The Two Week Curse Read online

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  40

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  Agility: (Base 6) +0 (-4 due to injuries))

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  10

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  Stamina: (Base 9) +0 (-5 due to injuries))

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  60

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  Mana: (Base 2) +0

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  20

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  Mana Regeneration (Base 1) +0

  0.95/s

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  Stamina Regeneration: (Base 7) +0 (-6 due to injuries))

  0.95/s

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  He waved his hand. The vision disappeared but another screen appeared.

  Title: From the Grave

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  You’ve died and come back to the land of the living not just once, but twice. You’re a true survivor who has put one foot in the grave.

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  Rewards: +0.50 modifier to Stamina and Mana Regeneration

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  He was a thirty-three-year-old combat medic without both his legs and his left arm missing.

  He had less than two weeks, then he’d disappear.

  He’d been doing private security work in South Africa, looking over VIPs and metal shipments.

  All it took was a split second and he was no longer a soldier but a cripple. Silent tears appeared in Erik’s eyes as he threw his body around. His useless nubs flailed around as if taunting him, telling him he wasn’t a true man anymore, that he was worthless, some discarded piece of meat just surviving there.

  A cruel smile appeared on Erik’s face.

  “Fuck. Even if it mattered, I’ll be gone in two weeks.” Erik snorted, looking back on his life, his three wives, loveless relationships. He didn’t have children; he didn’t want to bring them into this world of pain.

  What did he have left? A cabin in the woods, a rack of medals, and an insurance company fighting with him about his benefits as he slowly drained his bank account.

  Disappearing sounded kind of nice compared to this life.

  All Erik could do was sit there, playing it back in his mind, remembering the last feeling of having limbs. Thinking of the others who had smiled and joked as they loaded into their trucks. The moments that they’d talked and laughed or got to know one another.

  He couldn’t help but think of the families. Honcho had a wife, with a kid on the way. Rossy was the father to two kids. Yoreck’s family was close, with him having two sisters and three brothers.

  Gone, and he was sitting here in a hospital bed with two weeks left.

  He pressed the call button for the nurse.

  “Is there anything that I can help you with?” she asked with a soft smile.

  “I can’t get to sleep; do you have something that could help me?” Erik gave her a smile, more for her than himself.

  “Sure, I’ll go get you something.” She turned and left.

  Erik pushed his head back into his pillows.

  Here lies Erik West, used by many, loved by few and weakling.

  He snorted at his own thoughts. He was a warrior, but when had he fought for himself? Now, when it was all coming to an end, he was filled with regrets and weakness. He wasn’t a warrior charging forward into the breach; he was a sad man wasting away in some hospital till his time was up and they’d only need to change the sheets.

  He didn’t regret serving, nor did he regret his time with the military and private security contractors. He wished he had been able to pursue more things in life that the military had kept him from.

  Thankfully the nurse returned quickly and added some new chemical to his IV.

  “Thanks,” Erik said.

  “No problem.” The nurse looked as if she wanted to say more. But what was there to say?

  Chapter: Wolf or Sheep

  Erik woke up to the sound of snoring. He looked over to see a familiar sight. Rugrat.

  They had served together since they left the military. They’d saved each other’s lives too many times to count and they were brothers, even if they didn’t have the same blood running through their veins.

  Rugrat had been in the convoy. He’d been the one who had run through the bullets and carried Erik back to his truck and saved his life by putting tourniquets on his limbs.

  Erik didn’t say anything as he let Rugrat sleep in the chair. The man looked as though he had been through hell: his hair growing out, his cowboy hat off at an angle. The suit he wore looked as if it had been bought at a discount store and had been used too many times.

  A nurse came in sometime later, opening the door. Rugrat’s eyes cracked open as he looked to the nurse and the awake Erik.

  “How are we feeling today?” the nurse asked.

  Erik let out a long sigh and a shrug.

  Looking between the two, the nurse gave a compulsory smile. “I’ll bring some food around in a few minutes,” she said before leaving.

  Rugrat pulled himself up, his tan fading a bit as he leaned forward.

  “How was it?” Erik didn’t want to ask, but he needed to.

  “They were nice ceremonies,” Rugrat said, his voice forced as he looked at his hands. A heaviness fell over them as they sunk into their own memories.

  “I heard that you’re okay to leave?” Rugrat asked.

  “Yeah, I would.” Erik snorted, bitterness written all over his face. “Got the fucking two-week curse. Two weeks, I’m gone.” Erik flicked his hand to the side with finality.

  Erik instantly regretted his words as he saw the look of pain on Rugrat’s face. It was as if he had punched him in the gut.

  “You don’t know that,” Rugrat said, a defiant look in his eyes.

  “Rugrat—” Erik started.

  “Don’t you start that defeatist shit with me. I just watched three of our friends get put in the ground in the last fucking week. I ain’t having you give the hell up on me too. No one knows what happens when you disappear. What they do know is that the people who go can do anything before they leave! I heard that there was a person who had been stabbed but their body repaired itself!”

  Erik gritted his teeth, getting frustrated.

