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"Wow, all those stitches? Don't it hurt, man?" Holy fuck I ain't never known NOBODY done that to themselves..
Grey looked down at his wrists, which he'd torn the bandages off again. The stitches hadn't fallen out yet, it hadn't been long at all. A mess of them, like silver spiders all marching up and down his arms. He blinked impassively at the silver threads. "Hurt..."
"Looks like it'd hurt like a bitch." I bet they're fake. He ain't such hot shit.
The schoolroom was small and cold, the walls icy blue in his eyes. He was in the remidial class, he could never get information enough from people because they refused to pay attention long enough. Their Images were spattered with random happenings, and it caused Grey to fall behind. Two glowing shapes loomed over him now as he sat in his seat, looking down at the chill silver on his warm red wrist. He despised these other shapes...Human shapes. They made him wear a special kind of contact lense in school because people were so afraid of his eyes, and when tested for vision he was classified as nearly blind. Letters made little sense to him, and numbers less. These humans made a mockery of him...
"How the fuck'd you get so banged up anyway?" Probobly lost a fight. Skinny lil bastard. One of the shapes leaned in and stuck a glowing finger at Grey's wrist, and he bit back a snarl. Picking at the metal, he watched a small trickle of red dribbled down as the stitch came out in his hand. That ought to prove their authenticity..
"I did it." His speech was still terrificly formal at points, living in a hospital affourded little vocabulary improvement. He wanted to be at home now, at home and hiding under his bed where it smelled like fur and dead skin. He wanted the family to come in, their shapes glowing like lamps in his dark room, looking for him but unable to find him. He wanted...
Myaaaaaaaaa!
...He wanted Marie to stop screaming...
"You did? No shit? By accident, huh? With a saw or somethin?" Damn, guess they were real.
Gritting his teeth and growling through them, Grey climbed to his feet, the chair scraping noisly on the floor as it slid back to allow him room. "No," he snarled, slinging his pack over his shoulder and heading for the door, a ball of bloody bandages in his free hand. "I broke a clipboard, and tried to kill myself with the metal peices."
Grey tried to ignore the tiarade of mental Voices clamoring for answers behind him, moving across the campus with a hand on the wall. His school was open air, a private school, because the family that had taken him was wealthy. The girl went here too, but he never saw her. His fingertips slithered against the wall, and something rough rose in his throat. He ignored it though, and concentrated on one Voice, not far off.
Call me short, fuckin motherfuckers? Ain't half as short where it counts. Eh, they ain't worth my time. What the fuck's this fuckin shit, homework? Pfft...fuck this.
A cool blue surface touched his hand- the metal door to the library, and he forced it open as he had seen others Images do. Inside was a room with a few warm shapes, but mostly cool purple. Glowing yellow eimnated from computers nearby. Grey's fingertips followed the rib-like formation of books until he reached a secluded room which smelt of smoke.
"Hey, Daran-man, the fuck you up to anyway?"
Grey blinked and watched himself in the other's vision. Smoke curled, a small glow, the other was smoking. He himself looked disheveled, the old and tattered brown wool sweater clinging too tightly to his gaunt frame. Eating...right..he'd forgotten that again. Grey set down his books impassivly on a table, feeling more reassured and stable with the other's vision to follow. "Hello, Keoroot."
"Yer always so fuckin formal," Keoroot stood, barely reaching Grey's hips. Keoroot was a midgit, deformed. People said he was a half-human but no one could prove it. He had only three fingers on each hand, and a network of ring-like scars on his left wrist, matched with a hospital bracelet which had long since lost its ability to retain shape. Keoroot had wrapped it in silver duct tape. "Actin like I'm a psyche fuckin doc or somethin. I ain't, motherfucker, I'm just me. And you know I rule."
Keoroot always made Grey feel better inside. His ego made up for his size, his vulgarity towards the others said what Grey himself failed to. Keoroot had also been to doctors too...and because his experiences were also unpleasent, Grey felt safe confiding his own in the midgit. "It's not my name," he said, sitting down on the floor and folding his legs underneith himself.
"The fuck you say?"
"Daran," Grey answered simply. Keoroot was used to hearing him say only one or two words, if any at all. Grey appriciated it..and Keoroot liked to do most of the talking himself anyway. Their physical abnormalities had made them both outcastes, but also brought them together in a close knit friendship.
Keoroot took the cigerette out of his mouth and Grey watched as the heat from the tip died when the tridactyl midgit ground it into the library floor. "Don't be givin me that bullshit. I know it's yer name, I known it since day one. Can't fool me, I ain't never fuckin wrong."
Grey blinked, and knew it was useless to argue. Marie mewed softly in the back of his mind and he cringed, a shiver passing through his body. Keoroot noticed- he was the only one who ever did.
