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 Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2014 3:45 am
Grey
One upgrade from the trainee dorms was that the hunter dorms were framed by a large window. Of course the trainee dorms had the same static, structured, rigid, identical window, but it didn't have nearly the same effect as the window did on the second floor rather than the first one.
None of this mattered to a girl who covered the window with dark colored curtains the moment she could (not to make a statement, merely to block out the light when she was hungover or needed to sleep in particular), but it was certainly a nicety to occasionally happen upon the normality (perhaps in between shifts when she was trying to get a nap, or maybe when she had to wait for water to boil to make her soup) that was built into her wall and remember that for all the terrible things that had happened, there was still a small amount of pride in the glass that shielded her from the rest of the world.
For a blip in time she could turn off her brain, she could stare out at the wonderful view bestowed upon her.
(Ah yes, a permanent grey color in the clouds and the dull stony grey and blue that constructed most of the buildings).
No more having to shoulder Finn and Ripley's dilemma (Chel never really had to shoulder anything, she chose to take it upon herself, so the wording of that phrase was both melodramatic and entirely incorrect). No more complaining about having to be babysat to be granted permission to crawl off of the rock they all scuttled around. No more teeth. No more wondering why Dawson still hadn't texted her about their date (had he finally given up? She had to commend him for waiting so long- it usually happened much faster. Maybe he'd forgotten to even dump her. Maybe he had been busy with work? Why hadn't he-) No. More. Jack.
Of course, moments later she would merely shake her head, wondering why she was staring anyways. Her pot was beginning to boil over and soon (god forbid) her soup would be ruined.
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Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2014 3:52 am
tw: slurs
Disabled
She hadn't learned the proper word until the sixth grade. She remembered it quite vividly, if only because it was such a stupid ******** presentation. Her middle school, like many other middle schools, had a department for the disabled students. It was in the gymnasium (she was on the third bleacher and she was texting someone the entire time) while she was crammed next to one hundred or so of her classmates.
Not much of the presentation stuck. Inclusion and open-mindedness were encouraged.
Chel had been raised on South Park and the Simpsons. She knew she wasn't retarded, and that the word was used in the same way gay was; as a synonym for stupid. She walked down the halls jokingly slamming her fist against a friends arm, saying, "Wasn't that test retarded?" And that was the extent of her education. She could use that word in that way- she could police the space around her- because she was assured that she was not one of the characters she saw on T.V.
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Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2014 4:04 am
Disabled
The classroom was huge. It was a community college and the classroom was spilling with bodies, some people even choosing to take the stairs or the floor. Chel was one such people, but it wasn't because she chose the floor. She had been late (making poptarts for herself was a far more valuable use of her time than going to class- even on the first day. She wouldn't have even gone had she not felt lonely being the only person in the dormitory lounge. Chel needed people).
Rather than listening to the professor ramble, she looked around the classroom for potential associates. People who were like her, who didn't want to be here. People who had strangely colored hair. People who caked on too much makeup. People who had bags under their eyes. People who's clothing didn't match the pastel, earthy tones of the patchwork classroom.
The syllabus seemed like a waste of time her opinion. In Chel's mind, a professor should have just started teaching. All these rules and points were just made up constructs of the professor's imagining.
"If any of you are uh- in need of any assistance from the Learning Center or the Disability Center, just let me know so I can make accommodations." It was a common enough phrase- all professors were supposed to notify students that they were responsible for providing accommodations under the disabilities act.
The words were like a personal insult. I am not disabled. She didn't need help and she wasn't different. She wasn't.
She decided she wouldn't go to any class that offered assistance. Thus, Chel skipped all 4 of her classes, and didn't pass her first semester (nobody had really expected her to, though her parents sat her down at Thanksgiving for a talk about responsibility and financial stability and what it meant to drop out of college and what are you going to do with your life if you don't have a degree? and what would Chris think of this-
Hands slam on the dinner table and she says, "I don't know what Chris would think because he's not ******** here. I'm dropping out of school, ******** you-"
"Under our roof you-"
"Then I'm not going to live here."