  Rugrat got up, pointing at Erik. “Are you a fucking wolf or are you a fucking sheep?” Rugrat’s eyes burned into Erik’s.

  “I’m a fucking worm now!” Erik yelled.

  “You’re Erik fucking West—you’re a fucking wolf.” Rugrat poked Erik in the chest so hard it hurt.

  Erik flopped onto the pillows, tears in his eyes as he let out a self-deprecating laugh. “A wolf, huh? Fat fucking good I can do.”

  Rugrat grabbed him by his hospital gown and yanked him up so Erik could smell the sweat and see the stubble on his face.

  The veins on Rugrat’s neck and hand popped out as he looked at Erik, as if searching for something, looking for that spark, that fighting spirit.

  With a frustrated yell, he let Erik go and punched the wall.

  Erik wanted to say or do something, but he felt like an empty shell, a being without purpose, without a use. Just a hollow shell no one wanted or needed.

  Seeing Rugrat facing the wall, his shoulders slumped in defeat, hurt his heart. His anger and frustration rose. Instead of directing it toward himself, he directed it toward what had happened.

  It was what Rugrat said. Anything was possible to the people with the two-week curse. He would beat this. He’d break this fricking thing.

  There was always healing potions and healing spells in those games. Do I try and fight, even if for him, or do I just waste away here?

  There was a noise outside of the room of people talking. Someone was raising some kind of argument.

  Erik’s jaw flexed. He knew that voice.

  “Your parents arrived yesterday,” Rugrat said, reading his thoughts.

  Erik let out a deep breath. His brow pinched together and black li
nes appeared on his forehead as he rubbed his right temple. All right, so I’ve got two weeks before I disappear. I need to know more about what this means.

  “Rugrat, you know anything about this curse?” Erik asked.

  “I looked into it a bit. You see a screen in front of you when you woke up?” Rugrat asked.

  Erik nodded.

  “Well then, you’ve definitely got that. The screen showed your stats, I guess. You can upgrade them, get strong and use magic, like that Dungeons and Dragons stuff,” Rugrat said.

  “What about titles?”

  “Titles?” Rugrat frowned.

  “It gave me a title, something about nearly dying and coming back again.” Erik shrugged.

  “Oh, well.” Rugrat looked awkward but then faced Erik right on. “You might have died on the operating table when they were getting you fixed up.”

  Erik pursed his lips, trying to assimilate that as his head moved back and forth slightly. “Okay, well, that’s interesting to know.” Erik didn’t have time to think on all of that right now.

  “How do you feel? Stronger?” Rugrat asked.

  Erik moved around. He noticed that in his vision that there were two bars: one was blue, the other green. “You know what the bars mean?”

  “They’re your Stamina and Mana pool. It’s the amount of actions that you can do before you need to drink or eat something, or Mana you can use on spells before you need to regenerate it,” Rugrat said.

  Erik took in his words and continued his investigation. His stumps were itchy. He checked on them, thinking that it might be a rash coming in. “The hell?” Erik looked at the skin that lay under the socks on his limbs.

  The mangled skin should have taken a few months to smooth out, but now there wasn’t a scar to be seen.

  Hope rose in his chest, but he suppressed it. He didn’t want to raise his spirits only to have them drop immediately afterward.

  He put the socks back on.

  “It’s been nine days since you turned into a blue smoke machine, which means there are five more days,” Rugrat said, holding nothing back.

  The door opened. An older-looking gentleman with a refined bearing and a perfectly pressed navy-blue suit looked from the hulking cowboy-hat-toting man in the room to Erik.

  Erik didn’t miss the flash of disappointment in the man’s eyes as he looked to Erik.

  “Erik.” A woman, wearing a skirt and matching blazer, pushed past him. She looked as if she were on the verge of holding back tears as she moved into the room toward Erik.

  His features only hardened at these actions. His mother and father were upper-tier movers and shakers in medical and business circles. His father was a surgeon, while his mother was a business leader. The two of them had created a medical empire in various hospitals across America.

  His father hid his thoughts through his patented Doctor West smile that made him seem carefree and laid-back, but underneath there lay the heart of a viper.

  His mother was the one to play to people’s emotions, using their guilt and emotions to get them to do what she wanted.

  Out of the two, at least his father would lose the smile after he was home. His mother was manipulative and fake in everything that she did.

  “Mother, Father.” Erik looked to them both, his face pinched together.

  “Erik dear, when we heard about you losing your limbs, we were distraught. We would’ve flown over.” His mother held his head between her hands and looked into his eyes.

  “Rugrat, get my discharge papers. Could you give me a ride home?” Erik asked.

  “On it.” Rugrat, sensing the odd atmosphere in the room, quickly left. The door closed behind him.

  Erik’s father frowned. “We told you again and again to come and work for the family hospitals. Your sister and brother both listened.” His eyes thinned in anger as a snarl appeared on his face.

  “Well, go see them. Seems that they’re your perfect children.” Erik had even less regard for the two snakes who were his siblings.

  “Erik,” his mother admonished. “We’re family. Nothing can come between us!”

  “We were never a family, just the surrogates for you. Doesn’t matter much anymore,” Erik said.

