The Awaened -

This is a story that was listed originally under science fiction. However it is set in the present day and might more accurately have links to (mild) horror and mind control. I have six completed chapters that I'll add over the next few days and weeks. I'm always interested in feedback and any comments you might have. There will be some (quite graphic) sex in future parts but it is very limited.

I hope you enjoy the story.

"What do you mean you'll be here 'directly'!? No! Please don't hang up...I... Damn it!"

Kane Daniels looked up to the heavens in sheer exasperation as he threw his phone on to the sofa.

"It's almost as if they don't want the work! I mean it's a simple enough question isn't it? When can you come over and give us a quote to re-plaster the downstairs rooms? And what does he say?"

"I'll be over directly...?" said his smiling wife.

"Yes! But what does that mean? This afternoon? Tomorrow? Next week?"

"Any and all of the above. You should know that by now, love."

Kane lapsed into frustrated silence.

Emma smiled at her irritated husband.

"It was just the same with the electrician. I don't know why you'd expect a plasterer to be any different."

"I know," he sighed, "but it doesn't mean that I'm enjoying the 'directly' Devon experience."

Emma laughed, far more used to the slower pace of life than her exasperated husband. She'd lived in this area of North Devon for most of her life. The exception was her time at university. She went to King's College, London earning a degree in psychiatry and then spent the following six years building her career.

She was a determined, driven, career woman and loving the London life. Thoughts of settling down hadn't even crossed her mind when she walked into a networking event on the South Bank.

That same night, Kane was bored out of his mind, being talked at by a very earnest colleague when they saw one another. His piercing blue eyes and comical expressions managed to convey just how badly he needed saving from the bore of the century... and just how much he wanted her to be the one to do the saving.

She was intrigued, amused and turned on all at the same time. She was transfixed by his eyes and the rest of him was a close second. She swept in, kissed him deeply on the lips, excused themselves from the bore and the two of them had hardly been separated since.

"Earth to Emma..?"

"Hmmm??"

"Penny for your thoughts?"

"Just remembering the first time you flashed those eyes at me."

His expression softened at the memory and he gathered her lovingly in his arms.

"That was quite a night if I remember right."

"It was quite a weekend...if my memory serves me right."

Her hand stroked lazily over his rear as her breath came a little faster. His eyes widened in excitement and he leaned forward to kiss her every bit as passionately as she'd kissed him all those years ago.

ding-dong

They broke apart like teenagers caught by their parents before realising that they were both nearly forty and were in their own home.

"Bloody doorbell! Who could that be?" grumbled Kane as he headed through their 19th century cottage, ducking under the sitting room door lintel and opening the front door.

"You Mr Daniels are ye?"

"Err, yes, that's me."

"Oi'm Dave...the plasterer..? 'Bout tha' quote you wanted?"

"Oh, yes, the quote, excellent. I wasn't sure when you'd be here."

"Oi tole you oi'd be eer d'rectly."

Emma had to muffle her laughter in the background as Kane ushered Dave into the house to show him what they wanted doing.

They had moved out of their Clapham flat eight years ago. Jason had just turned two and Lauren was a six month sized bump when they'd first seen Furze Cottage. It was a traditional worker's cottage that had been extended to provide four bedrooms, a good sized garden and a gate that opened on to the glorious Exmoor countryside.

They'd spent every penny they had to secure it and had to live very frugally for the next couple of years but it had been worth it. The cottage was painted white with a slate roof and a pale yellow door with a large door knocker. The windows were wooden and made up of multiple small panes that all somehow managed to let a draught in from somewhere.

Their first winter had been a huge learning experience. The pipe from the well that supplied all their water had frozen. They'd nearly run out of heating oil, unaware how quickly their Rayburn (an Aga like cooker) and oil-fired stove in the front room used it up. And it took a very resigned looking plumber to tell them that their cesspit needed emptying. It was all a million miles away from their London lives.

But they loved it. They loved the peace, they loved the access to nature and they loved the open, friendly nature of their neighbours. Not that there were many of those. Furze Hill was a small hamlet with maybe eight houses, most of which were old farm workers' cottages. They were maybe twenty minutes drive from Lynton on the North coast and a similar distance to the local schools, shops and pub.

