| Clutching my cure, I tightly lock the door, I try to catch my breath again... |
[05 Mar 2008|10:50pm] |
... I hurt much more than anytime before, I have no options left again
WHO: Isaac Mendez, NPC!Simone, Peter Petrelli, and perhaps a visit from Brooke
WHAT: Someone overdoses and someone else tries to help
WHEN: Directly after the Halloween thread ( a real blast from the past this one )
WHERE: The artist's loft
WARNINGS: Drugs. Lots and lots of drugs.
Somewhere in there, things had gone drastically downhill. Now, away from the dizzying company of the party, Isaac could remember that he had been talking to a real slick charmer when that tickle behind his eyelids had become more of a sting. A distracting, piercing sort of urgency drove him away from her with barely an excuse and to the front hall. That's where Simone had stopped him, insulted and desperate, and in her low voice she'd warned him to behave himself and not go the way she knew he wanted to. But he'd blown her off, because Simone had never quite grasped what was the most important thing here, and socializing certainly wasn't it. No, there was something else and Isaac had to figure out what that was. Their arguing voices had raised until the closest heads had turned, staring blatantly at Simone's stalling hand and Isaac's maniac gestures until "Please don't do this!" and the slamming of a door had ended everything.
No, not everything. There was still more. Now Isaac was poised at the doorway of his apartment. It was all dark inside, just like he'd left it when Simone had first come to get him for the Halloween... thing. Paintings like dark portals taunted him from their places intact on easels. A flash or hint of color here and there... Isaac forewent the lights to avoid bringing back the images in full. He didn't need those right now, there was something else. He could blink and feel the pressure of it building in his head.
He knew what he had to do.
Memories consume, like opening the wound, I'm picking me apart again
Isaac stumbled his way down the front stairs, his numb fingers collapsing onto the smooth metal of the railing but not really ever catching it so that he was just as much on his way falling down them as walking. Feet on the ground, the artist padded across the studio floor. In the doorway, he'd latched toe onto opposite heel and shucked both of his shoes in this way. Now he could feel the real, litter-covered texture of every step. It planted him in a reality that he was about to leave. Reaching with one hand to his head, he tore away the bandana he'd been wearing for the costume--ha, who was he trying to fool-- while the other rummaged briefly among papers and paints. No, not here. He'd been more careful than that when she'd been around.
Yeah, you're a good guy, Isaac, lying to your girlfriend, running out on her party... digging through this garbage. But it's for her! The sentence felt stale and he knew he was finally lying to himself, too. Probably had been for a while. He didn't know his place or how he was supposed to find it, and somehow this burning in his brain was like the first thing he'd really felt in a long time. He could shoot up, but what did that ever bring him but trouble, and fear. He'd felt al lot of fear lately. For himself, for losing Simone. Both of these things, they would come again. But maybe-- just maybe, he would find the answer for it, too.
If he could only find this!
You all assume I'm safe here in my room, unless I try to start again
Things were swept aside in a chorus of breaking bottles, empty cans hitting the floor, and papers fluttering away from Isaac's violent gestures. Nothing was spared, despite that the artist was only making his way across the room, no longer searching but knowing. Every little bit of everything just seemed to be getting in his way, reminding him of something he wanted to forget. There was always a way to forget, even in your own home.
He charged across the room and fell forward in front of the mini-fridge, his knees hitting the floor hard and beginning to throb. He hardly seemed to notice. Fingers clenched around the small appliance and he pulled, heaving it away from its normal spot against the wall. Behind it, the plaster had been ripped away to form a moderate-sized hole there. Isaac dipped down and reached inside this, fumbling once and then finding the hard metal case that he was looking for. He could barely contain himself, but he managed to pull to his feet and carry the case all the way to the closet table before ripping the top off. The package was rolled so nicely and with one obliging tug on the end, it unraveled into a stream of fabric keeping all those needles so prettily in a row for him. The syringes, the tourniquet. It's like they were waiting for him; his friends.
Carefully, Isaac laid the package out on the table and slid out the first syringe.
I don't to be the one the battles always choose cause inside I realize that I'm the one confused
It didn't take very long-- habits don't usually. Soon he had the length of binding tightened around his arm. The one end was clutched in his teeth for last minute tightening even as the needle hovered over the skin, found the familiar purchase when simply flexing his arm brought the vein to visible surface. Here, he paused. He wasn't sure what he was looking for but he knew that he had to do this-- somehow, he knew. When he stopped to take a deep breath it came in and went out shaky and he closed his eyes for concentration.
