Necromance in the Air - Chapter XII (Fiction)
Heads up
After placing the office block on lockdown, Debs is left to deal with a confused security guard, an injured Felix, and a highly suspicious fake temp worker named Lucy or Felicity. Our four bewildered ‘heroes’ thought they were in for a long boring night being locked in…until the voices started coming from beyond Felix’s office….
If you’ve no idea what’s going on you can get back to the beginning by clicking here -
Chapters are short so you’ll get here quick!
Heads Up
“Dark mode’s depressing.”
“Yeah, but it’s policy. I mean, it makes sense.”
“Because of the necromancy, dark magic stuff?”
“Nah. It’s about money,” Errol said. “Big phrama wants eyes. They buy eyes like rare truffles, but heads are like... expired groceries. Easier to chuck them around. Can’t be wearing out the old lens, or retina or—”
“Ciliary muscles?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“So we’re basically discarded rubbish?”
“Yeah, exactly, there’s paperwork for eyes.”
“But not for heads?”
“Well, no. The sort of people who buy and sell heads don’t do it legally.”
“So it’s like selling drugs?”
“No…actually, yeah. It’s exactly like that, but with more severed heads. Selling and buying eyes is more like selling, I dunno, proper like, life-saving medicines and stuff.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Well, you asked why we have everything in dark mode and I’m trying to explain it.”
“So it’s not just an aesthetic thing because we’re all dead, and the company is all about dark magic, and how we’re reanimated souls torn from the afterlife and enslaved and all that? I mean, you could scoop the eyes out of our heads and sell them, right?”
Errol blinked, his lip curled almost into a snarl, and he held the expression for a moment. “You know, it probably is the aesthetic thing. I might be overthinking it.”
“Oh, right. We haven’t had any calls for a while now.”
“I think the system’s on the blink. Did you hear that siren a minute ago?”
“Oh yeah. Bad news that, remember last time?”
“God yeah. That was horrible, but on the plus side we got moved next to each other, which is great, isn’t it?”
“Um…”
“Isn’t it?”
“Errol, no offence meant, but you chat a lot of...”
“A lot of what?”
“Sorry. I just got a massive headache. Like a migraine.”
“Oh. That’s annoying. I’ve had an itch on my nose for a week. I keep sending requests for support, but all I get is a support ticket response. I’m begging to think they only send them to—”
POP! Something wet slapped against Errol’s cheek and he blinked.
“Ew. Did you sneeze?”
…
“Hello?”
Another pop, then another, and another, and another, closer and followed with a wet slap. Errol blinked, then blinked again. An eye slid down the monitor, leaving a bloody trail before plopping off the edge. “Gavin, is that you? Did you sneeze your eye out?”
A wave of pain seared across his head, like someone had, for a moment, inflated the inside of his skull with a foot pump.
“Oh, I think I’ve got a migraine as well. Oh no, wait. Oh, shi—” POP!
Elsewhere…
Lucy grabbed Felix’s hand, the one that he still had, and helped him stumble back towards his office.
“Hold on, Security man,” Debs said, barring Daniel’s path to follow. “There are things you don’t know, and I don’t think you want to know. It’s best if you stay here and…secure things.”
“More secure than the whole lockdown thing?” Daniel asked.
Debs gave a smile. “Can never be too careful, right? You stay here and shout if anything happens. It’s your job, right?”
“Shouting?”
Debs shrugged. “Look Daniel, security is your bag. I don’t expect you to be an expert on maintaining necrotic systems using dark magic and demonic curses, do I?”
“You…what?”
“See, I have my specialism. You have yours. So, do your job.”
“What are you going to do?”
“My job,” Debs said, as she took off down the corridor. She headed beyond Felix’s office door and through an exit that had an illuminated sign above it for emergency stairs.