Her father scoffs, but her mother takes a very polite tone, one that grates on every nerve in her body and is probably responsible for half of her behavior today:
"Okay, if that's your choice then okay. Let us know if you want help."
And that annoys her even more because now she's pitiable and now her mother has made her a victim and now she doesn't really want to move out because it means she needs help and she has to do something on her own, but if she stays then she loses and she can't lose because she always loses-
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Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2014 3:37 pm
Wasted Talent
Concerns arose in middle school. State-wide standardized vision testing came to her middle school- Chel was elated both because it would be easy as ******** (a test she could actually pass!) and it wasted class time. The less time she had to spend in class, the better. Chris was a year ahead of her, meaning they couldn't hang out (eighth graders went at a different time than seventh graders, obviously), but she had other friends and it was still a good time.
When it came to be her turn, they whispered amongst themselves. They wrote things down on the clipboard, and Chel merely thought they were filling out paperwork they had to. She read off the chart, albeit slowly- too slowly they whispered- and sometimes they had to encourage her to move on because certain letters took to long.
Chel was well aware that her comprehension and reading and writing and general English skills were lower than other kids her age. It was hard to escape such a fact when written tests were what determined your grades, when standardized tests happened once every two or three years, when the person before her in the line read off the entire chart in less than a minute or two when it took her fifteen whole minutes.
Her personal diagnosis was that she was stupid. That was okay by her, because she couldn't have cared less about school. It was all reading and writing that said if you were smart or if you weren't. She had heard every "there's different kinds of intelligence!" speeches in the book. She had had teachers apologetically try to help her do better, she had had teachers angrily accusing her of not doing her best.
Yet the end result was still thus: she was stupid.
That was okay.
Because there was no other state she could be.
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Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2014 5:16 pm
Disabled
There must have been a mandate that every doctor's office in west Michigan had to have shitty lighting and uncomfortable waiting room chairs. Chel had certainly sampled enough of them as she was bounced around from physician to physician.
Professionals with expertise in several fields are best qualified to make a diagnosis of dyslexia. The testing may be done by a single individual or by a team of specialists. A knowledge and background in psychology, reading, language and education is necessary. The tester must have a thorough working knowledge of how individuals learn to read and why some people have trouble learning to read. They must also understand how to administer and interpret evaluation data and how to plan appropriate reading interventions.
Her parents seemed unsettled with each of these visits. Each time they seemed to be more concerned than the last. They even bought her burger king after the previous one.
Chel understood full well what was going on. All those years spent looking away from textbooks had her looking at people. She knew when someone was masking their confused nature. She knew when someone faked a smile, but she appreciated it when they did anyways. The excess knowledge might have made her feel better in another light, but all it really did was make her feel lonely.
Eventually the verdict was delivered in her courtroom, and Chel was relatively relieved. Not because she was now disabled- that word hadn't sunk in yet and it would come bursting through the door much later with despair and bone-crushing, mind-crippling confusion held in its hand.
Rather, she was relieved she didn't have to visit any more doctors. Maybe she could convince her parents to get Taco Bell this time.
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Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 1:21 am
Save the Galaxy
Convincing the cashier that she was an 18 year old at the age of 15 was difficult, but the game was apparently worth every penny she'd saved up for her yearly intake of games. Chel's parents never supported her gaming lifestyle, which meant that she had to buy her own by selling the old ones or selling any other present she'd gained from a relative she didn't care about.
Which explained why every game she owned seemed to be a few years old, and why she had such a penchant for retro games. No she did not believe that the nineties were somehow a glorious age of gaming- they were cheaper so she could afford more of them. Chel's backwards way of thinking that quantity of games somehow outweighed quality.
But this time she wanted to put all of her eggs in one basket, which resulted in her side-eyeing a copy of Mass Effect. It was three years old now and collecting dust in the bargain bin. She gave Chris' distracted body a shove with her elbow and she casually said, "Yo, what about this one?"
"Looks like another shooter," was his comment, gesturing to the enormous gun in the guy's hand.
"Yeah, in space."
Chris shook his head. "Get it if you want."
"Yeah, says the guy eyeing up ******** Pikmin."
