Title: The Bedside Ghost Summary: The bell falls but, instead of waking up in the Land of the Dead, Ernesto de la Cruz finds himself with a broken spine – and an unwanted guest at his bedside who claims he can let him have the sweet release of death, if he gives back what he took from him… Characters: Ernesto de la Cruz, Coco Rivera, Héctor Rivera, Julio Rivera, Imelda Rivera. Rating: T Status: in progress
A/N: I’ll focus on oneshots, I said. No more long fics for a while, I said. Well, fuck me.
***
For a time after that one, deafening toll, there is only silence.
Little by little, sound returns – but it’s different from what he left behind. He remembers music, he remembers his own voice, the last note of a song leaving his voice… and then that toll before all went quiet. Now there is no music: only hushed voices, the rustling of sheets. There are smells, too; flowers, he can smell flowers, but beneath it all there is another smell that frightens him, that of disinfectant.
Where am I? What happened to me?
He tries to open his eyes and he manages, for a few moments, but all he sees is blinding whiteness, and then darkness once more. Again, he drifts.
After a time – how long? All he knows is that there is a bell tolling somewhere, there must be a church nearby – he can tell he’s lying on his back someplace soft. A bed, but not his bed. And worst of all, someone is touching him, moving him around, taking off his clothes and no, stop, what is going on?
He tries to cry out, but he can’t find his voice, and that is terrifying. He tries to move, but he cannot, and that is worse. Finally, with a terrible effort, he opens his eyes. The whiteness is blinding, someone is towering over him and he tries to get away, but his limbs do not respond. His body doesn’t respond. There is a hand holding his wrist, he can see it, but he can’t feel it – he can’t feel a thing.
Why can’t I move?
“Señor de la Cruz? Señor de la Cruz, please, stay calm–”
Ernesto de la Cruz shakes his head and that is all, it’s the only thing he can do. Shake his head, and scream. Because his voice, that he does find again.
His body, however, will never again respond to his will.
I was about to just answer and instead I wrote a thing.
The kid notices the break within thirty second of stepping into his apartment. Of course he does, he’s observant.
That, and maybe giving him a key so that he can let his own damn self in any moment was not the brightest idea Ernesto has ever had. It’s hard to hide anything when someone walks into you trying to splint your right arm on your own sitting on the couch in your living room, and his dishevelled hair is not doing much to hide the crack that runs down almost to the eye socket, either.
“I. Tripped over my alebrijes.”
The worried look turns into an unimpressed one at first – I could come up with a better lie in my sleep, it tells him – and then to anger. Ezequiel reaches for his whiteboard, but Ernesto shakes his head before he can write anything.
“I don’t know who it was. Some guys in the street.”
It isn’t even a lie, that. He really has no idea who those men were; he was walking back home through a few alleys when a gust of wind had torn the hat off his head – stupid, stupid, he should have been holding onto it – and that had been it. He was recognized in seconds, and jumped on before he could try to get away.
The Rivera family may have decided not to press charges, but the court of public opinion still has several bones to pick with him.
This is pretty much an alternate scene from Down to Dust – namely, picking up at the end of this chapter.
In case you’re wondering, @regneriisch is entirely to blame for this.
So yeah, let it be known that I take only half the blame.
***
Ernesto hadn’t realized the boy was there.
All he could hear was the howling of his alebrijes outside the mausoleum, all he could feel the cold dusty stone beneath him, and pain. His head hurt, something not too far away from panic had seized his throat. He kept his eyes screwed shut, curled on his side, praying for the end as much as he dreaded it. Surely the sun would rise any minute now. Any minute now. Any minute–
A sudden grasp on his shoulder, and a yank as though someone was trying and failing to drag him across the floor, caused Ernesto to recoil and look up. In the dim light coming from the candles outside, he could barely make out the face looking down at him. Even with the markings – pale blue and silver, with dashes of purple – it took him a few moments to realize who he was looking at.
Stop talking and start doing: My Fallout Shelter for my Tumblr blog 