4 posts tagged “dribblies”

More dribblies.  I don't know where some of this stuff came from.  I'm a freak.

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    “You wanted to talk to me, Mr. Daniels?” the school’s psychologist was sitting patiently behind his desk, watching the nervous-looking boy who’d taken a seat across from him.
    “I’m not… you know… I just… I’ve been having this dream, and it’s really weirding me out and I thought maybe you’d know what it meant,” he brushed his fingers through the long black hair, tucking it behind his ear.
    “Of course you’re not insane.  I’ll do anything I can to help you out.  Why don’t you tell me about your dream?  We’ll see if we can figure out its meaning.”
    The boy nodded a little and took a deep breath.  “Well, it starts out in the woods.”
    “What woods?”
    “I’m not sure… but from things that happen later on, I think they’re somewhere in England or something, back in medieval times.”
    The psychologist nodded.  “All right, please continue.”
    The dark-haired boy nodded again, taking another deep breath.  “So me and this other guy are running through the woods… and it’s really dark out and I can’t even hear any animals.  We’re running from something, but at this point in time, I’m not sure what.  When the other guy thinks that we’re far enough ahead, he stops running and lets go of my wrist, which he’s been tugging on since we left this castle-thing that we’re running from… I collapse onto my knees because I’m really exhausted, and my whole body is in this immense amount of pain.”  The boy started to look even more nervous.  “When I looked down at myself, I was in a dress… and, I was…”
    “Was what, Mr. Daniels?”
    “I was a girl.  The dress was ripped and I was dirty and exhausted… We started to hear a lot of men in the woods behind us, and dogs.  They were yelling ‘Get them!’ and ‘Don’t let them get away!’ and ‘Take the girl alive, we need her!’. 
    “The guy I was with grabbed my arm again and started pulling me to my feet again, but I pulled back, because I was too spent to run anymore.  He started trying to convince me to come, telling me that I had to keep running.  ‘We cannot let them find you!  We have to keep moving and get you to safety… your brother is waiting to carry you far from here.’
    “The guy was dressed like a blacksmith or something from back then, but he was wearing a sword on his hip.  His hair’d been tied back in a ponytail when we started running, but now it was half-loose and he was as dirty as I was.  He’d snuck into the castle to get me free. 
    “I told him that I couldn’t go on.  I said, ‘I cannot run any farther, and if you carry me, we’ll never reach my brother before the guards catch us.  You must kill me.  If they retrieve me, all is lost.  You must kill me.’  And then he started to argue with me again, saying that he could get me out safe.  But I knew we’d never make it, so I kept begging him to kill me. 
    “He finally relented and said that he would.  He drew his sword and put it against my chest and then stabbed me right through the heart.  Then he said, ‘As I have followed you in life, I shall now follow you in death,’ and he pulled the sword back out of me and stabbed himself right through the gut and collapsed on top of me and died too… then I woke up.”
    The boy seemed relieved to get that off of his chest and slumped back in his seat, grinning a little. 
    The psychologist sat for a long moment and didn’t say anything.  Then, he took a deep breath and leaned forward, putting his pen to his notepad.  “Mr. Daniels, are you possibly wrestling with your sexuality right now?”
    “What!?  No, of course not!”  He said defensively, looking angry.
    “Calm down, Mr. Daniels, I didn’t mean to offend you.  It’s just a standard question we’re supposed to ask if you trade gender roles in your dreams.”
    “I didn’t switch roles on purpose.”
    “I know that, sometimes it’s a subconscious urge that we can only express in our dreams,” the psychologist said reassuringly.  “I’m not accusing you of being homosexual.  I just had to cover the basics.  So, what do you think that this means?”
    “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be here talking to you.  I just want to get them to stop, I really don’t care that much what it means, just so long as it stops.  They’re really disturbing and I can’t get enough sleep, and if I can’t get enough sleep, then I’m going to fail my classes, and I am not here to waste my money.”
    “Well, I don’t know for sure how to stop the dreams.  The best way to stop the dreams is to understand and come to terms with why you’re having them.  However, if you want to try and stop them without understanding them, I recommend watching or reading something you’d like to dream about for a good half-hour before you go to bed, then that will be in your mind right before you fall asleep and you’ll have a better chance of not having the dreams.”
    The boy sighed softly and nodded to him.  “All right, thank you, doctor, I’ll try that.”
    “If you have any more problems or want to talk about this any further, you know how to reach me.  And here,” the psychologist pulled out a sheet of paper and pen.  He jotted down a few things then handed them to the boy.  “This is my cell number and my e-mail address, should you need to get a hold of me when I’m not here.”
    The dark-haired youth blinked, but accepted the paper, pocketing it and nodding to him.  “Thank you, I appreciate that.”
    “Don’t mention it.  Good luck with your classes.”
    “Thank you, doctor.”
    The psychologist watched the student leave his office, then sat back in his seat, watching the door shut behind him.  “Hmm… this might actually be a semester worth staying at this school.”

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((Damnit, if Tem can use his real name in stories, so can I!)

    There was just something about him.  Something about this kid that stumped everyone else.  No, not stumped--scared.  Just looking at him was enough to sent the chills through some people.  So different was he that a lot of people couldn’t stand to look at him.  Indeed, this feeling that surrounded him extended even to electronics.  Talking to him on the phone or on the internet was just as uncomfortable as if he was standing right there in front of you.  And yet… he still tried.
    So alone was he, that despite the overwhelming notion that he didn’t belong here, or among these people, that he still fought to find a place among them that he could call home.  But it was fruitless… even his own parents, whose job it was to care for him and love him could hardly stand to glance at the boy, let alone exchange anything more than required small talk with him. 
    Alone.  Yes, that’s what he was.  Just alone.  Miserably, hopelessly, unchangingly alone.  There was no one on this planet that could be around him and not feel that difference.  That thing that sung out from every pore of his being, announcing to all that were around him that he was not like them.  That he was something different--something to be feared. 
    A knock at the door.
    “Yeah?” he answered softly, seated at his desk, hunched over his physics homework.
    “Steven, it’s time for dinner, are you coming down?”  His mother’s voice resounded, shakily, from the other side of the door. 
    The boy sighed, brushing a few locks of his choppy hair out of his eyes.  “Sure.  I’ll be down as soon as I finish this problem, mo--” he stopped himself.  She’d asked him not to call her that, because it made her uncomfortable.  “Barbara.”  His heart wrenched.  His own mother couldn’t stand to hear the word fall from his lips.  “It should only take a moment.”
    “All right, hurry, though.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    But now Steven’s mind was anywhere but on homework.  It hurt, to hear himself calling the woman that’d birthed him by her name rather than her title.  Every time.  It never got any better, either.  You’d think he’d of gotten used to it, but no.  No one can ever get used to that type of rejection.  It was like he was just an unwelcome houseguest staying for an undetermined amount of time. 
    The pencil in his grip snapped.  He realized as he felt the wood splinter in his clenched fist that he’d been putting an unnecessary amount of pressure on it.  Indeed, now that he realized it, he could feel his face burning with pain and fear and insuppressible confusion about what could be so wrong with him that not even his parents could care about him.
    Tears fell openly, then.  Dripping down onto his open book and homework as silent sobs wracked his body.  The broken pencil was dropped and his face took it’s place in his hands, where he could cry openly without making a mess of his studies.
    He never went down for dinner.  Nobody came back up to ask him.
    Several hours later found Steven sprawled out on his bed, dried tears clinging to his cheeks as he stared up at the ceiling, which seemed dangerous in this dim lighting.  Without any illumination other than what was coming into his window, each little ridge of plaster seemed deeper, more foreboding. 
    The boy wasn’t asleep, merely laying there, staring up at those ridges and half wishing that they’d suddenly sprout to be as big as they seemed and fall down upon him.  To end this.  End the constant pain and loneliness that seemed to grip at his soul and squeeze.
    His mind was gone, someplace else… someplace far away from that lonely room. 
    He could see a man, a smile brimming and proud across his face.  The man was looking down at Steven and in his face, the deserted boy could see every bit of love and acceptance that he’d always craved and had never even come close to finding.
    “Dad…” the boy whispered into the dark.
    Indeed, this man that he saw had the same perfectly bright, blue eyes that he had.  Their hair fell in the same flopping manner around their faces, still shining and beautiful, but laying gently around their features, framing the acne-free structure of their skulls.
    The man looked so happy, so proud. 
    “Why did you leave me here?” he asked the dark ceiling.
    Steven had tried to call the man that his mother had found after the disappearance of his father ‘dad’, but the man had vetoed that as quickly and surely as his mother had gotten rid of him calling her ‘mom’. 
    Fresh tears slid down his cheeks as he tried to think of what it would be like had he been taken with that smiling man that looked at him so lovingly.  Would people have accepted him?  Was the only reason that people disregarded him so easily because they knew that not even his mother could stand to have him look at her?
    Steven shifted over and curled up on his side, those sobs once again shaking his entire lithe frame.
    The shadows of the room seemed to shift, gliding closer to him.  They wrapped around the boy, enveloping him in their cool comforting embrace.  The shadows held him gently as the smallish boy sobbed in the bed. 
    Within their embrace, the brown-haired boy would feel the smallest bit of safety and care, more than he’d felt in his entire life. 
    Without him noticing, his tears soon subsided and the screaming of his pained soul began to calm as he rested on top of his sheets. 
    Somewhere, in the back of his mind, Steven could hear a whispering voice, though he couldn’t quite make out what it was saying.  But the voice sounded so safe, so trustworthy… He let the voice lull him into a half-conscious place as his body was caressed by the shadows that held him safely within their confines. 
    In his half-awake state, he saw the man again, but the man was not looking at him any longer.  Rather, the man was occupied, talking to another man that was standing nearby.  The other man was listening intently to the words of Steven’s father.
    “….Do not deviate from the instructions that I have given you, understand?  These are perfect as is, even the slightest change will ruin the entire plan..” Steven stared at his father, feeling like a child that had woken from a bad dream and come downstairs seeking comfort.
    “Of course, Sir.  I’ll deliver the orders at once,” the other man said, then quickly departed.
    It was then that Steven’s father turned to face him, staring right at the smaller boy.  Unlike his father, who seemed well-built and muscled, Steven was smallish…frail-looking.  He stared back at the other man evenly.
    “Steven, you shouldn’t be here.  How did you get here?”  his father asked, with mock-annoyance.
    “I don’t know,” the boy answered honestly.  “I was just in my bed…”
    A hearty smile broke out on the man’s face and he walked over to stand in front of Steven, going down on one knee in front of his son.  Large hands reached up and rubbed along his son’s arms.
    Steven instinctively threw his arms around the older man, hugging him tightly.  “Don’t make me go back, please,” he begged his father softly.
    Not the least bit phased by the fifteen-year old throwing himself against the older frame, his arms wrapped around his son, gently stroking the hair of the boy.  “Shh, Steven, it’s all right.  You know you can’t stay here, though.”
    The boy’s hands clutched tighter to his father’s black turtleneck.  “Please let me stay, I won’t get in the way, I promise.”
    “You don’t want to stay here.  Look at this place, Steven.  This is no place for you.”
    “Anyplace is better than where I am!  Please, please let me stay.  I can’t go back there… nobody wants me there…”  Since the man had not tried to pry the boy off at all, he kept a tight grip to the man, refusing to let go.
    “Steven…”
    “You want me, don’t you?”  The boy pulled back enough to look at his father’s face, his own was once again tear-stained.
    “Of course I do.”  The man reached up, gently wiping the tears away from his son’s eyes.  “I want to be with you more than anything, but it’s not time yet.  You have to stay with your mother.”
    “She hates me!  She can’t even look at me… won’t let me call her mom… please, it can be time now, can’t it?  I want to stay with you.”
    “Shh.”  The man stood, kissing his son’s forehead.  “It won’t be long now.  You just have to stay there a little while longer, all right?  I will come for you soon, I promise.  Just hold out until then.”
    Steven never consciously let go of his father, but when he opened his eyes, he was back in his own bedroom and the alarm was blaring loudly from the nightstand next to him.  Five thirty. 
    “Just a dream…” he murmured to himself, pushing himself to sit up and slapping the alarm clock off.  “Just a dream.” 
    Sighing, he climbed out of bed and headed into the bathroom to get ready for school.

