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 Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2006 9:04 am
Amnesia
It had all happened quite quickly, far too quickly, where Vivian was concerned. One moment she had been called into the police station for “Reasons you will be informed about upon your arrival.” Then a child with a jack-o-lantern for a stomach had been shoved into her arms, and she had been dubbed it’s guardian. The next thing Vivian knew, she had been knocked out without any physical force.
“Ung..” Vivian mumbled something about rocks and her head before groggily rubbing and opening her eyes. She was laying down on her bed in her room, which was unusually clean. The teen furrowed her eyebrows. It was a Wednesday, right? She shifted around on her bed so that her clock on the other side of the room was easily read. “One, eleven, zero six. Twelve thirty AM.” So it was a Wednesday, but if it was, then why hadn’t her mom woken her up before this? She had school, and while it wasn’t like she didn’t mind not having school, she generally preferred not having to spend a week catching up on the stuff she missed.
Pushing herself out of her bed, she pulled one of the warmest blankets with her to use as a heater –her mom never turned on the house heater. As Vivian began to walk to the door, the teen pondered what had happened the night before. She remembered being at home and getting ready for the Halloween party she was going to have, then the phone rang because something bad had happened. Vivian scratched her head, pulling her hair out of a ponytail as she did so. Something had happened, but she just couldn’t remember what.
“Ugh.” She whined inwardly as a large blob of white in the corner of her room caught her eye. It was probably her dirty Halloween costume, and she didn’t relish the thought of having to move it to the laundry room –while it was okay to wear on yourself, (She had gotten her oldest brother, Ray, to put a spell on it to make it lighter, but it only ended up working when she wore it.) it felt like it weighed a ton when she had to carry it anywhere. About-facing, Vivian dragged herself over to the costume, and made a reluctant face before attempting to scoop up the large bundle of white. “Ugh, oh good grief.” The girl muttered, almost falling as the weight tried to drop to the ground. The costume was heavier than usual, but the teen just credited that to the fact that she didn’t usually attempt to carry it when she was still half-asleep.
Dragging the weight out of her room, down the hallway and into the laundry room, Vivian was about to drop the costume to let her mom wash the next cleaning day, but suddenly she felt a strange squirming in her arms. “W-What? Ack! It’s moving!” Dropping the load of her costume on the floor and quickly backing away, Vivian stared at the white pile.
Indeed, something had moved, however it was not the costume. As the heavy costume thudded on the floor, a cry echoed in the room. “Gah!” Vivian squeaked, frightened of whatever was in the costume. It took only a short moment for the shrill cries to become slightly quieter, and as they did, the teenager took a few hesitant steps towards the lump of white fabric. Kneeling on the floor, the girl nervously stuck her hand out towards the costume, and pulled away the uppermost sheet of fabric.
Vivian’s blue eyes widened as she revealed a wailing child beneath the costume. “Oh, holy freaking flying cows!” A hand shot to the teen’s head as she stared, wide-eyed at the young baby. How on Gaia had it gotten there? Why was it cry- wait, it fell, that’d be wh- “Ack! It fell!” As the strange knowledge that Vivian had just dropped a baby on the ground sunk into her head, she stared forlornly at the shrieking child.
The young baby flung it’s arms out in front of it, waving them in random circles and hoping to be picked up and comforted. It was not happening. The boy’s green eyes quickly surveyed the space around him in the time between wails and stuck on Vivian. Whining about the pain in loud gibberish screams, the boy pulled a section of the costume over him, his other arm, akin to bone, still waving in front of him, begging the teen in front of him to hold him.
Vivian stared at the child, dumbfounded and, frankly, just a little bit creeped out. Suddenly, weird memories were floating back into her head. They were the memories about the night before, and the teen was starting to wonder how she had managed to forget that her brother was in jail. It took a moment or so, but soon the girl realized that “Kid” (She eventually remembered the nickname he had been so fondly given.) was not going to just stop crying, and that she really didn’t have the slightest clue of what to do.
“Ah, um…” Vivian winced as the cries persisted. Reaching a pair of hesitant arms out towards the baby, the teen took in a sharp breath and picked up the child, holding it awkwardly in the air. “Just, stop crying. Okay?” The words were stiff and uncomfortable, and both the baby and the girl seemed to notice this, the former’s eyes filling up with tears, and the other watching in nervous horror. “Ah! No! No, no, umm, just,” the teen took a breath hoping that it would help her words seem more… soft. “Just, don’t worry. Everything’s fine, you don’t need to cry.”
The baby’s watery green eyes stared at Vivian for a moment as the gentle words floated to his ears. All of a sudden the wails stopped, and the young child’s mouth slowly, ever so slowly, turned upwards into a bright smile. The boy laughed, his white bone-legs kicking happily, and his arms reaching out in front of him, fisting and un-fisting his hands in a desperate attempt to be brought closer.
