Ben Parker (arachnomorph) wrote in wariscoming, @ 2013-04-18 03:09:00 |
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Entry tags: | ben parker |
WHO: Ben Parker
WHAT: You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry…
WHEN: After this.
WHERE: Random McAlley. Then a library that definitely did not have its open sign on.
RATING: PG-13. Maybe R. Ben’s life is not pleasant.
Ben wasn’t sure what the hell was going on, but he knew he didn’t like it. All those people were all telling him it wasn’t Kurt Wagner, but what they were saying was utterly impossible. Time travel? Alternate universes? Weird genetic freaks was one thing, but that was science, real science. These people wanted him to believe that some magic sea mammal had transported him across dimensions and times?
Yeah, right. Ben knew what this was, what it really was. He’d only been at the Xavier Institute for a few weeks, but he already knew it was no different than any other school. The infomercials and that bald cripple of a headmaster tried to make people believe how welcoming and tolerant it was, but really it was just a place for pretty little freaks to look down on the ugly ones. He saw the way everyone looked at him, with a mixture of fear and revulsion. At least the drunk, runty Canadian was honest about it, but all the others, they all just looked at him like he was a stick of dynamite that was about to go off at any second. Xavier talked a good game, but when it came time for room assignment, Ben had gotten his own special room with indestructible glass in the windows, a reinforced door and a lock that locked from the outside. Just temporary, he’d said, but Ben knew the truth. The q-ball just wanted to take in a homeless freak to make his school for the pretty ones look socially conscious. He didn’t really want Ben there. Nobody really wanted him anywhere. Nobody really wanted him.
All those people were liars. It was just a stupid game the pretty freaks at that school were playing on him for shits and giggles. Some telepath plucked his mother’s name out of his head and ran with it, and the blue freak that smelled like rotten eggs must have thought it was funny dumping him in the Bible belt. Some kind of test, maybe. Survive the trip back from the Midwest without getting strung up for being a mutant abomination. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, really. Why should anyone at this school be any better than anyone at the last one? It was his own fault for getting his hopes up. Just some dumb delusion that must have taken root while his dad was being murdered in his place. Those words, the last words his father had ever said to him, had haunted him the whole trip up to Salem Center. They must have been what made him think there was any hope of a better place out there for him.
Rrremember thissss daaay! Rrremember me and know in your hearrrt – yooou were…never…ever…aloooone…
Pretty words from a dying father to his son, but Ben should never have let himself believe them. He should never have let himself hope. Hope got you hurt, like he was now. Hurt that the mutants at that school were just as bad as the idiots back home, hurt that they played him for a fool and hurt that they threw his mom in his face. Only one person had ever done that before, and it had only hurt so much because deep down he’d always known what Butch said that night was true. It was his fault his mother was dead. He knew it had something to do with him being some kind of freak, that his birth had somehow killed her. For a long time, he’d believed that was why his father rarely ever spent time with him.
Now, today, all that was thrown in his face again, and just like that night with Butch, it triggered something. This time he knew what was going on, this time he was able to try fighting it, but all the twitching and seizing as he struggled against a body that was turning against him got him unwanted attention, and when his arm spasmed on that last message and broke the keyboard it was too much. He fled into the night, trying hard to stay upright, his arms clutching at his stomach as the fire of rage was replaced by the gnawing emptiness of the hunger that always came with the spider scratching its way to the surface. With no other choice he ran, feet pounding the pavement hard and fast, speed borne of a lifetime of running from bullies that would beat him into the ground if they caught him.
He ran and he didn’t stop running until the scratching in his skull died down and the vast yawning emptiness in his belly receded into the dull ache he was more used to. He ran until the thoughts of sinking his fangs into that telepath’s throat and drinking her dry were just a painful memory and his body was his own again. Finally, when all that was true and he was once again able to pretend to be normal, he could stop running, and he did, flopping up against the wall of an alley hard enough to send a jolt of pain down his back. His breathing came in short, rapid bursts as he gulped deep lungfuls of air.
He needed to get off the street. The last thing he needed was losing it here, in public. He’d barely escaped one angry mob, and even then only because his father was willing to jump in and hold them off. There wasn’t anyone left that would do that for him now. Once his breathing slowed enough for him to stand up straight, he pushed himself off the wall and began surveying his choices. Store, store, store…library. Closed library, empty library. He had a winner. Getting in wasn’t hard, mostly because he wasn’t concerned about alarms. If there was one thing a lifetime of running and hiding had taught him, it was how to keep from being seen and how to bug out of a place if it looked like things were going south. One broken window got him in, and a lifetime of handling all the house shit that dad forgot made it easy for him to pick out the wire going from the circuit box to the alarm. One cut wire later and he was pretty sure he’d be safe for the night. He could figure out what to do from there once the sun started to come up.
Right now he needed answers, and for better or worse, it seemed like that stupid board was going to be the only shot he had at that…