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(This is one of my favorite things that I've ever written.  It's so old.  And I really like the name Tyler, so this isn't the RP character.)

He’s still asleep.
    I feel like I’ve been living in a haze.  Morning.  Afternoon.  Evening.  They all run together.  They all hurt.  They’re all so… foggy.  It’s so hard to remember sometimes…those days when everything seemed clear and bright.  The days when my eyes shone and I could look at the world and see never-ending goodness.  Tyler was my favorite pair of rose-colored sunglasses.  Tonight, while all the world is dead, I creep into his room.
He’s still asleep.
    The box of his favorite things lays, as always, just inside his closet door, where he’d squirreled it away for days when we fought and he would actually sleep in here. 
    My long fingers lightly touched the dusty lid of the old shoebox, stroking my fingers along it and giving a soft sigh.  “You’re such a packrat, love,” I said into the darkness of the room before I gently removed the lid, laying it aside.
He’s still asleep.
    His favorite CD lay on top.  It wasn’t a store-bought disc, though… just one that he had burned of songs he loved.  Tyler had such a wide variety of tastes in everything, but especially music.  We’d met at a jazz club, moshed at a rock concert, waltzed at a wedding reception…This CD…he could never get enough of.  It has songs from Saliva, Beethoven, Billy Holiday, Deanna Carter, and Eminem… and that was only half the list. 
    Leaning over to the radio on the floor, I popped open the CD player and put it in, turning the volume on low.
He’s still asleep.
    A small purple teddy bear laid to one side of the box.  Across it’s stomach, it read “Cedar Point”.  I’d won it for him.  Well, not really.  I had tried to win him a tiger doll that he’d been looking at… we were spending the day at the amusement park.  He had a weird thing for cats…loved them to no end, especially tigers.  So I had stepped up to be the man; to win the stuffed animal for the man I loved.  Except…. I have terrible aim.  It was one of those silly games where you fire the water into the clown’s mouth to blow up the balloon….  Some little eight year old beat me half a dozen times and the man behind the counter had taken pity on me and given me the little bear.  Tyler had laughed at me, but told me he adored the bear because it was the thought that counted.
He’s still asleep.
    There was a ribbon tucked along the side of the box.  Carefully, I dipped my finger down next to it, pulling it out and holding it up to the meager light from the window.  Second place.  Best Dressed Pet.  2000.  That was when we had Harry.  Harry was a beautiful, loving black kitty.  Born and raised a spoiled lap cat.  A bigger attention whore than I could ever hope to be. 
    Tyler had designed Harry’s costume two months in advance, and did a fantastic job of it.  He’d spent hours sewing together a tiny tuxedo to dress the hairball in, complete with little doll shoes, a top hat, and a cane that we tied onto Harry’s tail.  Tyler even made the mask… Yes, that’s right, the true identity of the Phantom of the Opera is…. Harry, the cat. 
    After all the work he’d put into it, I felt… gypped  for him when he only got second place.  It’d been such a fantastic costume.  We’d even gotten a picture of it enlarged and hung onto our wall… it’s still down in the living room to this day.
He’s still asleep.
    All that time together.  The years upon years upon years that seemed like an eternity back then… how could ten years have raced by so fast?  And, even more baffling, how could the beautiful young man I’d loved so much have preserved the first flower I ever gave him? 
    But there it was.  The daisy I’d picked from someone’s yard and drawn on  with a marker… a letter on each petal, spelling out the world “Lovely”.  Tyler must have come home and pressed it between the pages of a book or something…. The flower was pressed, and then laminated to preserve it.
    A tear slid down off of my cheek, landing against the thin pieces of plastic that surrounded the forever-beautiful flower.
He’s still asleep.
    Setting the flower aside, I picked up a small stack of photos from the corner of the box.  His smiling face stared at me from the top one, right next to mine, giving peace signs at the Jimmy Buffet concert we’d attended together.  The tips of my fingers brushed over the photo, brushing along his mirrored-image’s cheek. 
    The second photograph was the two of us, dancing in the middle of the street during a torrential downpour.  It was his last day of high school and we were celebrating.  High on sugar and his ecstatic sense of freedom from the Hell that had been his high school, we’d blasted “School’s Out For Summer” and run, half-naked and screaming the lyrics, into the middle of the street.  The blissfulness of not caring who saw us or what they thought almost filled me again, as I sat there, staring at us.  Had I ever been that young?  That impetuous?
    I shifted through the rest of the photos until I found one that brought a tear to my eye.  Last Christmas… oh god….
    It hurt so much to see this picture again, as the new Christmas season approaches.
    He was on my shoulders, always having been a little short for his age… I had lifted him, so that he could put the angel atop our tree.  Our friends that had been over had teased me, saying that they were amazed that an old man like me, could even lift him still.  But he’d weighed nothing at all.  By then, the sickness had taken hold and was slowly squeezing the life from him.  You could see it in his eyes….he… he had given up fighting and had accepted his fate.  The fact that he knew it, and could still smile like that… blew my mind.
He’s still asleep.
    The day it’d happened, I’d woken up to a nightmare, unable to recall the haunting visions that’d woken a thirty-three year old man from a sound sleep.  Tyler was in bed next to me, awake and looking pale.  For a moment, when I looked at him, he looked ten years younger, no older than the day I’d met him. 
    His fingers had reached up and brushed over  my cheek, then pulled me down and he kissed my lips.  “Let’s go to the museum,” he’d said to me.  “I want to see ‘Cupid and Psyche’ again.”
    It was his favorite painting.  One of Cupid getting ready to leave Psyche as the sun rose because she was forbidden to ever see her lover.
    Two hours later, we were at the museum, having wandered through the suits of armor and Picasso exhibits until we found the humungous painting we’d come to see.  We’d stood there for several minutes, not speaking to each other as the February sun danced off of the snow on the windowsill and into the large room. 
    His hand tightened in mine suddenly and from the corner of my eye, I saw his whole body tense with pain.  Those golden brown eyes slipped closed and it seemed his muscles all decided to give out.  He crumpled onto the floor in a quietly rasping heap.
    “Call an ambulance!  Someone call an ambulance!” I yelled to the people who stood around gawking at us.
    I fell to my knees beside him, holding him halfway in my lap.  “Hold on, Tyler, please, the ambulance will be here soon.”
    “Silly man,” he whispered shakily, reaching up to touch my cheek.  “Don’t be sad, I’m going to be better now.  And when we see each other again…everything…. Will be… perfect.”  A harsh breath of air left him and I could tell he was really struggling.
    “Shh, you’re okay.  Don’t waste your energy, love.”
    I leaned down when he opened his mouth to say something else, putting my ear close to his mouth.
    “I love you,” he said.  And then, without any warning, the rest of the tenseness left his body, leaving him limp in my arms as tears spilled down my cheeks.
He’s still asleep.
    “I never got to say it back,” I whispered to the pictures, half -angry as I felt the tears running down my face again.  “You bastard… you always had to have the last word, didn’t you?  How could you leave me?  I loved you.  I love you.  Oh god….”
    A cool wind blew through the room, caressing my cheek.  It felt like his tender fingers.
    But no, it couldn’t be…
    He didn’t just touch my cheek….
    And that wasn’t his whisper in my tear, telling me that he knew….
    No… it couldn’t be… he’s….
He’s still asleep.