The cottage was now very much

their

cottage as they'd decorated it and upgraded things like the bathroom and electrics when they could afford it. Jason and Lauren both had their own rooms and they'd finally managed to get fibre broadband which allowed both parents to work from home when they could.

Thursday morning started much like any other school day. Jason was only a few weeks into his first term at secondary school and was tired all the time. It was normally a huge struggle to get him up and out of bed. But today was a football day and as Kane opened the door his son was already pulling on his socks.

"Looking forward to school son?"

"No one looks forward to school, Dad."

"Oh. Well I did. I was kind of hoping that you would too."

"It's alright. I like seeing my friends. Can Phil and Evan come over for a sleepover on Saturday after the match?"

"I'll ask your mother."

"Thanks Dad."

Kane went down the steep staircase into the warm kitchen. Emma was pulling boxes of cereal out of the cupboards, and he caught her by surprise as he wrapped his arms around her.

"Morning gorgeous!"

"Mmmm...good morning to you too! What's got you in such a good mood?"

"Can't a man just appreciate what he's got?" As he spoke his hands made free with her lovely rear end and she slapped at his hands in mock irritation.

"Stop it, Kane. You can't send me off to the hospital like that. I'll be no use to anyone as a volunteer if you do."

"You could always stay home," he said, leaning in for a kiss.

"Eeeeeewwwww! That's gross!"

They turned to see their nine year old daughter looking at them in total disgust.

"You may not think kissing is gross in a year or two Lauren," said Emma, smiling at her daughter.

"A year or two? She's not to kiss anyone but her brother until she's thirty-five!" joked Kane.

With a well-practised eye roll, the young girl hopped on to her stool and began filling her bowl to the brim with Weetos.

"We do have bigger bowls, you know Lauren."

"I know," she replied in a sing-song voice as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. She continued balancing the last few cereal pieces in a huge mound before adding milk very carefully.

Kane shrugged and made a start on his scrambled eggs and toast.

His thoughts began to wander to his latest coding challenge. He'd worked on projects for a major system integrator for five years after university but had quickly realised that he preferred working in smaller business environments. He left the large corporate world and now worked as a team lead for a gaming company. They were working on a new first person gaming engine and he was part of the core group developing it.

The next thing he knew, his wife was whacking him on the shoulder to get his attention.

"Huh? What?"

"I said, are you still OK to drive me and the kids into town this morning?"

"Yes, yes, of course."

"Honestly! And you accuse me of daydreaming."

He shrugged, finished his breakfast and cajoled the children into putting their bowls into the dishwasher and going upstairs to do their teeth.

Twenty minutes later found them navigating through the tiny lanes that led out to the main road. The battle for the radio station had been won by his wife that morning and Abba was blaring from the speakers of their Ford Kuga.

The winner takes it all

The loser's standing small

Beside the victory

That's her destiny

Kane laughed as Emma belted out the words at the top of her voice much to the annoyance of the two children.

The rain was heavy as Kane carefully drove down to the main road. They turned on to the A399 and Kane slowly accelerated up to forty miles an hour. The rain was lashing the windows of the car and the windscreen wipers were only just keeping pace.

"I hope the rain stops in time for your game this afternoon Jason,"

"Me too. It'll be fun doing sliding tackles though."

The two parents looked at each other and at the same time said,

"Extra towels!"

They were laughing when they heard the bellowing horn of a truck and stared in horror at the jack-knifing trailer heading straight for them.

Kane slammed on the brakes, but didn't even have time to shout a warning before the trailer slammed into their Ford. There were screams, the explosion of an airbag and then it all went black.

Kane slowly crawled back to consciousness. He felt like he was floating. Strangely there was no pain. He tried to move his arms and legs and found them feeling oddly light and free.

The sounds of a hospital ward were oddly subdued around him. The beep of monitoring machines, the hum of conversation, the clattering of trolleys, all somehow muffled.

He opened his eyes and screamed.

