All Your Fates (Currently editing/updating)

Chapter 38: Please Hold, Your Call Is Important to Us

Atticus’s POV

We asked David to lie down in the centre of the dancing lightning bubble, and I remarked to myself how much it resembled a firefly.

You could never be too careful. Neither Pepper nor I wanted to deal with David’s falling body crashing to the floor as this one’s soul vacated it, while waiting for its owner to return.

David lied down as instructed and got comfortable. That’s a good doggie, I hummed to myself.

I then nodded at Pepper, and she gave me a flat smile in affirmation. She took a deep breath and then hit a button on her iPad. I could see from my vantage point the application “powering” down. I could see a cold sweat form on her forehead.

The firefly pulsed lightning and then began to decay, twitch, falter to the ground. The buzzing noise began to drive down like a helicopter crashing to the Earth.

Polystyrene beads began to hit the floor, as David’s body looked relax, then limp.

The quiet was so deafening. It’s funny how you get used to a loud roar you forget it’s even there till it’s gone. I imagine I will feel the same longing once Pepper is likewise removed. Like standing in an empty wind tunnel.

Pepper rushed to David’s body to check on his vitals. She felt for his heartbeat in his throat, then quickly jumped away from inside the formation of the Chandli plates, as the system began to reboot itself.

I could see her fervent prayers for his safe return as the firefly began to take flight once again and hover a few inches above the floor.

“Come on, come on, come on,” Pepper muttered and paced like a caged lioness.

Suddenly the body sat up, and for a second Pepper smiled with warm relief.

But it was not sitting up in an upright position, ready to rise. It was convulsing, choking, gasping for breath.

Pepper turned to me with terrified eyes, “What’s happening? Where is he?”

“It didn’t work. He hasn’t returned. The body will starve for oxygen without the soul to guide it to breathe.”

Pepper shouted at me as if I was a madman, and let’s face it – I am by all dictionary definitions of the term, “But if David hasn’t returned here? Where the fuck is he??”