Lasarus

Apologies. Been suffering with a real bad slump in my writing the past 2 weeks as I try to figure out my life and general plans for the future. Essentially had this done well... two weeks ago but I ended up just writing blocking things. Any who, here's the completed thing. Yay!

Groaning tiredly, Noah rubbed his face with his palms, the, An Encyclopaedia on Monsters, lay tossed haphazardly to the floor beside him. Something he had done in frustration after numerous irritating remarks and comments about the monsters the writer had tossed in.

‘Unprofessionalism, thy name is Alikavarnish Terpentine.’ Not a single sentence throughout the various chapters had any decent information on the monsters. Nothing about their livelihoods, their diets or the like, though there was plenty judgement to how ‘pleasant’ the writer found the appearance of their forms especially considering the more sexual aspects.

Every other sentence was written in such a way that it seemed like it was tossed in a hat, jumbled around, tossed in a blender only to abandon those letters and pick up sand and throw it at a wall, hoping to god what didn’t fall would make a legible sentence. And yet, somehow, this book had found itself published, to what kind of reception, he had no idea.

What he did know though, was first that the monsters of this world—at least those in the book—were more human than he first expected, and secondly, he could do so much better and he wasn’t even a writer.

Pulling his hands from his eyes, he slumped them to the side and found his room had darkened greatly. Feeling his chest heave with a roaring yawn laced with what felt like a thousand years of tiredness, he slouched and slid onto the pillow, “I’m so annoyed, I’m tired.” He snorted, sending a final scathing glare at that kindling of a book.

As he was about to pull the blanket onto himself, he was startled by a loud crashing noise. Swiftly he sat up, heart beating rapidly from the unexpected shock, “what the?” he paused, hearing muffled by the walls the sallow weeping of a woman. He didn’t need a degree to know who that belonged to.

He certainly wasn’t going to sit around while Liora wept her heart out, not after it sounded like she’d just collapsed.

Throwing off his blanket, Noah got to his feet. His strides were long and swift towards the door, flinging it open on a hastened trip he didn’t care to close it behind him as he followed the wails of a woman abandoned. Listening as they grew louder and harsher by the step.

They wrenched at the strings of his heart. How freely she was letting all her emotions out even more so than after she got the news of her imminent eviction.

To hear this… Noah wasn’t being hyperbolic to say it hurt him physically, his heart that is. At her door, he lifted his knuckles and rapped along the centre. She didn’t hear him, her wails only continued without halt.

“Liora? Can I come in?” his voice rose, hoping they may get to her but they didn’t.

‘Can’t just leave her like this.’

“I’m coming in, okay?” a pointless question to ask when he was already twisting the handle and pushing it open. When he did, he recoiled as a pungent stench of alcohol and fruits assailed him, bursting from the seem and up his nostrils threatening to inebriate him without a sip.

Covering his nose, Noah pushed it open fully and glanced across the room. Dozens of bottles strewn here and there, stains where wine leaked out and onto the floors, and at the centre of it all, Liora, surrounded by a minefield of dirty green glass. There she sat on her knees just beside her bed, head tilted back and body rosy from the alcohol.

“Liora…” he could only mutter at her ragged appearance, worse even than his own. Her eyes were puffy and hair distraught, her nightgown hung from her shoulder to the point it showed off one of her breasts in full. A sight Noah may have hung on, but now, now was not the time.

He waded through the bottles, dragging his feet so he didn’t slip and fall and came to kneel at her side. His eyes sharpened as he noticed on her right arm a splotch of red that blended with the pungent ruby liquor and the golden puddle accumulated beneath her. All lit by the dying flickers of a candle just minutes from fading to nothing.

Chewing his lip, he kept silent as he reached for her arm and gently turned it over, enough for him to see the fabric torn and the hole gashed into her arm. His eyes darted to the glisten of a green-tinged shard of glass in Liora’s other hand—also bloody but that wound did not worry him as this did.

“Shit,” he grit his teeth, didn’t need a medical degree to know what she had tried to do with that broken wine bottle. Thankfully though, it looked like she hadn’t done it right… which was far from the right word to use for that. It was more like she’d jabbed the glass into her arm, hoping to nick something lethal. It wasn’t quite gushing out but it also wasn’t slow.

He darted around, searching the room for anything cleaner than his hand but there was simply nothing. The bathroom, he suddenly thought, there were towels there, he could use those, also clean it in the bathwater. He hoped it was clean though, he couldn’t boil it and cool it down in seconds. It would have to do.

 “Liora,” he squeezed tightly her bloodied wound, covering just one of the two gashes, and attempted to get her attention by shaking her, “I need to get you out of here, okay?” all she did was weep. “Come on, let me help you up okay?” he swapped hands on her wound, bringing his other under her armpit and tried to lift her up. She followed, though on wobbly legs.

“Leefv meh alhone,” she bawled, “lhet mhe dhai.”

