Obsidian: Price I

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Mr. Price's skin burned. His hands were bound behind him, wrists and arms gripped tight in the hands of several people. They pressed him close to a bonfire, its flames clawing at the dark sky like a man possessed. Sharp pops like cracking carapace and the whoosh of dying breaths escaping. Price's skin had long ago grown pink. It now made its way towards maroon. A deep, violent color on his pasty flesh.

He was forced to stand upright against the heat and face it head on. His clothes had been stripped. Sweat poured down the length of his body, but did nothing to assuage the burning. The bonfire's pillar made the shadows surrounding him deeper; intense wells of dark mystery amidst the looming pines. One of the shadows broke away from the treeline and slunk towards the fire. It had a human form. Price could tell little else until it spoke. A woman's voice.

"How do you answer for your crimes?"

Price swallowed, his throat coarse and dry. "What crimes?" he asked, voice cracking. "I hear no things laid at my charge."

"Have I not named some already?" the figure asked. Price tried to place her sound, but could not. She was no woman of the village. An outsider? "You countenance those that are transgressors of the law," she said. "You are, thus, the same in fact."

"What law?" Price said. "This is no court of God or man. You've taken me from my bed and to the wood." His eyes scanned the scene. "It is witches that do this thing."

"This court is not of your god," she replied, moving forward. "But it is one of men. Men you once knew." The hands gripped Price tighter. The woman was dressed in fur and leather. Her skin gleamed bronze in the firelight, half her face bathed warm in the aura.

Price scowled. "I've kept good my dealings with your kind."

"You recall the party of Wilmott Somes? They came upon your farm late one night, seeking shelter."

"They were hunting and setting snares," Price replied. "A storm took upon them and they needed aid. This was more than a year past."

"What did they hunt?"

"Rabbit, perhaps. Fox? I do not know for certain."

"You didn't care to ask?"

"It seemed not to matter."

"And if I told you they hunted men?"

"I would know nothing of it."

The woman turned to study the fire.

"And so you say that you knew nothing of their hunt. That they came upon your farm and you did not wonder at their lack of rabbit? Their lack of fox?"

"What breach of law is that? In entertaining them?" Price asked.

"I have named it already. That you gave shelter to these men who had killed and robbed. That you did so knowing their purpose on that night."

"It matters not if I did. I answer to no heathen court."

The woman turned and stepped up to him. "You've called us witches. You think we have signed the devil's book with blood from an inkhorn? I dipped my finger therin and made a blott in the book?"

Price shook his head. "I know not. Regardless, only God has authority over me. You are nothing."

She reached up and placed a hand on his bare chest. Chilled flesh. She leaned in close and whispered in Price's ear.

"I confess I have made no covenant with your devil. My oaths are sworn to one much older. Tell me, Mr. Price, are you baptized?" She pressed her hand hard against Price. The chill became frost on fallen logs. Wet. Cold. Dead. "It matters not if you are."

Icy tendrils crept from the woman's touch. Price screamed. The cold would seem welcome, but it infected him. Worse than the heat. The woman took her hand away. Price looked down and saw a blackened handprint remain. He watched the flesh droop and fall, revealing smiling white arcs of rib.

Through tears he saw her stare into the fire once more. A long shadow trailed out behind her. In that shadow, a smile. The black edges of the wound crawled up Price's chest and into his throat.

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"That's strange."

A man's voice. Price knew it, but couldn't place it. The world was dark now. Something over his eyes. A blindfold? Rough hands gripped the sides of his head and unwrapped. White light stabbed at Price's vision, then the world focused. A man stood at a computer, studying a monitor.

"What is it?" A woman's voice. Not the one from the fire. Older. She came into view, stepping past Price to the PC. They were dressed in grey uniforms. Price wasn't in the woods. He was indoors. The room was lined with stainless steel and multi-colored wire.

"That one sounded like a period piece or something," the man said.

"Maybe he had a bad day at a re-enactment."

"No, his physiological response to it was real. Someone hurt him."

The woman shrugged. "Maybe a weird hazing thing? I dunno, does it matter?"

The man shook his head. "No, it's just strange. These simulations replicate real-life experiences. It's harder on them that way."

What was happening? Price struggled to place himself. He'd been in the woods outside Massachusetts. Then . . .

The memories hit him. Price's stomach tightened. The back of his tongue lifted up. His esophagus tensed. Price tried to double over, but he was strapped back tight to his chair. He vomited down the front of his shirt. Some of it didn't clear his mouth. He took a rasping breath and choked on the chunks. He coughed and gagged.

"Jesus H. Christ, again with this," the woman said, then moved over to Price. She loosened a strap and forced him to lean over. Price barked and dry heaved, eventually clearing his throat. "How many sims has he gone through?"

"Nearly two-hundred," the man answered. "He's still not cooperating."

Waves of recollection crashed over the rocks of Price's mind. Every injury he'd suffered, every harm that had been committed upon him, every guilt he'd ever felt. They were being played back to him on repeat. Over and over. He'd been here for weeks. In this chair. Reviewing a highlight reel of his life's worst memories. But the woman had been buried deep. Deeper than the others. The trivial hurts and harms these two had scoured from his brain meant little. He'd hidden the worst of it. If they picked too hard at that old wound, Price might not ever come back from it. Neither would these two. Those that found the secret things were also found out by the secrets. He had to get out. The strap zipped back into place and thrust him up in the chair.

"Ok, I guess we got time for a couple more today," the woman said. She wrapped Price's eyes back up. He opened his mouth to speak, but his vocal chords were frozen.

"Sure, sure. Maybe we'll get another new one." There was a clatter of keys. Price felt the world disappearing. Where was he again? What was happening?

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A gentle ca-clunk brought Price to his senses. He sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He was on the subway. He stretched and a newspaper slid off his lap onto the ground. He reached down to grab it. A shadow fell over him. He looked up and saw a man looming. He looked homeless. Thick, grey beard. Dirty, torn clothes. Pungent smell. Homeless was smiling.

Price sat the newspaper back on his lap and ignored the guy. He felt the train slow and announce the stop. Somewhere in New York. It didn't matter where. Price was getting off. He stood and pushed past the man.

As he stepped out onto the landing, he turned to look back into the car. The doors slid shut, but Homeless continued to stare at him. A thick, fleshy tendril slithered out from beneath Homeless's coat and around the front of his chest. Price's heart tightened. He held his breath. They'd found him again. The train pulled away. The men held each other's eyes until the cars rolled into the yawning tunnel. Pressed into a dark mouth. Mechanical groans echoed back off the walls. It was gone.

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A gentle ca-clunk brought Price to his senses.

The people in grey played this memory back. Over and over. Trying to make sense of it. They found more memories like it. Many, many more.

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