|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2016 4:20 pm
|
|
|
|
He woke up, half sure that it had just been a dream. He sat up and rubbed his eyes and realized it felt strange; so very strange.
He pulled his hand back and looked at it, it lacked, well, texture for lack of a better word, for a moment it was plastic. Skin, fingers, nails – all plastic.
“Oh…god.” He said feeling numb in a way that had nothing to do with the plastic that had shifted back to flesh.
Maybe, maybe he should talk to someone about this.
“Idiot…” he swore as he changed clothes and swore again remembering his phone was missing, thanks to a certain thief.
“Idiot… what happened to never make deals with Other Creatures? “
He headed out the door seeking friendly faces.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2016 8:20 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2016 9:12 pm
|
|
|
|
He followed her, nervous, tired, scared, stumbling to take a seat on the benches. He sat there for an age perhaps, staring at his hands like he might find an answer there but none was forthcoming no answer beyond what he already knew.
So He told her, he told her from the start, hesitantly at first but with at least marginally more ease as the story progressed, why he’d felt down, lost, going to other Ashdown, feeling followed, going back and meeting them, it, the ‘us’ that was whispering in the back of his mind. He told her how they had promised that he would simply be more himself, but it didn’t feel that way right now.
Right now it felt like he was slowly drowning perhaps in a loss of self.
How he’d woken up back in Ashdown regular, and found himself changed, or changing. He watched her then, anxious, he knew he shouldn’t have done what he did, but…
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2016 12:40 pm
|
|
|
|
Temperance listened in silence, her face growing wan. She could understand his thoughts, his feelings, and his desire to bother escape in a way, to be better. She was mad at him, though, for trusting the faceless, and madder still at them. The faceless had taken advantage of his vulnerable feelings to manipulate him into choosing something.
"What do you want, Zac? If you... if this continues, you won't be you anymore." He'd be a faceless, which she was sure they had argued there was nothing better than a hive mind. "You'll be one of them, but that's not Zac." If Zac said yes, he wanted this... well, Temperance wished she could say she'd let him decide.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2016 10:30 pm
|
|
|
|
“That’s just it… I’m not.” he exclaimed. “I’m not that good, I was willing to – to become what I guess ‘Fetch-Jer’ called being a martyr. Maybe he was right. But it would have been better, she said she wanted to go home, I think she should have.
“And… and I mean you didn’t make it back in time, and you got the little skull, and you saw something awful imprisoned. But I didn’t even do that. I was so late, I failed so…damned much that I don’t even know who did it. We broke the cage, and that’s three times I didn’t push hard enough. I didn’t think we should do the elevator and Michael, and maybe he wouldn’t have died. I wanted us all to offer blood, but I didn’t start cutting… and now, now I don’t even…. I don’t even know what happened. I have a rock stuck in my hand, I know the name of another missing kid, and I still failed her. I don’t know what else to do with myself. They offered me purpose., meaning… I don’t … I don’t HAVE that anymore. I don’t even know where to find it.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2016 11:14 am
|
|
|
|
"Don't become a martyr, Zac. Do you know what martyrs do? They die and you can't help anyone if you're dead. You are good because you've kept trying." She rubbed his arm slowly, comfortingly.
"The ball..." she carried her own weight from then, too, and that made it harder to explain away his. "Blackfriar's, Heliodora - some things are out of your control. You fought against the... the mob mentality, but it doesn't change so easily. It's not your fault." And, like he had before, she drew him into a hug.
"So become better, not this, not throwing away who you are. Find magic, keep your books close because you are so, so smart, Zac. I know you're lost, but please don't take their purpose as your own. They... they can be so cruel."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2016 4:31 pm
|
|
|
|
“Michael, Adoelle, Heliodora.” He said, their names like a mantra, a prayer. “It’s what they ended up, it’s what they – they were expected to be. I’d have been a martyr if it had given them another chance.”
“I just – I just wanted people to stop and think about it.” He shook his head. “Michael, he was an accident that no one wants to admit to being part of. Adoelle, a vote of all things, and… “ He waved his hands. “I don’t even know for Heliodora. Just, she was here, and then she was gone. I just, I want to believe if it had been a face that people knew better that maybe they wouldn’t have just …”
he sighed.
“…I can hear them in my head, and I still don’t know. I feel like they meant well, I do. But…”
His shoulders sagged. “I think I’m just too much a coward, even for the ‘easy’ options.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|