Chapter 3: Chapter 3: Neighbors

Norman didn’t want to ruin the buzz he had going but leaving this nasty substance on his foot any longer would just cause him endless anxiety. He reached over and tried picking at it with his fingernails but the substance was harder than the flaking black fingernail polish he still wore.

He cursed under his breath and looked around for something to remove the gunk from his foot. He spotted a butter knife on one of the plates cluttering the table. He picked it up, finding it still had some peanut butter on it from the sandwich he made the night before. Norman shrugged and licked it off. It was a bit stale but he had eaten worse.

Now with a clean tool, he got to scrapping the blue substance off on the very same plate the knife had come from. He didn’t want this blue shit getting into the rug, even though the rug was stained from years of burns, dropped food, and spilled alcohol already. It was the principal of the matter.

It took Norman twenty minutes to scrape the substance off, it had hardened into a concrete-like consistency. It also left a large red spot on his foot after he finally got it all off, making it look like he was some weirdo with a foot hickey fetish.

With that onerous deed complete, Norman slouched back into the couch.

There is a bang at the front door followed by an indignant squeak. “Ouch.”

“A little help?” the indignant voice called from outside.

“I don’t recall asking for guests. Besides, you’re a strong independent woman, you got this,” Norman called back.

“Ass,” the young female voice yelled back as the door squeaked open another inch before she bounced off it again.

Norman chuckled at his friend's sister's attempt to get in. It took her three more tries before she got the door open enough to squeeze her skinny frame through. It was good she was flat as a frying pan or that small gap would have never been enough for her to squeeze through.

Anna was the nerdy type, with thick glasses and freckles. She was the farthest from Norman’s type of woman even before the fact that she was too young for him. Norman preferred a slightly older woman, one with a bit of experience. Even Charise had been a bit younger than his normal tastes but he could bend his own rules for a body like hers.

Norman sighed as Anna made her way over to the couch and sat uncomfortably close to him.

“I heard you come home, I thought you’d be at Charise’s tonight?”

Norman didn’t miss the undisguised joy in Anna’s voice that he was home instead of spending it at Charise’s place. And how did she even know Charise had called him? Norman knew Anna had a crush on him since he was fourteen. But it was just weird and Norman tried to ignore it.

“Did you come over just to tease me, Anna?”

“No…I was bored, and I saw you were home so figured you could use some company.”

“Uh, huh. More like you wanted to get high?”

Anna ignored his question. “Ooh, what’s that,” she asked, pointing at the small pile of blue powder on the plate.

“Wait, stop!” Norman yelled, grabbing her arm before she dipped her finger into the dried blood he had scrapped from his foot.

“I was just gonna sample a bit,” she said indignantly.

“It’s not some new drug, that’s elf blood I scrapped off my foot.”

“Ew, gross,” she pulled back from the plate. “Why would you have that on a plate in your living room?”

“Why would you think it’s a good idea to sample random drugs before asking?” Norman fired back.

She huffed and crossed her arms. “I didn’t think you would have anything too dangerous, you’re always just smoking weed.”

Before the argument could devolve anymore, the door was shoved open and a tattooed man with spikey blonde hair waltzed in and tossed something at Norman.

The bundle hit Norman on the chest before his drug-addled reflexes could react.

“Ow, what the hell, Toby.”

“Oh my bad, I can take it back if you didn’t want it,” Toby replied with a cocky smile, holding out his hand.

Norman quickly grabbed the roll of cash from his lap and stuffed it in his pocket.

“How’d we do?”

Toby shrugged, “coulda been better, coulda been worse. Move over beanpole,” Toby roughly pushed his sister aside and sat next to Norman on the couch. He quirked an eyebrow at the plate.

Norman shook his head and Toby just shrugged, grabbing the bong and packing some more into the bowl without asking.

“You know you could just count it to see,” Toby replied after exhaling a large puff of smoke.

“I trust ya, plus it’s rude to count money in front of people.”

Toby snorted. “I guess. I woulda waited until the end of the week to drop off your share but I heard about what happened at your work. That sucks man.”

That probably explained how Anna knew about his and Charise’s falling out. Toby always seemed to know what was going on around town. Norman wasn’t even surprised that his friend knew what happened at his work. It would have been stranger if he didn’t.

“Thanks. You hear about my run it with the elves?”

“Yeah, heard big boss Harry is trying to woo them for some of their magic knowledge. What a joke.”

You are reading story Norman the Necromancer at novel35.com

“Wait, you met some elves?” Anna asked. “Are they as hot as in the books?”

Toby snorted, “not those elves, beanpole, the Jorik.”

“Ugh, why would you call those blue-skinned assholes elves?”

“Everyone does… just not where they can hear you though. Apparently, it pisses them off something fierce after they learned about what it meant from human books.”

“Can we not talk about this? I just wanna relax after the shitty day I had.”

Toby shrugged and handed him the bong.

“Hey,” Anna complained, “why didn’t you pass it to me?”

“You’re too young, this shit will rot your brain,” Toby slapped his sister's grabby hands away.

“Jerk, if it’s fine for you, it's fine for me.”

Norman ignored the two’s antics as he took another hit.