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    The boy had laid there, unconscious, for hours.  If anyone had ever had the nerve to think that when you were unconscious, pain could not touch you, then I suggest that they come and watch this boy in his fitful brain-dead state. 
    When I’d found him, he was on the verge of death.  In a heap on the side of the road, beaten beyond recognition and half covered in snow, I was certain that it was already too late.  Nevertheless, I’d brought him back with me, to the home I shared with my mother.
    My mother…she is such a wonderful lady.  Anyone else would have been angry at me for bringing home someone I’d never met and laying him to bleed on my clean bed sheets… Not my mother.  She had taken to him as though he was my long-lost brother finally come home, ordering me out of the room to get a basin of hot water and a rag. 
    He hadn’t been moving, then.  His breath was so shallow that I thought his lungs must surely have collapsed, or been punctured by one of his broken ribs.  I think he was just numb.  As he started to thaw, his face would contort in pain and he would thrash a bit against the mattress.
    Mother had me hold him down so that he didn’t hurt himself further.  She cleaned his wounds and removed all his soaked clothing, having me help her after she’d finished cleaning him up to put on one of my own nightshirts to cover him. 
    “If I didn’t know better,” she whispered to me once we had him tucked in, “I’d say he’s seen the gates of Hell and never should have lived to tell about it.”
    “Mother…” I said to her and she patted my arm.
    “Do not worry, Falcone, he will live, and I’m very proud of you for bringing him here so that we could help him.  But he is very hurt--both physically and mentally--and it’s going to take a long time for him to recover.  Are you willing to stay with him through to the end?  If you’re not, we’d do better to drive out to the city in the morning and take him to the hospital.”
    “No, we can’t do that.  I will stay with him, Mother.  I’ll make sure that he gets better.”
    My mother smiled fondly and patted my shoulder.  “Good boy.  Now, I’m going to bed, it’s late.  Put your sleeping bag on the floor in your room and stay there.  And remember not to let him thrash, he could tear something worse than it is.”  She kissed my cheek and headed towards her own room.
    Going to my closet, I pulled out the sleeping bag and laid it out next to the bed.  I laid down in it and stared up at the ceiling of my room. 
    What on earth had that boy been through?  Those cuts…they overlaid scars that had healed and been reopened several times.  His wrists had been slashed horizontally and there were more all up the sides of his arms, as if someone had used him for a carving post.  The boy’s cheek had been gashed open really deeply as well, trailing down from the corner of his eye over to the base of his nose.  These weren’t random cuts… they were made with purpose and were carefully thought out; they were torture wounds.  And that was all besides the bruises that covered 80% of his body. 
    The boy gave a pathetic whimper from his place on the bed and I heard his head jerking from side to side on the pillow.  “No… no… please, don’t…I… I…”
    He trailed off again and gave a small sob in his sleep.  I sat up and looked at him on the bed.  Tears were streaming down his cheeks and every once in a while, he’d give a pathetic whimper and sniffle.
    I reached over to him, gently pushing the blond locks off of his forehead.  “Geezus, kid, what kind of mess did you fall out of?” I mumbled to him.
    “GAH!” He gave out a loud yell, as if someone had just stabbed him again and his whole body jerked painfully to the right.  His head plastered itself against the pillow and he gasped for air as his back arched, trying to pull away from his imaginary attacker. 
    I hurriedly got up, gently grabbing hold of him and pinning him to the bed.  “Shh…. Shh, it’s all right… nobody’s going to hurt you… calm down.”
    “I won’t do it again, I promise… please… never… never again… please stop…”
    “Shh, you’re safe now, kid… it’s all right, they won’t hurt you anymore.”
    “They killed… they killed him.”
    I blinked, my eyes widening as I looked down at him.  He was still asleep.  “Killed who?” I whispered as his body eased back down onto the bed.
    “They killed him… killed… David…”  he gave a small sob.  “…David…”
    He stopped talking again and his dream seemed to drift away from those things. 
    “Holy crap,” I mumbled as I let go of him, sitting up on the edge of the bed.  “This is going to be a long night.”
    Everytime I looked at the kid, more questions sprung into my head.  Where were his parents?  Who was David?  Had the monsters that had done this to him made him watch this David-person’s death as well?
    And then there were the questions I was ashamed to ask myself:  Should I have bothered to save him?  Wouldn’t he be better off if he was dead?
    Crimeny.  Nobody deserved to die, but surely there were people that were better off dead then if they tried to endure life after so much had gone wrong.  Like those people that survived the Holocaust or soldiers that came back after braking open the burning chambers at the concentration camps… Could they ever rejoin society and be happy again?  There were people that wanted them to, sure… but it wasn’t about those people.  It was about those that had seen the terribleness.  There were just some things that the mind could not recover from.  The body would always heal, but the mind… there was really no way to heal a mind that had been filled to more than its capacity for terrible things.  And I couldn’t help but wonder if this boy’s mind had gone past that point.  Could he recover from this?
    I fell asleep on the bed that night, laying against the edge of the bed with the boy about a foot away from me. 
    In the morning, I was woken up by shifting weight from behind me and a hiss of pain.
    “Oh gods,” a hoarse whisper sounded through clenched teeth. 
    I looked over at him.  His eyes were still closed, but he was sitting up, his arm wrapped about his waist, clutching his side.
    I slowly sat up and he tensed. 
    “Who’s there?” his voice sounded just slightly panicked and his face reflected nothing but fear.
    “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you.  Open your eyes, you can see for yourself that you’re in no danger here.”
    Tears welled again in his eyes and they slowly leaked down along his cheeks.  “I can’t…”
    “Can’t what?” I asked, watching him.
    “I can’t see anymore…they…” he stopped and it was obvious he couldn’t say anything else.
    “It’s okay… relax.  Let me see your eyes.”  I slid over close to him and gently touched his cheek.  “Open your eyes and I’ll see if I can help you.”
    He started crying harder, but slowly opened his eyes.  The irises had obviously, at one point, been green, but now they were almost completely white. 
    “Oh my God… how did they do this?”
    “They…they…”  He sobbed again and shut his eyes, jerking away from me and giving a gasp of pain, his hand tightening on his side.
    “Hey, take it easy, you’re going to hurt yourself.  Look, you don’t have to tell me.  Just… lay down and relax and I’ll get you some breakfast.  You’re hungry, right?  You want some eggs and toast?”
    His stomach growled and he bit his lip, blushing with embarassment.  He gave a little nod.  “Yes, please.  Thank you.”
    I gave a little laugh and stood up.  “Don’t worry about.  Just try to relax, all right?  You’ll heal faster that way.  Juice okay with your breakfast?”
    He nodded again and slowly lowered himself back to lay down again.  “Yes, please.”
    “Okay.  My mother will probably be in soon to check on you.  She wrapped all your wounds last night, so don’t give her a hard time, please.  She’s kinda old, anyway.”
    “I’ll be on my best behavior,” he said.
    “Thanks.  Now I’m gonna let you rest.  I’ll be back soon.  If you need anything, call.  My name is Falcone.”
    “All right.  Thank you.”
    I watched him roll onto his side, curling up into a little ball, then I walked out of the room and into the kitchen.  My mother was sitting there with a cup of tea, sipping at it.
    “How is he?” she asked, looking up at me as I got the pan ready.
    “I know that killing is wrong, Mother, but I really want to kill the people that did this to him.”
    “What happened?”
    “He started talking in his sleep last night… saying that they killed someone he knew… someone named David… and then this morning, I found out that they did something to his eyes and now he’s blind.  His irises are all but white, Mother.  I don’t even know what they could have done that with!”
    “Shh, child, he’ll hear you.  What is he doing now?”
    “Resting.  I told him to lay back down while I made him breakfast.”  I sighed as I cracked an egg into the pan.  “I told him you’d be in shortly to check on him.”
    She nodded a little and sipped at her tea.  “Give me his juice, and I’ll take it in with me.”
    I nodded and got the juice and handed the cup to my mother.  “He gets really upset really easily…” I told her.  “Just so that you know, he seems to be really emotional.”
    “Don’t worry, I can handle it.”  She smiled.  “I raised you, after all, didn’t I?”
    I smirked and watched her walk into my room with the juice before I flipped the egg in the pan.

