FicWad

Hey! Apologies, apologies.. Sometimes, when I have a lot going on, I simply forget all about Ficwad for a while. I should keep a reminder on the keyboard, or something..






I buried my face deeper into something soft. The fabric felt faded and smooth against my cheek and the scent lingering off of it made me think of something homely. There was definitely a masculine sort of edge to it - that musky and minty manly fragnance. Deo spray, aftershave.. the hell did I know.
But it was distant, as if the source of it had long ago left and never touched the fabric again. The thought made me irrationally sad.

I breathed in some more of the intoxicating scent and once again tried to dig my way deeper into the softness of it all. My disoriented brain simply wondered in a sleepy indifferent manner- where am I? The thought passed quickly, but after a minute or two I decided to learn more about this haven of coziness and warmth and tentatively opened one eye.
Darkness.

I tilted my head up and tried again - more darkness. Oh well, the careless half of my brain exclaimed happily and I let my head fall back into the comforting, cloudlike mass of lovely scents.




It could've been only minutes later, but at that, it could've been days as well. I had no track of time, obviously, just as well as I had no sense of location either. The room was dark, dark to the point of pure black, and I was fairly sure I was slipping in and out of sleep.

My dreams had been peaceful and dreamless, also full of black. Intense, lightless black, less like smoke and more like some kind of thick liquid that filled and claimed the space. I didn't mind.

Something creaked every now and then. I wasn't fully sure whether it was a part of my dreams or not, but in the deafening silence it received my undivided attention each time. When I detected a few rays of dim light piercing the blackness I became very sure that it had to be just another dream.
There was no light in the room, I knew that for a fact.

Another creak was followed by flooding light and... footsteps? My dreams were getting a bit more entertaining. I decided that this was good, since I wasn't all horribly exhausted anymore. I still didn't ever want to leave this place, but I was starting to feel less desperate on the matter, and more.. content.
The footsteps didn't come any closer, but a voice spoke out.

"Wake up"
It was Gerard! In my dream! How nice of him to visit.

"Wake the fuck up!" he grunted impatiently.

Silly, I can't just decide to wake up. Why did he come to dream to tell me this? And that hostility, man, that's just braking my heart. I sniffed. If he wanted me to wake up, why didn't he just come find me in the real world, in that black room, and wake me the hell up. Stupid man. Let me dream.

"You need to wake up" he muttered and seconds later something hard hit the back of my head. Did stuff like this hurt in dreams? It did now.

"Mhmkay"

I wasn't sure whether I'd actually just formed an understandable word or not but it had definitely been my best shot.

"I gotta ask you something. It's important. Vital, get it?"

"Mhmm"

"For christ's sake Avery, clear your fucking head and pay attention!"

I cleared my throat, then tried my very best to clear my head too, though I was a bit unsure of what he meant. Did he want me to meditate? Weird. Or just not think about anything? Easier said than done. He did want me to listen to him, atleast. I cleared my throat again and winced as I realized for the first time that it was dry and raspy and in desperate need of water.

"Okay" I finally croaked.

"Is Frank going to turn into something?"

"Mhuh?"

"Is he going to turn into something, something like you? Is he going to change?!" The panic and fury in his tone did not go unnoticed, and I don't think it was meant to, either.

"Nah" Oh, Gerard, I am not a freaking comic book vampire. Please grasp that.

"Are you sure? one hundred percent?"

"Yeah"

The door slammed shut and gushed out all the dim light. I danced and twirled in my blackness, and reminded myself that when I finally did wake up, I'd yell at Gerard for invading my dream. And for being rude.



*



A violent cough rocked my body awake and I gasped for air as if I was breathing for the first time.

My throat ached and burned and after frantically searching around with my hands, I learned that I was in a bed that was not my own, and that there was a nightstand next to me with a glass of water and saltines carelessly tossed onto it.

I almost spilled the water as I threw my arms around feeling my surroundings in the darkness but when I finally got a firm grip on the glass and gulped the lukewarm liquid down like it was the best thing I'd ever tasted, like the most delicious wine or the first sip out of a frosty spring or the first taste of the salty, rusty blood of a-
Blood.
I paused; something strange had to do with that word. I tried to figure out what, but the ties were loose and my brain slow and clogged up.

I pushed the thought to the back of my mind to be thought of later, when I was sure I was as awake as I would get and the thoughts would float freely and smoothly again.