At least he still had the side business of making the anti-necrotizing potions. Something he had randomly stumbled upon during his tests to raise the dead. They weren’t exactly healing potions but they kept wounds from being infected and slightly increased the speed of healing. They were important for the idiots that went out exploring this new world and got wounded by the hostile wildlife, dangerous plants, or more likely when they ran across the Jorik that bordered the eastern side of Colorado.

Norman doubted anyone would be happy to learn what exactly was in the concoctions and he certainly wasn’t going to tell anyone, especially Toby. That would be as good as telling the whole city since Toby knew almost everything that went on in the city, and he tended to not understand the term private or secret. It was bad enough Norman was known around town as a necromancer, he didn’t need to be labeled a pervert or sicko as well.

It wasn’t his fault it had made the concoction work. He had only done it to get back at some douchebag physical classer that was harassing him in the early months after the apocalypse. But it became a good seller since there really was no other alternative unless a healer went with you.

Anna was the first to leave when it was clear she wasn’t getting Norman’s undivided attention. Toby left an hour after that, having helped Norman smoke the remaining bag. He also grabbed the last of the potions Norman had made and shoved them into his electric van.

That left Norman alone to ponder his life choices. He really hated this introspective part of being high. So instead of dwelling on his thoughts, he got up and headed out the back door to the detached, barely standing garage. A thought struck him while high and he wanted to test out the theory but he needed something before he could. He was hoping the garage had something he could use.

Norman was forced to crawl under the partially open garage door as the side door was jammed shut due to something falling in front of it. Norman removed the obstruction which turned out to be a rake and shovel that had fallen over and wedged themselves between the door and a table covered with junk.

It wasn’t often that Norman came out here. He didn’t own a car and he hadn’t bothered keeping up with the yard work since the world went to shit. Thankfully the city ordinance people either changed careers or had better things to do as they hadn’t hassled him about the unkempt yard. He quite liked the wild look of his backyard.

Norman walked over to the light and pulled the string. The bulb came on for a moment before there was a popping sound and it went dim again.

“Dammit, what else can go wrong today?”

It took another twenty minutes before Norman found a replacement bulb and managed to replace the burned-out one in the dim light. The light blinded him as it came on and he nearly fell off the overturned bucket he was using as a step ladder.

Now that he could see, he blinked away the afterimage and looked around the cluttered garage. The tables along the side were filled with empty bottles that he used for his potions.

He certainly wasn’t in the mood to mix up a new batch today, he was after something else. And soon he found it.

Norman had been forced to use traps to catch or kill rodents and the occasional raccoon as they seemed to really like his garage. The live cages for the raccoons were empty but one of the traps had caught a rat.

Norman winced when he found that. The mouse traps weren’t strong enough to kill rats but this unlucky specimen had found itself caught by the back leg. Norman could see it had tried to gnaw itself free by the amount of dried blood near where it died.

Norman gagged and nearly vomited as the smell of the rotting animal reached his nose. Gagging and coughing, Norman picked up the dead rat and placed it on the table before he backed away. He scanned the room and found a dirty rag. He sighed and shook the dust off the rag and tried to tie it around his face but it was so rotten it fell apart.

He stared at the torn cloth and groaned. He decided to just hold his breath as best he could since he didn’t want to go back into the house to get something.

The next item he set on the table was the empty baggie of weed that was now filled with the blue dust. In his drug-fueled mind, Norman had a bit of an epiphany. The Jorik were beings that were good at magic. What made them so good? Certainly, humans could work magic and some had been present when the blue jerks had cast spells, yet they weren’t able to reproduce those same spells.

What made the Jorik special? Norman thought that was obvious when he caught the sparkle in the bloody dust. But he needed to test it out.

The problem was that Norman could only work with corpses. Norman had tried to switch to a different magical class or even a physical one but even if he knew exactly what the other person was doing, he couldn’t recreate the results and he even suffered for it. Whatever shitty magic system this world had, it didn’t like people changing after they decided on a course.

If it hadn’t been for Norman’s random discovery of the potion, he would have given up a long time ago like so many others. Norman didn’t know much about chemistry but he was pretty certain the ingredients he used to make the potion didn’t assist with healing normally, which left magic as the only explanation. That was proof that he could do magic and just enough motivation to keep him going.

Norman dipped his fingernail into the powder and pulled it out. Then he paused. He didn’t exactly know what to do. With his other hand, he pulled out his notebook and set it on the table, flipping through it until he found a page he thought might work.

Most of his knowledge of raising the dead had come from books, TV, or manga. The page he had opened showed a printed screenshot of strange symbols drawn in a circle of blood across the torso. He had tried this ritual out before with normal human blood but it hadn’t worked. Holding back his disgust, Norman flicked out his tiny pocket knife and began carving the design into the rat's belly.

He tried his best to hold his breath but he still gagged at the smell as he cut the rat open. Out of reflex, Norman covered his mouth with his free hand. That… that, was a mistake.

Norman had forgotten he still had the tiny bit of blue powder on the underside of his fingernail. Said blue powder landed in his mouth as he covered it.

Norman realized this mistake as a wave of disorientation hit him a moment before his vision pinched to a tiny point – like he was standing at the bottom of a deep well – before his muscles seized up and he toppled over sideways like a falling tree. Before Norman lost consciousness he realized he probably shouldn’t have done this stoned.