Quote:
You are just getting ready to head to sleep and you're all tucked in when something catches your eye. It's a strange shape, or light, in your room. It's only there for a second, but dread immediately floods through you. It was just a shadow, right? Maybe you pulled too many all nighters? Forgot you put up that new poster and thought it was something else?

...Or was it something else?

Either way, whatever you thought you saw was only there for that fleeting moment. What did you see? How do you react?

...Are you going to be able to sleep tonight?


Narcotics entered his life again. Isaiah never objected to it anymore; they provided him not with the boost of memory, but smoothed away the sharp edges of pain that prevented movement, sleep, intake of vanilla meal. Percocet, Oxycontin, Hydrocodone - whatever it was that Quenton provided, it didn’t matter. He would take half the bottle if only he had teeth to chew the pills.

Isaiah kept blankets to his chin, and beneath he shivered terribly. Blood lost left him immensely cold, and no amount of short maneuvers chased away the chill. He laid on his wrong side now, away from the short stump remaining of his right arm, and felt the blanket brush against the gauze packing with every twitch. Everything still ached, surely, but the worst boon of morphine was the tenuous bandwidth to think. And in thought, he reflected ruthlessly.

There would be no writing smoothly anymore. He would never again press both hands to his face, or open a pickle jar, or pin someone to the bed. He would never know dental care in the same way. He could never again chew with teeth his very own - only with porcelain facsimiles bestowed upon him at a hefty price. His future spoke of screws drilled into his jaw, or prosthetics strapped to a stump, and ceaseless stares from passersby. He knew he would have to hide his defects now, his stolen arm and teeth and finger. He knew no one would tell him what they thought about these missing parts of him - how they left him lesser, perhaps, or more disturbing.

And his sex life was all but over.

These, he knew, composed not the worst of his predicament. The Negaverse owned him now, and expected of him what he once bargained. They would find him eventually. They held in their possession his fingerprints, and his dental records. If he sought dentures, they would know his civilian identity. His only saving grace, perhaps, was that he had never once been fingerprinted. He would have to endure a life of liquid meal unless he wanted to surrender himself to their demands wholesale.

As he laid with his thoughts, his gaze traveled to the far corners of the room where the moon no longer touched. Quenton’s apartment looked far different in the late night, when shadows stretched far and crawled up walls. He blinked, and a shadow drifted just slightly, perhaps caught by a passing headlight, or perhaps cast by an object’s motion. Immediately he recalled her - Alkaid, shattered and terrible, lurking within his apartment. Setting it alight. Stealing his cat and defacing his art to torment a friend. He would find her here, surely, watching him for any action against the Negaverse. No part of his life could be saved from them.

The shadow stilled, and he saw no more than the tall floor lamp in the corner. His breath ceased to let out. He lay there for several moments more, studying it for treachery, and wondered when the next shock would come - when the real bogeyman would lurk over him. Would it be Cinnabar next? Schörl?

The clock read 2:06, and still he could not sleep.

fmelyn
alkaid mention

mivynian
going out of order here but quincy apartment vague mention & schorl mention

whimmsical blue
brief cinn mention