Chapter 04 - Keep on Truckin'
It was some time later. Some average, ordinary, uneventful days had passed. Timmy had gone to school and gotten mediocre grades. The hubbub had mostly died over the lightning incident. The novelty over pretending to receive electric shocks from him and worn off and he had returned to the cosy chair of obscurity.
Timmy had indeed read over the fine print but could not see through the legalese to find the answers to his questions. He had briefly wondered what lawyer had written it; perhaps he had traded his legal expertise for the opportunity to not spend his eternity in hell.
Timmy, like most people, had less than favorable feelings towards lawyers.
In the absence of certainty as to what would happen to him should he fail at his mission, Timmy had chosen to more or less ignore what had happened. The opportunity to die and be resurrected is not as easily exploited as one would think. If you try and use it as a party trick, it invariably makes people uncomfortable. Uncomfortable questions get asked.
So no, Timmy had not gotten any further in learning what his mission was. He had weighed his chances and figured that so long as he went around his business pretty much as usual he was most likely safe. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to try and clean up his act a little bit, of course. Be a little more respectful towards his elders. Help little old ladies across the street. Eat his vegetables. All that sort of thing.
It was hard. Timmy didn’t have anybody he could confide in. It wasn’t that he didn’t have any friends; he had a few. They just weren’t deep, dark secret friends. They were more the kinds of friends you felt comfortable swapping insults with or asking for answers on a tough assignment. If he tried to tell them he was immortal they would either blow him off or get genuinely freaked out. He had enough social problems as it was.
Timmy was only a few weeks into immortality and he was already finding it lonely.
Immortality is a classic curse. Many people find the idea of immortality initially appealing. It doesn’t set in until your first century has passed that you will outlive everything. Not just your friends and family, as if that weren’t bad enough, but entire civilizations rise and fall as you watch. You find some nice island where you can settle down and in hardly any time at all it’s suddenly part of some war-torn continent. You can make good money off of long-term investments, but there’s hardly any point.
Immortality is also a lot of work. If you aren’t careful, somebody will notice. Either you’ll be heralded as a prophet or you’ll be tried as a witch. Neither cases are favorable; prophets accomplish their utility by becoming martyrs. When you fail to become one, you just get locked up by whatever tyrant is in power. As boring as immortality can be, it is infinitely more so when confined to a jail cell.
There’s yet another problem with immortality. Many people falsely assume that immortality is a synonym for invulnerable. Nothing could be farther from the truth. An immortal being is incapable of being killed but is as susceptible to inconvenience as any other. Indeed, an immortal being is much more susceptible; a victim on the rack has the eventual escape of death available to them. No such escape exists for an immortal.
All this Timmy had been thinking while crossing the road. He really should have been paying more attention.
The truck, its driver crazed on caffeine and insomnia, clipped Timmy’s right side, breaking his ribs and splintering his shoulder. Timmy spun as he was flung some way down the road and skidded on the pavement. He had enough time to register the incredible searing pain before losing consciousness and, after a few moments, vital signs.
The one casual onlooker screamed hoarsely and rushed towards his mangled body in time to see something very strange happen. Before that, though, it must be shown what Timmy saw.
There was pain, unbelievable pain, and then void. Darkness. After a few moments, though, an incredible sight met his eyes, or what, after death, he used to observe visual stimuli.
There was a sign, bigger than galaxies, dwarfing solar systems, but able to fit between the cracks of atoms. It had incredible size but an odd feeling of lack of depth, as though if after making a trip of uncountable light-years to its edge, you would see that was as thing as a ray of light.
It fit comfortably into Timmy’s range of vision.
As he goggled at it, it flickered a few times. It seemed to be making a buzzing sounds, as if all the atoms in the universe had assembled to make a fly of godly proportions. Then it went out and the absolute darkness of whatever plane Timmy had been inhabiting was replaced by the darkness of eyelids thickened by blood congealing on them.
The sign had spelled out, quite simply, two words.
“Please Wait.”
The pain came back.
As Timmy was laying there, as this onlooker watched, Timmy’s body was mending itself faster than is physically possible, and with much greater efficacy. His ribs pulled back into place and rebuilt and strengthened. His shoulder socket mended and there was a sickening pop as his arm fit into place. His lungs re-inflated, his blood cells reproduced fast enough to put rabbits to shame, and the large amounts of skin that had been left on the road were replaced in a stomach-turning fashion as the flesh crept back over exposed bone.
Timmy gained consciousness and was aware of a few things. He was covered in blood, still warm, all his. His body ached. He was incredibly, unbearably, thirsty. He was still lying in the road. Somebody was watching him.
