#* ✶ ⋆ — for him‚ wanting tastes like blood and silence and ash ┊ ❛ rory ryker ❜

[pres5play]

ORIGINAL CHARACTERS.

[pres5play]

*&     ────     rory   looks   her   over,   eyes   narrowing   trying   to   detect   even   the   faintest   of   amount   of   insincerity   in   the   woman's   words.   you   could   not   be   too   careful   these   days,   *&   after   already   running   miles   from   his   past,   there   is   no   need   to   complicate   things.   ❝   you   can't   be   too   sure   at   times   like   this.   especially,   given   the   hour.   ❞   he   lowers   his   weapon   to   commit   to   his   reluctant   truce,   ❝   kodak   keys,   most   people   call   me   key.   what   brings   you   to   our   little   city   away   from   home  ?*   ❞

❝ Ow! What the fuck was that for? I told you I was human! ❞

♡ ───── open starter for kelly maxwell !

[opheliamblackwood]

Refraction: Chapter 3: Human Error

There was no point to anything it seemed. I woke the next day thinking that it’d all been some fucked up, horrible dream. But, as I sat up I realized that it hadn’t been. Reaching for dad’s hand, I could feel my fingers trembling. His hand is as cold as a winter night. Fuck.

“Fuck!Fuck…fuck! This isn’t real. This isn’t…it can’t…Dad! Dad, wake up!” I screamed shaking him. Dad’s head moved over to the side, but his eyes didn’t open.

I fell back and slumped against the wall, arms resting lazily across my knees, drawn up to my chest. Tears slid down my face, but I couldn’t make a sound. I’ll have to inform the Elders and they’d have to send him above or below, whichever I choose. It’d be more merciful to send him below, to where he’d give himself back to the earth. If he went above….well, there were things, monstrosities that couldn’t be imagined. The Elders always had observers and scouts on board. The observers lived closer to the surface and constantly kept an eye on things above surface using something like a telescope. They told everyone that the lands were barren. Trees were decayed if not ashes and anything that tried to grow, couldn’t. Corpses littered the ground and animals, the ones that survived, were misshapen, broken somehow. The scientists wanted to study them, but they couldn’t run the risk of bringing them below ground and contaminating everything. They’d worked too hard to keep the shreds of humanity safe. There were only a few thousand of Humans left and that was scary to think about. Oftentimes, I think that maybe it’d be better off if the human race died off. Then again, most wouldn’t consider me human. I would never be that again and I don’t know what to consider myself either. I’m an in-between. Not fully mutant, not fully human. I am both and neither all at once. The Elders liked to keep tabs on their Metas and what our powers are so they could study us. It was their belief that we are what the human race needed to survive. Nature had granted us a gift and our only chance at renewing the human race is because of people like me.

Staring at my hands, I watched them tremble. My heart is pounding and the silence is louder than the blood rushing to my ears. I’m trying to breathe, but I can’t. I keep trying to take big gulps of air and force my lungs to work, but my body won’t listen to me. No, instead, spots are dancing in my vision and I feel weightless. I’m swimming in black and there are the faintest sounds in the distance. I’m starting to come to.

Someone is searching for me. I can hear so many voices. I can’t open my eyes, as much as I try to. I see his eyes, twins to my own. He doesn’t speak but I can…feel his voice. It doesn’t make sense, but in a way, it does. I feel what he’s saying more than hear it. I feel overwhelming sadness pouring from him, but not for himself. It’s for me. Somehow, he knows. He knows about Dad, he knows about me. He reached out to gently touch the side of my face as if trying to determine whether or not I’m real or an illusion. But, the moment his fingertips brush the side of my cheek, his face crumples up in pain and he falls to his knees. When I reach for him, he fades. I don’t even know his name.

Bria is shaking me awake.

I’m groggy as I growl out what I say.

“What the fuck..?” I manage, while rubbing the side of my head which is now throbbing.

Tears are pooling in Bria’s eyes. She’s eye-level with me, crouched down.

“Rory….I’m so sorry. “ she says, gently placing her hand on my shoulder.

I struggle to get up, using the wall for support.

“For what?” I ask, finally able to stand.

“You dad…I found him. I called the Elders and they’re sending someone out here.” Bria said, steadying me by holding my elbow and she guides me over to a chair in the corner of the room.

“When you didn’t come to work, I tried calling you. I must have called twenty five times. When you didn’t answer, I took a sick day and decided to come and check on you. I realized that I never knew where you actually lived. But with a lot of sneaking around, I managed to find out via the systems. I booked it over here and the door was locked. So, I may have wiggled a window open and snuck inside. I found you and your dad here…” Bria said while leaning against the wall.

She looked shaken as she looked over to Dad’s corpse. The reality set in and I was stone inside. I couldn’t feel. I wouldn’t feel. Especially not with someone on the way to come get Dad.

“ I got home and I thought he was just out cold, but when I realized he wasn’t breathing…I couldn’t handle it. It was too much. I can’t…I can’t do this.” I said, my voice barely above a whisper as I focused on a spot on the floor.

Bria came over and wrapped her arms around me.

“Oh Rory. I’m here, love. I’m not going anywhere. You will make it through this. It may hurt like Hell, but you will. And you’ve got this amazing girl as your friend so, you know, that helps.” Bria said, winking at me.

I appreciated what she was trying to do and I couldn’t be mad at her for it. She was always there and I’d always been such a shitty friend. Dad had always asked me why I never had Bria over to hang out. I guess, I just expected the whole world-what was left of it, to hate me. I didn’t want to get close to anything other than my Dad, because it’d hurt that much more when it was ripped away from me. I wasn’t ignorant to the fact that being Meta would eventually make my life difficult. It was always just a matter of time.

