Fresh-Faced New User
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Time is a funny thing, it can stretch a moment of danger into a life time and shrink the greatest epifany of joy to a mere blink of the eye.
For the unknown giant he had lain in darkness for all his life. He knew that before the darkness there had been light, mighty pillions ablaze, twirling pin pricks of light and the honest light of life. Yet now all he had known was darkness, strangely though he knew no despair. He could feel course sheets beneathe his mighty frame, as if he lay on a apothicarium slab. He could hear voices, far away and broken, like the last ghosts leaving the burial grounds. He could smell cleaning liquids and the scent of crushed flowers swirling in the air. Yet as to where he was, even who he was this was as the time decreed it, all in darkness...
Silence...darkness....
Anger.
Where was he ? Why was there screaming ? Why was some one clawing at his arms ?
Reactions took over, even before his eyesight returned. Hands launched out and acted. When the solar brightness had died to a deathly greyness provided by a series of flickering flourescents on the plastic tiled ceiling he could see figures dressed in white smocks, too small to fit all the way round dancing wildly. Many were covered in their own filth and all were wild eyed and screaming. Several other figures dressed in white uniforms of t-shirt, trousers and cheap black boots were desperately attempting to restore calm. The giant looked down and saw a smock dressed male limp at his feet, it's neck bent at an unatural angel. As of yet no one had noticed. He stepped away scanning the room's slowly calming choas. No one else was dead on the floor, the uniformed ones were gaining control, though they were using heavy handed persuasion with the aid hand held shockers and what looked to be the administraion of drugs.
A uniformed worker approached him, smaller than he was, a lot lighter he could see the nervousness in it's approach. The giant raised both his hands in the traditional sign of submission and sat down on the nearest bed. The worker looked relieved and then saw the body. He pressed a button on his belt and raced to the corpse.
Depsite several attempts to waken the stricken cadaver the worker looked around and began screaming to other uniformed staff.
More hands went to the buttons on the belts and then they too ran over and tried to resuss the dead man.
The giant watched impassively.
He knew that the body was dead, he had felt the neck shatter into hundreds of pieces in the crook of his arm. Still he had felt nothing inside, definately no sense of wrongness or guilt. Only, well nothing. just like he was feeling now.
More of the white uniforms arrived and they lifted the broken corpse onto a gurney and wheeled it away, none of them looked at the giant or said anything to him so he sat there, waiting. After a while he put his hands down.
Time again tricked the senses and after an age a man, dressed all in white but with a funny red cloth wrapped around his throat in the shape of a bow stood in front of him.
"Good morning. I am doctor Klaymen and I will be assesing your mental state of health." He was a little man really, made more so by his brow beaten expression. Watery blue eyes scanned a clip board held in the embrace of a scrawny arm. A pot belly pushed his white shirt over his too tight belt. He had not once looked at the giant.
"Follow me please", it was an order, the requestive on the end was mere formality, a duty that was complied with and forgotten the moment it had been said.
He walked off without looking back.
The giant stood and followed...
Klaymen had had a terrible morning, an inept intern had sectioned a sports jock who had had some sort of car crash and was unresponsive - meaning a bed was taken up and he had not authorised it. Also a near riot had exploded and a patient had been killed, it had been Denis Judderman so no one would care or dig to closely. One more dead child rapist was only a good thing. Still there would be questions and paperwork, neither of which Klaymen liked or needed.
Still, first things first. The sports jock who had been submitted as catonic. Well he was obviously awake and responsive now so a few questions and a polite reminder that he had not been charged for the bed so there would be no need for the matter to be reported to the press and he was free to go.
Klaymen sat in his office, a room too big for him in every sense. The old desk was made of oak with inlaid walnut and leather, all dusty and ill cared for. The chair behind it was a cracked leather affair that no longer swiveled and was too cold in winter to sit on without a throw. A filing cabinet sat like a squat metal gargoyal to one side of the desk. A cold iron wrought radiator gurgled with slush brown water and leaked it's vile vomit onto the threadbare green carpet.
The whole room smelt of damp and decay, a place forgotten and uncared of, and Klaymen called it home.
