Death To Thora - COMPLETE SHORT STORY

Six

Everything happens in a flash.

I wake up hanging from the driver's seat with my cheek pressed to the road. The Corolla is on its side.

My brain is too scattered to really understand what happened, but when I remember the headlights, I jump into action. I fight to get my seatbelt off. When I finally do, my vision begins to blur. I force myself to stay awake. I can smell the smoke coming from my car, but I can't climb out, not like this. There is a throbbing in my leg that starts to set in, and I am hit with the gravity of the situation.

I use all of my strength to try and stand up, but I can only manage to sit on the broken glass. I scream for help, praying that someone– anyone– can hear me.

My eyes close, and when they open again I am outside, sitting up against a tree.

A tall man stands over me.

"Who-who are you?" I ask.

The man seems shocked by the question. He crouches to examine me, and I take in his face. I know him from somewhere.

Then it hits me.

He's the man I found in the street with the crows. The man I had a nightmare about.

I use everything I have to push away from him. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong. My instincts tell me to scream, so I scream as loud as my lungs allow.

Oh god. Oh god. Am I dead?

I scream louder.

The man never says a word. He just watches me patiently, like he's waiting for me to die. I continue to crawl away, towards the direction I think the town is, when I see boots running for me from the distance. I let myself rest on the wet asphalt, my face down.

I'm rolled onto my back. I tremble in terror, anticipating the man's face, but instead of his dead eyes, I find lavender ones. The same lavender ones that scared me when I first saw them. The ones that now bring me so much relief, because they aren't his.

Then it all goes black.

-🏶-

"You've gotta be kidding me... You're the town Doctor?" I fixate on him in utter disbelief.

It doesn't feel like much time has passed, yet I woke up in an office with daylight shining through the windows.

"Don't worry, I'm stone cold sober." Calix says, pulling out a needle and a thread.

I flash back to him punching a random guy across the face the other night. "So what– you black out, send people to the hospital and then sober up and heal them?"

"Not exactly. I didn't send you here, did I?"

"But–"

"And don't let the age fool you," he rubs a numbing agent over the gash on my forearm, "I was trained by my father from a young age– and he was a kickass doctor."

"Calix, you're drunk ninety-percent of the time when I see you–"

"Yeah, well, you try being a doctor in a town with a population of two-hundred people who like to read in their free-time. Turn's out, there's not much work."

"Why didn't you ever mention this?"

"I'm a cards-close-to-my-chest kind of guy. Welcome to that ten-percent."

I will admit, he seems right in his element as he stitches me up. His movements are coordinated and steady, and he doesn't even seem like he's concentrating that hard.