  “You will be coming back with us to New Hampshire, where we will take care of you,” his father said, brooking no argument.

  Erik started to laugh, getting more and more crazed by the end of it.

  Erik’s mother moved away from the bed as she seemed to realize that her son was not the young and naive boy from before but a man who had been in battles around the globe, killing people for nearly half of his life.

  “Good fucking luck. I can still beat you with just one fucking hand, you useless fuck. Even if I didn’t, I’ve got the two-week curse. Try fucking ‘helping me out’ with that!” Erik laughed.

  His father and mother looked to each other. They seemed to be communicating in gestures.

  “Yes, to the two snakes in the room, I will be disappearing from this fine earth in, oh, another five days! So take a vacation in Colorado, say that you were consoling me, and fuck off.”

  His mother’s face transformed in a second, a look of disgust and distaste there as she looked at her son. She didn’t need to say anything. All the anger that she had hidden as she looked to draw him over to her side to do her bidding was removed. Finally, he saw her true face.

  Rugrat opened the door. Her face turned into a saddened expression as she turned, hiding her face in her husband’s shoulder.

  Erik’s father had a gloating smile on his face, hidden from Rugrat but visible to Erik.

  “Let’s go,” Erik said. Rugrat helped him out of his bed and onto the chair. They left his mother and father in the hospital room.

  They reached the truck. Again, Rugrat helped Erik up, throwing the wheelchair in the bed, and jumped into the driver’s seat.

  “You good?” Rugrat asked.

  “I’m feeling better than I have in years.” Erik smiled. It felt good to finally sever all ties between him and his parents.

  Inside, he was still terrified. He wasn’t ready to check out, but Rugrat made a good point. Who said that this was the end?

  Rugrat patted Erik’s shoulder. “Just the start of something new.”

  “Hmm?” Erik said, sensing something more in Rugrat’s words.

  Rugrat gave him a small smile. “You’re not the only one with the two-week curse. Must be a damn virus. I’ve got it too.”

  Erik, shocked, didn’t know what to say.

  Rugrat shook his head and let out a short laugh.

  Erik couldn’t help but shake his head and snort. Rugrat started up the truck. Erik wanted to say something, but he knew Rugrat would dismiss it. Their brotherhood was stronger than blood. They didn’t need to say anything.

  Erik took a deep breath, calming his emotions.

  Thank you, brother.

  Chapter: Gun Nut

  With that, Erik and Rugrat had to make some hard decisions: which of their babies did they want to take?

  “Dammit, how the hell am I taking any of my guns in a two-by-four meter space?”

  “It’s going to be hard,” Erik agreed.

  Rugrat had a sour look on his face as they drove along a bumpy road leading to Erik’s cabin in the woods.

  From what he found online, he drew two conclusions. Previous wounds before the curse would heal but at a slower rate. If someone was injured, they would heal faster than normal, but nothing death-defying.

  Every time someone was hurt, the speed which they healed increased.

  People’s bodies don’t only push past physical limits like how much they can lift, but also how many injuries they can take? Doesn’t that mean that the more damage you take, the faster that you’ll recover?

  It was one hell of an idea, but it had far-reaching possibilities.

  They made it to a hardware store. Erik drafted up a list and gave it to Rugrat
.

  He jumped out of the truck and went to get the items on the list.

  Erik reached into the backseat, grabbing a knife that hung off Rugrat’s bag. He rolled down the sock on his left leg.

  He looked at the stump there right above the knee.

  He started to think of how crazy this all was, that it was just him clutching at straws.

  I might be, but like Rugrat said, isn’t it better if I just tried? What’s the worst that can happen? Erik paused for a moment. Maybe I shouldn’t think that while holding a knife.

  He shook his head and cut his leg with just enough pressure to break the skin and draw blood. He flinched slightly and put the blade away, setting a timer on the phone as he continued his research.

  Erik looked over the different spells that had been created already and some of the hypotheses people had come up with for what worked, what didn’t, and why.

  It seemed like the spell and words weren’t important, but rather the word association and one’s thoughts.

  For example, there was one person who yelled meatloaf and it turned the ground into a quagmire, then said pizza and created a sea of fire in front of them.

  “I do not want to see that guy’s cooking skills in person,” Erik muttered.

  He took a deep breath and put the phone down. He placed his hand on the leg he’d stabbed. “Heal.” Erik watched the Mana bar in the corner of his vision. Nothing happened. He thought on what people had said in the video. He not only needed words but the intent and association.

  He closed his eyes, thinking of his leg. He thought of how it must look like inside, based off the x-rays, the different scans, and what the doctors had told him.

  He started to feel as if he were looking through his leg, seeing the skin, moving deeper through the fat, muscle layers, the nerves and tendons, blood vessels and to the bone and down to the marrow. It was as if he could see the burned-off nerves, the sealed blood vessels, and sculpted muscle to round out his nub.

  He continued to look through the layers, as if he could look through it all as if it were a layered scan.

  His head started to hurt and he felt tired. He opened his eyes. His Mana bar blinked at him. There wasn’t much of the blue left in the bar.