"They fuck with you in the ER, man? In the loony ward? They fuckin start you on some shit that fucks with your brain or somethin?" The midgit crawled on all fours across the floor and sat at Grey's side, peering into the Demon's face. Grey's eyes were tightly clenched shut.
Shaking his head abruptly, Grey forced himself not to listen to Marie any longer. "Books," He managed to growl out.
"Wanna fuckin read? The fuck's with you man...Word's're fuckin bullshit. Too many and you're out cold like someone pumped you fulla knockout gas or some shit like that."
A flashing image from Keoroot, one Grey had only seen a few times before, filled his head. Keoroot had undergone an operation when he was young because his hands had no fingers, they were flipperlike in their appearance. The doctors had put him under in order to seperate his hands and feet into individual fingers, but he had awoken three times during the entire operation, thrashing and fighting the mask which supplied gas to his lungs.
You almost died three times, Grey caught himself thinking. Opening his eyes and blinking twice, he reaffirmed where he was and repeated the request. "Books, please, Keoroot."
The midgit shook his head and pulled his pack into his lap, spilling the contents. Several thick volumes hit the floor with a thud. Keoroot selected one and handed it to Grey. "I ain't never gonna get you, motherfucker. Many times as you fuckin explain it I still don't get how the fuck it works that you see what I see."
Grey's finger felt expertly along the page edges of the book until he found a folded corner and opened it, lying it on the floor. Sighing, Keoroot leaned over the book as if reading, letting his eyes drift over passages. Grey simply sat, staring ahead into space, the words he could not see with his own eyes racing through his mind. Books were full of the untold and unallowed...Grey loved them.
"Turn," he instructed aloud, and the midgit took one of his three stubby fingers, and turned the page.
Sometimes the ride home was the worst part of it all. Fingers would tear like little parasites over the lips of the seats and claw at the edges of Grey's hair and shirt. Voices- none of which were anything alike, or paying any heed to one another, were all blurring together. When he finally thought he had a grip on one of them, another would crop up in the corner of his mind and leap to the front, demanding attention, shattering anything close to a preception he might have held. The tempurature was always different, and he could never tell where he was next because of it. Today was bad...
Today was bad because they were all gripping and pulling at him, yanking back his long sleeves to see the stitches, pulling at his cloths to see if there were any more cuts or wounds. And there were. There were always scars and cuts. Since Grey never felt anything, injuries went unnoticed for long periods of time, until someone else found them and brought them to his attention. He sighed and did not fight as the edges of his shirt were pulled up, nearly over his head, and two younger students chattered internally and externally about him. He's so thin, where did all these scars come from? Do you think he was in a car accident? Maybe he's a crazy person like I see on TV sometimes...
"HEY! Hey you motherfuckers, get the fuck off him! That's right I'm talkin to you, bitches! OFF!" Angry swearing and a sudden weight on the seat beside him told Grey Keoroot had come bouncing from the front seat in the bus where he was usually held captive for breaking rules to the middle seat with him. The two people didn't leave Grey alone, and in fact began to pull tighter on his cloths. Keoroot's swearing nearly drowned out all mental Voices, but not completely. Grey sunk down in his seat and tried to twist away, but the grip the two others held on his shirt was unyeilding. Keoroot's thick fingers slammed against their arms and closed with the force of a carpenter's vice, but the two people- their voices were high pitched now, Grey knew they were girls, weren't ready to let go.
"Please leave me alone," He choked out. Marie was screeching inside his head now, adding to the mental clutter he couldn't understand. Someone's hand reached from behind and caught up his hair. Intentional or not, he didn't know, and twisted away. But their grip was solid too.
"Dude, do you dye your hair like this? Nobody has really black hair. It's just brown, but dark, ya know? And what's with the silver?" Dude, he a raver or somethin? Man, maybe he's got somethin on him to-
Yanking forward, Grey nearly dragged the person from behind with him. Hands went quickly to the top of his head, protectively over his hair. "I don't have anything!" He yelped, trying to curl up. But the pulling on his shirt was insistant.
"Dude, why do you wear so much black? You a goth or somethin?" All goths're posers. He can't be a poser man, no way-
"Let GO of me!" His voice reached a frantic level as he jolted to his feet, throwing his hands to his sides in fists and glareing at the two orange shapes in front of him. There was a ripping sound and they ducked away, giggling. Grey turned, infuriated, ready to slam against the side of the bus, but Keoroot's body was there, arms spread. Standing on the seat, he almost reached eye level with the Demon.
