Displaced

Chapter 3 - Rewrite

 A skeptic since birth, Blake Myers was not oneto believe in the divine; he preferred the realm of the rational, where factsruled over faith. However, as he lay inthe back of a cart, encased up to his head in a slab of solid stone, he began to consider switching his loyalties tothe side of religion just so he'd at least have somebody to blame. An unplanned intergalactic vacation was bad enough; being attacked by a pack of half-starved zealots and forced into becoming an accidental killer was worse. These last five hours, however, had been the icing on the cake.

Blake had woken up with a massive headache to find himself unable to move anything below his chin. Cool, hard, unbending rock encased his entire body, and, try as he might, he found himself unable to budge. Not even his newly discovered super strength could manage much of anything, partly because his body was so pressed together—body straight with arms locked to his sides, like a particularly tight coffin—that he couldn't generate any good leverage.

He'd woken to the light of the morning sun shining in his eyes, his head wobbling like a bobblehead as the wagon carrying his boulder hit bump after bump. Now, that same blazing ball of fire glared at him from its peak. The entire day so far, he'd been able to do nothing but breathe, twist his neck a little to look around, and try to speak to the wagon's driver, who'd just ignored him the whole time.

Breathing wasn't easy, and his neck was getting sore. To make matters worse, two biological time bombs were ticking down inside him, and their countdowns were both getting distressingly close to zero. All in all, this had been one of the three worst mornings of Blake's life.

At least the ride gave him plenty of time to think about everything, like what had happened with the Voice. Looking back with the emotion of the moment removed, he could see clearly that he'd had no other option at the time; she would have killed him if he hadn't acted. Self-defense was a perfectly justifiable action. That didn't mean he felt nothing about having blood on his hands—he'd remember every detail of her corpse for years to come—but with his new perspective, the guilt that had set him running that evening no longer haunted him.

Blake had little choice but to keep that perspective in mind; his current circumstances made it abundantly clear that last night would not be an anomaly here. He was, effectively, a prisoner. What would become of him now?

"Hey," Blake croaked in another effort to communicate with the non-responsive wagon driver. "Driver man, hey."

As always, the man did not react, at least not in any direct way. A hiss escaped Blake's lips as the wheels of the wagon closest to his head hit a large bump, the sudden jostling smacking his skull against the nearby wooden railing. Blake suspected at this point that this was no accident; every time he tried to speak, he'd get a bump on the head moments later.

Though Blake had yet to see the man's face today, he knew his tormentor's identity already. This wagon and its red-haired driver matched the one he'd passed just as he'd tripped on that stone the night before. The fiery-maned man was surely Apostle Yarec, the soldier called to the village the night before. He was also surely the one who'd ended Blake's night with a blow to the head. If the village's Voice was capable of conjuring balls of flame larger than Blake's head, he shuddered to think of what somebody higher up the food chain might be capable of. Blake's prison provided a dark glimpse into the level of the man's power.

The wagon began to shake and Blake realized they'd driven off the path and into a small, flat meadow. The cart stopped and the Apostle hopped off, walking over to the wagon by Blake's feet. Blake heard some rummaging, but couldn't see what was going on until the man came into view holding several small logs of firewood and a small pot. With the practice of a man with years of experience, he had a crackling fire lit beneath the pot in under five minutes.