Adrian Cross
In a roar of gasps, Adrian awoke from his trance. The sharp lights burned his eyes and he squeezed them together, embracing the darkness for another few seconds before slowly trying again. The ceiling was white. So was the duvet above his chest, and the rails on the side of his bed. I'm in the hospital.
His skin was covered in a thick layer of sweat. As he tried to raise his upper body from the bed, he shivered at the gross feeling of detaching himself from the soaked sheets, like removing a sticker from its glue. As he sat up in the bed, he immediately felt dizzy and plummeted down again. The pain inside his skull was intense, like shotguns shooting bullets, carving pieces out of his brain one shot at a time. He drew attention to his breath, trying his best to steady himself. Slowly, the pain faded, until it came back. It throbbed and pulsated, as if it was a beating heart, pumping pain into his brain. Then, it faded again until it was only there as a faint background noise, but Adrian knew that it would return again, like a predator stalking the shadows, biding its time until it was ready to strike.
"You're awake," a nurse said, entering the room. He was a young man couldn't be much older than him. Clean-shaven, big eyes, a posture that screamed of upper class. So how did he ever get here?
"Seemingly so," Adrian said. His voice was weaker than he had thought. "Where am I? How long was I out?"
"City Hospital," the nurse said. He poured water into a plastic cup and placed it on a tray next to the bed. "And maybe about three hours or so."
Adrian downed the water and asked for another cup. The nurse obliged, and Adrian downed the next cup just as quickly.
"Is Malcolm here?" Adrian asked.
"Your friend is getting some food from the café," the nurse replied. "Should be here soon. Along with the doctor, so they can have a look at what's wrong with you." The nurse placed himself next to Adrian on a swiveling chair, leaning over the railing of the bed. "How are you feeling?"
Adrian had no words for how he was feeling. How can I explain how I am feeling without sounding like a madman? "Hard to say," he heard himself say. "Head still hurts. Pain comes and goes as it pleases."
"Had a boyfriend like that once," the nurse said.
"Came and went as he pleased?" Adrian asked.
"And was a real headache." The nurse smiled. "Of course, getting rid of him was easy enough. Let's cross fingers it'll be just as easy with this one."
Adrian smiled back, raising both hands, fingers crossed. The nurse turned out to be quite kind. They talked about everything and nothing for about ten minutes until he told him he had other patients to care for. After he left, the pain returned, bringing with it a haziness that made him lose sense of where he was. He tried to shut off his eyes, but the haziness turned into the husk voice of the Midnight Star. I am the Midnight Star, let me in. I am the Void Pathogen, let me in. I am the Gamma Ray Thunder, let me in.
"No," Adrian heard himself say. I will not give this voice a name. You are not the Midnight Star. You are not real. You cannot be…
"Adrian Cross." The voice snapped Adrian out of it. The voice was gone, but the headache remained, and Adrian struggled simply keeping his eyes open. The voice belonged to the doctor who had just stepped into the room. "Good to see you up and about."
Adrian groaned. "Up and about might be stretching it a bit." The pain subsided a little more, and he could finally open his eyes fully. The doctor was wearing a long coat, round glasses, and a smile that looked borderline psycho. "Pain's still there."
"Well, you're still better than earlier, that's for sure," the doctor said.
"Aye," Malcolm said, entering the room with a half-eaten sandwich. "Much better." Malcolm marched over the floor and pulled the swiveling chair up next to him. Only now did Adrian see that he had a wrapped bagel in his other hand, which he placed on the tray next to Adrian's bed. It looked positively disgusting.
"Sorry," Malcolm said, unwrapping the bagel. It was even more disgusting unwrapped. As Malcolm gave it to him, he could feel the wetness of the bagel through the thin paper that held the fragile thing together. Malcolm deepened his apologetic look. "Vegetarian meals haven't really made it to our public health services yet. Best I could do."
Adrian frowned. "A for effort I guess." He looked at the doctor. "Can I eat?"
"Think it may even do you good," the doctor said. She was flipping through some charts. Probably my vitals. Is this now where she tells me everything in my body is off and I need to start taking my vitamins? "Well Mr. Cross, it seems like all numbers are normal."
"All of them?" Adrian asked.
The doctor closed the charts. "Yes, all of them. Which is what worries me. I've booked you in for a time later at the MRI-scanner, to check if there could be any signs of tumors. Its probably nothing, but I just want to be sure."
Adrian gasped. Cold sweat started forming everywhere underneath his skin. Cancer? No-no, that can't be! Malcolm too looked as if he had seen a ghost.
"You think –" Adrian swallowed his words in sheer anxiety and began coughing. "You think I may have cancer?"
"To be honest with you Mr. Cross, I haven't the faintest clue right now what you have," the doctor said, now with a blunter voice than before. "Headaches, dizziness, seizures, and visions… it could be stress, it could be a tumor, it could be the onset of something else."
How does she know that I had visions? Adrian quickly shifted his attention to Malcolm. "You told them?"
"Of course I bloody told them," Malcolm said. "You were screaming so loud I thought your skull would fucking burst. I told them every inch I had to. God's sake Cross, this is your life we're taking about."
The doctor got up from her place. Her smile was no longer there. Her bedside manners neither for that matter. "Your time in the scanner is later this afternoon. Get some rest until then. Maybe your friend could read you a magazine, we have plenty of those down the hallway."
