Edwin Seabeck is a killer in potentia (elusive_control) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2013-04-03 18:25:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! narrative, edwin seabeck |
WHO: Edwin Seabeck
WHAT: When 'breaking' becomes 'broken'.
WHEN: Wednesday night, 6:30-ish
WHERE: Some distant part of the IVI campus
WARNINGS: none
STATUS: narrative complete
This was not really tenable, Edwin thought as he collapsed on the ground, knees bent and upper body hanging over them as he breathed raggedly. He was physically exhausted, nearly 2 days without having sleep making his limbs heavy and sore, but he knew that when he put himself to bed tonight his mind would still be whirring away. Every slight movement, whether it be outdoors or emanating from his roommate, would prod his lulled mind back to alert consciousness, if it hadn't already been preoccupied with some bit of fancy spun out of his boredom. But at least tonight he was going to get some insight. And then, if it wasn't going to conflict terribly with whatever Hunter said, he was going to beg Jada to, if not sing him to sleep, then at least sing him into a state where he wouldn't remember the time passing. If his brain was so keen on staying awake as it worked through whatever the hell it was doing, it could very well do so without his attention. At least as they moved into what passed for autumn in the desert, the evening air was getting slightly cooler. He pulled off his sweatshirt and balled it up behind his head so he could lie back and look up at the stars. He'd romanticised them before. When he was 16 and entertained the notion he was some being from another planet, he'd thought maybe his powers were merely a pulsing signal, some biological homing beacon waiving out at something cruising beyond altitudes, beyond telescopes. As he got older and his humanity seemed to be confirmed, he was content to be some sort of temporary repository for the light of a million dead stars, just a way station in their timeless, boundless procession into oblivion. And then in surrounding himself with scientists, far more fluent than he was in the structure of the cosmos, he found that to merely observe a thing, to open his eyes and stare into the sky, was to alter that inexorable procession. It would never be a 1:1 energy exchange and so, while everyone on the planet was made of billion-year-old stardust, he might be the only one made (in part) of starlight as well. Occasionally, he did see himself as something other than a weapon. Edwin pulled off his sunglasses and set them carelessly into the red dirt next to him, both the stars and the darkness itself more vivid without the screen. It was Wednesday, so the exchange of training for therapy meant he came into the evening with a bit more of a headache than the rest of the week, but it didn't throb terribly. It wouldn't be a distraction as he plunged his thoughts down into his memory and found a single flash of fear, one strong enough to trick his brain into giving up what it had spent the last 24 hours capturing. Nothing happened. Yesterday's attempt had a small delay attached to it, but as 60 seconds clocked by, worry set it. He cycled through to another memory, an alternative memory - his first night in the halfway home after they'd taken him from his grandmother: anger, futility, fear. 60 more seconds of nothing. A different memory, this time on the opposite side of fear - Terry Gilchrist outside the hostel in Manchester, snogging the living daylights out of him in between snatches of forgotten song lyrics said in a Northern accent:confident, wanting, the first boy that made him nearly forget himself. Nothing after 2 minutes. It hadn't taken this long since... since ever. Edwin sat up and dug into the pocket of his track pants for his phone. He busied himself with the camera function as Panic began to lace itself through all of his nerve endings. Panic was good, severe anxiety was a trigger and he tried that one too, wrenching the memory of that first moment when he'd been told he was being haunted: the shock, the rising bile and the plummeting of his stomach, the knowledge that he was so hated as to have anchored a soul to him. The sharp feeling was so intense and his hands stilled as he tried to hold onto it, tried to make it as vivid and as intensely grounded in the now as he could. It failed too. It took him an unnecessary amount of time to find the settings on the flash and to turn it up as high as he could, the phone sliding in his clammy hands as he determined how he could hold the thing, hit the capture button and not blow his own hand off. Could Anthony even fix that? Injuries were injuries, but the idea of fingers sprouting anew from a mangled wrist seemed to be too cartoonish for reality. He frowned as he tried to grip the bottom of the phone as gingerly as possible without the thing flopping out of his hand. It took him a while to get a stable enough hold, one that he could simultaneously reach the screen to his the capture button. Edwin found the flash on the back of the phone and got the piece of clear plastic as close to his left eye as he could, readying himself. "1. 2. 3 -" Edwin pressed on the screen. Moved his finger slightly to the left, pressed again. "Oh come ON!" he bellowed frustratedly at himself as he tapped blindly on the bottom of the touchscreen until it suddenly, without warning, flashed. He dropped the phone immediately, but it was the only reflexive thing he did aside from vacuum the light into himself so fast there were no residual spots in his vision. Stunned, it took him a moment before he picked up the phone and set it again, this time rapidly firing the flash as often and as quickly as he could, every capture sinking into him, no change, no change, no change. Edwin brought his hand down hard on a rock, slamming the phone into the red mound in dead silence, once, then twice, then pitched the thing as far as he could. He rubbed his hands over his face as he found himself at a complete and utter loss in the star-spotted darkness. The drumming in his skull, the pulsing beat of his powers thudding in his ears, was almost a taunt: do you remember this? This is nothing compared to what comes. |