---------------------------------

Whoosh!
    The oversized jacket whipped around the corner behind the boy as he took the steps, two at a time, up towards the top level of the parking garage.  The blue sweater-jacket had been through a lot with its owner, and was still in pretty good shape.  The left pocket was ripped and hung open, the ties for the hood had been torn out, the cuffs of the sleeves were frayed and so was the waist band, which had never hugged the boy’s waist.  It had been in the custody of this boy since he was eight.  Now, at sixteen, it didn’t fit him much better than it had the day he’d gotten it.  The jacket was still huge on him, though now, rather than it hanging to his knees, it only hung to mid-thigh.  The sleeves still overhung his hands by a good three inches.
    The boy’s face was tear-stained and those tears were still falling, dripping from his cheeks as he rounded another corner.  Those normally-bright-blue eyes were red-laced and bloodshot, looking strained and lost.
    A choked sob escaped him as he stumbled on the last five steps.  Giving a small whimper of pain, he pushed himself back to his feet and hurried out onto the roof of the parking deck.  The concrete of the deck’s surface seemed to sparkle in the lights atop the roof, twinkling over shiny rocks and glass that lay scattered atop it.
    Bare feet ran across the pavement, heedless of the rocks and broken glass that lay scattered over the parking spaces.  The smallish feet were throbbing, bruised and bleeding as they repeatedly smacked against the rough terrain.  That boyish figure hardly seemed to notice.
    He reached the ledge of the roof, panting.  As the boy sniffled, he easily jumped up onto the ledge, standing up and surveying the city below.  Slowly, the boy turned his head up towards the sky, those pained blues drifting over the inky blackness.  Shaking a few untidy brown locks from his face, he took a deep breath to calm himself a little.
    Silently flapping wings brought the observer to land on top of the stairwell leading off the roof.  He stared intently at the boy up on the ledge.  That, the man thought, staring at him, …that tiny child is the deciding factor?  He’s not even a man yet, how can anyone think that the battle is coming?  And that HE… he, of all people, is going to be the victor.  I don’t even think he knows…
    What the boy did know, however, was that he looked strange right now.  A lithe teenager, standing on a ledge some seven stories up in nothing but a pair of pajama bottoms and that humungous jacket.  But he didn’t care.  He’d finally had enough and it would all be over in another minute.  The boy knew he’d never survive the fall.
    The observing man watched that slow smile creep over the shadowed face.  Nobody knew what side the boy would choose, but the forces of light seemed sure that it was their side that he’d be choosing.  They claimed that he had their blood in his veins and that alone would make the decision. 
    It was true, of course.  Anyone that went near the boy could feel that presence about him.  Indeed, it’d made his life a living hell.  He had no friends to speak of.  There was something about his aura that sent would-be companions away from him before they’d even opened their mouth in greeting. 
    But, as he stood and watched this boy, the moonlight reflecting off of those tear-shined cheeks, the observer couldn’t help but wonder what made the others believe that he was in the bag.  At this point, he thought that it was anyone’s game. 
    One foot stepped forward, then there was nothing but wind.  The flowing air wrapped around the boy, trying to push him away from the sudden stop at the end of his fall.  The brown-haired boy felt weightless in the air as he plummeted towards the sidewalk.  And everything was calm.  Perfect.  This was what he’d wanted all along.  Why had it taken him so long to realize?
    “Tabris!”
    The boy heard the voice, but he didn’t recognize it.  Besides, he thought, even if I would have known who it was, it’s too late now.  It’s all over… finally.
    The direction of the wind suddenly changed.  It felt as though he was falling sideways rather than down.  His body wasn’t weightless anymore, either.  Rather distinctly, he felt his own weight…in someone’s arms?  The blue-eyed boy was confused; he should have struck the ground by now.
    Those fleshly lids started to open, Tabris saw a sliver of the sky overhead.
    “Do not open your eyes,” a voice whispered to him.  “Just rest,” it told him gently.
    Was he dead?  Had he died and not even realized it?  Was it really that fast?  That painless?  Shouldn’t there be a bright light?
    Even though that voice was not demanding, it had authority to it.  That didn’t mean anything to the boy, though.  What made him obey was the sense of safety he was getting from the other.  It was the best he’d felt in a long, long time. 
    This has to be heaven, what else could feel so utterly peaceful?  I must have died.  I don’t even remember hitting the ground.
    A sigh escaped from the brown-haired boy as he shifted in the arms that supported his weight.  Laying his head on the other’s shoulder, one of his arms snaked up around the observer’s neck, holding onto him.  Within seconds, the boy had fallen asleep.
    The demon looked down at the sleeping teen in his arms and sighed.  Those wide wings pumped a little harder, taking them higher into the air.
    “Perfect,” the demon said softly, “what am I going to do with a depressed angelic halfling?  I’m never going to live this down.  Saving an angel…I must be out of my mind.”
    The black-haired observer started his descention towards his home on the outskirts of the city that was only a few miles outside of the smaller city that Tabris inhabited.
    Ever since the half-angel had been born, there had been rumors circulating about him, and, being the resourceful demon that he was, the observer had found out where the boy was living and had gone to watch.  
    There was great controversy over the boy.  With the angels claiming the boy to be on their side, the demons had no choice but to believe them.  Most of them had never seen the boy, they just knew he was a half-blood, and blood was usually a strong influencer of fates.  With most of the demons buying into the fact that the boy would be a child of light, there was a great uproar among them to get rid of him.  There had been more than one council meeting about whether or not they should just kill the halfling, rather than wait until he actually went to the light.  That idea had always been vetoed by a very small margin, and that was only because they thought the boy would have been incredibly well guarded by the angels.
    “And they’re the proverbial ‘good guys’,” the man muttered as he landed in his front yard.  “Their savior could have died tonight and they would have let him.  At least demons have the decency to look out for one another.”
    He walked to the front porch and up the steps as the black wings started to reform into his back.  With the boy in his arms, he made his way into the house and up the stairs to the guest room.  Kicking the covers back, he gently lay the sleeping boy on the bed.
    That jacket was removed and laid on the chair to the wooden desk.  The demon sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at those bleeding feet.  He gently got the bits of glass out and wiped them off.  He’s probably not going to be able to walk in the morning.
    Standing once more, he tucked the boy in under the covers.  The black-haired man would stand over the boy for a long moment, staring down at the angel.
    This boy…is not the end of anything.  He is the beginning, if he lives that long.
    Tabris’s soft hair was reflecting the moonlight that came into the window and there was a slight moistness to his lips that made them sparkle.  He looked peaceful and innocent laying there on the large bed.  Not to mention small and porcelain.
    “He’s one of the dreaded angels of light, is he?  Destroyer of the dark?”  The demon shook his head, staring down at the boy.  “Poor child.  Fate, you are most cruel.”
    Shaking his head, he left the boy alone, shutting the door behind himself and heading to his own room to go to bed.
    His mind was reeling, trying to figure out how he was going to explain this to the boy when he woke up, what he would do if the angels came for him, or worse--the demons.  Knowing that he wasn’t guarded, the demons would be on him worse than a pack of hellhounds. 
    No.  Definitely not.  This would be his secret.  He couldn’t risk anyone finding out.  The boy was his responsibility now, whether he choose light or dark hardly mattered, but the boy had to survive long enough to decide… then, they could try to kill him, but not until. 

-----------------------------------

    I have a story to tell.  I have to tell everyone about Manipi, he deserves that, at least.  But… I can’t bring myself to say it out loud… that’d be like admitting that it happened, and I don’t think I’m ready to accept what that means.
    I’ve only been back in the States for three days and it feels so wrong.  I was going to stay forever in Africa… with Manipi.  But.. He’d wanted to see this--the place I was trained… the people I called my family.  He wanted to see this house where I stayed between assignments.  My room.  This town.  The woods that surrounded this place.  This place--my dormitory between adventures and assignments.  What had once seemed like paradise after getting home from an exhausting month or so in some random wilderness now seems cold and dead.  It is so empty here, so lonely.  What I wouldn’t give for some more…
    Assignments.  Gods, what am I thinking?  All of this happened because of some routine assignment that had gone so horribly wrong.  How did I screw up something so easy so badly?  It’s not like I’ve never done this before.  Two years after graduating the training facility had been spent accompanying older members of our group on expeditions just like that one, not to mention all the research they’d had me do when they’d deemed it too dangerous for me to attend!  My first solo assignment… I should just stay up here in my room forever.
    Life was so much simpler before Love.

    A gentle knock sounded against my door before it was opened and two sets of feet, as well as four paws, made their way towards me.
    I was seated at my desk, my back to the door, my bed to my right, and staring out of the window in front of me at the woods that stretched out for a good five miles around us.  The file from my last assignment was laying scattered out in front of me on the desk.  I’d just finished all the paperwork.
    “I told you not to worry about that paperwork, Ricky,” Dylan, the head of our organization, told me, stepping over to gather up those papers.
    “It’s done.  I didn’t put it in order yet, though.”  I spoke quietly, my eyes not leaving the window as his arms reached in front of me.  Dylan had been like a father to me ever since I’d been sent here from the training facility, which was not actually too much of a stretch.  I was the youngest person to ever even attend the facility, let alone graduate.  I was sixteen when I graduated, that’s why I’d spent two years as an understudy to all our senior members.  Dylan was in his fifties and took it upon himself to be the father-figure of the house, as I had enough sibling-figures running around with me.
    Anne was seated on my bed.  She was the older-sister/motherly figure in the house.  Except she didn’t have a lot of motherly influences, she was more like a tomboyish big sister, but every once in a while, she was very tender.  I think this was going to be one of those times.
    Dylan took the file and sat down on the bed beside Anne and they both stared at me.  The tiger cub that had accompanied them to my room, that I had brought back from Africa, was seated at my feet.
    For a long moment, nobody spoke.  We all just sat there, looking anywhere but at each other.
    “Ricky, it’s been almost three days.. You’ve hardly eaten or slept… heck, you’ve only left the room three times.  You should come down to dinner.”  Anne sounded so worried.  It made me feel horrible to be the cause of these kinds of feelings.
    “No, thank you, I’m not hungry.”
    “You have to eat!” she said, almost desperately.
    “I know… I will.  Just… not now.”
    “But..”
    “Anne,” Dylan interrupted her and she stopped arguing with me.  He stood up and pulled my chair away from my desk, turning it to face him and Anne on the bed.  My eyes lowered to my lap as he retook his seat.  I really didn’t want to see Dylan.  I’d let him down, I just knew that I had.
    “Ricky,” he said quietly to me.  His voice even sounded strong and comforting.  “Nobody blames you for what happened.  We know you did your best, and we underestimated the demon.  That is not your fault.”
    “I didn’t do my best.  I didn’t even try to save the demon.”  I shook my head, tears welling.  “I just killed it… I’ve never seen so much blood… and it was all because of me.  I did it.”
    No, I mustn’t cry.  I can’t.  I’m an adult now, I have to be strong.
    Arms wrapped around me, holding me tight against the hard chest of the older man, and that ended the façade for me.  I started sobbing, shaking in Dylan’s arms as I hunched over and wept.  Sometime during my crying, Anne had joined us, wrapping me up in her arms as well.
    I don’t know how long we sat there like that, but it was a while.  By the time it was done, I didn’t feel any better, but my eyes were dried out and there weren’t anymore tears coming for a while.  Anne and Dylan didn’t let me go.  I realized that we’d moved over to the bed, and that it was a lot more comfortable here than it was in my little wooden chair.  Sighing a little, I shut my eyes and relaxed a bit between them.
    Dylan spoke after a few more minutes, whispering into my ear.  “After what the demon did to your friend, Ricky, we understand why you didn’t try to save it.  We all would have done the same thing, had it been one of our friends.  It was a terrible thing that happened out there, but you can’t go on forever pretending that it was all your fault, you’ll drive yourself crazy that way.”
    Words failed me.  I didn’t want to talk about it.  I didn’t want to think about it.  I’d have given anything in the world not to know about it, but that wasn’t meant to be.  No, I had to live with it; with myself, for the rest of my life.  If it’d been up to me, I wouldn’t have lived this long, but apparently, I had no say in the matter.  Instead of death, I live on, with not only my memories, but scars--real, physical scars--that I would have to look at every time I looked in the mirror or down at myself.  I would have preferred death.
    “Come down to dinner, Ricky.”  Anne said to me softly.  I know that it wasn’t a request, but I still treated it as one.
    I shook my head to her.  “No, thank you.  I’m not hungry.”
    “I really think you should come down to dinner,” Anne insisted softly.
    “I would only come down and watch you all eat, Anne.  And things like that make several of our members very nervous.”
    Dylan gave the smallest of laughs at that and let me go, leaving me sitting close between them, still.  “He’s right about that, Anne.  Thomas is home this week, and you know how he gets about his eating habits, especially when he thinks people are watching him.”
    Anne sighed and shook her head.  “Don’t encourage him, Dylan.  He needs to eat, otherwise he’ll pass out.”
    I saw Dylan shoot a look to Anne that said ‘Maybe that’s the best thing right now,’ but it disappeared when he caught me looking.  He put his arm around my shoulders.  “I’m going to have Greg make you a sandwich and send it up.  I want you to eat some of it.  Not all of it, just a bit so that we don’t wake up to the sounds of your stomach growling tonight.”
    Greg was the cook here, and he was damn good at it.  He made some of the best foods that I’d ever tasted, and he was always more than willing to humor me when I used to go down there and ask if I could help him. 
    I thought about going down there now.  Helping Greg would take my mind off of Manipi and off this past years’ events and the devastating effects they’d had on my life.  But, no, I wasn’t going to go down there.  I wanted to try to accomplish something.  I wanted to write it all down, everything that’d happened while I was in Africa, what happened to Manipi, and what I had done as a result of that disaster.  No, I didn’t have time to go down there and run errands for Greg.  I wanted it so that I’d remember every detail of this and get it all down.  I wanted to remember everything exactly as it’d happened.  I needed to tell everyone about Manipi and his sacrifice.
    Dylan reached up and ruffled my hair fondly.  “I had better get down there and clear off the table before Greg pitches a fit.  Ricky…” he looked down at me again and smiled softly.  “…if you need someone to come and talk to, come and see me.  My door is always open, okay?”
    I nodded a little to him.  “Okay.  Thanks, Dylan.”
    The older man headed out of the room, leaving Anne and I alone with my tiger.  The tiger was rubbing against my leg.  As I watched, Anne’s hand moved down and started caressing between it’s ears.  “What are you going to name her, Ricky?”
    I looked down at her.  “I don’t want to name her anything, Anne.  You can name her.”
    “But, she’s your cat.”
    “No, she’s not.  She’s Manipi’s.  He saved her.”
    “Manipi can’t take care of her now.”
    “Neither can I,” I told her, shaking my head.  “I killed something, Anne.  No, not just something.  I killed a fallen angel!  Without hesitation.  Without remorse.  Anne, there was so much blood…I kept trying to kill it after it was already dead.”
    Anne seemed at a loss to comfort me.  She wrapped her arms around my shoulders and hugged me against her.  “Ricky, this isn’t healthy.  It’s not your fault.  That demon took something very precious to you and something just snapped… that is not your fault.  Things happen, especially when you’re under a large amount of stress… and believe me, that was a large amount of stress.  Everything will be all right.”
    “Why couldn’t it have just killed me?”
    The older woman gently jerked my head towards her, forcing me to look up at her.  “Don’t you ever say anything like that again, Ricky.  Never.  It was bad enough that you lost someone.  None of us would have been able to live with ourselves if we lost you too.  Ricky, you are loved by a lot more people than you think, and you leaving us is not an option.”
    I stared up at her for a moment, then gave a little nod to her.  “I know.  I’m sorry.”  Hugging her tightly, I kissed her cheek.  “Thanks, Anne.”
    She returned the hug, holding me tightly in her arms, and I had to admit, I felt safe there.  And, earlier, when I’d been laying between her and Dylan on my bed, that was the safest I’d felt since this whole incident started.  Even after I’d killed the demon, that didn’t help me.  I’d been scared to death of myself, worried about what I might do next… who I might hurt, whether or not I’d just snap on the plane and kill everyone… Being here, in Anne’s arms, I felt like that was a world away.  A lifetime, even.  Like it hadn’t been me that had done it, but someone else.     

