Cevic

Chapter 11

Locked in

 

Drip. Drip. Drip.

My eyes opened to the calming, rhythmical sound and smell. The smell of humans, and an acrid detergent-like rushed into my nostrils.

 Groaning from the acrid scent that assaulted my nose and brain, I looked up, and saw, first, a pure white ceiling overhead. When I looked around, it was a much unfamiliar place.

  I was lying on a propped-up bed with a white mattress, white sheets and a thick cotton blanket that served its purpose well enough that I was perspiring under it. The room I was in was empty except the bed I was lying on and a small lamp.

 My arm was attached to a tube in which water dripped from, and a needle-like object had been punctured through my skin and taped.

  There was a dull, throbbing pain at my head and eye, and breathing was starting to become torturous due to the smell. It smelled too clean.

  The hairs of my skin rose, and suddenly despite the thick blankets, it felt cold.

Where was this place? Why was I here?

  I was dressed in clothes that didn’t belong to me, in white clothes with a dark blue jumper. On its breast were a few printed words in cursive I couldn’t read, but I could make out one bolded word.  HOSPITAL

  If my vocabulary didn’t fail me, hospital had nothing to do with hospitality, even though they sounded similar. Wasn’t it a place for sick people?

  My wrists felt heavy and odd too. In an attempt to pull them up, an odd clanking, metallic noise came from under the blankets, from my wrists. My heart in my mouth and sweat tickling down my shirt despite the cold, I kicked away the blanket with my foot.

  Both my wrists were handcuffed to the bed.

The wooden door slid open, and a human male entered.

 “You are awake.” He closed the door behind him.

He was tall, maybe even taller than me, with chalk-white skin that seemed to be stretched over his cheekbones, a face once handsome but marred by wrinkles that showed his age- around forty-nine or fifty, sharp jaw, blue eyes, and swept back grey hair.

  There was something about his aura that made the whole room chilly. Fear lodged itself in my throat, and my mouth seemed sandpapered. I couldn’t breathe properly.

 “What is your name?” he asked softly.

 He was dressed like a doctor, in scrubs and all. Shouldn’t a doctor know? He didn’t seem like a doctor. A doctor made you feel safe. He made me feel like I was surrounded by a crowd of gangsters.

 “Has cat gotten your tongue?” He took a step forward, his hands clasped at his back.

 It took me a couple of tries to speak. “Who are you?”

 “Who are you?” He reached out, grabbed my pendant, and flipped it over.

My heart nearly stopped. Behind it was my name, written in Cevica.

 Eron Alchaillrë

“Not terribly smart, are you?” He released the pendant. “Your library card in your pocket reads Eric Jamison, but your necklace reads otherwise.”

 “W-what are you talking about?”

 “It is a normal procedure in a hospital that if a minor gets into an accident,” said the man slowly as if speaking to a child, “we call the guardian, or the closest kin. We looked you up. Eric Jamison. There exists no Eric Jamison in town.”