He raised a trembling hand in front of his face. Through a red haze Timmy saw sickening little movements as fractions of bone moved into place and knit, as tendons healed, as it inflated slightly as it regained blood and flesh and shape. Even his hair was growing back where it had been scraped off. He turned his head slightly so he could see who was watching him.
It was a girl. Timmy recognized her as Joan. He recognized her from school. She was his age but acted younger, as seemed to be the habit. She was watching him now with a look of mostly horror, part disgust, and, yes, some curiosity. Timmy, now mostly mended, pulled himself up, and stood unsteadily. He winced.
“That smarts.”
Joan fainted.
Timmy dragged her out of the road and propped her up against a tree. They were near a baseball field, so Timmy went and got a drink of water. He was badly dehydrated from his recovery; replacing all the blood he lost had been costly. Eventually his thirst was sated and he carried some back in his hands to splash on the unconscious girl.
Joan sputtered her way to wakefulness. Her eyes wandered, then focused on Timmy, and she glared. A wisp of memory occurred and she whimpered and scooted away from him. It was definitely an awkward situation. Timmy sighed.
“What are you?” she asked quietly.
“Nothing,” he answered automatically. His brain kicked in.
“That is, nothing special.”
“But I saw you killed!”
“Obviously not. Must have been a trick of the light. I’m here talking to you; how could I have been killed?”
“Maybe you’re a zombie.”
“Wouldn’t I have eaten your brains by now?”
“You could be a vegetarian.”
“A vegetarian zombie?”
“Well, why not?”
“I… But…”
“Aha!”
Timmy stared at her. Even on solid ground, with a blue sky overhead and the smell of grass and dirt in his lungs, this conversation seemed far more unreal than what had taken place in Limbo. People were weird.
“All right, let’s say I am a zombie. What are you going to do about it?”
Joan hesitated. As a lifetime patron of the macabre, her knowledge of classic horror movie monsters came to her aid.
“I could shoot you in the head.”
“Please don’t. It wouldn’t work, anyway.”
“I could cut your head off.”
“That also probably wouldn’t work.”
“I could…bury you at the crossroads.”
“What, under the road? You’d need a jackhammer to get into it and I think you need a license to tear up roads anyway.”
Joan sat back and thought. Her eyes examined Timmy carefully. Besides his bloodstained, ripped clothing, not a scratch or bruise remained to tell what had happened to him. Amazingly she found herself completely unafraid. Timmy wasn’t threatening, even covered in blood, with a forced smile on his face. A little creepy, but not threatening.
“You’re Little Timmy, aren’t you? From school?”
“I’m not little,” he mumbled.
“So, you’re not a zombie. You don’t look like a zombie.”
“Thank you.”
“Are you a vampire?”
They both looked overhead to the sun shining through the leaves of the tree above.
“Never mind. You have to be some sort of undead.”
“I do?”
“Anything living would have been killed by that truck.”
“Do I look like an undead?”
“Well… No.”
“Maybe I was just lucky.”
“But you aren’t even scratched!”
“Very lucky.”
Joan glared at him.
“Look, you really don’t want to know. It was just one of those million-to-one-chances, or something, all right?” Timmy said, desperation beginning to show in his voice.
“Well… I don’t know.”
“Really, there’s nothing you need to know.”
“Fine, but I’m going to have my eye on you.” Joan got up and walked angrily away. Timmy just felt relieved. He didn’t think he was going to get away with it. Not that she really could have done anything; she’d be locked up if she had told anybody.
That still left the matter of his clothes. Almost half of Timmy’s shirt had been torn off, and a significant amount of pant leg had been torn off. Bits and pieces of shredded clothing could still be seen twitching in the wind, adhered to the road by congealed blood. What was left of his clothing was almost completely covered in blood, with bits of gravel stuck here and there.
Timmy didn’t know what he was going to tell his mom.
As it turned out, it didn’t matter. Nobody was home by the time he got home, so he was able to change out of his rags and bury the evidence in the backyard. He’d just have to hope that nobody would notice a missing set of clothes.
Timmy made himself a sandwich and thought about what to do about Joan. She didn’t pose much of a danger, but the last thing he wanted was somebody paying him undue attention. It made him uncomfortable. He didn’t choose to be hit by a truck, it was just bad luck that it had to happen in front of someone. Oh, for a hit-and-run without witnesses.
He’d just have to be extra careful. Look both ways when crossing the road. Stop drop and roll. All the doggerel safety tips of his youth. He doubted he’d be as unlucky as before, but he couldn’t afford an inquiry. Anyway, he would run out of clothes.
