guest article two of two today

GUEST ARTICLE TWO OF TWO TODAY
My regular article posts at 7am.  The following is the first chapter of a dystopia novel.  If you behave yourselves, there might be more.
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The Border


By D. Ritchey
Chapter 1

Maybe a siren woke Betts, or a rat sniffing his nostrils. His eyes snapped open, and his first sensations were the darkness and the smell of blood. His head started spinning and he put his hands down. He tried to sit up. That took a long time, and when he finally did his hands came away sticky. The sheets fell away. His legs were dangling off the improvised table and he didn’t know how far the floor was. A heaviness was all around, close in on him. His legs were dangling and he couldn’t see, and the pain under his ribs was like a broadhead, searing and death right there. So this is what an arrow must feel like. Had he been shot? He sat there, knowing he was badly hurt, terrified to move. Maybe the Christians were right; maybe this is Hell .

Then he noticed the slit of light. A sense of walls formed and his irises adjusted. He began remembering. His name was Betts and he was a man and this was a warehouse. He had come for a procedure to remove the chip from his chest and something had gone wrong. Yes, it had gone wrong. He was alone. Where was the doctor? The Bangladeshi, Betts thought he was, the little man with the sharp, dark face? He must have run away. Something had gone wrong.

Nausea was rolling through Betts and he crapped his pants and vomited at the same time. The revulsion launched him off the table and when his feet hit, his legs buckled. Then forward onto his hands and knees, vomiting like some demon in him was trying to burst out. The shock of it woke him and he remembered what opiates do to a man, and memory took over him. He had to move, he had to get out. He started crawling towards the slit of light. He got there and searched up and felt the handle and pulled. The door swung inward on him and he pulled himself up and the outside air rolled inward on the grave like air of the warehouse and it opened him up some more. The light from the alley came in. He got up on his feet and staggered out and he leaned against the wall, disgusted by the fluids his body had ejected, disgusted and wanting to get away.

He stood there, feeling the shadows around him, breathing deeply. In through the nose, out the mouth. Ten, twenty times. His heart was slowing and he felt better. He smelled rat and decomposing food. Looking up and down the alley, on its bubble lighted floor made of cobblestones. The pain in his chest was fierce, like an arrow must feel like. Carefully he felt for it under his shirt. He felt stitches. He lifted his shirt but it was too dark to see. He had to move.

He looked up and down the alley. It was old and everything in it was old. Time had made the brick and roofs wavy. Everything was low and old, warped and cryptic here in the Old City. He saw a rat emerge and course along the cobbles. It disappeared and Betts pushed away from the wall and went towards the end of the alley. He saw a car pass, trailing red light. He stopped and waited. Then he went on, walking his hands along the wall to be steady, skirting the cans and dumpsters. He found himself wishing for family, someone he could call on to help in. Wishing in a vague and distant voice, way back in his mind. It was terrible to be alone. Terrible.

He came to the Second Street end of the alley and paused, watching for cars and people. But he saw nothing. The light there was better and he saw himself. No, he couldn’t go out like this, covered in blood and vomit, reeking of exrement. He had a coat. Where was his coat? He looked back as if doing that would tell him where it was. It must be in the warehouse. He went back and entered the warehouse and saw the coat there, dim and folded over a chair. “Like the carcass of a coyote a rancher hangs on the barbed wire,” he thought. His hat too. He went down the ramp and across the concrete floor. He kicked a scalpel and it went skidding off, ringing on the ancient concrete. He put on his coat and hat and left, glancing back at the tables and sheets and the cheap floodlamps the doctor had so kindly turned off before he ran.