He was hovering above a body in the ward. He frantically tried to turn and see what was holding him up. But he could only turn very slowly. There was nothing holding him but he felt like he was moving through treacle. He started to hyperventilate as he realised that there were other strangely amorphous things in a sort of stasis over other bodies in the ward as well like some kind of eerie humanoid manatees.

As his breath came faster and faster the machine beside the body he was nearest to began to beep faster until an alarm sounded and a nurse came running into the ward.

Kane shouted. A wordless cry of alarm as the nurse did something on one of the machines and suddenly he was sucked down towards the body. His arms and legs flailed to no avail as he was suddenly rammed into the figure beneath him. His body..?

"Aaaaarrrrrgggghhhhhhh!!!"

The pain was excruciating as his back arched and his body spasmed. The nurse was calling for help as his body struggled to deal with the shock. He continued to hyperventilate until a sudden wash of calm came over him as the pain medication took effect. His body stopped shaking and he blacked out.

He woke once more to that eerie feeling of semi-weightlessness.

He opened his eyes and saw that he was floating above what he assumed was his body which appeared to be in a hospital ward. There were several medical professionals standing around his bed. The curtain was drawn and he was having a hard job hearing them as they presumably discussed his condition.

He started to panic at the strangeness of it all. His breathing became faster as he anxiously looked around. The beep of the machines that he was attached to accelerated. But he was in no hurry to experience the pain that he went through the last time. So despite his shock at this literally disembodied view of the world he tried to calm his breathing and take in what was happening around him.

As a way of focusing he concentrated as hard as he could on trying to hear what was being said by the medical team. Almost instantly noise flooded into his awareness. It was overwhelming as the muted sounds were suddenly turned up to eleventy-stupid.

He reeled back from the odd sensation, his hands automatically going to protect his ears which didn't make the slightest difference. It wasn't coming to his ears as such. He could

feel

the noise and he suddenly realised that he could understand the words.

"...all very well but tell me how a patient who has been comatose for four weeks can suddenly change their breathing patterns, scream like the very dead and then drop back into a coma for no discernible reason!"

"It's probably just an autonomous reaction to..."

"Don't be stupid. Brain dead people don't scream like that. People who show no higher brain function that are in comas don't scream like that. You're the experts. What happened?"

"Clearly he must have woken up. The brain patterns showed massive activity before the pain medication presumably knocked him out again."

"You mean this brain activity?" said a doctor standing over one of the machines beeping in the corner.

"What?"

The assembled doctors crowded around another monitor.

"Is he awake?"

"It's a bloody miracle if he is."

"That's the only thing that this activity can mean...Mr Daniels? Can you hear me? Mr Daniels?"

As the doctor shook his shoulder, Kane realised in horror that he was being sucked back towards his body.

"No, no, no NOOOO!"

The memory of the pain was horrific and as he recoiled he somehow started to slow his movement towards his physical self but they persisted and suddenly he slammed back into his body.

His eyes flew open as he braced himself for the pain but it was more of a dull throb as he spasmed again. His shriek of surprise at returning to his body came out as an odd gurgling noise. His throat was dry and he could feel something in his airway. Hearing returned to normal via his ears as the medical staff gathered around him.

"Mr Daniels! You're OK. Relax, please lean back and relax. You're in hospital and have been for a while. You have tubes in your throat which is why you can't speak. Can you understand me? Can you hear me?"

Kane's slightly panicked expression slowly calmed and he nodded at the woman holding on to his shoulders.

She sighed with relief and slowly released his shoulders.

"We're going to run a few quick tests and then if all is well we'll remove the tubes OK?"

He nodded again.

It took a while before the whispered discussions stopped and the other doctors withdrew. Two nurses started to work around him at the direction of the woman that had spoken to him. She kept up a running commentary, presumably for his benefit.

"I'm Dr Watson - yes, really - Jane Watson. This is Nurse Howell and Sister Kennedy. They've been the main ones that have been looking after you while you've been with us."

She continued to chatter while they efficiently went through various checks. They took their time and he started to calm down in the face of their obvious competence and care. Then Dr Watson, no he couldn't think of her like that, Dr Jane, stood back and nodded to the two nurses.