"Hey, don't pull that fuckin shit, hear me man? Wanna go back to that fuckin nutbox, that's a one way ticket right there, smashin into a fuckin window." C'mon man I know you don't wanna fuckin do this, fuckin horny teenybopper fucks fuckin with you but Jesus man... Grey caught himself in Keoroot's vision, shoulders ridgid and hands shaking, hair tangled from where he had pulled away. His shirt was torn down the front, exposing his scarred stomach. His ribs showed under the corpse-pale flesh, Grey was almost certain he could see his veins running under his skin. Drawing a shaking breath, Grey unclenched his fists and dropped like a dead weight into the plastic seats of the bus, shaped to look like leather, only from everyone's point of view, they were green.
Keoroot sank down next to him, his feet dangling above the floor. The halfblood sighed exhaustedly and shook his head. Grey curled his knees up to his bare chest, the fabric sliding coursely against his skin. Skinny, corpse pale, torn...he was like they were all saying now...
Fuckin freak...all I wanted to know was-
Eww he's so WEIRD! What's up with him?
God, I hope I like...Don't get freak germs.
What's his case anyway?
Is that the kid who was in the loony bin? Fuck...
Mom is gonna tell them to get me another bus when she finds this out!
He was a freak. Inhuman, demon, creation ...freak. No one wanted him, least of all the people who had him. Grey curled his knees tighter and wrapped his arms around them, pulling tightly. Maybe he could curl into himself, curl into himself and vanish in a plume of smoke, like the kind from Keoroot's cigerettes. Up, gone, withough hassles or hospitals or people Screaming...
"Don't start in on that shit, Daran-man." Keoroot placed his small hand and thick fingers into Grey's hair, stubby malformed digits scratching his scalp. Keoroot was one of the few people who knew scratching Grey's head made him feel better. Something raging inside of Grey quelled, and he looked up. His face was flushed red from the effort to hold in tears. He would not cry. He had promised never to cry again. Keoroot's preception was how he knew this. The midgit twisted his mouth into something between a frown and a grimace and closed his other hand around Grey's upper arm. "Don't want no fuckin rumors started bout ya, right? Fuckin freakin out on the bus and cryin and shit." Shit, man, I really care about you, you know that? Scared me half to fuckin death when you were in that place. Thought they might put you on some shit to change you around... Keoroot forced a smile. "Might make me look fuckin bad, right?"
Grey blinked once at the midgit, the thoughts creeping into his mind. Without a word, he released his knees and lowered his feet, sitting stock still as he had before. Keoroot patted his shoulder and pulled away, sitting down again. "Hey, that's more like it, right man?"
"Keoroot," Grey spoke thoughtfully, slowly. His voice was scratchy. "You have a huge ego for someone your size." He glanced sidelong at the midgit.
"What, was that a fuckin joke? Fuck you man. I am the fuckin best motherfucker these motherfuckers ever laid eyes on." Keoroot grinned broadly and swept his feathery hair out of his eyes, throwing his arms back behind his head and leaning. A moment of silence passed between them, and would have continued if Keoroot's chatty nature did not prevent it. "So how'd they treat you there, anyway?"
The lack of swears caught Grey's attention. "What?"
"You know the fuck I mean. The fuckin nut box. They treat you like shit there, or just fuckin okay? I'm fuckin curious," Keoroot's voice had a strange quality to it. Grey didn't understand it until the midgit took a shaking breath. "It's cause...Might have to go to one myself, you know? Fuckin think I got a fuckin mood disorder or some shit like that...And I just wanna know..."
"It's bad," Grey broke Keoroot off, his tone indecieferable. He was only glad he was no longer there. But not happy. He doubted he had ever felt joy in his entire life. "If you're bad, it's bad back."
"And if you're a fuckin sweetie Shirley Temple cuddle fucker?"
Grey shook his head as the bus clanked and lurched forward, a mini-whiplash as it ground to a halt. "I wasn't good."
He could sense Keoroot's anxiety, felt it through his silence and his Voice. The midgit pulled in a breath like he was capturing some sort of animal in his hands and swung his feet onto the seat, giving Grey a gentle kick. "This's your fuckin stop, Daran-man. Get the fuck outta my fuckin way. I gotta get up there with Seņor Shitface before he notices I'm fuckin split from my assigned seat."
Grey nodded and hugged himself as he stood, trying to hide the tear down the front of his shirt and his body. People stared at him as he moved off the bus, their eyes raping him. He shuddered and hunched over, hurrying down the steps, his shoes crunching on gravel and dirt, the world becoming and array of colours and heats. But their eyes did not rip away and he felt sick inside. Keoroot's voice screamed from the bus window as the monstrous contraption screeched and squealed, growling on its way.
"Don't fuck this up man! It's good now, hear? Don't fuckin fuck this up and get kicked in there again!"
Brushing a strand of black hair away from his eyes, Grey moved down the walkway to the warm square that was his house. His free hand clenched the tear in his shirt shut, afraid someone would leap out and force it open to stare at him again. He was tired of their staring.
