12 Days of Fiction, Day Six: Rescued
Jean-Luc was afraid. His head hurt; it hurt so much that he thought he was going mad. At first he had thought it was a normal headache, but it had grown until his mom’s aspirins hadn’t helped. She thought he was faking it in order to skip class, but as it got worse she noticed it was real, and then she panicked as well.
Too late.
There was a spike of pain, a needle that pierced his brain, and everything went blank.
Jean-Luc woke up on a hill. He couldn’t recognize anything: he had never been here before. His head was feeling slightly better: the pain was now a dull throbbing that concentrated on his frontal lobes. Like sinusitis to the tenth power. Just wonderful.
He saw a shed at a distance. With nothing better to do, he set towards it. Only then did he notice his clothes were shredded. And charred, it seemed. He also realized the sun was setting. But his head had been hurting this morning… had the terrible headache affected his sense of time?
And how had he arrived here, wherever here was?
And how had his clothes become charred?
And why did he feel so concerned about his mom?
His mom. Pushing back the newly mounting headache, he searched for his phone. He could use the GPS to find out where he was, and he could call home. Or an ambulance: he could call for an ambulance now and sort the details later.
The phone was dead. Fried. It even smoked.
Jean-Luc cursed. Aloud. Then he looked around, found himself alone, and shouted out his pain. Tears flowed freely., but the pain didn’t recede. The thrumming was almost unbearable. That was funny: the morning’s headache and the evening headache were different. Simply great: Jean-Luc was the headache world champion.
It was almost dark when Jean-Luc stumbled into the shed. The small part of his brain that retained some functionality told him to try and look for some clean clothes. Or at least clothes that were not charred. He tried to take a look, but could not.
The throbbing grew in intensity.
Jean-Luc screamed.
This time he noticed he was engulfed in a blinding white light. It felt as if the sun itself was growing inside of him, and its light was pouring from him. A ball of flame surrounded him and exploded out.
The shed was reduced to smithereens.
Jean-Luc passed out.
***
A rhythmic noise. Strange. He had never heard it in person, but the movies had taken care of that: it was the whup-whup of a helicopter. A searchlight pierced the night and stalked up and down.
Jean-Luc wanted to move, to shout out for help, but he could not. The simple effort of opening his eyes was almost unbearable. He heard the helicopter fly away and felt a tinge of desperation.
But the helicopter came back.
He noticed his head didn’t hurt. Well, it did, but it did like his body ached after an afternoon of physical exercise. His brain was physically exhausted, if that made any sense.
“It does,” a voice in his head said. Jean-Luc couldn’t tell whether it was male or female. It didn’t sound like his own.
“Oh, great, now I’m going mad,” he thought. He was so wasted that he was just concerned out.
“No, you’re not. Hold on, we’re coming.”
Had he been able to, Jean-Luc would have smiled. His imagination mounting a rescue mission, that’s what it was.
“I’ll die here,” he thought. The chopping noise of the helicopter seemed to drift back in.
There was a thud.
“No you won’t,” a female voice said by his left ear. And this time it was a real voice, it was not in his head. “We’re here to help.”
With an effort, Jean-Luc opened his eyes.
There was a girl by his side.
She had orange-red skin.
~~~~
The illustration that inspired this story, titled Star, is (c) by Yuri Shwedoff, found via ArtStation. I’ve used without permission, and I’ll remove it if requested.