Maybe he could do something to throw Joan off the trail. With luck she’d just forget about it, but she didn’t seem the type. Maybe he could persuade her to leave off. There had to be something he could do.
Timmy would just have to wait and see.
Timmy had indeed read over the fine print but could not see through the legalese to find the answers to his questions. He had briefly wondered what lawyer had written it; perhaps he had traded his legal expertise for the opportunity to not spend his eternity in hell.
Timmy, like most people, had less than favorable feelings towards lawyers.
In the absence of certainty as to what would happen to him should he fail at his mission, Timmy had chosen to more or less ignore what had happened. The opportunity to die and be resurrected is not as easily exploited as one would think. If you try and use it as a party trick, it invariably makes people uncomfortable. Uncomfortable questions get asked.
So no, Timmy had not gotten any further in learning what his mission was. He had weighed his chances and figured that so long as he went around his business pretty much as usual he was most likely safe. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to try and clean up his act a little bit, of course. Be a little more respectful towards his elders. Help little old ladies across the street. Eat his vegetables. All that sort of thing.
It was hard. Timmy didn’t have anybody he could confide in. It wasn’t that he didn’t have any friends; he had a few. They just weren’t deep, dark secret friends. They were more the kinds of friends you felt comfortable swapping insults with or asking for answers on a tough assignment. If he tried to tell them he was immortal they would either blow him off or get genuinely freaked out. He had enough social problems as it was.
Timmy was only a few weeks into immortality and he was already finding it lonely.
Immortality is a classic curse. Many people find the idea of immortality initially appealing. It doesn’t set in until your first century has passed that you will outlive everything. Not just your friends and family, as if that weren’t bad enough, but entire civilizations rise and fall as you watch. You find some nice island where you can settle down and in hardly any time at all it’s suddenly part of some war-torn continent. You can make good money off of long-term investments, but there’s hardly any point.
Immortality is also a lot of work. If you aren’t careful, somebody will notice. Either you’ll be heralded as a prophet or you’ll be tried as a witch. Neither cases are favorable; prophets accomplish their utility by becoming martyrs. When you fail to become one, you just get locked up by whatever tyrant is in power. As boring as immortality can be, it is infinitely more so when confined to a jail cell.
There’s yet another problem with immortality. Many people falsely assume that immortality is a synonym for invulnerable. Nothing could be farther from the truth. An immortal being is incapable of being killed but is as susceptible to inconvenience as any other. Indeed, an immortal being is much more susceptible; a victim on the rack has the eventual escape of death available to them. No such escape exists for an immortal.
All this Timmy had been thinking while crossing the road. He really should have been paying more attention.
The truck, its driver crazed on caffeine and insomnia, clipped Timmy’s right side, breaking his ribs and splintering his shoulder. Timmy spun as he was flung some way down the road and skidded on the pavement. He had enough time to register the incredible searing pain before losing consciousness and, after a few moments, vital signs.
The one casual onlooker screamed hoarsely and rushed towards his mangled body in time to see something very strange happen. Before that, though, it must be shown what Timmy saw.
There was pain, unbelievable pain, and then void. Darkness. After a few moments, though, an incredible sight met his eyes, or what, after death, he used to observe visual stimuli.
There was a sign, bigger than galaxies, dwarfing solar systems, but able to fit between the cracks of atoms. It had incredible size but an odd feeling of lack of depth, as though if after making a trip of uncountable light-years to its edge, you would see that was as thing as a ray of light.
It fit comfortably into Timmy’s range of vision.
As he goggled at it, it flickered a few times. It seemed to be making a buzzing sounds, as if all the atoms in the universe had assembled to make a fly of godly proportions. Then it went out and the absolute darkness of whatever plane Timmy had been inhabiting was replaced by the darkness of eyelids thickened by blood congealing on them.
The sign had spelled out, quite simply, two words.
“Please Wait.”
The pain came back.
As Timmy was laying there, as this onlooker watched, Timmy’s body was mending itself faster than is physically possible, and with much greater efficacy. His ribs pulled back into place and rebuilt and strengthened. His shoulder socket mended and there was a sickening pop as his arm fit into place. His lungs re-inflated, his blood cells reproduced fast enough to put rabbits to shame, and the large amounts of skin that had been left on the road were replaced in a stomach-turning fashion as the flesh crept back over exposed bone.
Timmy gained consciousness and was aware of a few things. He was covered in blood, still warm, all his. His body ached. He was incredibly, unbearably, thirsty. He was still lying in the road. Somebody was watching him.
He raised a trembling hand in front of his face. Through a red haze Timmy saw sickening little movements as fractions of bone moved into place and knit, as tendons healed, as it inflated slightly as it regained blood and flesh and shape. Even his hair was growing back where it had been scraped off. He turned his head slightly so he could see who was watching him.
