The Start of Things

The smell of blench was the first thing I processed, not the Frankenstein-like body jacked into life support. Just the sharp smell of bleach, then iron. Which amalgamated into a denatured dread, a somber soot that lingered in the atmosphere like vultures to a carcass. As we all gathered around Callahan’s bed, now reduced to three nobles, I pressed my hand against the side of his bed. Using it partly to look at Callahn’s metallic face and to keep myself from collapsing. He lays still with his jaw loose, yet to the monotone pulse from the monitor. I smudge my falling tear across the white sheets. The normality of it all. It sounded like a pickaxe ramming into the ground, yet his body to pavement - a cruel act of landscaping. He began to wander more and more, but with his condition getting worse, I never considered he was suicidal.