--------------------------------------

    Be strong.
    Those were the last words that I ever heard from my father. 
    Be strong.
    I hear them again, every single night when I lay down to bed. 
    I can remember everything. 
    I remember hating the fact that he was spending his last days in the hospital.  How much I hated to be there… and how much I wanted him to be at home with me. 
    I hated having relatives hanging around our home, whispering about what to do with me once he was gone, as if I couldn’t hear them.  They didn’t care that he was sick…that I was losing the only person that had ever loved me.  All they were concerned with was who was going to get stuck with me from then on. 
    I remember the nurses.  They were always nice to me.  The bent the rules and let me sleep by his side when I didn’t want to go home.  They would come in and help me into the bed beside my father, tucking me in without hardly even waking me.  I know that they just felt bad for me, but I appreciated the fact that they cared enough to help me at all.
    Those last hours…I remember every minute of them.  How I’d screamed at the relatives and made them leave… and how he didn’t even tell me to be nice to them.  My carefully-built mental barrier that kept me denying that it was really the end collapsed… and I remember it to the second, because it was the first time I’d cried since my father’d been admitted into the hospital.  Like a little kid, I’d climbed into the bed beside him and I begged him not to go.  Everything that had been weighing on my mind at the moment came tumbling out of my mouth at the same time… how I didn’t want to live with relatives, and how I didn’t want to move, how I liked our house and our life and how I didn’t think that I even wanted to live without him.  He was my life… and he was being taken away from me.  The man who had raised me, alone, since I was barely six months old… and now I had to learn to survive without him.     
    I cried for hours, laying there with him.  During the last hour, though, there were no more tears.  Just sad smiles.  Clasping hands.  I played with his fingers and he told me how innocent I looked.  He told me things.  Things about his past and things that I should know for my future. 
    When it was time, I felt him going… it was like I could feel him slipping out of my hands, which were both clutched around one of his own, larger hands.  And he managed to tell me that he loved me once more… and then, those infamous last words. 
    “Be strong.”
    I hardly even heard the flatline.  It was as if I’d gone deaf all at once.  And his hand stopped holding mine, even though mine kept tightening, hoping that if I clutched him tight enough, he couldn’t leave me.  The nurses came in and helped me away from him. 
    I couldn’t see.  There was no voice in my ear, asking if I was okay. 
    Everything was gone.  Everything.  There was nothing left for me.
    I stayed in that room for almost an hour after he’d died.  I sat there, on the edge of his bed, and just stared.  So that was it. 
    The nurses didn’t want to leave me alone, but I was not paying any attention to them anymore, so I was alone. 
    After I had my time alone with him, I had resolved myself to go and tell the relatives that he was gone before I went to make arrangements for the funeral.  And I would be making them, not any of them.  I would bury him, because I knew how he wanted to be buried.
    I had walked to the waiting room where the relatives had been gathered, and I guess I had been quite a sight, because as soon as I’d walked in, all conversation had ceased and all attention was on me.
    Tears welled.  I felt them threatening, but I had to be strong.  I drew myself up, taking a deep breath to try to calm my shaking nerves… I wanted my prepubescent voice to come out sounding strong; sure of itself, and like the man that I knew I was.  Instead, it came out in a very small, shaking sound.
    “He’s dead.”
    And then everything was black. 
    Nurses told me later that I had passed out--mental exhaustion, they’d claimed.  They were there when I came to.  No family, just nurses.
    After obliging the nurses and staying in bed for some half-hour while they made certain I was all right, I excused myself and went back to my father’s room, where, they were cleaning his bed.  He’d been moved to the morgue. 
    I had to swallow down a lump in my throat before I continued on, heading down to the first floor and leaving.  I didn’t feel anything.  There was no sorrow.  No pain.  Just a big hole inside me. 

-----------------------------------------

    The boy let out an anguished scream before collapsing to his knees, trying to push an invisible attacker away from himself. 
    The crowd that had been randomly wandering about the town square and it’s numerous shops stopped, then stared, forming a circle around the yelling boy and staring in awe of what they were seeing.
    “NOO!  PLEASE!  Don’t touch me, you don’t understand!”  He grabbed at his heart as he sat there on his knees, panting and crying out.  It seemed as though he was trying to push a different person’s hand away from his heart.
    He didn’t appear to be much older than sixteen, possibly seventeen years old.  His hair had been dyed blue with white spots that looked like clouds in the sky-blue colored hair.  Eyes were the color of gold, and the redness and tears within them only brought out the strange color more.  He was thin and slightly toned, though most of that was hidden by the baggy cargo pants he was wearing and the too-big t-shirt that hung too loosely on his shoulders.  The way the boy was hunched over, however, allowed the lines of his back to show through.
    Suddenly, the blue-haired boy jerked, his body ridged for another moment before he slouched down, the hand that had been fighting the invisible attacker moving to the ground to help support his weight.  His other hand still clutched at his heart and he was gasping for breath.
    The crowd had formed a tight circle and was watching the goings-on without an inkling of what to do. 
    There came a shuffling on one side of the crowd and another boy, a thin Asian boy, pushed his way through the crowd and into the center of it, nearly sprinting to the collapsed boy.  They obviously knew each other, and the new boy wasted no time at all wrapping his arms around the smaller boy’s shoulders and turning his face up to look at him.
    “Skylar, Skylar, talk to me,” the Asian boy whispered to him, “are you all right?  What happened?”
    Skylar stayed still for another long moment, catching his breath as the tears spilled down across his red cheeks.  His lips were slightly blue and trembling with the effort not to break into sobs that very instant as he looked up at his friend.
    “Oh, gods, Sho… It hurts.  He touched me.. Touched my heart… Nearly froze it, but it hurts so bad.”
    Sho looked alarmed and moved his hand to touch Skylar’s heart, and sure enough, the skin over it was cold as ice.  “All right, hold on, Sky, we’ll fix it, come on.”  Wrapping his arm under the other boy’s arms and draping the blue-haired boy’s arm around his shoulder, he carefully hefted the crying boy to his feet, helping him out to the side of the square.  Those brown eyes of the Asian raised and glared at the crowd surrounding them.  “Get out of the way!  There’s nothing to see here, get lost!”
    The crowd parted for the two of them and most wandered off, muttering something about rude Americans as they did. 
    Sho took Sky over to the bus station bench, sitting him down on it, then seating himself next to him, brushing the blue locks from the other’s face and watching him worriedly.  “Skylar, tell me what happened.”
    The bluenette had regained some semblance of control over himself, though the tears continued to stream down his cheeks.  “Oh, Taisho, gods, it hurts..”
    “Who did it?”
    Skylar swallowed hard and took a deep breath.  “It was a ghost, named Tad… He saw me on the street, and knew that I saw him, so he came over.  But when he saw me up close, he started crying, and I asked him what was wrong, and that’s when he grabbed my heart.”
    Taisho’s brow furrowed as he listened.  “Why did he grab you?”
    “Sometimes.. It’s easier for ghosts to convey what they want to say through touching you, rather than trying to explain it.  He probably didn’t realize how sensitive I was to the other side.. For people who are not as sensitive, that would have just made them cold, but conveyed the emotion the ghost wanted to share.. But for me… it didn’t work like that.”
    The Asian boy listened silently, gently wiping the tears from Sky’s face as he talked.  One of Sho’s hands moved down and touched Sky’s heart again, it was beginning to thaw out.
    “What was it trying to tell you, Sky?”
    “It was hurting… badly… and, it’s my fault.  He recognized me, and it made him hurt terribly.  But, Sho, I’ve never seen this ghost before in my life.  I’ve never been to London before.. There’s no way I could have seen him.  Ghosts can’t travel very far, and I’ve never been even close to here before.”
    “Well, maybe you knew him while he was alive?” Sho asked as his thumbs stroked the curve of Sky’s cheeks.
    Skylar shook his head again.  “I didn’t recognize him at all, Sho.  I’ve never seen him before.”
    Taisho watched Sky for another moment, then nodded to him.  “All right, love.”  He leaned close to Sky and kissed his forehead comfortingly. 
    “Can we go back to the hotel, Sho?  I don’t want to be here anymore.”
    The Asian boy nodded to him, touching Sky’s heart once again.  The skin was almost it’s normal temperature again.  “Yeah, let’s get out of here.”  He stood up and helped Sky up, wrapping an arm about his waist. 
    Sky started to object to needing help, then decided against it and curled his arm around Sho’s neck, walking with him back towards their hotel.

