The Atomic Wombat Writes

“Grab on to my hand, dammit!” he shouted at me.

I reached for him with both feet. Thrashing desperately, despite my need for focused calm. His arm and hand felt like they had been slimed by a dozen fish and I slipped off. I reset myself and tried for him with my feet again.

“The other hand, moron.”

“I’m trying! If you’d back off my ass long enough, Andrew, I’ll do what you want. Shouting is not going to get me there any faster.” I sooo didn’t need this in a partner right now.

“Excuse the fuck out of me for trying to keep your wet butt from drowning, Miss Shit-for-Brains.”

I grabbed his other arm with my feet, finally. Once I got hold of him, I took a huge breath of relief. Yeah, I know I’m underwater, but I have to be here in order to finish this particular binding ritual. Andrew was my anchor, literally. He held me underwater so that I didn’t bob to the surface like a cork. Having a fat ass, does make you do that sometimes… well all the time really. In addition, I needed his monitoring and grounding skills so that I could breathe and function underwater long enough to perform this extremely difficult cantrip.

To anyone else, what I next said sounds like “mwefhal lfwquohsh thoihahk counglikng gnkilgnuoc khahioht hshouqwfl lahfewm” or at least that’s how I think it sounds from the outside. What I really said was, “I bind thee by blood” and I opened the small cut on my belly. It’s not my fault that I have to speak this god-forsaken language in order to do it.

Plus, why do I always have to cut near my organs? Why doesn’t an arm or a hand cut suffice? I blame the misogynistic pricks who invented these rituals. Always gotta be the belly if a female performs it. Something about vital power of the womb or some shite. I tried a leg cut once, I’m still carrying those particular scars. Enough said.

Once enough of my blood decorated the knife, I thrust it into its head, right between the big, silvery, compound eyes. It took some doing too. The broad gray head had a skull that was like thin, strong steel. The neckert then shrieked and his inky blood plumed in the water all around my face. As I drew in the next borrowed breath, I found that the blood tasted like battery acid and my skin began to itch and swell wherever the blood brushed against it.

“Pull me up, Andrew. We’re done here.” I called wearily up to him.

I felt strong hands grab both my ankles and pull me slowly toward the surface. As soon as my head broke the water, I pulled a long gasp of blessed air into my lungs. I know that it’s all in my head, but even though I can breathe underwater with Andrew’s help, I still want to feel my lungs working on their own. My diaphragm was moving like a bellows to get as much oxygen as I could.

“Wow, you look like shit, dearie.” He said with a broad grin on his face. I never figured out how he could smile so wide and still talk. It must be a mystery involving wormholes, string theory, and several physicists on heavy drugs.

I didn’t want to look at my face. I could feel it beginning to puff up enough to close my eyes for me. This is gonna suck in a minute, once the pain signals hit my brain. The adrenaline was wearing off and I was in that shaky unreal phase. The one where you either sit and stare at a spot in the wall or the one where you keep rocking in place and repeat yourself while your body shakes.

I rummaged in our little portable med kit. There it was… my instant bee sting remedy. This will probably work in this case too. My face felt the same as it did when I got stung by some jellyfish tentacles across the face and eyes when I was a little kid. Not seeing for a day and a half was not my most fond memory. I quickly made up the paste of baking soda and water while I could still see. I then slathered my entire face with the stuff, wrapped a wet hand towel around my head and lay flat.

I could feel the cool drawing action of the paste pulling some of the sting out of my face. Sting sounds so nonchalant doesn’t it? Okay, fine. I felt the paste drawing some of the bone-melting pain away from my face.

“No more neckerts, ever. Got it?” I said to Andrew.

He just pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and grinned some more. I glared at him. Andrew looked the part of the computer geek in every bad teenage flick ever. He had unkempt straight, black hair that was either a little too long or a little to short to really do anything with it. He was really pale and he had a few freckles here and there. He wore crappy shoes from K-mart or some other cheap discount box store. He had shapeless jeans and a FIXX t-shirt that he never left home without. Andrew’s main interesting feature lay underneath that t-shirt. He had been born deformed. His rib cage was lopsided to the point that his breastbone was about 3 inches to the right of where it should be. That and it stuck out. I thought it was the coolest thing about him. He agreed to disagree.