses it into the air and catches it from the sides. Phantasm pulls, and the rag stretches taut, a few droplets shooting outwards like a fleeting firework. Phantasm uses his fingers to fold the rag twice. Both folds are from top to bottom so the rag is wider than it is long. Phantasm sets the damp, folded rag on top of Tommy's forehead, and the cool temperature seeps through Tommy's skin into his mind. It soothes him even though he hadn't even realized how much of that gunk still remained inside his head. He feels like he's taken a centuries long nap, but the rag does wonders to bring him both to the present moment and the realm of the waking.

Phantasm's green eyes slide across Tommy's form like a habit, but he stops suddenly. His eyes shoot backwards in their roaming, catching on Tommy's open eyes. Although his mask and the secret charm hides much of his expression, Tommy knows that something has shifted. Phantasm scowls dangerously at Tommy, and the blonde is struck between fearing for his life and wondering why Phantasm has been taking care of him thus far. The former part wants Phantasm to leave, but the latter wants someone to stay, even if it is a horrendous villain. Tommy is scared of that aspect of himself.