TOC MetaStories: Ineen Aldrop's 'He Stood taller Than Most'

Part 2 -A Rude Awakening-

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Paulie was having a terrible dream. It was full of terrible wrinkled old women screaming as they beat him repeatedly over the head with shoes. The hits came faster and faster till he thought he would die, then a sudden jolt caused his eyes to flash open as his mouth opened in a silent cry. His back tried to arch and he stopped a moment later as his eyes fluttered closed again.

He groaned silently. ‘Uhhg, my head..’ He was so damned thirsty, why was he so damned thirsty.

He stopped as he realised that he couldn't rub his face, his hands didn’t respond to him and his legs were similarly immobile. His eyes shot open all at once as he once more tried to move and found he was unable. It took his misty vision a few more moments to focus, his surroundings seeming to form from the surrounding dimness slowly.

The ceiling above him was a dark gunmetal grey, the texture akin to that of cast iron or stamped metal. His eyes roved further and he saw that the room he was in, for surely it must be some manner of facility, was rounded. The contours of it seemingly off, as if the proportions were just imperceptibly wrong in some way he couldn't consciously quantify.

He took a deep breath and nearly gagged, the air was ripe with the stench of blood and fermenting meat. The smell akin to that of a deer carcass he had once found rotting on the side of the road as a kid. He swallowed heavily and tried to breathe through his mouth, the potency of the noxious odor lessening as he stopped breathing through his nose.

He tried to take a second to remember how he had gotten here. He tried to move again but he was well and truly pinned. A little panic crept up in his belly before he realised that he must simply be in some manner of hospital. The rational part of his brain doing its job of making sense out of nonsense.

Yeah. He remembered now. He had been walking home from work, he had just lost his job, and then there had been some manner of explosion? No, a bright light, from overhead. He scrunched his eyes again as he tried to form a picture in his mind, but the images kept slipping away as he tried to grasp them. The harder he tried, the faster they seemed to slip away. Finally he tossed his head in disgust, or tried to anyway. All it did was make the restraints he was in shift a little.

He took another deep breath of the cool damp air and tried to focus on where he was and how he was going to escape. Firstly, he was in some manner of chamber. He didn’t appear to be guarded or otherwise impeded besides the restraints that bound him. He thought he heard a noise like a low gurgling but as he held his breath the dark room remained eerily silent. Like a tomb, or a morgue.

Paulie scrubbed the grim thoughts from his mind. He didn't have time to be afraid, he coulden’t let his control slip away. He had played enough survival games to know that panic was the first step towards a grisly end.

Instead he focused his attention on his apparent paralysis, he could feel his limbs, they just would not obey his commands. It was as if his brain was being overridden by something else. He grunted aloud as he struggled mentally to overcome the force and then stopped as a new sensation assailed him.

Paulie noticed what felt almost like a wall in his mind. He closed his eyes to better focus on this new strange sensation, his mind scrabbling along the face of the block like a dog trying to find its way through a chain link fence. Eventually he looped around, the wall seemingly surrounding his mind from the inside, trapping his consciousness inside his own head. It wasn’t really a wall, rather that was the closest approximation his mind conjured up to explain the sensation.

He would have picked at the strange barrier more, but his concentration was broken by the sound of a grinding mechanical burr. It was almost like unto the sound of a rusty door grinding on protesting hinges. He froze in his own mind, as if anything could observe his non-physical struggles.

The sound of soft footsteps sounded next, multiple of them. He shrank inside his own mind as a strange hissing bark issued from nearby. While the sound was unfamiliar, Paulie found that he could strangely get a sense of its meaning. It was as if he was listening to words filtered through tall grass, the echoes of meaning caressing the edges of his awareness in altogether unpleasant ways.

The barking hiss was answered by others. The slick sensation of awareness squirming through his mind like worms or some other foul thing. He tried once more to shake his head, but was unsuccessful. Only his eyes retained their ability to move. The strange voices, for that was surely what they must have been, continued to speak and the squirming in his brain became more intense. The sensation springing right past fire and stabbing straight to nuclear armageddon, his mouth quivered despite his paralysis and he let loose an internal scream that surely would have stripped his vocal chords had he retained the ability to speak in that moment.

The pain was so intense it felt as though something were boring through his very brain, the voices got closer and the pain finally began to subside. His muscles remained stubbornly lax, despite his own inner turmoil.

*Bark hisss bar… nny little thing.” The voice cackled from next to his ear.

He felt a jolt run through his body as the surface he was trapped on seemed to move. The ceiling grew nearer slowly as a low mechanical whirring vibrated almost imperceptibly through him. He was on a table, or something that moved under him. As he made the observation he was surprised yet once more as the table stopped rising and then began to tilt forwards, bringing him into a vertical position.

As the room was slowly revealed to him he was met with his second big shock since waking up. He might have been expecting nearly anything, shadowy government figures in hazmat suits, horrible twisted shadows with mouths filled with razor teeth, maybe even tall grey skinned aliens like from the movies. But what he saw in front of him was none of them.

In front of him stood a pair of what he could only describe as short reptile people. In fact, the comedic nature of the scene was much funnier to him in that moment than it was horrible. He would have probably chuckled if he was able to speak, instead he smiled internally as he looked at the tiny little.. things.

The one on the left was only about one-hundred-and-twenty-five centimeters tall at his best estimate making them no taller than his stomach. In fact if he had stood them atop each other’s shoulders he doubted they would have been any taller than he himself. They had dark green scaly skin and smooth bald heads with what looked like tiny rows of horns or spines that ran from their crowns down their backs out of sight under the small suits they wore. For the first time he noticed that they were wearing some manner of suits and that gave him pause.