"Already read my fair share of shitty magazines today," Malcolm said, crossing his arms. "I aint doing that. But I will stay here and keep the cunt company."
The doctor gave him that look parents often gave their kids when they were swearing in front of them. Disapproval. She didn't comment though, but merely left the room. Something wasn't sitting right with him. I know it. I just know it. Its not cancer. Adrian was not one to shy away from doctor's orders, and he rarely played the-guy-who-knows better. But this is my body, and my body is screaming it back at me.
"Its not cancer," Adrian said.
"You heard the doctor," Malcolm said. "Could be good to get it checked out."
Adrian looked at him, angrily. "Malcolm, it's not cancer!"
"Cross, what do you think is most likely?" Malcolm asked, surprisingly calm after Adrian's shouting. "Some kind of god whispering things in your brain, or a tumor?"
When he put it like that, Adrian knew how he sounded. But I don't care. Its my body, and I just know it. I can't explain it. It didn't matter much anyway. As long as his parents weren't made aware of the doctor's potentially dire predictions.
"Did you call my parents?" Adrian asked.
Malcolm shook his head. "They're still in Chile if memory serves me right. No need to make them worried halfway across the globe when there's little they can do at this stage. I'll call Mathias and Valentina if things get really serious."
"Like brain cancer?" Adrian asked.
"Like brain cancer," Malcolm confirmed. He took Adrian's hand. "But to be frank with you, I don't think it's a tumor. I believe you."
Adrian raised an eyebrow. "You… you do?"
"Aye." Malcolm nodded and squeezed his hand. "Wouldn't do you harm to get it checked but something doesn't sit right with me in all of this. That scream when you blacked out. Cross, that was something different. Out of the world, I tell ya. It wasn't you. Humor me for a little. What would happen if we went to Greece?"
Adrian was so surprised to hear that question, he wasn't half prepared to answer it. He simply shrugged. "Practicalities first. I imagine we would rent a car and go to the place."
Malcolm snapped his finger. "Like that? You'd know where to go? Exactly?"
"Within a stone's throw," Adrian stated firmly. "Clearer than a pointer on Maps."
"And then what?" Malcolm asked.
"Then we find what we need to find," Adrian said.
"Do we need to dig?" Malcolm asked. "Is that why he wants you? No that cant be, you're real crappy at that."
Adrian scoffed. "Couldn't have said it better myself. But maybe bring some light gear just to be sure."
Malcolm scratched his bald head. He is really thinking about it. Are we doing this? We are really doing this. "And then what?" Malcolm asked. "What's the damn plan?"
"I don't know." Adrian knew there wasn't an exact plan. "I don't know what comes next. I just know where to go, and that the Midnight St –," Adrian interrupted himself. No, I am not giving it power, even if it is real. "And that the thing told me it was important. It told me – "
"I am the Midnight Star, let me in. I am the Void Pathogen, let me in. I am the Gamma Ray Thunder, let me in."
"I am not a spark of your imagination. I am not the thing in the night that gives you nightmares. I am not the it you crave to rob of an entity. I am what I am, and you know what I am. Your fragile mind cannot handle opposing me. You can either give in, or you can resist. Resist, and your days in the hospital will only continue until you have withered away, pale as the sheets you will die upon. Give in, and I will relinquish the needles I have pinned into your brain. Just. Like. That."
A snap echoed through his mind. As the echo faded from his consciousness, so did the fog around him. The headache subsided, and completely vanished. The world suddenly had colors again. He could taste the air, smell the scents, feel his skin.
"Malcolm, my headache is gone," Adrian said. "The dizziness too."
"How?" Malcolm asked.
"I – I don't know," Adrian said. He started to caress his face with his fingers. He could feel himself again. Its like a fog has been lifted. The haze is over, and I can finally see again. "It's like… its over."
"Like that?" Malcolm asked. "Bloody hell, just like that?"
"It was him!" Adrian said. "He told me it was him. And then, he proved it."
"That's messed up! That's really fucking messed up Cross!" Malcolm exclaimed, pointing a finger at him, getting really close to his ear. "Oi, Midnight Star or whatever! If you're in there, get the fuck out of my friend's head!"
"Don't anger him!" Adrian snapped. "If he can make me sick, what else can he do?"
"If we go to Greece, we may just find out," Malcolm said. "I aint going."
"Malcolm," Adrian said. "I don't think I have much of a choice."
"Fuck!" Malcolm exclaimed. He groaned loudly. "Fine! Let's blow our savings. And chase this motherfucker's buried treasures or whatever the fuck he wants us to do. Obeying a sick psycho so your brain doesn't boil over."
"Yeah." Adrian sighed and swung his legs over the rails. I know Malcolm is right, but what can I do? I am not going back to that hell-loop. There was no pain anymore. No haze, no problems to balance himself, nothing. He had never felt better, actually. It was almost similar to the time he had a kidney stone. Two years ago, he had been in so much pain he could only crawl to open the door when the paramedics came. He couldn't walk, he couldn't talk, he couldn't breathe. Until they came him a wonder-drug through the rectum. Minute by minute, the pain subsided and after half an hour, it was pretty much gone. The pain returned a little while later, but those blissful moments were the best ones he had ever had, because of the pain he had just endured. This is the same. I can only hope the pain doesn't return, just like it did with that kidney stone. If that's the case, there's gonna be a whole world of pain waiting for me around the corner. Yet again, I don't really feel like I have a choice.
Together, they walked out the hospital, telling no-one he had left.