-------------------------------------

    “David?”
    “Come here, child.”
    “David.”  The boy moved to the older man, wrapping his arms around him and laying his head against his chest.  “David, I can feel you.”
    “I know.”  David’s arms wrapped around the boy, stroking his hair and holding him close.
    “Did I die?”
    The man laughed softly, shaking his head.  “No, my boy, you did not die.  You’re alive, just very sick.  There’s a young man taking care of you.  You should make a full recovery under his watch.”
    “But… if I’m alive, how can I feel you?”  He looked up at the other man curiously.
    “Sometimes, when you get sick, especially as sick as you are, your soul will detach itself for a short time from your body so that it doesn’t get sick as well.  If your soul gets sick, then it will die and the body cannot live for very long without the soul.”
    “Are those men still after us, David?”
    The older man sighed a little, resting his cheek on top of his young friend’s head.  “Unfortunately, yes.  They are currently out looking for your body, but all the snow has nearly melted, so they no longer have the blood to follow, which gives you a head start when you come around.”
    The boy’s arms tightened around the man.  “Would you think less of me if I said that I wanted to stay here with you rather than going back?”
    David sighed.  “No, I wouldn’t.  You’ve been through a lot these past three months.  I don’t think anyone would blame you.  But you can’t stay here.  You have to go back.”
    “I wish I were dead.  Then I could stay with you.”
    “Don’t ever wish you were dead, my boy.  Being dead is nothing to look forward to, no matter who you know on this side.”
    The boy’s hands curled into fists, holding onto David’s shirt as he buried his face into his chest and David felt the wet tears against his body.  The utter misery coming from the boy was almost palpable--it took a lot for a soul to cry and David knew his young friend was near the breaking point.
    “Please don’t make me go back, David,” he said through his tears as he clung to the other.
   

    “Geezus.  I’ve never seen anyone this sick in my entire life.”  The young man gently mopped at the boy’s forehead.  “Not to mention those wounds.  Stabbed twice and all those other cuts.  It looks like he just escaped from L.A. or something.  What do you think?  Should we just take him to the hospital and be done with him?”
    The man looked over at his companion.  The dog stared back at him, tilting his head to the side.  Then the dog stepped to the edge of the bed, sniffing at the boy’s hand and licked it lightly before looking back to his owner.
    “You’re such a softy,” the man said to the dog.  “Well, since you think we should keep him, I’ll trust your instincts on this, Raziel.  But still… he’s been like this for almost a week… You’d think that at least the fever would have broken by now, wouldn’t you?”
    The man mopped the boy’s forehead again, then stood up and stretched out.  “Watch him for a few minutes for me, boy.  I’m gonna go make us some dinner.”
    On the bed, the boy whimpered pathetically, tears streaming down his cheeks.
    “I hope those tears are taking this sickness with them, kid, for your sake.  I don’t think you can take much more of this.”

    “DAVID!  NO!  PLEASE!”  The boy’s arms were up in the air, gripping at someone that was apparently just out of reach. 
    His yells had woken up the young man, who was watching him in half-asleep curiosity from the cot set up next to the bed.  Raziel jumped up on the bed, licking at the boy’s face and whimpering.
    “Raz, leave him alone.”
    The boy’s eyes slowly opened and he looked up at the dog, pushing it away and sitting up.  “Ugh.”
    The man pushed himself up as well, wiping his eyes.  “You’re up.  How are you feeling?”
    “Hm?”  The boy looked over at the man and blinked in surprise.  “What?  Who are you?”
    “I’m the guy that saved your life, but you can call me Raven.  What’s your name?”
    “Saved my life?  Great, when they find me again, I have you to blame,” he mumbled.

---------------------------

    Skylar dialed his mother’s phone number from the phone in the airport.  He’d just gathered up his luggage, and, sitting on top of the trolley, had decided to call his mother, to let her know he’d gotten there all right. 
    The blue-haired American looked quite out of the ordinary in the British airport, which was crowded with business people, hurriedly rushing back and forth to get to their own planes or back to their offices.  Skylar’s fingers pushed the blue locks away from his face as he listened to the phone ring a few times before an anxious-sounding woman picked up the other end.
    “Hello?” the woman’s voice said nervously.
    “Hey, mom,” Sky said with a smile.
    “Oh, Sky, dear.  Have you landed yet?”
    “Yeah, I’m calling from the terminal.  Are you all right?  You sound stressed.”
    “Oh, I was just worried is all,” she said, and relief crept into her voice.  “How was the flight?”
    “Long.  Boring.  They played Austin Powers as the in flight movie, so I just went to sleep.  I don’t see what people see in that movie.”  He gave a dramatic sigh and smiled brightly again.
    “Well, people find entertainment in all sorts of things, you know,” his mother told him, sounding like she was treating this as a serious conversation, whereas it was quite obvious that it was all just a joke to Skylar.
    “Yeah, I know,” Sky replied, refusing to let his good mood be deflated.
    “How is the weather out there, is it raining?”
    “Actually, it’s really sunny outside and looks pleasant.  I can’t wait to go and check it out and see how warm it is.  Is it still pretty warm back there?”
    “Oh, yes, quite.  The end of summer and all, it’ll linger for a while.  When are you heading to the school?”
    “As soon as I get off the phone with you.  I figured I’d call and let you know that I’d survived,” again, that hint of joking crept into Sky’s voice.  “How’s Raph?”
    “Huh?  Oh, Raphael?  He’s fine, dear.  He’s at work right now.”
    Sky gave a little nod, picking a fuzzy off of his black t-shirt with the words “Out Of My Mind, Back In Five Minutes” imprinted across the front of it.  “Yeah, I figured he would be…”
    “Are you nervous about the school, honey?” she asked.
    “No… in fact, I’m pretty confident that I’ll learn more here than I ever did back home, despite the reason I was sent here.”
    “Travis did it because he cares…” his mother started, but Sky didn’t listen to anymore of the statement, pulling the phone back from his ear and holding it at arm’s length for a moment, before pulling it back to his ear.
    “Do us both a favor and stop lying to yourself, mom.  He didn’t do this to help me.  He did it because he hates me, just like he hates my father.”
    “He doesn’t hate you, Skylar,” she told him, her voice raising in pitch.
    Sky scowled, his good mood shattering.  Sometimes, he just wished he could tell him mother exactly what he was thinking and where she could put all her anxious lies, but he couldn’t do that to her--to Travis, yes, but not to his mother.
    “I don’t want to talk about it, mom.  Look, I have to get going… I still have to get to the dormitories and unpack and everything, so I’m going to go now.”

---------------------------------------------

Dancing gnomes.  I could see them, spinning and laughing, dipping and waltzing.  Such funny little creatures.  Their pointed hats never seemed to fall off, or even move, except for a little bit of twitch at the tip from their movement around our front yard.  Those chubby hands were clasped together or wrapped around their partners in the shabby painted-on outfits--people wouldn’t even paint them on decent clothing, it always had to look like rags.  And yet, the gnomes never looked unhappy.  Indeed, they were practically glowing in delight.  Their cheeks were always round and red and their mouths were always smiling.  There was always that certain sparkle in their eyes, too, that made it seem like they were having the times of their ceramic lives. 
    I’ve always wanted to dance with the gnomes.
    It was hot out.  The gnomes were stationary, looking out at passers-by on the street while I sat on the front porch steps of our new suburban home.  We’d moved during the summer, because my mother and step-father thought that it’d be better for me than in the middle of the school year.  Either way, I didn’t share their enthusiasm about “starting fresh.” 
    They may not have liked the way their lives were going down in South Carolina, but mine had been perfect there.  I had a few friends who I could associate with when I felt the need to be around people, even if that wasn’t very often; I had ten acres of woodland to explore and camp out in; and heck, I had year-round predictable temperatures, for the most part.  And then, out of nowhere, we’re packing our bags and moving to Ohio, the land of insane fluctuations of the weather and lake-effect snow from September to May.
    Adults are so selfish.  They even had the nerve to tell me that they were doing this for me.  How sick is that?  As if I don’t know that this is nothing but a reason for them to be closer to people.  They always hated the woods.  They hated living far away from people.  So, here we were.  The end of our house was barely twenty paces from the beginning of the next. 
    The first thing I’d done when we got here was to go and set up the gnomes in the grass.  I don’t think they like it here, either, but they probably hated being boxed up.  There were some kids--some my age, some younger--that lived up and down our street.  They’d halted their baseball game to come and watch me set up the gnomes, but none of them had dared come closer than the farthest corner of our neighbor’s lawn.  None of them spoke, and they all watched me like I was some kind of wild beast that didn’t belong there.  Kids are good at seeing things like that.  I don’t belong here.
    There were three trees in our front yard.  None of them was good for climbing.  The lowest branches were still five feet over my head.  They were ugly.  Not like the trees back home.  These trees all looked the same, like someone had taken one and just photocopied it and put it ten feet from the original.      We were one house away from a major road and cars were zipping past at over fifty miles per hour.  All the racket they were making, it was like living next to a highway, especially when compared to our house in Carolina.  No traffic ever went by there, all you ever heard were crickets.

So, since I bought my Mac, I'm going to be selling my PC.  However, back before I realized that I write better on-location (i.e. away from my house), I tried to type up some stuff on my computer, so I'm going to repost the stuff here that might be worth saving before I clear out everything else.