                                                         ---

I feel the shift of something inside of me. It moves in degrees, fractions. Increments of the dregs of a slowly rising darkness are bleeding through me.  The things I loved are becoming dull and useless. I don’t have much of an appetite these days. The liveliness I used to feel is transforming into a sadness that makes my limbs feel as if they’re made of wood. Sometimes I come home from work and just sleep. No matter how much I sleep, I still wake up tired.  Good old Depression, my friend. For the past week or so since my Dad died, I’ve been dreaming of the man I saw in the lab that day. Only, he speaks to me too. I can never make out what he’s saying because it’s always garbled. But, he seems adamant that I hear what he’s saying. It’s never any use. Sometimes, I walk up to the glass and put my hand on it in my dreams and just as he’s reaching for the glass to rest his hand against it, I wake up. His eyes always widen, like he’s never ready for me to be yanked away from him. Dreams are weird. 

I am listless, a ship that lost its trajectory, crashing into a bottomless pool with no hope of rescue. Perhaps this is what it means; to feel so utterly lost and pointless. I’m like a comma in a sentence. No one really pays attention to it, but it still has a purpose. What’s the point? If no one cares about my existence?

It's different. It's different when your parents or your siblings care versus someone who doesn't have a direct tie to you, no familial obligation to love you. Perhaps this is what my life will become now, an empty bottle. It was once full of something, but now it’s empty. Here I am believing that I’m meant to be one of a small race of people that adapted to the poison of the world so that I could  help save it. But, maybe they were wrong. Maybe I’m wrong.

How can you save the world when you can't save what makes up your world? What sort of promise does that make you feel like you have? None. I still have Bria, but it isn’t the same. I’m an orphan now. Unwanted, unloved, broken and lost.

Get up...

I feel something tugging at the farthest corners of my mind.  What? Was that a man’s voice I heard?  

In my sleep, I’m sinking. I’m always drifting in this pool. The water is black, murky and I can barely see anything but this faint blue glow on the surface. There’s this feeling of peace that I can’t fully explain. I just know what when I’m feeling it, it’s the most comforting feeling in the world and nothing matters. There is no fear, no pain, no feeling other than it. I just want to submerge, stay there forever if it means I can stop feeling all of the things I’ve been feeling when I’m awake. But, something tugs, reaches for me in the water. I’m ready to give up, but it won’t let me. An arm reaches down, starts pulling me to the surface and right when I get to the surface, I wake up. I never see who the arm belongs to, but it’s strong. 

                                                           ---

My head is pounding when I wake up. It’s probably my blood sugar due to the face that I barely eat anymore. I sit up in bed and rub my arms. I’ve got goosebumps. The dreams do that to me now too. Throwing my legs over the side of the bed, I glance around the room. Yep, still the same shitty situation in the same shitty place in the same shitty world. Great. Well, guess I should get something to eat.

Standing up, I think about the taste of coffee with a little bit of cream and sugar and that really gets my appetite going. This is weird. My stomach grumbles and I glance down at my stomach. Rubbing my stomach, I walk over to the fridge. My robe with unicorns on it makes me think of my last birthday, when my dad got it for me. Stupid shit like this usually makes me start tearing up, so I distract myself while staring in horror at the disgusting innards of my fridge. 

“Alright Rory, get your shit together. This fridge isn’t gonna clean itself.” I say to myself as I start pulling questionable containers out of the fridge-spoiled milking being among them. I crinkle my nose as I shove everything into a trash bag and tie it up to put in the corner of the kitchen. I place my robe on the back of one of the kitchen chairs as I get a small container, fill it up with dish liquid and a sponge. I spend the next half hour scrubbing the mess out of the inside of the fridge. Somehow, cleaning always makes me feel better. So, when I finally dry everything in the fridge and put what isn’t spoiled back inside of it, I feel somewhat accomplished. 

Turning the coffee pot on, I start on the few dishes in the sink and clean up the rest of the kitchen. When I’m done, I glance around me and smile to myself. Time to get my reward-beautiful coffee, the ambrosia of the gods. There’s a little light on my phone that keeps blinking red on and off, so I pick it up and unlock it. I’ve got several text messages from Bria. Sighing, I open up my messages and read them one by one. 

“ Hey Ror, just checking in. Feeling any better at all today?”

“ Do you want me to bring you dinner? I know you don’t eat much these days.”

“ Do you want me to come over? I don’t mind. We can have a girls night. I’ll bring pizza.” 

Girl’s night? Are you serious Bria? Do I look like a Girl’s night kind of girl? The next text is what makes my heart leap in my chest.

“ Dude. Some wild shit happened down at the lab today. Apparently, I overheard Singleton talking to another higher up and one of their Meta’s got loose. Apparently, he’s not just any meta, but he’s pretty fucking dangerous. Wild, right? Please be careful. Who knows where this guy could be. Lock your doors.”

That gets a response from me: “ Are you serious?! Did they say anything else about it? Has the Meta been found? I’ll be at work tomorrow.”

A Meta on the loose that is dangerous. Hm. This isn’t gonna go well. Makes me really excited to go to work tomorrow. I wait a few more minutes to see if I get a response and decide to give up. Time to shower and pull my head out of my ass. This sulking shit is only cool for so long. I’ve always been the type that just needs space and time to be moody and sullen before I come out of it. It’s like living in a fog for a bit. Depression sucks ass.