It was a girl. Timmy recognized her as Joan. He recognized her from school. She was his age but acted younger, as seemed to be the habit. She was watching him now with a look of mostly horror, part disgust, and, yes, some curiosity. Timmy, now mostly mended, pulled himself up, and stood unsteadily. He winced.
“That smarts.”
Joan fainted.
Timmy dragged her out of the road and propped her up against a tree. They were near a baseball field, so Timmy went and got a drink of water. He was badly dehydrated from his recovery; replacing all the blood he lost had been costly. Eventually his thirst was sated and he carried some back in his hands to splash on the unconscious girl.
Joan sputtered her way to wakefulness. Her eyes wandered, then focused on Timmy, and she glared. A wisp of memory occurred and she whimpered and scooted away from him. It was definitely an awkward situation. Timmy sighed.
“What are you?” she asked quietly.
“Nothing,” he answered automatically. His brain kicked in.
“That is, nothing special.”
“But I saw you killed!”
“Obviously not. Must have been a trick of the light. I’m here talking to you; how could I have been killed?”
“Maybe you’re a zombie.”
“Wouldn’t I have eaten your brains by now?”
“You could be a vegetarian.”
“A vegetarian zombie?”
“Well, why not?”
“I… But…”
“Aha!”
Timmy stared at her. Even on solid ground, with a blue sky overhead and the smell of grass and dirt in his lungs, this conversation seemed far more unreal than what had taken place in Limbo. People were weird.
“All right, let’s say I am a zombie. What are you going to do about it?”
Joan hesitated. As a lifetime patron of the macabre, her knowledge of classic horror movie monsters came to her aid.
“I could shoot you in the head.”
“Please don’t. It wouldn’t work, anyway.”
“I could cut your head off.”
“That also probably wouldn’t work.”
“I could…bury you at the crossroads.”
“What, under the road? You’d need a jackhammer to get into it and I think you need a license to tear up roads anyway.”
Joan sat back and thought. Her eyes examined Timmy carefully. Besides his bloodstained, ripped clothing, not a scratch or bruise remained to tell what had happened to him. Amazingly she found herself completely unafraid. Timmy wasn’t threatening, even covered in blood, with a forced smile on his face. A little creepy, but not threatening.
“You’re Little Timmy, aren’t you? From school?”
“I’m not little,” he mumbled.
“So, you’re not a zombie. You don’t look like a zombie.”
“Thank you.”
“Are you a vampire?”
They both looked overhead to the sun shining through the leaves of the tree above.
“Never mind. You have to be some sort of undead.”
“I do?”
“Anything living would have been killed by that truck.”
“Do I look like an undead?”
“Well… No.”
“Maybe I was just lucky.”
“But you aren’t even scratched!”
“Very lucky.”
Joan glared at him.
“Look, you really don’t want to know. It was just one of those million-to-one-chances, or something, all right?” Timmy said, desperation beginning to show in his voice.
“Well… I don’t know.”
“Really, there’s nothing you need to know.”
“Fine, but I’m going to have my eye on you.” Joan got up and walked angrily away. Timmy just felt relieved. He didn’t think he was going to get away with it. Not that she really could have done anything; she’d be locked up if she had told anybody.
That still left the matter of his clothes. Almost half of Timmy’s shirt had been torn off, and a significant amount of pant leg had been torn off. Bits and pieces of shredded clothing could still be seen twitching in the wind, adhered to the road by congealed blood. What was left of his clothing was almost completely covered in blood, with bits of gravel stuck here and there.
Timmy didn’t know what he was going to tell his mom.
As it turned out, it didn’t matter. Nobody was home by the time he got home, so he was able to change out of his rags and bury the evidence in the backyard. He’d just have to hope that nobody would notice a missing set of clothes.
Timmy made himself a sandwich and thought about what to do about Joan. She didn’t pose much of a danger, but the last thing he wanted was somebody paying him undue attention. It made him uncomfortable. He didn’t choose to be hit by a truck, it was just bad luck that it had to happen in front of someone. Oh, for a hit-and-run without witnesses.
He’d just have to be extra careful. Look both ways when crossing the road. Stop drop and roll. All the doggerel safety tips of his youth. He doubted he’d be as unlucky as before, but he couldn’t afford an inquiry. Anyway, he would run out of clothes.
Maybe he could do something to throw Joan off the trail. With luck she’d just forget about it, but she didn’t seem the type. Maybe he could persuade her to leave off. There had to be something he could do.
Timmy would just have to wait and see.
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