úterý 3. května 2011

Deathday: Intro

Tak. Protože se nemůžu proklikat do soutěže (a vyhrát taky ne, v Anglii už jsem s nima byl), můžu postnout povídku v originále a hned. Překlad možná přibyde, ale spíš ne. Pokračování by se objevit mělo, ale nějak mi nejde stvořit, takže... Meh.


That evening, father arrived early. I was far from believing his doing so had anything to do with that day being my birthday, but curiosity led me to at least lay down the violin and listen. A few moments later I’d heard all I needed to figure out where to look for whatever caused his mysterious appearance.
From my window I climbed down onto the garage roof and from there through the skylight into a large room filled with muffled sounds of the radio. My father’s car was as white as his doctor’s coat and he kept it just as clean and tidy. Knowing this, I found the dark blotch just near the upper edge of the windshield quite suspicious... not to mention exciting.
I opened the trunk with a spare key and revealed something just a bit beyond my wildest imagination: inside, upon a plastic sheet, rested the neatly folded body of a man in his early twenties, still warm and the crack in his skull still bleeding. He couldn’t have been dead for more than half an hour.
This was going to be the best birthday ever.
There was a chamber in the basement of our magnificent mansion where nobody but me ever went. Inside, one could stumble upon some old furniture, bottles of stale chemicals and a broken freezer, my treasure chest. It was locked and only I had the key – for a good reason, too. Once the lid was lifted, a ball of golden fur leapt out of its dark prison and greeted it’s master with as much noise only a dog can make, second only to an elephant in a china shop.
Despite having died about three years ago, Lord was as lively as ever, perhaps even more so. There’s an art to rebuilding the body of an aged golden retriever into a furnace capable of burning every bit of organic material, from meat to petrol, with unmatched efficiency. And the secret to this art is my greatest treasure, written in a book I bought with my very first allowance. A book that took ages to decipher, as both the language and script were foreign to me: A beginner’s guide to necromancy – bringing creatures back from the dead in 10 easy steps.
Thanks to this book, my dearest pet wouldn’t ever leave my side again.
Thanks to this book, my greatest desire could finally become fulfilled.
I dragged the corpse from father’s trunk all the way to the basement. By the state of the dead man’s looks and clothes, he wasn’t anyone to be missed anytime soon. I used father’s “misplaced” medical tools to patch up the wound on his head and then quickly checked the body for other fractures. Surprisingly enough, there were none.
The ritual could begin.
To restore life to a dead body, one must offer a sliver of his own life in return. It’s a sort of bait to lure the desired soul out of the bleak depths. And once it bites, speed is key. Pull it back to life before others have the chance to latch on.
I reached out with my hand, which was nothing but a gesture. What I was about to meddle with was safely out of physical reach.
The boundary between life and death feels much like a water surface. From the living point of view, down there it’s dark, cold and distorted. You can easily reach for a gold coin and end up with a handful of muck. Unless you’re clever.
A soft groan escaped the former corpse’s throat, the last one for quite a while. First he would need to learn to breathe consciously. Most of his body was different now, a husk dependant on his own will, which was, in turn, absolutely subject to mine.
The first friend I had ever made.
Quite literally.

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Pár poznámek: Ne, nebudou tam upíři. Ano, bude tam nějaká ta slashovitá interakce. Pokud vůbec něco bude. Hmm. Že bych dal limit 4 komentíky? 8D

Pokračování: http://awlker.blogspot.com/2011/05/deathday-part-1.html

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