WHO: Charlie WHEN: Around 0200, when the glass starts shattering WHERE: Charlie's room, 209 WHAT: In case you've ever wondered what happens when you drug a deaf boy and then explode a window in his face. WARNING: Blood and gore and poor, poor Charlie
This is ridiculous, Charlie thought as he stared down the numbers displayed on his phone. It was past two in the morning and he had been lying in his bed, patiently waiting for sleep to overtake him for the past three hours. It didn't help his situation at all that the storm seemed to be getting more and more violent outside his window and the blinking indication of a dying battery on the screen of his phone only increased his stress levels. The power had been out in his room for hours and he'd been using his phone for light. With no way of charging the thing, he would be blind within the confines of his room until he found his way out. As someone who lived his life one sense shy of a full set, Charlie was none too keen on losing another, even if only temporarily. He hadn't been to the lobby since the power outage began and wasn't aware of the flashlights being given out there. A flashlight certainly might have soothed his nerves but alas all he had was his dying phone and his long-dead laptop.
Which wouldn't be a problem, of course, if he had just fallen asleep when he'd intended to. He could have slept through the worst of the storm and woken up to a room with power, or at least enough feeble sunlight to see a hand in front of his face, but whenever he closed his eyes all he saw was the face of the blue-haired man from the pool. Without the ability to hear, Charlie couldn't be sure just how bad the storm had gotten but every few minutes he would catch something out of the corner of his eye, movement in the blackness, that made him imagine the whole building was crumbling around him. He blinked his eyes hard a few times to try and make something out in the dark but it was no use. Charlie was working himself up into frenzy of fear and he hated himself for it.
This was the sort of thing that had started to eat at him lately. How was he supposed to call himself an independent adult when he couldn't even be left alone in a power outage? Yes, he was exhausted and terrified and honestly he was sure that Bryant wouldn't have any objections to letting Charlie spend the night for safety's sake but he didn't want to have to do that.
He stared up at what should have been the ceiling but was currently just a swampy nothing before his eyes and willed himself to see reason. There was nothing to worry about. Everything that was bothering him was in his head and if he could just manage to get to sleep he could open his eyes to a much brighter world. He clutched his phone to his chest as he mouthed calming words to himself and managed to get his heart rate down a few beats before he caught another movement. It was impossible, really, he couldn't see three feet in front of him but he was seeing something. He took a deep breath and sat up in the bed, pushing the blankets away and swinging his legs over the side of the mattress. Using the phone's dying light to guide him, Charlie made his way over to the window, hoping to get a better look at the storm so he could convince himself it wasn't so bad.
The light from the phone caused a glare on the window's surface and nothing could be seen past the layer of glass separating him from the hurricane. He was mildly soothed, for a moment, by his own actions, despite the fact that he still couldn't see outside. It was more the act of facing his fear that added a swirl of hope and satisfaction to his kaleidoscope of emotions.
The glass shattered without any warning and Charlie had less than a second to react before there was rain and cold wind on his face. It was like that glass had been the only thing between him and pure chaos as the storm rushed into his room with immense destructive power. In another half-second Charlie registered the pain all over his body. He screamed with it, a horrible, wrecked noise and threw his arms up in a belated attempt at protecting his face.
The glass had come straight at him and his entire front slowly started to fade into a sea of wet, red blooms. The blood was already running in rivulets down his fingers, the drops being picked up by the wind and splattered against the bedspread as they fell. Charlie had closed his eyes just a moment too late and, in trying to open them, he felt a shooting pain that almost made him faint. He couldn't move his eyelids and every twitch of his face sent the same pain directly to the muscles in his knees and they began to shake. He lifted wet, shaky hands to his face and felt gingerly around his eyes, coming into contact with the shards lodged into the skin of his eyelids, pinning them shut. He lost his breath two, three times as the reality of the moment dawned on him. His entire body shook violently with the wind and the pain and some kind of liquid was spilling over his lips and dribbling down his chin. He was breathing heavily, and every exhale was a shaky, high-pitched sob. The room was being torn apart by the storm now. Clothing and papers and small trinkets were being tossed around like an invisible group of robbers was ransacking the place. Not that Charlie could see it. Not that he would ever see anything ever again. He had to get out of that room.
His bare ankles were torn to shreds and he wasn't wearing anything on his feet so the agony that he felt when he took a step was to be expected but he still screamed when he felt the soft flesh on the arc of his foot break and give way to a large, sharp chunk. Oh God, Charlie was definitely going to pass out. He was screaming without pause, now, every cry punctuated with a gasp of grief and his throat so wet that he feared he might drown. Desperately, he lifted himself up to his toes to try to minimize the damage to his feet and began the process of turning himself around.
Head light from the pain, unable to see or hear--only to feel the bruising punches of the wind and taste his own blood-- and shaking so, so badly Charlie tried to pull one foot in front of the other and spin around, but the wind caught him and he stumbled back two, three steps until there was no more glass to bloody and he was falling.
Without being able to see or hear, the sensation of falling was almost pleasant beneath the torment of his wounds. The wind batted at his body, jerking it around until it looked more like he was slithering than plummeting to the ground below. He didn't see the concrete coming towards his face, didn't hear the crack of his own neck against the pavement. He was just gone.