“Secure…stuff? Sure. Okay, Daniel, you’re the last line of defence. Should a bizarre spider creature break in here along with a psychotic man with a creepy voice, you’ll definitely be more effective than the massive metal shutters they’ve already defeated.” Daniel said. He turned to face the reception desk and pointed at a coffee mug. “Stay right there, ya mug.” He let out a sigh and took a seat in the chair Debs had vacated and began spinning on it as Felix and Lucy reached the office door. “You realise I’ve just run away from the people outside, right?” He shouted down the corridor towards Debs as she vanished down the stairs.
Felix was stumbling away with Lucy’s help. “Look, you’ve seen what was in there. We need to save them,” Felix said as he pushed open the door with his shoulder. The creature had wrapped itself around what remained of his forearm, as if returning to where it belonged.
Lucy, trying to support Felix’s weight, stumbled after him. “Save them?” She said.
Inside Felix’s office, green LEDs flickered, casting eerie shadows. Behind the tinted windows that had looked out into the barely lit call centre floor were now in complete darkness, but from the room beyond came the hubbub of voices growing more distressed by the second. A sound like the popping of popcorn, only…wetter, punctuated the voices.
“Felix, what’s happening?”
“It’s…uh, hard to explain, to be honest.” Felix said, as he took a seat at his desk and started typing. He slammed the desk between typing and moving the mouse, cursing at his stump of a hand. “This is ridiculous.”
“Are the heads…are they zombies?”
“Yes. No. Kind of.”
“Great, that clears things up.”
“I can’t talk about this now, Lucy, but I’m going to need your help. I need you to go in there and start disconnecting the tubes.”
“In there?” Lucy said. She took a step backwards, finding her back pushed up against the door back into the reception area.
“I have to shut things down from here, and to be honest, having one hand is making it difficult enough. I’m not in any state to go in there and start pulling things apart.” Felix didn’t look up from his screen as he spoke. Every few seconds he would reach out with his injured arm, wave the creature over the keyboard, then swear under his breath.
“You want me to go…in there—” A sudden pop followed by something wet hitting the tinted glass made her jump and she swallowed back a scream. “Into the room filled with exploding zombie heads?”
“I can’t do it. Look, they can’t hurt you. They’re literally heads, and most of them are really nice.”
“Until they explode or try to eat my brains.”
“If we don’t do something, they’re all going to…”
“Going to what?”
“Burst.”
“What, why?”
“Um, because we supply them with cursed fluid to keep them sort of sane, and it’s pumped to them by a dead whale’s heart on the floor below. The lockdown closed some vents, which will block hoses, so when the heart beats there’s nowhere for the blood to go and it, uh… the heads aren’t really structurally sound.”
“Structurally sound?”
Felix looked up and stared at Lucy. “They’re decomposed heads. Half of my job is going in there and sticking them back together. They might as well be sprinklers now. That popping sound—”
“Is the sound of exploding heads?” Lucy said.
Felix shook his head. “Bursting, Lucy. Exploding is a bit…extravagant.”
“Oh, bursting, that’s so much better. Thank god there’s not a room full of exploding zombie heads, they’re only bursting. ‘Lucy, could you just go into the room with the bursting zombie heads and mess around with some sick, twisted dark magic while I play on my computer?’”
Felix turned back to his computer. “The longer we stand here, the more of them we’ll lose. They’re people.”
“They’re undead zombie heads!”
“Wow, dehumanising people just because they’ve become resurrected heads. You sound like you should be the one working here. Right now, that room is full of sentient water balloons and they’re all about to burst. Can you imagine just waiting to burst, Lucy? Can you?”
“Can’t Debs do it?”
“Uh, she’s got bigger problems.”
“Like what.”
“Like a much bigger problem.” Felix snapped, a rattle of the keyboard in front of Felix made them both stare at the computer.
“Did that…did you?”
“It wrote something.”
“It?”
“Yeah.”
“Felix. What did your freaky severed tentacle hand just type?”
MUHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Right, off I pop! Hope you’re enjoying this silly manic mess. Things are going to be bloody and goopy, slimy and spooky, and all together ooky…
YAAAAAASSSSSSS!! This is GOLD! PLATINUM! RHODIUM! LONSDALEITE!!!!!!!!!