Reader took hold of the slipping thread, twisting the glowing incorporeal hook at the end of his staff to wrangle the thread like spaghetti, spinning the staff to wind it, trying to tug it back in.
The knot continued to unravel, the thread drawing itself out with enough force to make him stumble. Stumbling on a floating board of timber a thousand meters in the air was not an experience that Reader enjoyed or cared to repeat. He planted his feet on either side of the weave and hauled.
The light of the entire weave flickered and suddenly he plunged several meters at a near dead drop. Reader’s stomach heaved upwards, a panicked whimper escaping his lips. Grim cackled. “Ahhahahahahhaahaha!”
“Shut up, you stupid… stupid… book.”
Grim cut off his chortling, immune to the sudden terror, and said, “Stupid stupid book? Are you for fucking real?”
“Just shut up,” Reader groaned through gritted teeth, straining on the knot. “Tell me what’s happening! That’s an order!”
“Oh lah dee dah, we’re fucking ordering now, is that fucking right? Well, let’s see, oh master of fucking mine, what the shit did you manage to do wrong with this one.”
Grim leaned in as Reader’s thighs trembled.
Grim bobbed from side to side, humming and hawing with exaggerated ponderousness.
“Come on!” Reader barked. The air was moving faster around them.
Grim said, “It’s one of those fucking things, I’m not sorry to fucking tell you. Weave’s overloaded, so it’s coming undone. You’re fucking lucky it’s going as slow as this so you can really savour those last moments, if you get my drift… Sometimes a thread will tear or the whole thing just kind of tangles up. Nope, this is one of those gradual descents into fucking doom.”
Reader’s mind raced. The thread was sliding out of the knot. There were maybe three inches left before the end came free. He understood what would happen then. Sudden and complete catastrophic failure.
Reader said, “Does it mean something that it’s happening gradually instead of suddenly?”
An inch lurched forward, the weave flickered, another gut-wrenching multi-meter drop, then the wind whistling as it resumed its previous still-too-fast pace.
Grim said, “Yeah, sure fucking does.”
Reader paused, waiting for the rest. When it didn’t come, he shrieked, “Are you going to tell me?”
“Well, sheesh, master mine, I don’t remember you fucking ordering me to…”
“GODDAMMIT GRIM! TELL ME EVERYTHING ABOUT THE WEAVE!”
Grim blinked rapidly, even taking a step back. Then he nodded, pursing his lips in what might have been an impressed expression. “Okay, master. If that’s what you fucking want. Let’s see… let’s see… the first weave was woven in the year… I think it was…”
Reader couldn’t contain the panic and desperation in his voice. He was nearly sobbing with unrestrained terror. “Grim! Tell me the specifics of THIS weave. Why is it failing gradually instead of suddenly!”
Grim looked disappointed. “Fuck. Alright. It’s overloaded. But just a fucking smidge.”
Reader blinked rapidly, the tip of the thread was nearly at the knot, one twitch of his arm and the whole thing would be over.
“You mean we need to dump weight?”
“Ex-fucking-zactly!”
“Well, let’s dump weight then!”
Grim’s face morphed into one of wide-eyed glee. “Fucking yeah!”
Reader’s face contorted in momentary confusion, then he understood the gleeful expression. “What? Wait, no…”
Grim was gone.
Below the board he could hear the wild laughter, “AHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA! FUUUUUUUCK…. YEAAHHHHHHHH!”
And he was alone.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
The weave immediately responded to the change in weight. It was still strained, it still took a monumental effort, but Reader managed to drag the thread back. He couldn’t let it go. He could feel the pressure of it wanting to pull loose again, but for now he was in control.
The problem was that the board had picked up quite a bit of speed and while he could maintain the weave, there was nothing he could do to strengthen it without letting go.
He turned to the sky, “Nothing at all?”
Absolutely nothing, Reader was in for a wild ride.
“How fast am I going?”
Reader wasn’t plunging straight down, he was still travelling with the lateral momentum. He was probably travelling at about… uh… 5 meters per second.
“That’s… that doesn’t sound so bad…”
And accelerating.
“Oh Jesus. How long is left?”
With all of the action, Reader had failed to notice that he was past the halfway mark, less than 400 meters separated him from his salvation. Or gruesome injury. Or likely death.
Reader grimaced, focusing on the thread, thinking. Thinking desperately with the last moments he had left. Thinking while he still had a life and brain to…
“That’s not helping!!!”
Reader started talking, probably to himself, possibly to the narrator. “If I jump at the last moment it will cancel some of my own momentum. Right? I mean forces and all that. I push down, equal and opposite reaction, the board pushes up. It hits ground faster, I hit it slower….”