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    “YOU KILLED ME!” the boy yelled, shoving the police officer away from him, tears stinging his eyes.  “I NEEDED YOU AND YOU PURPOSEFULLY DIDN’T COME AND YOU LET ME DIE!”
    “Collin, calm down.” The long blond ponytail of the police officer swung around behind him as he tried to calm the teary-eyed boy down, restraining the boy just enough so that his flailing limbs didn’t land any of their prospective hits.
    “CALM DOWN!?” Collin’s voice cracked as he struggled to push those arms off of his own, black bangs falling into his face.  “You kill me, bring me back, plant false memories in my head to make me hate my own boyfriend and now you’re here telling me to calm down and trust you?  Do you have any idea how stupid that sounds?  Get out of my home!  GET OUT!”
    He tried to shove the policeman out the door again, but the officer grabbed the crook off his arms and suddenly slammed the boy hard against the wall.
    Collin let out a miserable cry, but didn’t stop his fighting as the policeman’s body covered his own, pressing their bodies into the pale yellow wall of the apartment.
    “Collin, listen to me,” the man spoke low, close to the boy’s ear, keeping his weight against the boy to keep him restrained, “I set you free.  You’ll never grow old.  You’ll never die.  I know that I made a mistake putting those memories in your head, but even before you died, you were stealing Xavier from me.  I couldn’t have that.  Xavier has been mine and my responsibility for over a century, and then within a month, you were stealing him from me…”
    “Then why did you bring me back!?” the boy hissed through his tears, trying vainly to remove the weight of the other from him.  “You could have had him… all to yourself… if you’d have left me dead…”
    “I could have, but he would have never forgiven me for letting you die.  He knew I was your guardian.  I thought that if I brought you back, and made you despise him, he would come running back to me for comfort, the way he always did.”
    Collin gave an angry jerk under him, using his entire menial weight to try to unbalance the man.  To no avail.  If anything, the officer pushed more firmly against the black-banged boy.
    “You loved me once,” the man whispered into Collin’s ear.  “Just the way that you love Xavier now.”
    “LIAR!”
    The officer smiled lightly, pressing his cheek against the boy’s.  “I can prove it… I can give you back every memory that you have lost… every piece of your life that was stolen away when your soul went to Uriel.”
    “Get off of me,” suppressed rage filled the boy’s voice, his hands clenched into fists.  “Get out of my home.  Stay away from me.  Stay away from Xavier.  We don’t want anything to do with you.”
    The man laughed softly.  “You were so much more docile when you were alive, you know…” 
    Officer Richards shifted his waist against Collin, moving the boy’s hands easily up above his head and shifting to hold both wrists with one hand.  His other hand moved down, brushing his fingers over the younger boy’s cheek before he moved them to his own shirt, which he proceeded to unbutton.
    “Don’t touch me!  Get off!” Collin struggled more fiercely as he saw the man undoing his shirt.  But the more he struggled, the more he was aware that the cop wasn’t even trying to subdue him, really.  All of Collin’s earlier near-escape attempts had just been a game to Officer Richards.  He was holding Collin almost completely still without even trying.
    “You’re way too stressed, Collin… a boy your age… you should relax more.”
    The shirt was maneuvered off of the older man and dropped to the floor.  His smile had become artificial; condescending as he looked to the squirming boy in his grip.  “Didn’t Xavier teach you how to have fun?”   With a sadistic giggle, the man’s wings emerged from his back.  Huge, white, and shining.  They gave a little flap before they moved to engulf the two of them in the pure whiteness of them. 
    Collin was livid and fearful as he tried to kick free of the man’s restraining hold.  “Ronny, stop…” His voice had lost some of his confidence and had a slight pleading quality to it as he pressed himself as close to the wall as he could manage, distancing himself the best he could in the enclosed area.
    “See?  You never stood up for yourself when you were alive… you always succumbed to Xavier’s and my will…”
    “Stop it, Ronny.  Let me go.” His voice was a little steadier, but still fearful.
    “You don’t like this shirt, do you?”  Ronny whispered, close to the boy’s ear before he nipped and sucked at the lobe.
    “Don’t…”
    Officer Richards’ hand slid behind the boy’s back, moving up and caressing around the scars where the boy’s own wings could emerge. 
    “Don’t, Ronny.” 
    With another smile, Ronny let his fingers wander over Collin’s scars, summoning the wings out.
    Collin gave a cry of pain as his wings forced their way through his skin, pushing out of his back.  He arched his back away from the wall to allow room for them to unfold and stretch.  Those dark bangs in his face hid his closed eyes and pained face.
    “Denying that they’re there doesn’t make you human, Collin,” Ronny murmured into his ear.  “They need to stretch and breath every once in a while.  It stops hurting after a while, too.”
    “I hate you.”  Collin whispered to him, as Ronny pulled the remains of his shirt from the smaller angel’s body.
    “Hate is such a strong word… and remember, I told you… you loved me once.”
    “I never loved you.”
    “How would you know?  You can’t really remember if you did or didn’t, can you?”  He smiled and kissed the boy’s cheek softly.  “I can show you.  I even know things about you that you never knew.  I can share everything with you if you’ll let me.”
    “Get away from me.  Xavier is going to be home soon.  If he finds us like this…”
    “He won’t do anything.”  Ronny smiled.  “Xavier is mine.  And even if he wanted to, he would never, and could never, raise a hand against me.  He is too smart.  He knows he would lose.  Just like you lose.  But you haven’t figured that out yet, so we can keep playing this game, if you like, or, we can skip the game and we can sit down, have a cup of coffee, and talk.  As I said, I have important information for you and Xavier and I refuse to leave until I’ve shared it.”
    “Baba…” a small voice came from a room down the hall and a small brown-haired boy peeked his head out of the room. 
    “Yeah, Tai?”  Collin called, trying to keep his voice calm. 
    “Bubby woke up… he says he has to pee.”
    Collin raised hate-filled eyes to Ronny.  “Go in the kitchen and wait.  I have to take care of the boys.”
    “Oh, I love children,” Ronny gave a smirk as his wings smoothly moved back into his back.  He let go of Collin and headed down the hall. 
    “Ronny, no!”  Collin winced as his own wings folded back into him, then hurried down the hall after the older angel.  Being much smaller than Ronny, he easily dodged past and ahead of him.  “Go wait in the kitchen.” He hissed at Ronny, then motioned the small boy in the doorway back into the room as Collin moved over to the shared bed of the two children.

----------------------------------------------------

    The fact that his mother was laying so close to him, right inside that polished wooden box, was not quite catching in Devlin’s brain.  He couldn’t fathom never seeing her again, or that that box would soon be underground.  The boy kept looking to his father, to explain why they were in the burial place.  His father was too upset to even look down at his five-year old son, though.
    Tears of absolute misery were streaming down the grown man’s face, and he was sobbing into his neighbor’s shoulder.  Any thought of being strong in front of, and for, his son had exited the grieving man’s mind once he’d seen his beautiful young bride bruised inside that coffin.
    “This is completely unacceptable,” muttered a woman that had worked with Devlin’s mother in the marketplace, sewing blankets for special occasions.  “Those guards should be executed for doing this to her.  She was too good for this…” The woman choked on the rest of the words she was going to say and dabbed at her bloodshot eyes.  She looked to Devlin and offered a small smile to the small boy that she hoped would look reassuring, but it only looked pitying.
    One of the other neighbors gently grabbed Devlin’s arm, leading him away from the burial sight while the coffin was closed and lowered into the ground.  The young boy glanced over his shoulder in time to see his father wail and try to keep the coffin from descending into the soft earth. 
    For the next week, the two men didn’t pay much mind to one another.  They hardly spoke and neither really did much.  Devlin often had his father take him down to the beach just to watch the fishermen do their work, and his father obliged him for no other reason than a distraction from the fact that his wife was dead.
    Devlin’s father was like a zombie now.  A walking cusp of a man, his eyes were devoid of life and his movements lethargic at best, mechanical at worst.  The older man didn’t work on the nets he often made for the fishermen, nor did he tell stories to Devlin of the faraway places that he’d traveled to in his younger years, of life on the sea, or of mythical beasts that he’d just barely escaped from.
    The young boy missed the man his father had been.  As little as he was, though, he was big enough to know that when his mother had been raped and murdered, she had taken a large piece of his father with her.  He understood that things would never be the same anymore.  This island would never be the home that it had been before.
    His mother’s co-worker came over to check on them every couple days, shooting looks of pity at Devlin.  She cooked them dinner on nights when Devlin’s father didn’t seem to want to move, and she took Devlin out for walks so that he didn’t have to stay in the small house with his father all the time.  During the days when his father looked on the verge of tears again, she would take him to the marketplace and let him help her with the quilts, having him hold things together or get a certain needle or color fabric. 
    One day, almost exactly two weeks after his mother had died, his father came to him with a small smile.  The older man folded a few coins into his son’s hand, clasping his own around the smaller hand tightly for a moment, then sitting down. 
    “Devlin,” his father started, looking over the short boy with a sad look in his eyes, “I need you to go to the marketplace.”  He reached over to his son and gently touched his cheek, playing with a few locks of the blond hair that fell into the boy’s face.  “I need you to get us a loaf of bread.”
    “But father, I can’t go to the marketplace alone,” Devlin murmured quietly to him.
    “Yes, you can, Devlin.  You have to start taking care of yourself now.  I know you can do it, you’re a strong boy, you always have been.”  He gave another little smile to him.  “You’re going to do great things with your life, son, I can tell.  Your mother and I are very proud of you, remember that.”
    “But mother is gone.  She can’t be proud of me anymore…” 
    A small tear formed in the corner of his father’s eye.  “Your mother is an angel now.  She’s watching out for you.  She’s very proud of you, I know.  She thinks you’re a very brave boy.”
    “When will I get to see her again?”
    “Not for a long time, Devlin, but don’t worry, she’ll wait for you forever.”