Vivian sighed happily, glad beyond belief that ‘Kid’ had ceased crying. As she was about to place the child back down on the costume, suddenly a pair of tanned arms swooped down and scooped the child away from Vivian. The teen’s eyes followed the child, and a smile spread on her face as her eyes landed on her mother.
“You just have to be gentle with them, quiet and reassuring.” She explained, her voice barely above a whisper. Pulling the baby into her arms, she cradled ‘Kid’ with one arm and dangled her other hand’s fingers in front of the baby’s face –a temporary toy for him to amuse himself with. “And you have to follow their directions, pick them up and set them down and cuddle them when they want it.” A knowing smile played on the older woman’s face as she gazed at the child in her arms. How long had it been since she had a child to be able to hold? Far too long, she had quickly concluded.
Vivian watched her mother hold the baby, watching how the child reacted to her movements. She noticed that they were all large and deliberate, slowly going from one point to the other without stopping, just one flowing movement. A frown grew on the teen’s face. It didn’t look so hard, so why was it? Her mom could do it, so it stands to reason that she should be able to do it just as well, if not better… Right?
The teen pouted slightly; as awkward as she had been with the baby, seeing her mother looking so happy with him made her want to try to hold him again. Yeah, she had managed getting the child calm, but what good was that if you couldn’t hold the kid?
A gentle voice interrupted Vivian’s thoughts, “Honey?” The teen’s face snapped upwards immediately from her daydream-like state.
“Yeah?” She answered, pretending to be nonchalant.
“I’m going to get this little guy something to drink, okay? I’ll be back in a minute.” Vivian’s mother waited for her daughter to silently shrug and turn around before she left the room into the kitchen.
Vivian stared at her costume, splayed all over the floor. It was then, while both her mother and Kid were out of the room, that the realization that she had to take care of this child set in. She laid her head down on the palms of her hands, and balanced her elbows on her legs.
She was a mother.
No, not a mother, just a parent, or a ‘guardian’ as she remembered the police man saying. She was a child’s guardian, at only seventeen. But that would change soon –she reminded herself. Her eighteenth birthday was only around the corner. It was, at the time, only two months and four days until her birthday.
She was still a guardian.
She was supposed to represent a mother.
She was supposed to take care of a child at seventeen, or eighteen, or whatever age she would end up being for the most part of her guardianship. How would that work? What would she do? She had never, ever, not once in her life, been in any sort of prolonged contact with a baby. As far as she knew, all kids were born six years old and already knew how to hold basic and moderate conversations, and knew all the rules in society that were taken for granted.
She did not know how to teach a child to read, or speak, or be polite. Heck, sometimes she wasn’t polite, and when she was in the presence of certain guys in her class, it was almost as if she had lost the ability to form coherent sentences –verbally, or in her mind.
She was not ready for this. She was positive that she wasn’t ready for this. Really, who would be? Was there a soul on Gaia who would have been able to learn that her brother had been sent to jail (Something that, at the time, didn’t really seem real. It was almost as if he was hiding somewhere, readying himself to jump out at Vivian and yell “Surprise!” Like the big dork she knew her brother was.) and the reason he’d been sent there had been trapped inside a kid that was placed under your care, without the said person being able to have at least a minor breakdown? Vivian was pretty sure there wasn’t.
Taking a breath, the girl turned around to look at her mom and Kid in her arms, she smiled for a second, then pushed herself up off the ground. “Okay,” She started, talking to herself. “I’m ready.”
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Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 5:54 pm
The Official Naming of Cyril Lucious Aeing
It had been a week since Vivian had been dubbed the official guardian of Kid, and she was beginning to realize that, as convenient as it could sometimes be, her child could not go through life being known as ‘Kid’. So, with some urging from her mother and some self-convincing, the teen went out on a mission to find a perfect name for her little rugrat.
“Hmmm…” The girl hummed, slightly irritated, as she scanned the pages in a baby names book. The pages were flipping almost constantly through lists of names much along the lines of Pete, Peter, Paul, Bob, Rob, and Dan. Yes, those names might have been fine for some other person but… She glanced over at Kid, who immediately responded by striking up a game he had recently been taught. Covering his face with his small white hands, the boy giggled madly as he hid himself from Vivian, then revealed himself in a flash. The teen smiled softly at the boy in her lap. No, he needed a special name. She sighed inwardly. “Hrm, maybe something like-”
“Alphonse!” Her mother suggested, much too energetically for Vivian’s liking.
“No, mom. We’re not naming him Alphonse.”
“Fredrik?”
“No.”
“Laertes?”
