THE CRUSH Release #1
Journal Entry: Mon Nov 6, 2006, 11:06 PM
I've started a new book called THE CRUSH from about September of this year. I'm posting a taste of it and I hope you'll read...
***Rated PG-13*** ...like it matters.
Here's the shot:
“Gentlemen, today’s training will be a demonstration of Nerve’s methods. For many of you this will be, no matter how experienced, the first time you fully understand what in the hell The Crush is. In later trainings, I expect all of you to hold with discipline and fight with dedication. Do not rely on your partners because—well, you will be fighting against them in some cases. I will tell you now—“Ralph signaled to the headset in his hands which was connected to Gremmly’s censors, ”Any sign of disobedience or unwillingness to fight and Gremmly will correct you. For those of you experienced at Nerve, you understand the severity of those words, and if you are less experienced I suggest you do not venture to discover. All Nerve asks is you fight your opponent as an opponent and nothing else. But for now, a few shots of The Crush is in order. Observe the difference between a cyberized and non-cyberized student.”
Everyone stood in the bitter quiet of the A-Class training lab. Near’s eyes wondered up and down the glass paneled room, completely covered in white tile. His gaze happened to catch Ione who responded in a flightless expression.
“Everyone exit and line closely by the panels. You’ll be watching the demonstration from behind the glass…J.D. and Kent, you’ll be in the demonstration. Everyone else, get out.”
As the boys breathlessly filtered from the glass room, Kent and the boy named J.D. set in their readied positions, flexing their lungs and contorting their limbs in impossible positions. The red-head slung his cork foreword and pushed open his leg compartment. Under the prosthetic flesh and around the metal bone an iron plate covered his knee. “Goddamn thing is rusting,” Kent muttered, puffing out a powdered compound from the crook.
The other, the blonde Caucasian, bent and stretched his tendons while massaging his neck.
“Enough then…” Ralph commanded,” Here we go. Kent and J.D—”
“Yessir,” they whispered.
“Be prepared.” Ralph steeped out of the white, strobe-lit room and behind him shut three galvanized four-inch blockades.
“Jesus Christ,” a boy muttered. A golden eight-pointed star hung from his neck. “What’s happening?”
“Those doors’ll hold,” Ralph said as if speaking to himself. The surrounding boys felt beads of sweat scuttle down their temples.
“Gremmly, time.”
Inside the room, the white strobes flickered wildly before becoming intensely brighter, where the white tiles shined within X-Ray gradational pannels. Ione and Near could see crimson synapses bulging from Kent and J.D.’s bodies. The effects of the Crush were visible now their contracts were in place, and what a difference it was...
Gremmly, from inside the control room, turned a large black dial to 200 pounds. In the moment, the two boys inside the room jolted downward, huffing in fagged expressions. Apparently, the Crush actually ‘crushed’ it’s occupants. Their breath became thinly visible as the temperature of the room plummeted to exactly zero degrees Celsius.
J.D. moaned in pain, hitting the floor, shaking and shivering...Kent pressed his hands firmly against his temples, mouth parting in shock. Within the second, both boys' veins protruded from beneath their thin skin.
“What’s happening?!”
“It’s been a while since they entered the system. It’s only a matter of adjusting homeostasis. It’ll be a few seconds now.” Ralph replied.
“Ugghh!” J.D. shook. His previous demeanor suited him better, Ione decided.
“Why aren’t they wearing anit-Crush suits? Their lungs will collapse,” another kid shouted.
Ralph only smiled to himself. He hadn’t thought of it, but he was sure J.D. was fully aware. Kent was lucky—cyberization was the best way to go under Crush influence. It meant several less things to worry about, especially in single’s sparring.
“What is this ‘Crush’ thing?” the boy muttered.
Ralph burst out in a cackle. He had quite an interesting group.
“The Crush?!” he mimicked,” The Crush is an artificial field that accumulatively smashes your organs and crushes your bones; however, it enhances your physical and mental abilities by a margin double your current status, and—“he motioned their eyes beyond the Plexiglas,”—and if they stay within too long…well, non-spinal injury is reversible, but serious neurological damage has one alternative--cyberization.”
“Cyberization?”
“Kent is cyberized. Look closely and you'll can see plug sockets in the back of his neck. Every part of his body is expendable, eyes, legs, arms…”
“What about nerves?” The boy asked leaning upon the glass, pressing his nose in.
“No. That is essentially what the Crush damages. There’s no loophole in the system…Gremmly, try six-hundred pounds!” Ralph shouted into his mike, beyond the disenchanted boys.
“Six hundred?”
"Do it."
Kent and J.D. seemed to smash into the ground by an unseen force. The crimson synapses became resilient silver as they struggled against a splicing pressure. A splurge of blood poured from J.D.’s mouth, and seconds later, a yellowish liquid steadily ran from his pant leg where it puddle at his knee. The teenager struggled to stop himself, shaking his head as tears ran down his cheek. J.D. jolted downward between gasps and cries of humiliation and horror.
It truly disgusted Ralph.
“Sto—ahhh-p! “he gagged. The boys behind the glass were deadened. One bent over and puked and puked and puked.
Near couldn’t pry his eyelids over. Wider and wider his eyes expanded, absorbing the horror that Nerve was.
Kent gripped his head as if it were about to explode, kicking the floor and buckling his knees as his body lay subjected to Gremmly’s God dial. His eyes began to glimmer a neon red…Cyberization apparently had it’s downsides.
Ione frantically glanced at Ralph whose face seemed shapeless. But after a few hourly seconds passed, Ralph decided he’d seen enough, or perhaps, his students saw what they needed to see.
“Turn it off.”
There came no response at the other end if the headset. Kent’s bionic arm flexed open all compartments, unsheathing a razor, machine gun, and three glimmering butterfly knives. The gun fired. The knives shot from the band, one slicing through the Plexiglass.
“Gremmly! Shit!”
As soon at it started, it stopped. The pressure went dead.
Every boy behind the glass struggled to keep their knees from buckling… minds with them…or simply their guts in them. The sight was unfathomable: Kent’s prosthetic flesh stretched downward, eyes bulged and bloodshot, mouth cut and bloodied after bitting his tongue and cheek walls. He lay slung on the floor, almost lifeless as saliva flowed steadily from his mouth. His clothes’ colors were faded, as was the pigment in his skin; however, it seemed petty compared to the other student, who was now crustily stuck against the wall. A crimson substance fountain from his back where a three inch hole screwed deep into his chest and out the other end. Around the wound skin seemed butchered into fine, cutlered shreds, similar to a jagged screwdriver applied to soft meat. Of all this, thick, oozing blood and tissue splattered the wall in a purged manner.
J.D.’s dilated eyes stuck forth widely from their sockets, fresh tear paths just below among sweat running from his bangs to dripping pants.
A student in the back-crowd suddenly began to struggle. The heart attack came and went swiftly. Now, J.D.’s possessor lay dead, fulfilling their contract. No one dared to look back or sideways or diagonal to see. They knew what rule number one fully entailed.
Ralph turned to the dehumanized youth. “Training’s done.” He tuned his headset. “Gremmly, get someone to clean it all up.”
It's a mouthful...Like it? Leave a comment! ^^
- Mood:
Winter Downs - Listening to: Origa - Dimache
- Reading: Cafe Kichiouji ~De
- Watching: Will and Grace
- Drinking: Agua