The only other chair in the room sat with it's back against the wall facing the too large and battered desk. It was a broken reception chair, plastic and faded orange, one leg warped so that it was in an enternal wobble.
Klaymen huffed his way back to his chair, the short walk from the infirmary to his office had winded him, he no longer cared. Slumping into the over sized black leather chair his hand reached down the desk drawer automatically, seeking solace from the knowlege that what was within would dull his day perfectly.
Still, first things first.
The giant had followed on naked feet, the intern who had filed the report had stated that they had found nothing that would fit his grotesque frame and the ward nurses had not bothered so he now stood infront of Klaymen bare as the day he was born.
Klaymen flipped open the thin vanilla carboard file with the legend Jon Doe XX/XX/XX on it. Inside was a the medical report stating that they had found said JD in one of the many parks that made up the Grand Centeral at around midnight, there was no report of a car accident and the subject did not smell of booze.
Again the unconcious dropping of a hand to the desk draw.
The subject did not appear to be injured and looked to be in supreme physical condition.
On reading this Klaymen glanced up and for the first time looked at his patient.
He stared in enraptament at the figure before him. The giant had declined the seat and stood in all his brutal glory before Klaymen. With a professional eye Klaymen put the figure before him at easilly over 6 and half feet tall - nearer 7. The vast bulk weighed him in at over 350 lb and that was over slab like muscle. There was no sense even naked of eroticsm, only of coiled brutality. The face was equine and blunt, the broken nose only emphising the feral feel of the man. Despite his enormous size there were numerous scars and what looked like bullet holes to the front but as the medical report stated that these looked old and well healed. A short cropping of wire tight hair cropped short to the head gave a veroicous military look to the figure. Also evident were several what looked like silver studs drilled into the patients head.
Klaymen's left hand actually went to the desk draw and began opening it, his unconcious looking for the release it so desperatley sought.
This was clearly no sports jock but a military man.
It then dawned on him that the patient was naked, completely. Even as that thought invaded his mind his eyes buried themselves into the file, only to lance out at the patient groin, as if drawn by a power greater than gravity. The giant was all in proportion. Flicking a swich on the thirty year old intercom which sat heavily on his desk he asked his secretary to bring a sheet to his office, immediately.
Minutes passed as he stared with deliberate non interest at the patient notes till his aged secretary opened the door to his office and threw a greying bed sheet into the office.
"Dress your self man." Ire warred with awe, the sheer physical presence of the man was making the room feel too small. His hand was now resting on the desk draw handle.
The giant simply wrapped the sheet once around his waist and resumed his stance, almost statuesque in it's rigidity.
Klaymen resumed his note reading, only scanning the words rather than absorbing them. Time found and by whom what attempts at resuss had failed and that the subject had deemed as catonic and removed from the A and E ward asap.
Military, that would explain a lot. Probably some sap with PTSD or the like.
Marine or special forces. Had to be. The desk draw began to open, his hand operating with it's own muscle memory.
Klaymen feared the paperwork that this could bring, he needed to open this can of worms quickly and get rid of this monolith of a man out of his ward.
"What unit were you in ... ?" Klaymen stalled, the giant looked to be in his mid thirties but his eyes were older, a lot older.
"...." the giant responded with silence, just staring at a fixed point over Klaymen's head.
"If I knew which branch you were in then I can call the relevant bodies and have you transfered there, they have the time and money to care for people with your....issues." Klaymen was begining to get irritated. If the bloody thug won't talk then he would have to book him in here and send mesages, all time consuming and ulitamtely pointless.
Klaymen floundered about on the desk for a pen and then tapping his teeth with it looked hard at the face.
"Where did you serve ? When ? Who with ? How long?"
Nothing.
Klaymen flounced the pen onto the desk.
In a fit of pique he shouted, "Well, name, rank and fething number you idiot. You meat heads are meant to memorise those things surely."
Silence.
Klaymen composed himself, this was not going to plan. He was begining to see why the intern had gone for the simple route of catonic.
Klaymen began to think that he would have to begin the booking in procdure when a flash of inspiration hit him.
