Good Enough

Chapter 1: Nightmares

‘Pick it up, pick it all up.
And start again.

You got a second chance,
You could go home.

Escape it all,

It’s just irrelevant.
It’s just medicine.’

~ "Medicine" by Daughter

My voice is locked in the cage that is my throat. I try to swallow back the lump that has formed on my parched vocal cords, only to find that my mouth is just as dry. The color has long since drained out of my face, but right now, I can particularly feel how cold it is.

The love of my life lay in a pristine glass coffin before me, reaching out for my touch.

I wish this was just some messed-up fairy tale, and I could simply open it. In a perfect world, I could just waltz right over. Be her knight in shining fucking armor and wake my wife with true love’s kiss.

But this isn’t a perfect world. And fairy tales are myths.

I can see it in her tear-filled eyes that she doesn’t have much left in her. She’s fading.

She coughs, and I flinch as blood splatters against the walls of the vat she's confined in. She gasps desperately for air every few seconds, but it’s not working and I can feel it.

“The tainted O2 we have provided for your wife is refusing to concentrate in her lungs. It’s breaking them down, piece by piece. Quite frankly, she’s drowning in her own blood.”, the alien bastard says. The coolness in his voice makes me want to puke. “If you keep fighting us like this, rather than simply giving us the mathematical equation to make the portal gun, your wife will run out of time.”

I feel nervous stutters grip my words as I try to understand what this maniac wants. “P-Portal gun? I have n-no idea-”

He interrupts me, apparently not accepting what I had to say. “Don’t play coy with me, General Sanchez. We have footage of you coming and going through a portal, spawned by that gun.”

That caught my attention. Lifting my gaze from Diane, I began to ask, “General? How the hell-”

He interrupted me once again, reading the clipboard in his hands. He began to list off my past, “Enlisted in 20XX, after your ‘rocker’ days. Served four tours in Iraq, received your medal of honor when you led troops to take down a major terrorist group. Got married to Diane shortly after returning home from active duty. We know everything about you. We also know that you have been seen using a multidimensional portation device. We want it. See a pattern?”

I open my mouth quickly to protest, “I don’t know what y-you are talking about! You said it yourself, I'm military. I-I’m not a damn scientist!”

“R...ick…”, Diane’s voice was muffled through the glass, but I could feel the despair from a mile away.

My wife’s lips form my name, and I instinctively run over to her. When I do, an invisible barrier sends an electric jolt through me and forces me backwards onto the ground.

“Motherfucker!”, I curse as my wife shakily reaches out for me again, her fingers grazing the capsule, before she goes into a coughing fit. Her face is beginning to pale. “This can all stop, Rick.”, my interrogator presses. “Just give us what we want. We don’t want to make your wife suffer any more than she has to.”

“Listen here, fuck face-” My words are halted as I hear my wife cry out, wheezes gripping her breath.

“I wouldn’t retaliate if I were you, General. I do not wish to force the code out of you, but if you keep us waiting… Sadly, your wife will smother to death. And her blood will be on your hands.”