The other was slightly taller and seemed to notice his roving eyes as it nudged at the shorter one and gestured to him. He watched as they seemed to get into some manner of altercation, their strange hisses and groaning barks making a terrible sort of sense to him. Almost as if they were speaking in heavily accented English, but he knew with a sort of morbid fascination that they were not.

The taller one spoke brashly, “It is awake, idiot!” I told you that a specimen this large would require more than five seeble of the tranquiliser. Look at how its eyes follow us, it is unsettling. Disgusting.”

The smaller reptilian ducked its head, the lighter skin around its bright blue eyes seemed to darken slightly, maybe their form of a blush. It moved quickly to a table that was just out of Paulie’s line of sight and seemed to rummage around for something before it spoke. “Apologies, great Jaul. But I do not seem to have any more of the compound here, perhaps if I was allowed to fetch some more?” It voiced the question in a manner that sounded almost pleading to Paulie. But why would it feel the need to plead for permission to do what it had already been ordered to do?

The taller one seemed torn between staring into Paulie’s eyes and reprimanding the smaller creature. “Oh you stupid loorm. This is why I keep telling the Captain to stop hiring females just because they are pretty. No, you will stay and watch over the specimen. I will go and fetch the compound. Don’t let it out of your sight.” It hissed, the sound aggressive even without the strange automatic translation.

It waddled out of view on its short stumpy legs, too-long arms swinging as it was lost from view.

He was left alone with the shorter one, apparently a female of its.. species. Paulie’s mind was swimming. What the actual shit was happening. Had he been knocked unconscious by a lightning strike and was in some sort of eternal nightmare? He had heard that coma patients sometimes dreamed, was he in a dream? He swore silently again, he couldn't very well pinch himself while immobile.

His frustration must have shown on his face as the reptilian female seemed to shrink away from him as if in fear, her whole body trembling. He would have frowned and cocked his head if he could, that was not the reaction he would have expected. As he thought it he realised that the sense of numbness he had been feeling had slowly been getting worse. The pins and needles in his fingers and toes were growing, going from a base tingle to an entire busload of angry children wearing cleats trampling him.

He groaned slightly at the sensation and then froze as the small creature let out another more frantic sounding hiss. It took him a second to realise why, then he noticed. He had groaned aloud, the slight noise escaping his lips a marked improvement over his previous total silence. He found that his face was starting to unlock, the corners of his mouth curling down in a frown as he slightly bared his teeth from the effort.

The small reptilian female was beside herself now, she had retreated to the farthest side of the room, her small body rocking back and forth as her lanky arms were wrapped around her middle. She seemed to be whispering something to herself over and over but he couldn't make it out.

It almost sounded like…

He never finished the thought. The sound of thudding footsteps announced the return of the other, and from the sounds of it several more besides. He grunted in frustration as he wiggled his toes. At least it felt like they were wiggling slightly, he could be imagining it for all he knew. He might be imagining this entire thing.

He heard a barking shout. “What are you doing in the corner!? I told you not to take your stupid eyes off it..”

The voice didn’t finish its tirade as the cowering female pointed to him. Her clawed six fingered hand shaking visibly. “It’s coming too, q-quick. You must-t hurry. It is starting to stir.”

Paulie was stirring alright, he growled low in his throat in triumph as he felt his hands clench into fists. Oh yeah, if they only left him a little longer. He shuddered as he tried to move and remembered that he was still restrained. That gave him pause, what was the point if he wasn’t going to be able to move anyways.

‘No!’ He shouted in his mind as he struggled again. This time hard enough to make the table he was strapped to groan ominously. He would fight! He would not sit here and be toyed with, nightmare or not he was not some big pushover sophead. No, he knew how to handle himself, and given his height advantage if he could just get free of these restraints these small iguana's would certainly be in for a shock.

The commotion around him had reached a fever pitch. Barks, hisses and growls surrounded him so fast that he could barely make sense of one before another seemed to take its place. He did however notice the taller creature walk back into his vision pushing the trembling female ahead of him. The pair was being followed by four more of the small green people. They were holding some manner of batons, they looked like weapons to him. If the way they were brandishing them meant anything, the guards as he now thought of them obviously held the weapons with lethal intent.

He noticed that in the female’s hand she held a large vial filled with some manner of dark purple liquid. As he watched the shivering female loaded it into a cruel looking device that seemed part drill, part injector. He saw her shift nervously from wide elephant-like foot to foot, obviously not wanting to get any closer to him.

In that moment he felt an odd sort of kinship with her, clearly neither of them wanted to be here. And if her poor treatment by the taller one was any indication her standing was little better than a whipped dog. She took a step closer, then another as the four guards raised their batons threateningly. Small lights on the end flicking from a solid green to a deep yellow.

As she reached him she reached out and gripped his forearm just below his elbow with a shaking hand. He realised that her hand was cool to the touch, but not as cold as he might have expected for a reptile. He realised that she wasn’t really a reptile and so probably didn’t fit into any earthly category of creature classification. In that moment he finally admitted to himself that this probably wasn’t a dream.

She paused just before she pushed the needle in his arm, Paulie straining to move, the restraints that held him creaking with his newfound efforts. She shook her head and he once more saw the skin around her eye’s darken, “I’m sorry.” She hissed so quietly that he nearly missed it.

She pushed the device into his arm and he yelled at the sharp pain. The small kick of it spiking his adrenaline as he threw out his arm with a strength he didn’t realise he possessed. The restraints that had at once held him fast snapped like gunshots as the injector was sent flying into the nearby wall with such force that it left a deep impact dent as it exploded into a thousand pieces.

The room went silent for an instant as the female fell backwards to the metal floor in shock. And then all hell broke loose