Stashed in a Jar by Rex Hurst

Author:Rex Hurst [Hurst, Rex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rex Hurst
Published: 2024-08-26T00:00:00+00:00

II – 1955

Beaver Boy rolled about the white padded room, spitting up foam, arms restrained by a straitjacket. This fit was a yearly occurrence, causing much speculation among the staff at the state asylum.

Normally, Beaver Boy just sat in a chair, staring into space. But once a year like clockwork, he would become uncontrollably agitated and flip out, attacking and biting everyone in sight as he screamed gibberish.

“Down by the crick. Old stones bury the bodies. Steal the soul. Fly into space on scale plated wings. Maastrichtian rises. U-Sathane rests by the bones.”

After he bit a chunk out of a nurse’s cheek, the staff had learned to react quickly when the fit hit Beaver Boy. It was now routine to fling him into a padded room and wait a few hours for the storm to pass.

What none of them could see, and Beaver Boy only vaguely sensed, was Aiden standing in the corner of the padded cell. He stared at his old friend through rarely blinking eyes, a bloodless smile curled on his lips. Every twitch, every speck of foam, every groan of despair was ingested.

Aiden’s physical wounds had long scarred over, but the emotional ones still festered. Once he could walk again, Aiden had stolen away a piece of Beaver Boy’s mind. He bound it in a walnut shell and had it bronzed, keeping it on a chain around his neck. Whenever Aiden held the bronze nut close to Beaver Boy, his former friend became unglued.

Aiden had taken this pilgrimage to the insane asylum for the last eight years. He never got tired of seeing his betrayer suffer. Beaver Boy was the Judas figure in Aiden’s saga and the young mage found he had difficulty showing benevolence.

He was never quite sure what Beaver Boy was trying to do while grasping for the nut. Was he trying to reassemble his shattered mind like an ethereal Humpty Dumpty? Or was the captured consciousness somehow informing Beaver Boy about all the fantastic travels Aiden had embarked on? Or was it just an animalistic thrashing, chaos personified? It fascinated Aiden.

Are we done here?

“Not yet.”

He no longer needed to be asleep to talk with Maas. His friend’s words would pop into Aiden’s frontal lobes and he could think his responses right back. But the boy hadn’t gotten quite into the habit yet and often spoke out loud, making him look like a madman gibbering non sequiturs.

His journeys had been considerable. Physically he had never gone further than forty miles from the bed of his birth, but his spirit often spun beyond the bonds of the planet and across secret worlds of man and myth. He had seen many wonderful lands, taken on much of the arcane traditions. Aiden’s personal story had taken on a mythic quality. One that seemed to be unique to himself.

Not unique. Just very rare. Maas told him over and over again, but Aiden hadn’t encountered anything similar.

Aiden climbed into the back of a pink Ford Fairlane. The driver, unnaturally asleep, now woke up and found his head filled with a compulsion to drive to South Wales.

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