"Hey! They're-"
Chel was already busy flipping over the box and reading the back. "Yo we get to ******** save the galaxy from the reaper invasion," she oozed sarcastically. "
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Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 1:31 am
Disabled
lawb
lawd
lamd
lamb
"These are stupid, I'm not learning anything." Sixteen years old and her parents were still pushing dyslexic workbooks, dylsexic-friendly fonts and dyslexic learning tapes on her.
Just once she wanted to not feel like she needed fixing.
No one ever blatantly said she was broken- to do so would be bad etiquette- she knew that. But it came in different forms.
You just learn a little differently!
We're going to do popcorn style reading today. One person will read at least a paragraph, and then they'll say popcorn and the next person picks up.
(The teacher doesn't say a word when she chooses to go to the bathroom two minutes before her turn. Yet the teacher's pissed off when Chel decides to skip fourty minutes of the class. Chel wonders if teachers notice their hypocrisy.)
Children with dyslexia have problems processing the information they see when looking at a word. Often a dyslexic child will have trouble connecting the sound made by a specific letter or deciphering the sounds of all the letters together that form a word. Given these challenges, children with dyslexia often also have trouble with writing, spelling, speaking, and math.
DYSLEXIA WARNING SIGNS
Do you want any help?
SATs: Write the following statement in cursive and then sign your name on the line.
The only time it felt okay to be dyslexic was when a friend had drawn a d**k in her workbook. She followed his suit and covered the entire thing with "artwork" of naked women, dicks and other illicit things. Her father blamed television. Her mother bought her a new workbook.
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Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 1:35 am
Save the Galaxy and ******** Blue Chicks
Chel had had an inkling, but Mass Effect certainly solidified her suspicions. Chris had been interested in Kaidan a little at first, but the moment Liara appeared on screen, Chel and Chris lost their s**t.
"We're gonna ******** that blue chick."
"Yeahhhh!! Yeah yeah!"
That was how Chel knew she was gay. She didn't have words for it yet, and for all she knew Chris was just going along with it for the joke of ******** a blue woman. A fifteen year old Chel didn't know how to articulate her frustration with the limbo.
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Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 1:43 am
Save the Galaxy with a Guide
"If we kill the rachni queen then-"
"She's a shifty b***h."
"Yeah, but there's consequences and it looks like-"
"Dude you're literally being like RELEASE SPIDERCRABS ON THE UNIVERSE."
"No I just mean-"
"MOM CHRIS LOVES SPIDERCRABS AND WANTS TO KILL US ALL."
Even Chris couldn't help laughing, even if he was pushing the sound through pursed, frustrated lips. The entire game had been like this. Chris analytically making sure they were on the right track, and Chel making her own choices regardless of any instruction he gave.
With a click of the mouse, the chamber filled with gas and some sad music played. "It's okay, we'll find you a scorpion to ******** or something."
"Oh my god."
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Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 1:54 am
Toy Story
Mufasa dying had done nothing. The fox being left in the forest struck a cord in her heart, but she didn't cry. When Little Creek released Spirit, she punched Chris in the arm for looking so pathetic.
But when Jesse was left, she laughed and said, "What a stupid b***h, just get up and go next door or something."
Later that night she cried about it- about that stupid red-headed doll, and she wasn't sure why.
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Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 5:46 pm
Fatigue
She can't keep going at this pace, and she realizes that, but she has to. She has to, because if she doesn't, she won't sleep. The texture of her blankets will scratch her hands as she grips them tightly from waking up at the image of teeth, at the sound of the sky itself cracking and dismantling itself. Before the teeth come, she always looks up at the sky, because she envies it. When the sky rumbles and shakes, it has the ability to detach itself from the situation. It gets the option to let go.
But the teeth always come next, and she's woken up so many times from the crunch of her neck that it doesn't seem to scare her anymore. She's annoyed and she's tired. I want to sleep dammit, is what she complains to Tenebrae, who merely stirs a bubbled agreement (although he's never sleeping so his agreement is worth nothing). This stupid ******** body needs to sleep, she orders it, but it never happens.