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    “Now, when you get there, I want you to check in with Mr. Zuick after you’ve finished moving into the dorms.  He says that he lives less than a mile from there, so anytime you need a familiar face, you can go there.”  Ren’s mother was fussing with his hair and jacket.  “He also said that if you wanted, you could park your car in his garage so you don’t have to pay for parking.”
    Ren gently pulled his jacket out of his mother’s worried fingers.  “Mom, I haven’t seen this guy in almost ten years, there’s no way I’m going to recognize him.”
    “Mind your manners.  He’s very kind to offer you his garage and his friendship in that strange city, so you behave around him, got it?”  She bopped him on the nose gently.
    “Yes, ma’am,” the boy muttered and rubbed his nose.
    “Good boy, now give your mother a hug.”
    Ren smirked and wrapped his mother up in his arms, hugging her tightly.  “Don’t be so worried,” he told her softly.  “Everything’s going to be just fine and I’ll call you as soon as I move in.”
    “Don’t you tell me not to worry, young man,” his mother said sternly, releasing him and cupping his cheeks in her hands.  “My baby’s going off to college.  You grew up so fast…”
    “Nonsense,” he said with a grin.  “I’ve been here a million years now.  You should be glad to be rid of me.”
    His mother knew that making jokes was Ren’s way of dealing with things he didn’t want to think about.  She smiled to him and kissed his forehead.  “Do you have all your supplies?”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “Even the chemicals?”
    “Bagged and tagged, but I think the school supplies them, anyway.”
    “Well, it won’t hurt to have them.”  She sighed and surveyed the thin boy in front of her.  “Who’d have believed that I would raise the next Ansel Adams?”

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    “MY SON IS NOT SUICIDAL!”
    The strawberry-blond head followed the boy’s body as he sank down more on the wooden bench outside the principal’s office.  His face was as red as his hair, tinted with both embarrassment and guilt.  How had he managed to make such a mess of things?
    The smallish boy had strawberry-blond locks down to his shoulder blades, which was almost always braided.  Blue eyes were as clear as the afternoon sky in the spring and slightly eerie to look into when light hit them from a certain angle, as they seemed to lose the pupil and turn completely blue.  He was thin-framed and short for his age and extremely light in weight.  His father still told him, at fourteen years old, that he weighed nothing at all when they played and the older man lifted him.  The boy’s skin was always slightly tanned and seemed to sparkle like sand in the sunlight.
    “HE’S JUMPED OFF OF YOUR HOUSE, OUT OF A MOVING CAR, AND DIVED OFF OF A BRIDGE, WHAT DO YOU CALL THAT IF NOT SUICIDAL BEHAVIOR!?” someone else bellowed from inside the office. 
    The boy felt as though he could die from shame.  His poor father, trying to explain his behavior to people who would never understand, nor did they want to.
    The secretary leaned to the side to look around her desk to make sure the boy hadn’t made a run for it.  He’d sunk out of view and was hiding his face in his hands.  The woman behind the receptionist’s desk, however, was completely straight-faced and seemed to not hear any of the shouting coming from the adjacent room. 
    “HE DID NOT JUMP OUT OF THE CAR!  HE WAS NEVER INSIDE THE CAR!” his father yelled.
    People would never guess that the redhead’s mild-mannered father could ever sound so agitated and angry.  The boy knew that he could get that way, but this was the first time that he’d ever been witness to such a side of his father.
    However, as intimidating as his father sounded when he yelled like that, the boy could not see how the fact that he was holding onto the back of the car was any better than jumping out of it, but maybe his father had a strategy in mind. 
    The voices lowered a little and the small boy scooted closer to the door to hear what the grown-ups were talking about now.
    “Mr. Locke, if Raven reports to school with one more broken bone, we will be forced to report you and him to Children’s Services--”
    “FOR WHAT!?” Raven’s father bellowed angrily.
    “For failure to get your son treated in a way that is in his best interest!” the voice answered back, sounding annoyed that he actually had to spell this out to the man standing a few feet from him.  “If you are unwilling to act, then we will!”
    “You have no right!” his father spat venomously across the desk.
    “We have every right!” the other man stated furiously.  “It is as much our responsibility as it is yours to make sure these children are safe!  If a parents seems unfit, it is our job to report them and get the child placed where he or she will be cared for properly!”
    “UNFIT!” Raven’s father roared.
    Raven eyed the door.  He just wanted to run away and never come back to this school.  Maybe he could convince his father when they got home that they should move.  He wanted to go home and pretend like this had never happened.  His father shouldn’t have to endure this ridicule because of him!
    “Why don’t we ask Raven to come in and explain himself?”
    Raven recognized the voice of his principal, who seemed to be quailing under the tempers that were flaring inside of his office.
    “No.” Raven’s father said angrily.  “None if you is going to talk to my son.  And if I find out you have been harassing him while he’s at school, I will call the heads of your organizations and have you all fired.  Don’t go anywhere near him.”
    Raven figured that it was just as well that he didn’t talk to those people, as they wouldn’t believe him anyway.  Nobody ever believed him.  Not even his father, but at least his father still tried to be conservatively supportive of him.
    The office door was suddenly flung open, smacking against the wall half a dozen inches from the receptionist’s desk.  Raven took a small ounce of sick satisfaction when she jumped and looked affronted momentarily. 
    His father came storming from the room, blond hair waving behind him in the breeze he was creating with his swift walk.  Those angry blue eyes didn’t even glance at Raven as he stormed by, but they didn’t have to.  Within half a second of the older man passing by him, the redhead was on his feet, falling into step behind his father as they hurried out of the office and out the doors of the school. 
    The boy didn’t dare look back at the adults they’d left behind on his way out for two reasons.  For one, he didn’t want to see how angry they were.  For two, he was having trouble keeping up with his father.  It seemed as though the blond man was in more of a hurry than his son was to escape the oppressing feel of that office and the stuffy warmth of the building.

My dribbly notebook is nearly full, I'm going to have to invest in a new one soon.  :-D  I shall call it, "Dribblies, Volume 2".

"I talked to every tenant in the building."

"And?"

"She's quiet, lives alone... neighbor across the hall says he thinks she works a lot, he sees her coming and going a lot.  The kid on the first floor says she gives him a weird feeling.  And the girl diagonal says she's seen her crying as she was coming or going a few times..."

"Ahem." The rental agent cleared his throat.  "Sorry.  I have the spare key."

They cleared the way and let the tall young man through.  He unlocked the door.

"How well did you know this tenant?" Karla asked, pulling on a pair of rubber gloves.

"Lelia?  She seemed like a nice girl, but I only saw her about once a month, when she paid her rent."

"Not well, but you're on first-name basis?"

He gave a little laugh.  "Every tenant is on first-name basis with the staff.  It makes them feel more at-ease.  Besides, she's younger than me, it would be awkward for both of us if I were to call her miss."  He followed them inside and stopped.  "Oh... Wow."

The four intruders stopped in the middle of the living room, staring around.

The wall directly ahead of them sported two windows... and a detailed mural that looked like the windows had expanded the whole length of the wall.  A dragon was painted as swooping past, down close to the open-appearing building, and just below the first window. 

An art desk lay off to the right, covered in half-finished sketches, mathematical equations, post-it notes with theorems scribbled across them and about a dozen lists, pinned to the wall just above it.

One of Karla's assistants went to examine the desk, while Karla turned her attention to the desk opposite that held a computer and stacks of CDs. 

The rental agent wandered over to the book shelves while the other two officers branched off into the bedroom.

"Was Lelia a mathematician?" the man by the desk asked.

The young man shook his head.  "Not that I'm aware of.  When she first filled out her rental forms, she was working as a cook."

One of the men emerged from the bedroom, holding a couple pictures of smiling individuals, with Lelia among them, laughing.  "Doesn't exactly look like the type to cry in hallways, does she?"

"Depressed people aren't always doom and gloom, Mark," came the reply from the man at the art desk.

"Does anyone know John Mandrake's birth name?" Karla asked, looking up from the computer.  "She has it password protected."

"Who's John Mandrake?"  Mark asked.

"A magician," the agent supplied, looking away from the books.  "He was in a book.." the young man shook his head.  "I can't remember.  I think it was a trilogy."  He blinked at the police.  "Is Lelia okay?"

"She's missing.  The sooner we find her, the better."

---------------------------------------------------

Gabby stormed into the apartment, slamming the door behind herself.  Breathing deep through clenched teeth, she pulled off her shoulder bag and threw it onto the chair.  "AARRRGH!"

Rebecca looked up from the book she'd been reading and quirked a brow at her roommate.  "So, the party didn't go well?"

"That... that SNOT!"

"Woah, Gabs, those are some really powerful words.  You're going to ruin my virgin ears," she smirked and pushed herself up.  "Now, more specifically: What snot?"

"Nate Taylor." Gabby flopped unceremoniously onto the other end of the sofa, kicking up one foot onto the coffee table.  "Every comment he made when he introduced me for my award may as well have been an 'It's Pat' joke!"

Becca cringed.  "Oh, I'm sorry, hon."

"The last thing he said was, 'So here he, I mean she, is,' and it took every bit of self control I had not to punch him in his smug little face when I went up to accept it," she ran her fingers through her short hair, pushing it off of her forehead.

"Don't let him get to you, Gabby.  You're a very talented woman--just because you don't buy into all the girly stereotypes doesn't mean you're any less of a woman."

"No, but it does mean that 90% of the people I meet will think I'm a lesbian."  She groaned.  "Fudgenuggets!  He's already gotten to me, hasn't he?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Crap."

------------------------------------------------------------

The light reflected off the blade and into Aaron's eyes.  His breath caught and he looked down at his arms: bound, palm up.  He tensed his fingers, making a fist, then stretching them out.

The man with the blade was talking.  Speaking of enlightenment and justice.

Aaron was listening to his blood, pumping through his ears.  He was keenly aware of his heartbeat: bump, bump, bu-bu-bump.  It was the first time he'd listened. 

The blood went out of his ears in a wash, flushed away in an effort to escape the confines of his skin.

Aaron was screaming.

The knife was halfway through his hand, held there as blood gushed around it.  The muscles in his hand spasmed, the fingertips twitching.

His own voice sounded far-away.  Begging.  He wasn't sure if he was coherent.

The knife was twisted.  Aaron screamed louder.  The pain left him dizzy and sick.

The other voice was there again.  A harsh whisper, trying to justify causing a twelve year old so much pain.

Aaron felt weak.  The room danced around him, fading at the corners of his eyes.  He tried to hear the awkward beat of his heart.

Another stab.  His other hand.  It didn't hurt as much this time.

The room went black.