"OK, Mr Daniels. We're going to remove the tube now. It's not a pleasant feeling but it will be over quite quickly. Please keep your head tilted back and when I say three, breathe out as hard as you can. Ready? One. Two. Three!"

It was a horrible sensation as the tube was half pulled and half vomited up and out of his throat. He coughed and choked for a full minute before his natural body functions kicked back in and he began to breathe more naturally. He was offered some water and he sipped carefully before trying out his vocal chords.

"...family. Where are my family?"

He didn't sound like himself at all. Raspy and breathy. A poor impersonation of Gollum from Lord of the Rings.

The doctor's face clouded over with concern. She looked down, unnecessarily straightening her coat before taking a deep breath. She looked at him with enormous empathy in her eyes.

"I'm so sorry Mr Daniels. We did everything we could to save them but they never regained consciousness. The damage from the accident was too severe."

He looked at her in complete shock, unable to process what he was hearing.

"You can't mean it."

Her eyes welled up as she saw his reaction. She slowly eased herself down onto the mattress beside him and reached for his left hand. Her hands were cold. Her eyes didn't leave his as a tear rolled down her cheek.

"I wish I didn't mean it and that I could give you better news. I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you. I was the attending doctor in the ER that night and if it helps in any way, they didn't suffer. The lorry driver was exhausted and had driven through the night. He lost control when a car pulled out on him and that's what caused the accident. He was devastated. He was taken by the police to..."

Kane's eyes rolled back into his head, wishing that there was physical pain to take away what he was feeling now.

There were other words that may as well have been transmitted via radio waves for all he knew as they didn't reach him. The nurses began to look concerned as he began to shake at the reaction to the news. Surely this was all a horrific dream? Surely he'd wake up in bed with his wife smiling at him in their little cottage. Surely his beautiful children would come bouncing on to their bed and do their best to push him and his wife out from under the warm duvet in their Saturday morning bed fight ritual before going downstairs for pancakes.

Surely.

He reflexively tried to curl up into a foetal ball but his back and leg were in some form of traction. He had to use his arms to block out the sympathetic looks from the nurses as his body was wracked with sobs, barely able to breathe. The shaking became worse and worse until eventually he passed out with the memory of his sons words from that morning,

"It'll be fun doing sliding tackles though..."

He slowly came awake some time later. He stretched slowly, until he realised where he was and an instant lump of emotion formed in his throat.

What he was going through wasn't a dream, however fucked up it was.

Tears began to well again except it felt different. The difference was enough to peak his interest. He was aware of the tears but they weren't running down his face. Except they were. He looked around the dark, muted hospital ward and realised that he was again looking down on his own unconscious body as tears welled from the corner of his/its eyes.

He reeled back in shock and his...form, his psyche, his id (he snorted at that last one)...anyway, whatever this presence was moved back a few inches through the air over his bed. He forced himself not to panic, not to react to the strangeness that he was experiencing, and instead to take this all in, maybe try and make some sort of sense of this eerie otherness.

Slowly the beeping of the machine beside his bed that monitored his heart rate slowed down to more normal levels. He used the beeps to force himself to concentrate, almost like a form of meditation, as he regained control over his panicky reaction.

He managed to turn himself completely around peering (was he still using eyes?) through the darkness of the nightime ward. There were five other beds, all of which were occupied. All of them appeared to have some form of traction equipment or large casts on them from what he could make out.

The colours were strangely muted too. Everything appeared to be the same, just grayer and duller. Everything except for the other amorphous beings hovering above the other patients. They had an inner light. A glow that meant that they shone very gently. They were almost shapeless, with just a hint of a face and the shape of a shoulder. There didn't appear to be limbs as such. Just grey-ish, manatee-like shapes hovering in the air.

He looked down at his own shape and he appeared to be much like his normal human form. He was wearing his normal work from home clothes. The ELO t-shirt and the comfy jeans that he kept having to pull back up over his hips. It took a while to realise that there was a soft glow coming from somewhere. But everywhere he looked it seemed to always be coming from behind him.