He continued his ramblings about physics stuff that frankly is a mystery to everyone, even physics professors. Nobody actually understands it. If they do…
“If this is your way of saying you can’t help then fine. I’m going to try. How fast now?”
This isn’t really a two way dialogue, I was helping out before but…
“HOW FAST?”
Sigh… Reader was falling at a pace of about… 7 meters per second at this point, which frankly, wasn’t very good at all. The ground was moments away.
Reader tensed up. He wanted to badly to clench his eyes shut, but he needed to see the ground coming. Needed to time it just right. His upward leap was nearly simultaneous with the board hitting the ground. Incredibly it did cut more than a metre per second off his fall. While this might seem like a miracle, it actually spoke more to the mass of the board. The greater the mass the greater the upward force Reader would be able to produce by jumping against it. Which is great. Maybe life saving great. But it also means that was a heavy ass board and if he’s just found something lighter to make his death-raft out of the whole affair would probably have been unnecessary.
Reader tumbled to the ground, smashing the unyielding white hard ground. He couldn’t account for what part of his body hit first. All he knew was that he tumbled, pain exploding all over his body, from his head to shoulders to knees. The strike of the ground was like a kick from a mule, and they came in a rapid cascade.
But then he was lying on his back, very much not dead. Concussed probably, and probably suffering internal wounds. But not dead yet.
The board? When it had hit the ground it had done so unevenly, glancing off the ground and spinning through the air. Reader caught sight of it again an instant before it smashed, still spinning, into his face.
“Shit!”
Then blackness.
He wasn’t conscious to see it, but a green bar appeared on an empty groove in the band on his arm, filling about ten per cent of the long empty groove.
“Come on!”
The words pierced the darkness, casting some light on Reader’s consciousness. The light brought lancing pain. The pain produced a weak groan.
“About fucking time, come, get the fuck up. This place is fucking boring. Oh, and you’re bleeding to death.”
Reader’s eyes snapped open. “Grim!”
“In the fucking flesh. Well, not flesh. Paper and leather. Which is kind of flesh I guess? So fuck it, yeah, in the fucking flesh.”
“But you fell… the fall didn’t…?”
“No, I guess that’s another one we can strike off the fucking list. You know what they say, god loves a trier.”
“I don’t think that applies to… wait, did you say I was bleeding to death?” Reader touched his body, checking the pulses of pain. His head was dripping blood and pounded terribly. His shoulder ached in a mind consuming kind of pain. His hand went to the sharp pain in his stomach. Something hard protruded from his abdomen and when he touched it, the pain scrambled louder. Then he screamed louder.
Grim cackled, “Isn’t that fucking funny? It’s the fucking letter opener! AHAHAHA! The fucking letter opener…” he wiped a tear from his eye. “You crack me up sometimes.”
Reader’s fingers came away wet, and his robe was drenched and only getting wetter. “Shit, oh shit, shit. I’m dead. I’m going to die. After all of that. After everything… oh no… God no…”
Grim cackled on, “Stop! Stop! I can’t take it.”
“This isn’t fucking funny! I’m going to die! I’m never going to see my family again. I’m never going to get home…”
Grim’s laughter settled, “That’s probably not true.”
Reader looked at him incredulously. Everything hurt, his vision swam, his heart was thumping and fluttering. “How the hell is it probably not true?”
Grim gestured with his eyes, glancing at something behind Reader.
Reader turned to look over his shoulder. The act of turning cost him dearly, the pain surging in his abdomen. And everywhere else.
Behind him, only yards away, was a massive wheeled structure. It was dark in colour and bizarrely chaotic in construction. It was like a small house, but on wheels. Odd tacked on additions littered every face. If Tim Burton had made a movie about a Dr. Seuss wagon, this would have been the baby. At the front of what must have been the strangest wagon he had ever imagined lounged the hulking forms of…
“Are those… minotaurs?”
Grim didn’t answer.
There, in the open window of the wagon, was a face. No, not a face. A skull. No, a mask. A man in black robes and wearing the skull of some massive bird as a mask was staring at him.
The man spoke. “You seem to be in some bother there, my friend. It just so happens we’re having a special on healing paraphernalia today. And we’re happy to trade.”
Grim leaned in, “You know what’s the fucking funniest?”
Reader said, “What?”
“I think you lost the rest of the loot on the way down. Can’t find it in your robes. So… aw shit, this is so fucking funny… You’re going to have to pull that out of you so you can use it to buy shit so you don’t bleed to death!”