After a moment of thoughtless mindblock, I rose up and started feeling my way around the room. I tried to walk along the wall, gliding my palms on the chipped painted surface and trying not to trip on anything. There was a lot of clutter and a few big pieces of furniture, one of which being a desk with exceptionally sharp edges. I cursed under my breath as I waited for the throbbing in my knee to cool down.

Finally, after what felt like circling around the entire room, I found a doorway. The was no door there, only a staircase leading up, but the lightswitch that I'd been looking for had finally been found. I flicked it, and was blinded for a secibnd by the sudden light, despite how dim and soft it was.

I had no idea where I was. There was a window high up on the wall, but a tiny one with black shutters drawn to block out any daylight. Hence, the 24/7 darkness. Huh - my 'dreams' were starting to make a little more sense now. I had been in complete darkness.

And for how long-? A fresh wave of panic ran through my veins as I tried to grasp a sense of time, had it been hours, or days? As if on cue, my stomach rumbled like the worst of thunderstorms and I walked back to the bed to gnaw on the cardboard-like saltines. Better than nothing at all, I figured.

By the end of the last cracker I had declared the room a basement. The cement floor and the dull painted walls pretty much gave it away just as much as the small rectangular window that was way too high up on the wall. My eyes wandered around the room, and despite my extra slow intake I succeeded in my attempt to find some more clues on my whereabouts.

There was a massive amount of crayons scattered on the desk, colourful wooden ones that hadn't been used as much and lead pencils that had been sharpened and sharpened until there was nothing left but a butt. Smudged ink and paper scrap covered the rest of the surface.

After discovering this, my eyes suddenly took in the wall behind the desk, propably close to hundred pieces of artwork were carelessly taped on it in no particular order. Little pieces of paper with abstract forms torn out of notebooks, and big canvas-like paintings dark and detailed.

A familiar painting came to my mind as I stared at the wall in awe. Ray's apartment! The corridor - the gory painting! It was the same style, the same unplanned splotches of paint brushed onto the canvas with great force and feeling, the same detailed figures that managed to stand out and claim your focus in the middle of the painted chaos. They were Gerard's, I was sure of it!

Slowly I realized that Gerard had no apartment of his own, and hardly a studio, either, in which he created and slept. No, but the thought of Gerard's handprint, of his touch and presense in this unidentified room, was enough to comfort me though I knew that the friendship I shared with him would never be the same again.

I knew I had to let reality dawn on me sooner or later and decided that it was time to let my guard down and face the situation.

I remembered everything now. I was fully awake and as much as I wished that I could go back to the previous blackness and unconsciousness, it was time to take a good hard look at the inevitable. I had bitten Frank. Gerard knows that. I had revealed myself in the most terrible, lethal way.

Gerard had been right - I hadn't been entirely honest with him. But hadn't I tried? How much honesty exactly was required from me? I had already gone the extra mile and told him more than I thought I would be capable of, right? How could he accuse me of not telling the little exception to the rule, to my humanity, when I'd already forced myself to tell him so much?

With Frank on the line, he could, I understood slowly. They both hated me now. They should. I hated me, I thought and without a warning the self-loath and rage came with such force that I found myself in hysterics, my legs ran across the room and my lungs built up a horrifying, raspy scream. I didn't recognize my voice.

"I want out!" I screamed as I scrambled to the stairs and fell in the middle of my hasty climb. I could physically and mentally feel myelf starting to freak out.

"Gerard?! Frank?! Anyone?" I took a deep, trembling breath to control my voice and the sobs and listened closely for a reply. Or any random sound from the other side of the door. Just.. Anything.

"... Gerard?" I pleaded. And waited.

"Gerard!!" I screamed again ignoring the burning in my throat.

I had finally managed to get myself to the top of the stairs and I let my body fall on the last step, leaning on the heavy door.

This was useless. Someone, presumably Gerard, had dragged me here to die. He had seen what I was capable of and he'd saved the human kind like the fucking hero he always wanted to be, I thought bitterly. Most likely he had no intention of ever letting me out, or to check up on me. He was leaving me here to die in this dark, tomb-like room that was already getting on my last nerves, making me act like a lunatic. I'll just let misery have me and wait for starvation, then, and we'll all be a lot happier, I decided and shrank further back.




Urgent footsteps from somewhere beyond woke me up from my black state of mind. All misery evaporated as I heard the sound getting closer, and closer and..

"Avery, seriously, you're gonna wake up Mom and Dad" Gerard's disapproving and nervous whisper penetrated the door.
"...Oh" I couldn't think of anything else to say as I turned my head to unglue my tear-soaked cheek off the door.