Vivian rolled her eyes and looked over at her mother, silently patronizing her. “Mom,”
Her mother’s expression hardened slightly. “Now honey, I don’t appreciate that tone you’re using with me. So loose it, and stop giving me that look.”
“Yeah yeah. Whatever.” The teen dismissed her mother with an absent-minded wave of her hand, something the older lady obviously did not find appropriate. Before she could bring up the apparent rudeness of her last act, however, Vivian walked over to her mother and gave her a one-armed hug and let Kid pull on her hair- his version of showing affection.
Mrs. Aeing gave her daughter a smug look, “Okay, you’re off the hook this time but-”
“If I do it one more time, then I’m going to get in trouble, right?” An exasperated sigh and a giggle from Kid confirmed Vivian’s guess.
“So, what do you think of the name Patrick?” The lady said with the same exuberance as before.
This time however, Vivian didn’t even have to react as Kid did all the talking for her. Pushing his eyebrows together and scrunching his face up, the boy’s head shook violently with his small head-wings flapping just as hard. “Naaaabamawaa!” The baby cried. He really hadn’t the slightest clue of what the big things were doing, but that sound the bigger one had made did not sound pleasant to his ears at all; thus, the young boy vocalized his feelings, be it slightly louder than was needed.
Both Vivian and her mother formed nervous smiles. If he was this loud as a baby god forbid he decide to screech when his lungs expand.
It took a good two and a half hours of searching for Vivian to come up with what she thought was the best name for her baby-dearest.
“Cyril.” She proclaimed, her charge too busy grabbing at the sparkly faux plants on the table next to the trio to really comprehend what had just happened.
“’Cyril’?” Her mother parroted.
“Yup. Cyril Aeing. What do you think?” Of course, Vivian really couldn’t care less about what her mother thought of the name… Really! It was just a common courtesy to ask, was all.
“Hmmm… It sounds a little…” She paused for a moment, her pale skinny fingers drumming against her chin. “I don’t know, empty? How about adding a middle name?”
Vivian stared at her mother for a second Empty? Psht. It didn’t sound empty, it just… needed more substance, was all. Pondering the thought of adding another name to the child, Vivian didn’t notice the gentle tug she felt on her shirt sleeve. But suddenly, another name was the last thing she had to be worrying about.
“Vivian! Cyril’s-” Mrs. Aeing didn’t even finish her sentence as the inevitable occurred. The newly dubbed ‘Cyril’ had firmly grabbed onto the sparkly display plants that had been strategically placed in a vase, and gave them a quick tug, attempting to bring them to him. Well, it turned out that they were much too stubborn to give up that easily and instead pulled the baby out of his mother’s grasp.
“Ah! Cyril!” Quickly latching onto her child, the teen yanked the small boy up from the path he had just been quickly taking towards the carpeted ground, and plopped him down on her lap once more, sighing in relief. “Good God, Cyril! Try not to give me a heart attack, okay? Sheesh!” The boy just blinked at the big lady babbling in front of him, then looked back to the sparkly piece of faux foliage still tightly gripped in his hand, instantly distracted by how it caught the light. Vivian shook her head slightly. It was no use shouting at a baby, he didn’t know what she was saying anyway. “Thanks mom.”
The lady smiled, “It was nothing. I wouldn’t want to see my grandson get hurt.”
“Mmm.” Thinking a moment, the teen grinned and looked down at Cyril. “You know, I think I’m going to name you Cyril Lucious Aeing.”
Her mother stared, slightly confused, at her daughter. “Why Lucious?”
“Because,” Vivian started, as if it was completely obvious, “It’s close to Lucifer, only if I named him that he would probably end up acting like the devil incarnate, not just have a name that insinuated that he was a trouble maker.”
“That makes perfect sense.” She said, even though to her, it really, really didn’t.
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Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 2:34 pm
The Trials and Tribulations of Getting a Child to Sleep
It was late, to say the least. Vivian had only just managed to fall into a fitful sleep two hours ago after having to cater to her new child’s every need. It really hadn’t occurred to her that Cyril wouldn’t want to go to bed after having stored up all his energy by napping the entire day. The teenager had ended up playing an extremely watered down version of ‘hide-and-seek’ for several hours in order to drain the energy of the strange child, only to realize that it was wearing her out more than Cyril. It was then that ‘super-mom’ intervened and explained to Vivian that more energizing activities were better, and that ‘tag’ was probably a more suitable choice. Vivian quickly informed her mother that there was a reason that she never played tag with Cyril, but her opinion was only cast aside.
After Mrs. Aeing realized that Cyril had a strange love for finding the darkest, dankest, most creepy and spider-filled areas in the house, (That she didn’t even know she had.) she quickly ended the game and suggested that Vivian just put Cyril to bed and attempt to go to sleep herself.
It worked.
For five minutes.