BAM-- like a hammer, an earthquake. Isaac felt shaken to his very core with the blast of fiery suggestion just inside his eyes. Some vision of horrific proportions was dancing on the other side of his eyelids but every time he tried to access it he would panic, pull away. He couldn't focus when it was just him standing there and being scared.
But God, why him. Why was this happening... why the needle against his skin... in his skin... with the soft sweet string of the syringe as it depressed from one insistent urging of his finger. In and gone... Isaac's eyelids fluttered as he slipped the needle back out and laid it indiscriminately somewhere on the table. The seconds passed by predictably in the countdown from eight, seven, six, there they went as his heart pattered and his breathing slowed. Everything flared up into a single rush before the poisons could properly slip into place, calming the whole body to an unnatural smooth. From here, maybe, Isaac could access those shaking images. He slowly closed his eyes--
No! The reds of fire thundered into his vision, still too vividly. It felt like something exploded against his eyeball and Isaac screamed for the furious pain. His knees buckled as he nearly dropped to them then clung to the table, grasping for his lifeline. The syringe rolled like prophecy into his hand and Isaac knew that he needed more. This was stronger than any of the others and he couldn't be content until he could find the point where the vision could be accessed. He grabbed and he dabbled with new ferocity and without further preparation he stabbed the re-prepared syringe into his arm quite unceremoniously.
I don't know what's worth fighting for or why I have to scream, I don't know why I instigate and say what I don't mean
It can't be said that Isaac was much aware of what happened after that while the drugs poured furiously into his bloodstream, heating and then cooling his nerves, sliding over all those senses. This was usually the part where he blacked out. But there was just too much to be contained. He could close his eyes this time, lower lids until there was nothing of his world there but his low, laborious breathing, but the vision was waiting. The fire. He could see New York as it laid out every day of his life, outside his window, and without realizing it he clenched the correct colors, found the paintbrush. But all of the palettes, they were full... and this was bigger than anything else he'd ever attempted. Once again, Isaac feel to his knees and where he fell he applied the paint. The first spray of gray right across the floor without discretion.
But there wasn't just New York, no, there was still the fire to deal with. Crawling to the side, Isaac knocked the gray can over in his rush for the reds and oranges, the yellows, and the terrible white. You wouldn't think that white could be terrible, could you? But this white was the accent of death, the highlights of the massive mushrooms cloud that signaled the destruction of so much that he knew.
Sharp, angular strokes formed buildings. There were those affected but mostly those totally unaware of what was about to happen to them. The devastation, it was only the brink, the exact moment of occurrence. For Isaac, nothing else mattered but this very instant where huge numbers of people were going to die. Hours, it could've been hours, or maybe days or just minutes. Isaac slathered the paint around more frantically than he ever had before and yet the lines were crisp and the details precise. He could see so vividly because this time when he looked it was not from the quick veil of his eyelids but his entire eye retreated and gave way to the truth. And with the drugs keeping him up, the vision could not bring him down. It would not chase him away-- he would preserve it.
I don't know how I got this way, I know it's not alright, so I'm breaking the habit -- tonight
But drugs... chasing after that one, instead, can lead to just as fast a crash and Isaac, even in his tranced stupor, could tell that his time was ticking. The faster that his hands flurried across his solid-floor canvas, the more that his body began to ache and then to shake. He was losing details, and life, sooner than he could afford. Sweeeep across for dark backgrounds and then quick accented strokes of the smokey gray sky, the light mixed curves of yellow and orange making the explosion itself. It's a grand, glorious expression of artwork almost too clean and brilliant for something so massive as it is trying to depict, but the event does not choose its vessel and Isaac's hands move where they may.
If he were more aware of what was happening perhaps he would stop, but he's been consumed by the light in his eyes and eaten by the drugs in his system. He went too far. Even as he painted, his body began to shut down system by system, collapsing upon itself even as he dragged along for one last stroke, one last outline. It's a miracle inside a disaster that he doesn't smear any of the already laid paint. No, the floor seems to let it soak in with the weight of it. This image... it was meant to be there.
And Isaac's the one who had to paint it. But what he had to do to get to this point...
Never again his body screams as it dies, depositing his rapidly cooling form finally onto the floor. He was done. Perhaps for a very long time.
I'll paint it on the walls, cause I'm the one at fault. I'll never fight again --
It was everywhere. The very floor of his loft displayed the vision for anyone else to see; now it wasn't just Isaac's burden to bear but the world's. But the world never came in here. Isaac was alone.
His body splayed along the edge of the massive painted explosion, the artist replayed the colors in his mind and behind his eyes with what little consciousness he had left, but so vividly that the event seemed to be occurring right in front of him over and over and over and over... he knew nothing else.....
... but that they had to stop it. Save the world.
--and this is how it ends.
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