Now she's stumbling through the door into her room. She's been awake for 22 hours (which is a new record, and in that fact she actually finds some accomplishment and solice).
Sirens that don't exist are flaring in her mind and she stumbles with the effort it takes to turn the doorknob.
She doesn't even make it to the bed, she just considers the floor two steps into the room to be good enough. Her vision goes dark and she's falling, falling, falling. When the black tendrils of sleep come, they don't seem to mind that she isn't in a bed.
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Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 5:49 pm
Fatigue
When she wakes up, she has an awful soreness in her neck, and her side hurts because her daggers been flattened against it all night. She checks her phone, it's been 13 hours- she slept for 13 hours and now she feels like puking. Her head is on fire and it rocks with the abuse, but she crawls to the bathroom and lays on the ground.
The bathroom floor is cold, and she's always appreciated that. It bleeds into her skin, soothing it as she shuts her eyes and almost let's sleep overtake her again.
But sleep doesn't come (it never comes when she wants it to). She checks her phone (it's the only motion she can manage at the moment). She has duty in 20 minutes.
"Alright Craft. You can ******** do this. Get off the ******** floor."
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Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 5:53 pm
Family
Her father grasps the shoulder of his brother-in-law, grinning broadly from ear to ear. It's Thanksgiving, and they're all watching football. Chel loved football. You didn't have to read to enjoy men tackling each other.
"Family's all you'll ever have and all you need," her dad comments idly to the group, who nodded and raised a cup of whatever-poison-they'd-chosen in agreement.
Chel raised her own glass, but she wasn't so sure. She amended the statement in her head to only include Chris, but that didn't feel right- she felt like she was betraying some ancient familial law. Love thy parents and all that s**t.
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Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 5:59 pm
Fatigue
She can't keep going on like this, she knows, she knows. Every time she walks out the door, she insists that she smile and have a good time. She swore to Rep as a trainee- she wouldn't give in to their melancholy, morose attitudes. She would be the hunter who smiles. Every wave in the hall is greeted with a wave of her own, and when she's too tired to manage a wave, she puts on her headphones and bobs her head.
(This let's everyone knows she's okay. She's just fine, because she has music. Is everyone okay with that? Are we all good? Is anyone staring at me- should I pull down my jacket more- can anyone see it?)
But when her face presses into the bathroom floor again, she wishes for just a moment that someone would come get her. She wishes that someone would save her for a change. No, she wishes that for once she'd let someone save her. She wanted to hear the words and have them stick, but that took someone saying the words in the first place. Not Chris, not Abbi, not Jason. They were lovely friends, but they treated her condition like it was something that needed fixing and like it was their god given task to do so. She needed someone who didn't make it his or her obligation. She wanted someone who did it because they respected her enough to help her up while loving her downfall just as much.
Not a duty, not a job, not a pity party.
Someone who didn't make her feel endangered, but someone that didn't make her feel comfortable and in power. She needed to be used, but not abused, she needed to feel in control, but part of a larger game. She needed to be close, but not too close. Hopelessly dependent upon someone that didn't need her dependence like a drug.
Not "the right thing to do," not the designated driver, not the concerned parent, not the responsible friend.
She coughs until her chest is wracked with a fire- she wonders how bad would it really be if she smoked? If she drank until she couldn't remember who she was? She was beginning to understand why Finn and Jack were such alcoholics. But she did them one better- she needed to burn every moment into her scalp until her body eventually learned not to disobey her. Alcohol stunted her ability to remember.
Not the captain of the cheer squad, not the southern patriot, not the football game announcer, not th-
But dyslexia doesn't have to keep a kid down. With some help and a lot of hard work, a kid who has dyslexia can learn to read and spell.
But no one ever comes, so the bathroom floor is her only salve and the teeth are her only friends.
So she smiles.
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Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 6:22 pm
Fire
She dyes her hair orange and yellow. It's a bad dye job and it's uneven, but now her hair looks like it's catching fire from the bottom up.
It doesn't look good on her- she's never been a summery color sort of person with her bright blue eyes, but she's satisfied. Jokes of "fire crotch" ring through her head and she laughs in spite of herself.
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