Then Cyril screamed, and yelled, and noticed that when he did so both the big ladies came running to him. It was then that the baby decided that he quite enjoyed that strange sort of power that he held.
A few bottles of milk later, and Vivian had tucked her small miracle child away inside his crib. The milk seemed to do the job, as ten minutes later, at 12:35 pm, with the hopes of a good night’s rest, Vivian dozed off into the sleep in which she had happily stayed in for the next two hours. Meaning, her hope of getting eight hours of sleep was quickly and promptly shattered at 2:36pm.
Cyril blinked his luminescent green eyes as they quickly adjusted to the darkness around him. A babyish grin grew on the boy’s face as he caught sight of a spider scurrying across the bars of his wooden crib. He reached his stark hands out to grab hold of the arachnid, but the small creature was far too fast, and managed to slip away from the boney limbs and hid itself in the dark, upper corner of the room. Cyril’s grin formed into a pout, and the baby immediately looked to the source of his entertainment for the past few days: Vivian. It wasn’t that the child had any real diabolical plan in mind, and it wasn’t that he intended to steal his mother’s valuable sleeping time away from her, but it was just that the boy desperately wanted to be paid attention to, and he knew from experience that Vivian could always do that. So he cried. Quietly, at first, before it escalated to wails and sobs, and even a couple strange noises that really couldn’t have been formed by anyone else.
What with the ruckus going on, it was inevitable that Vivian woke up with bleary eyes, a confused mind, and a migrane that hinted that the cries had been going on for at least a minute or two. A tired eye-rub and a soft groan later, Vivian turned her full attention to her son. “Nnng, Cyril, whaddisit?” Granted, the words came out a little bit slurred and whiny, but the teen was proud of the fact that she had managed to speak at all. Of course, all Cyril had done was cry some more, and so Vivian pushed herself into a sitting position and stared at the corpse-boy with squinted eyes. A chill rolled down her spine as she realised how creepy the baby’s bright eyes could be in the dark, and she told herself that his eyes probably weren’t actually as bright as a searchlight, but they just looked like that in the dark because the green colour contrasted the black. That had to be it.
Vivian stood up and was about to scoop a wailing Cyril into her arms, when another pair of tanned arms beat her to it. “Wha?” The teen followed the long limbs with her eyes until she reached a familiar face. “Mom?”
The older lady nodded, and adjusted her grandson on her hip when he began to entertain himself with the gold locket hung around her neck. “I heard my grandson dearest crying and I figured that you might be in need of some assistance.” Vivian nodded groggily, not really comprehending much other than the fact that her mother had somehow managed to wake up at 2:36 in the morning, and act like it was midday.
“Yeah, yeah…” Vivian rubbed her head for a second, then shook it a little bit in order to rid herself of her sleepiness. “Here,” She continued, stretching her arms out to receive her son back from her mother. “I’ll take him off your hands now.” But strangely, the cold child did not end up in her arms. “Mom?” She parroted her earlier question, “I said ‘I’ll take him off your-’”
Her mom just laughed and shifted Cyril again –Vivian noticed that the baby squeaked as the gold locked was inadvertently taken away from his grabby hands. “No no, silly. It’s alright, I’ll take care of him for now, I just want you to worry about getting to bed and having a good night’s sleep, okay?” Cyril made a sound much like ‘Humph’ as he realised that his chubby hands were simply not long enough to reach the pretty shiny thing he had previously been inspecting.
Vivian adopted something of an incredulous look on her face, as she replied. “What? No, mom, he’s my kid, I have to take care of him. It’s my responsibility. Seriously, just let me take care of him, I’ll be fine.”
Her mother just smiled. “But Vivvy, you’re my child, and I feel the need to take care of you by keeping you healthy. The only way I can make sure that happens, is through giving you the chance to get as much sleep as you need.”
The teenager only rolled her eyes. “Seriously mom, you need to understand that I’m almost an adult now, I can make my own decisions. I chose to keep Cyril, and now I’m choosing to take care of him, okay?” She stretched out her arms once more and was thrilled by the familiar feel of the hard bone of Cyril’s arms and legs leaning against her own dark, warm limbs.
“Very well,” Her mother sighed, “But I’m keeping an eye on you, alright? I don’t want you growing up too fast, you hear me?” Mrs. Aeing pulled the duo of now-united mother and child into a tight hug before walking off to her respective quarters.
A yawn at the end of the hallway and the sudden loss of her mother’s perfect posture told Vivian that her mother really wasn’t as not-tired as she had been pretending to be. A slightly more respectful smile crept onto her face as she sat down on her bed, and tended to Cyril by first handing him one of her shiny gold bracelets –with which he immediately greeted by grasping it firmly and stretching it and fiddling with it in any way imaginable.
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