WHO: Avery WHEN: the wee hours of January 7th WHERE: his trailer WHAT: dissociative states WARNINGS: compulsive creepiness?
One moment, Avery was asleep, sprawled out across his bed, completely uncovered with bedraggled, slightly dirty sheets trailing onto the floor, and the next he was awake, his eyes wide open in the near-darkness. It wasn't a startled awakening, nor had he been disturbed by bad dreams or a need to visit the bathroom. No, it was a sudden state of being, accomplished as quickly as a light switch being flicked from off to on, and there was no grogginess or disorientation. The man in the bed was instantly alert and aware.
Avery had barely slept since his visit to the antique shop on New Year's Eve. He almost hadn't been able to believe that he'd been able to afford anything from that shop, most particularly anything he'd actually want. The military-style dagger had caught his eye immediately; it appeared to be very old and yet wickedly sharp. He'd had to visit the ATM, but ultimately he'd left the shop with the dagger in his possession. Oddly enough, he couldn't remember much about his conversation with the shop's proprietor, but it didn't seem to matter. Nothing did. Avery felt increasingly as if he were living in a fever dream, and he'd developed dark circles beneath his eyes from his lack of rest.
Quietly, he sat up and put his bare feet on the floor, then stood to cross the small bedroom to his dresser, a rickety pressboard piece of furniture that would have looked perfectly at home at the town dump. Opening the top drawer, he reached beneath the clothes until he found the dagger in its primitive-looking sheath. Once he had it in hand, he wandered through the trailer, traversing the narrow hallway, the kitchen and finally the front room, where he seated himself on the low couch beneath the double windows at the front of the single-wide. Moonlight shone in and illuminated the dagger in his hand.
Anyone who might have been watching him at that moment wouldn't necessarily have recognized him. This man looked grim, clear-eyed and confident, not like twitchy, jittery, awkward Avery Weston at all. He sat for quite a while with the dagger in his lap, then lifted it slowly to his nose. It was clean and as shiny as an incredibly old military knife could be, but he fancied that he smelled blood, dank and coppery, and maybe traces of fear sweat. It was completely intoxicating to him, and his skin prickled with goosebumps as he inhaled so deeply that he almost felt dizzy.
Once he'd lowered the dagger, Avery stared at it for a few moments and then turned it, carefully drawing a line of red down his chest. From his collarbone all the way down to his lower abdomen, it bloomed scarlet, and when Avery lifted the dagger again, it was stained with red. This time, he lifted it to his mouth, unhesitatingly sliding his tongue out to taste of the blood he'd drawn. He nodded once, as if in affirmation, then sat for several hours, his lips and chest smeared with traces of blood, until the first light dawned in the sky. Only then did he move to clean the dagger and put it away, as if it might be the most valuable thing he could ever hope to own.