“I’m not going to do that,” it was slow going, filled with slight amounts of resistance but nothing his lanky body couldn’t control. He guided her down the steps, listening to her slurred grumbles while offering soothing words of his own.

“Nearly there,” he muttered.

“Nhooo lhe m’ ghooo...” She slurred, feet staggering beneath her leaving Noah to prop her up with an exerted grunt.

“Still not going to do that. I’d only join you and drag you back to the land of the living,” he chuckled, biting the laughter away as it was far from the aptest of times to be funny.

Behind him a trail of blood and wine trickled along, following them to the bathroom where he quickly brought her into and laid her against the bathtub on the floor. Reeling he panted and without thought rushed to the shelves in the changing room and ripped away from the piles of bandages.

“I need to get a better look at the cut, so I’m going to lift your sleeve up, okay?” she didn’t say anything but sniffle and whimper.

Slowly rolling the bloodied and torn sleeve up to her arm, Noah grimaced at the gruesome slashes. They were jagged and hesitant. Even Liora, drunk as could be, feared what she was doing. The only bit of relief he got was that it looked only skin deep, maybe deeper in places and not something he was comfortable leaving untreated by a professional.

“Oh, Liora,” he shook his head.” Finally separating from the laceration, he fell to the bath, it was empty now but he knew there was a faucet. He reached to the bronze-hued thing and the bluestone atop it and squeezed it. Without even twisting it, he felt something break off inside him and be pulled into the stone, in the next second it flickered to a bright blue light that just as quickly dimmed and water began to stream steadily from the faucet. He paused for but a second but didn’t linger.

Taking up the pail from earlier, he filled it with the water and extended Liora’s arm. “I need to clean this okay? It might hurt a little but I need you to power through it for me, okay?” he was saying that too much, ‘okay’ no, she wasn’t okay. Farthest from.

Without her resistance, he began to trickle the water over her arm, watching it turn red and drip onto the floor, wetting it only to descend into the drains beneath the bath. Slowly but surely revealing a clearer picture of the wound.

When it seemed clean enough, for now, Noah took up the first towel and cautiously patted her arm dry. Tossing the saturated one to the side, he took up another and began to wrap it around her arm, it was a smaller one, much more so than the one he’d used this morning, he needed to fold it in half to get it to a good size, even folded it was thin enough not to be encumbered, though as he layered it around once, twice, then four times, it began to thicken gradually. He made sure it was tight, not enough to be painful but enough to help staunch the flow till he could find a proper healer.

“You didn’t have to go this far, Liora.”

She didn’t respond, didn’t even react as he tugged the makeshift bandage to tighten it more. Though her eyes remained open, if just barely.

“I know you feel the world is against you, but doing this would just remove something beautiful from the world. No matter what you think, no matter what if it feels like the sky is falling around you. This isn’t the way to go. What if your daughter… what if Eleanora came home and learned you’d died like this? What would she think?” his voice though soft, was passionate.

“I may have only known you for just a few hours, but you deserve more…”

Letting out an exhausted sigh, he looked down at Liora slumped and weak body. Blood and other fluids caused the bottoms of her nightgown to stick to her body. “Need to clean you up,” checking the bandage wasn’t loose, he pushed himself to his feet and returned to the dry room. He looked around, finding another clean towel or two and brought them with him to the bathing room. When he returned, Liora’s head bobbed anemically his way.

“Harf…” she slurred, “you look sho yhung.” Liora reached out a trembling hand, lifting it so weakly Noah had to catch it for her and lower it to her lap.

Forcing a smile, he whispered to her, calming her, “I’m going to take your clothes off, alright?”

“Nnn…” Liora grumbled, she rolled her body and bobbed her head, “bh ghenthl.”

As he began to strip her, Noah felt his heart twist. For as careful the thing he was doing was, he couldn’t stop those horribly intrusive thoughts. Tempted was he to lurch and cast his cheek a reverberating slap, to wake him from his thoughts of Liora’s barren body. It wasn’t the time, nor the place. Pretend you’re a doctor, Noah, just pretend you’re a doctor. He reasoned, dipping one of the clean towels into the water, he logged it and then began to dab it across the stains discolouring Liora’s body. Slowly and gently removing the stickiness of wine, blood, and urine.

There came a time, one most uncomfortable when he couldn’t focus on just her thighs or the rest of her body. He had attempted to avoid it, but he knew for the sake of cleanliness he must.

Turning his head away, he clamped tight his eyes and dipped the sodden towel between her legs. It would have been simple. It would have been innocent. But Liora, drunken and sloshed with anaemic deliria, let out a wimpish whine. The moment she did, Noah urgently pulled away. It was too effeminate to be a groan of uncomfortability.

He darted down, focusing on the ginger carpet for any more grime, sighing thankfully, he saw nothing. “I’m just about done Liora,” he gently said, “just need to dry you off and get you upstairs… Just need to dry you off…” he cast an eye over her body, glossed with water that shimmered in the low light of the night, and sighed. “If I don’t stop acting like a perv, gods going to smite me down.” And he wasn’t even religious.