Traveling Salesman: Astronomgonist

Chapter 6

  Teerkedas's face felt like a cracked egg. His skeletal facial muscles were constricting like a snake on valium and he was feeling like he'd slept fourscore and seven years. The steam engine's boiler started to run out of feed water. He struggled to keep as much of the feed water as he could from steadfastly running out. His cerebral cortex was swelling the size of a kumquat and the electric air he created to support the engine had blown out like a transformer.

"Stop the car, Harrodean!" He shouted. She stopped the car on the main road and the tires screeched.

"What's your problem, man?" Harrodean asked with furrowed brows.

"Get out of the car!"

"Are you blitzed?"

"Get out of the car now, Harrodean!" His tone of voice resounded like a tornado crossing water. The driver's side door lifted off and Harrodean got thrown from the car. Teerkedas sighed as if taking his last breath and rested his head back on the passenger's seat.

Harrodean shakily stood up on her feet. The car exploded tossing her backward on the ground. She screamed. "Teerkedas? No!" She tried to inch towards the car, but the smoke was too much for her lungs to take.

She coughed, covering her mouth with her hand, shielding her face from the intense heat with her arm. Beads of sweat formed on her brow. Her eyes squinted as she raised a brow. There was a shadowy port falling like a mixture of black snowflake-patterned ash and black hail.

The molecules emerged slowly into a shape. The sound of footsteps walking out of the fire made Harrodean gasp. The fire swirled and collapsed inward on itself, puffing out in smoke. A corporeal shell formed, and the sky turned black and blue. There was Teerkedas appearing in front of the wreckage like twinkling lightning bugs and stars. His body absorbed the wrecked car and finished filling the shell, pouring into it like a glass of water from the water cooler. His knees buckled and he hit the ground fast.

"What the hell are you?" Harrodean's asked, her eyes widened.

"I'm an Astronomgonist (ɘˈstränɘmgɘnɘst)," Teerkedas said coughing from the smoke residue symptomatic of his transformation.

"Sounds like a dentist from outer space." Harrodean crinkled a brow. "What's an Astronomgonist?"

"It's a rare kind of rogue magician-sorcerer. My kind are incapable of controlling their powers because they're adversely affected by what also infuses or enhances our magic. I'm dying. I think the digital conditions are affecting me."

"I just knew something about you was going to freak me out." Harrodean sighed, rolling her eyes.