"Did you kill Judderman earlier?", Klaymen was thinking that he would turn the brute over the police, they could have him and good luck to them.
"It's ok if you did, no one liked him here, he was a bad man so I won't be mad." Klaymen's voice took on an almost pleading note. "You can tell me. It was an accident wasn't it. He made you angry telling you all the stuff he did and you just...hit him with...a bed pan...he fell...died. That's what happened isn't it. Come on get it off your chest, you will feel so much better. The truth is the paramount thing here, I can be your saviour, your balm. Just tell me what occurred in there? Were you scared? Was that it, did he attack you and put you in fear..." A slight hint of desperation was evident.
The giant for the first time looked directly at Klaymen, in a voice that sounded like broken bolders cascading down stone stairs, " I know no fear". It was said with such certaintity that Klaymen knew this to be true and not some idle boast.
"Fine, yes, of course you don't - still what happened in there, this was not an accident and you were the nearest person to Judderman so the police would like to speak to you." Klaymen nervously began fiddling with desk draw handle again, if he could illict some response from this man that could be vaguely shaped like an admission then that would end his woes - two for the price of the one as they said.
" Some would say that what you did was justice, Divine right and all that ?" Klaymen saw a spark of acknowldgment deep within those grey stone eyes. He leapt forward hoping that he had finally cracked the monstrous man's barriers.
"That was it, he told you what he had done and you felt compelled to kill him, it was ordained by the Lord, it was right, it was just , it was good for you to kill him." Klaymens voice rose till it was a screech, and yet the giant just stood there.
Klaymen felt both embarrassed but also motivated as he delved off into this fantasy.
"It was the Lords work for you to kill him, it was the begining of your Holy Crusade for Him...."
Inside the giants mind the darkness that had sat like a veil over his memories was ablaze, the little mans words were tearing holes through which he could catch glimpses of his past, and what a past, what glories were his and those he served.
The little man had stopped talking, he was sitting back his hands flat on the old desk, eyes lost as he contemplated his fantasy.
The giant decided that this was enough, he knew now who and what he was, indeed were they not the same thing. He was a warrior of the Holy Crusade, he had been fighting for his home world when the traitors had come. They had fired on them unnounced and revenge was required. Yet how was he to do that here, where here was ?
In a bass rumble he growled " Where am I?".
The shock of that voice, the inherant authority that it commanded forced the dreaming doctor to his senses.
He found that he was answering before he knew why... awe and fear.
"Your in hospital..."
"What planet fool."
"err- earth ?" Klaymen was flustered and a little scared, this thug infront of him had taken over the interview and he was not prepared for where it was going.
"Terra ? when ?"
Klaymen noted the puzzeled look on the behomoths face, it would have been amusing but the absurdity of the questions and the threat that semed to ooze off him.
"Some people refer to this place as Terra yes, from the latin Terra Firma - solid ground. As for when, it's wet day in july who would have believed it?" Klaymen tried to force a smile but it failed to stay on his face. Damn, he was talking about the weather and this idiot was talking about planets ?
"The year little man, what in the name of the Lion is the year ?" The giant moved a pace forward, hands clenched into deadly fists at his side.
Klaymen squeeled in fright, he took no umbrage at the the term little man for in this case that literally what he was. His hands flew to his desk draw as sweat spilled from his brow. He was going to die, he knew that now as well as he knew anything. Today was the day, now was the hour that he was going to do die. Such fearful knowledge has granted men in the past the strength to do great heroics, to battle on to the highest peaks and hold the damn of defeat together for one moment longer. Not in the case of Dr Klaymen. He even forgot the panic alarm that sat under his desk, help could have come but his fear had robbed him of the use of his mind.
"The year...2008. July 5th 2008"
The gaint roared in anger, his huge frame expanded as he expelled the darkness in a mighty bellow. His hands raised above his head, clenched into fists he drove them hard down onto the desk causing the old oak to splinter.
He pulled them free and saw Klaymen wetting himself in the chair..." Please don't kill me, please don't kill me" the little man whispered over and over again, his hand still holding onto the draw handle, even though the desk itself lay smashed.
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