It was a real surprise that they actually had to take a bus to the facility. Dennis saw no real reason behind any of this. After all, the plant was merely 25...maybe 26 minutes away by foot. He did walk quite a bit faster than the average person, but it was still much better in comparison to spending an hour and a half strapped into a tin can. When he voiced his discomfort, everyone else looked like he was at least three quarters insane. So apparently you had to do the democratic thing and make yourself into a canned sardine so that everyone else could be happy. Fuck democracy!
Being who he was, Dennis obviously pressed the issue enough to alert even his holiness - Mr Michael Price. This time he acted through an avatar, aptly titled daughter. “My father would like me to tell you that it was all stated in the insurance release everyone signed” and that shut him right up. What do you even say to something like that? She stuck around for a few moments - enough to show him just how stomped his idea was - and then she just turned around and left. Alright - well done, girl! Point made! He sank a bit in his seat and refused to look up at the looks of ridicule the other students were probably shooting him with right about this point.
Kent thought he was being helpful “Hard to imagine Price fathered something so fine!” he’d punch Dennis’ shoulder and wait for a retort of some kind. He wasn’t helpful tho - he was Kent. And sometimes you just wanted him to be - what? - Ken Lite? Whatever you called it, not everything could be boiled down to the size of her assets. He did have a skill point in persistence though “Oh come on, haven’t saw you this debilitated since you tried to pick up your neighbor with that ‘No speak English’ story” and then he’d wait for some teeth to show, because he knew Dennis well. No such luck today.
“What was her name? Amanda? Tori? Kri...”
“It was Rachel, as you well know, and she’s sitting three rows in front of you. I’m talking, alright! Will you shut up already?” he understood what Kent was trying to do, but some reflexes you were born with. Not like staying quiet was one of his fortes anyway.
“So the only way to make you talk is to embarrass the shit out of you?” Kent chirped “That’s useful to know actually! Wonder why Lil’ Miss Price has the opposite effect on you” even if he didn’t tone it like a question exactly, he still expected an answer. The silence threatened to be long, and Dennis got pulled in yet another mouthful “There’s something strange about her”.
“Seems to me like someone likes her!” and there was that itching need for Kent Lite again, but Dennis was all out of resistance today, so he simply nodded agreement “Must be it” and just as Kent went for…
Dennis felt his head jerk, heard what must’ve been the bus horn and saw the window coming closer to his face. He felt the fall in his right even before it came. The side of his head shook hands with the window and after a flash of black fireflies across his field of vision, the whole bus flipped to the side, and he could feel water coming closer. As they fell he thought he could hear something like screams. Most people flew from their side of the bus and into his, and he could hear crackling noises as they made the window’s acquaintance too. And then as the fall intensified, time seemed to shrink in meaning as everyone lifted off the side, just slightly before being slammed wholly along with the bus again. He could swear there was something sticky on his face, but he couldn’t feel it. The crash came with a silence. Everything went dark.
After what seemed like a good nap, he finally twitched back into consciousness and scratched his nose. The motion seemed blurred and slowed somehow. Where was the pain that was cutting his side? Where was...where was everyone? His head moved left and right, sluggishly. Everything was so slow… and why was the light so dim? What was..? As he tried to speak, he finally grasped the water he was immersed in.
The crash! How long had it been? Where was Kent? He couldn’t see his body in one of the many floating ar….FLOATING! Goddamit! It was one of those dreams again. It had to be.
He got up fairly easily. It almost felt like he was unhurt. As he walked - strangely enough - out of the bus, he tried to will himself awake. The few fish that had gathered to nibble on the corpses skittered away from the one that forgot to stop moving. For a moment he thought he could see Price and his daughter in the distance, but the next moment they vanished in a swirl of a great tail. Great, even in his nightmares they haunted him!
Every step felt like a brick, until he tried pushing off the bottom. The initial force slowly guided him towards the surface. Accompanied by occasional swings, he would surely reach the glassy surface in front of him. When he finally breached the line, his first breath felt...wrong. And the water that inhabited his bowels up to that moment...it simply climbed up his tubes, slowly pouring out of him. He paddled towards the shore, where he saw a ruckus. A few more paddles and he could recognize some of them. There was Kent, and there were the Prices. He couldn’t see Rachel anywhere. Had he passed her floating body on the way up? Everything in his head seemed so fuzzy now.
He should’ve woken up by this point.
