Face Time Continued : The Amulet Part XIX

Continued From HERE...

1.

Tim yanked out a bar stool and collapsed up to the soda counter. Grizzly made a bee-line for the Men's room whistling a Steppenwolf tune.

"Hey buddy, how about a couple cold Cokes for me and The Griz?" Tim said as he sloughed off his steamy hide vest and draped it over the neighboring chair.

"You betcha, mister! Hotter'na raped ape out there, ain't it?" The kid behind the counter proudly announced as though it were the first time he was actually able to use the epithet.

Tim chuckled (mostly to humor the kid) and smacked the counter in approval. As he shook his head relishing the humor, two sweating glasses of Coke were carefully dropped to the veneered surface. The kid nodded, returned to his stocking duties, and laughed a little himself, proud of his little comment.

Grizzly appeared from the saloon-style doors, announced his appearance by erupting with a fierce belch, and resuming his whistled rendition of 'Magic Carpet Ride.' His eyes lit a bit as he saw the glistening glasses of soda and he, too, sidled up to the bar and raised his glass in a mock toast.

2.

Erin absently wiped at the irritating itch of a drip that clung to the lip of her nose. She sniffed up some of the blood, wiped at it again, and never once even thought twice to examine the red liquid stain that smeared across her hand. She inhaled a few times, swooned, coughed a bit, and all the while glared with woozy fascination at the plate-sized disk she held in her grip. She admired --no, she ached at the touch of --the surface; it's roughed chrome... but more like a smooth pewter (nothing was quite as it seemed... nothing), the gleaming steel... but more like the dulled metallic sheen (it seemed to rearrange itself at every touch), and that horrid (beautiful) red eye in the center. It hummed; but it pulsed. It changed; it didn't. It was sickening; it made her gorge rise with every thrum. But it was also, somehow, everything she ever wanted. The amulet sang in her grasp and the song was something between desire and agony.

3.

Tim and Grizzly sat among idle chatter and slowly nursed Coke after Coke. The icy drinks offered them just enough lost humanity after so many miles on the dry, arid road. They spoke on and off to the counter man (who, as it turned out, was named Earl and who was, happily, from right there in town), and they occasionally meandered through the aisles of the store picking out a few items here and there with which to survive the rest of their day-long trek. And though they shed every inhibition, they still clung (however slightly) to their natural skittishness... but nothing could prepare them for the girl who wandered in with a glare in her eyes like a cornered, angry animal.

The store's door whisked open, setting off the sleepy chime, and Erin stood there, not unlike any other day she was scheduled to work... except for the fact that she looked like a trapped beast facing off her predators. Even Earl caught his words in his throat. He'd seen Erin hundreds of times, but never with the ghastly pallor she cast and never with the hyper eyes of something inhuman and feral. All they could do was stare... until Erin leaped...

To Continue... 

The Amulet: Business

High atop the mountain range in New Los Angeles sat the hospital known as Te' Luma Health Systems. Since 2110, the corporation had provided a way to reverse the onset of natural aging. For hundreds of years prior, getting older was just a way of life and the complete result of it, but Te' Luma discovered the secret.

Locked inside every human is a very simple trigger lying dormant in a very specific set of amino acids. When each is triggered in a specific sequence, they begin to systematically reverse the effects of aging. Mental acuity is reestablished to its twenty-year plateau, physical prowess becomes that of a typical, moderately fit thirty-year old, the standard signs of aging such as wrinkles and graying recede almost completely, and the person nearly wholly returns to an age where ageing is never even an issue. It's nothing shy of a miracle. But how did Te' Luma find this God-like cure-all? It depends on who you ask.

Local legend tells of a man by the name of Martin Derrick, a man, who it seems, is coincidentally the great grand father of Te'Luma's founder, Ivan Derrick. From stories pieced together over the years it is known that Martin, sometime in 2021 was out plowing his farmland just before planting season. He was tilling the soil when suddenly his machine grinded to a halt. As he stopped to investigate the source of his troubles, he discovered something foreign lodged in the tilling disks. After some finagling, Martin was finally able to remove the piece. The item he held in his hand was a pewter-colored (albeit filthy) circular object roughly the size and shape of a tea saucer. After some cleaning in curiosity, he held the disk to the sun and noticed runes and hieroglyphics scrolled across the surface of the outer ring. The center hummed and lit with a dull crimson phosphorescence that spread like blood-filled veins into the writing. It shook, almost unnoticeably, with a numbing thrum that seemed to set off all the nerves in Martin's hands as he held the amulet... yes, that's what it was: an Amulet. And it somehow beckoned. Beckoned to him.

As the years passed, Martin began to regain some of his youthful fervor. He tended to daily tasks with a bit more aplomb and whimsy than his age would let on. He was up at four, tending to the animals and the land, in by noon for a hearty brunch, and back to work till sundown. This was daily, and he thought nothing of it, especially as he kept the amulet with him at all times. It wouldn't let him have it any other way. And Martin was content. But he couldn't help thinking, as he said his prayers and kissed his wife, that there was something else he could be doing with his new found vitality. And there was, at least one thing: his wife bore him his first and only child, Emmit.

As Emmit grew and began to take on likes and dislikes of his own, it was clear to his father that farming was not in his boy's blood. Emmit was adventurous, daring, risky, and far too scatter-brained to focus on tending the Earth, so, when he turned eighteen, Martin helped his son pack -including the Amulet hoping beyond hope that it would impart the same luck and youthful exuberance it had for Martin, though at the same time quite reluctant to see it go- and sent him on his way to make his fortune in the city. A fortune that would become the basis for the end of death as we know it.

To be continued...