Wyte Noize

[Follow on from some ideas around SI:7 communicator relays. A beginning of a story...]


The noise again. Whining, buzzing, like a bothersome mosquito. He swatted around his head. But there was nothing there. There never was. So, blinking sadly, Fizzlewidget brushed the floor in silence. He twitched involuntarily and a small cloud of dust danced the few feet to his scabrous nose. He sneezed and fell over.

Grufftoof looked up bleary eyed from his desk. Peeling a sheet of vellum from his cheek and wiping the drool from his chin. “Kant yu see dat I iz finkin an ting? Shuttup will ya?”

Fizzlewidget looked up and blinked. He mutely tapped the side of his head, the hollow metal sound of the plate there ringing across the floor.

“Yez, yez. I be tinkin” the troll gestured back, tapping his own head “... tinkin...” and promptly fell back into his drug-induced slumber.

The leper-gnome would have signed, if he could. Instead he made strange whistling sound and got up to his feet. Dejectedly he continued his cleaning, staring intently at the floor. And the buzzing continued.

The leper gnome ran head down. He ran for as fast as his little legs could carry him. The cobbled floor of the passageway blurred beneath his feet (well, at least to his own view). He screwed his eyes up tight, ready.

DUNK

With a dull thud he hit the wall (at speeds close to several feet per minute) and collapsed rigid as a corpse. His left eye twitched and blinked. An occasional spark arched from the bolt in his neck and flickered towards a rusty nail discarded on the stone floor.

Silence. Blissful, blissful silence.

BBZZZPP BZZPPBB

Fizzlewidget frowned. And the buzzing got once again louder.

I absolutely love the idea of the story being conveyed through the radio or whatever. Love love love it!

An odd annoying static suddenly rings out, followed by a broken communication..

*static* ...Chief.. looks like w- *loud static* ..upping the frequen- *static*

Fizzlewidget was just reaching for a jar perched on the furtherst shelf when the signal changed. He gaped silently, mouthing like a fish longing for water. His eyes rolled back in their sockets and he dribbled, smiling.

The jar shattered loudly on the stones below, its contents oozing unpleasantly between the cracks of masonry. There was a loud curse and a string of expletives from somewhere in the gloom of the laboratory, followed by a seething bolt of darkness. It struck the still smiling gnome square in the chest.

His gormless grin forming around silent words, Fizzlewidget flopped to the floor and began picking the shards of glass from the floor, oblivious to his smouldering fingertips. And the crackling hole in his chest.

The buzzing continued, it's former strangeness now a pleasant distraction to the banality and pain of existence. Someone, something was talking to him. To him. Someone, somewhere was watching out for him.

The Chef wanted to make him free!

Things don't always escape him. Some would say, cruelly, his mind was less the razorsharp scalpel, more the rusty butcher's cleaver. But no, things didn't always escape him. Sometimes he saw things you couldn't possibly notice.

This wasn't one of those times.

Grufftoof was still cursing the stupid little gnome as he entered the shifting wormhole. He'd had to leave the lab, the acrid smoke billowing from the spilled contents of the broken jar was a little much even for his iron lungs. The gnome was clumsy at the best of times. But recently? Maybe the wiring was coming lose or something...

Da Dok winked and smiled slyly to the troll who appeared before him. Adjusting his apron and pulling his gore-stained labcoat tight around his shoulders he pulled his trusty cleaver from his belt. It was cold this far North, the snow crunching underfoot.

"So den... whut iz it yuz wuntid me ta fix diz tyme?"

A handful of snowflakes floated strangely in the air, and the chill north wind howled briefly. Muffled voices faraway. Then, with a crackle of twisted energy and a strange pop he was gone.

Fizzlewidget looked up, still smiling his lopsided smile. He carried the remnants of the jar to the bin in the corner and deposited the pieces carefully. Whatever it was that lived in there snapped and gurgled at his fingers, so he beat it down with the broom handle. With the mess cleared and all alone (though, he felt, no longer truly lonely) the lepergnome carefully pushed a butcher’s block (or as people seemed to prefer to call it, an operating table) against the wall. He climbed clumsily onto the pitted and scarred wood and stood on his tiptoes. Cleaning the dirt and grime from the sealed crystal glass frame he could just about peer into the dark sky beyond.

BZZZBBBT BZZZZBBBBB

Somewhere, someone out there was watching him. Watching over him.