Post by Deleted on Aug 20, 2020 20:43:29 GMT -5
OOC: Lab Rat King, thank you SO MUCH for collaborating with me on this. You are spetacular!
The show was long over. Adrienne had said her goodbyes but like every show, she had to go home. Fantasy time was over as her mother would say. However, she was unfamiliar with the backstage area of the pavilion. Looking for the back entrance, she would slip out and get a ride back to her hotel. However she was lost. In her street clothes, clutching one strap of the backpack over her shoulder, she wandered aimlessly. She figured eventually she’d see someone that could point her in the right direction.
But she was alone.
Down the hallway, she heard a commotion. Like a chain rustling, she perceived.
Tiptoeing quietly, she approached the door. It was labeled with a red placard reading “Storage”. And it wasn’t closed. She couldn’t see anything through the crack.
The same noise again roused her curiosity. Someone was in here. Maybe a custodian.
Adrienne pushed the door inward gently so as to not make a noise. Her sneakers however scuffed the concrete floor as she stepped forward and peered into the darkness.
There was barely a moment long enough to draw breath before there was a sudden and heavy chain rattling, followed by a sudden lunge of a beast out of the dark. The dim, motion-sensitive lights in the room snapped on just in time to illuminate the battered and bruised figure of the mutant Lab Rat King-- he’d stopped short inches from Adrienne’s face by the collar, snarling beneath a black leather muzzle that just barely guarded her from the reek of iron.
With a sharp yelp, she stumbled backwards into the door behind her. Inadvertently, that closed both of them in. Realization of who was in front of her took over. Slumping against the door, Adrienne closed her eyes. She brought her knees up and buried her face into them, frozen as prey that knew that it was over.
The quavering silence and stillness that settled over the moment was perhaps more painful than any screaming or howling might have been.
For what felt like an eternity, King stared down at her with wild eyes, bloodshot and gleaming like amber under the incandescent light. Slowly, his shoulders began to slump and relax. The chain collared to his neck rattled gently as he took a step back, then another, slumping down against the wall behind him in a mirror of her place. His bloodied back smeared red against the old chipped paint as he sank down, leaving a dull and unnaturally dark trail.
He exhaled through his nose, the fierceness in his eyes gone. He looked… tired. So tired.
“Didn’t mean to rattle your bones, little birdie.” His voice was low and raspy, the damage to his throat practically audible. He observed her without hostility. “The fighting is done for today. Sore to our souls. Now we lick the wounds.”
Adrienne loosened the death grip around her legs and peeked across the room. For months now, this man across from her had been a regular feature in her nightmare. But there were some things that tore through the narrative of the terrors. One, how he talked. Actually how he talked past the scary parts. Two, the look in his eyes after their match. Finally, the seed that Silvio Leon planted. All she had to do was put on a brave face. Swallowing her pride and all of her previous assumptions, she set forth.
“I’m sorry for intruding.” She spoke softly, just loud enough for this small room. She was careful, tacking on a careful consideration. “I can go if you’d like.”
There was another break of deep silence in which King stared at her--again, with none of the monstrous hostility from before, but with a weary sort of curiosity. He blinked slowly, as though his eyes hurt. He cocked his head ever so slightly to the side as though listening to something on his peripheral, then vaguely shook his head.
“No intrusions, no incursions,” he told her, keeping his voice low to match. “The little birdie nesting here a moment isn’t a nuisance. There is always air to share for the bold and daring.”
The urge to flee lessened. She remembered all of the bravado she had going into their encounter. But looking upon him, trying her best to not stare too long at one area of his ravaged body, Adrienne realized that she was cruel in her assessment. Mitch Heart was wrong. But he wasn’t the only one. Adrienne, too, thought that Lab Rat King was just putting on a show. This was something else. This man’s situation seemed awfully familiar despite the varying circumstances.
“I think I owe you an apology. You didn’t dehumanize me. Instead, I did that to you.”
The look in his eyes after their match.
There it was again; as he watched her, clearly listening, the look in his eyes returned. Something… deeper and further away, with an unshakable air of melancholy.
He just nodded, exhaling; as though accepting the apology, he shifted over a bit against the wall, cocking his head toward the empty space beside him in offering.
Adrienne hesitated, throughout her mind bubbled that violent bout. His fingers prying her mouth open. The anger and aggression exerted from his throws and slams. The boot on her neck. But a quirky tarot card reader’s words resonated with her. Because ever since that night, he had been … friendly to her? She wasn’t sure if that was the right word. But moreso, if one listened to this man, he seemed to be truthful. He said the fighting was done for the day. Crawling over, she joined him. Resting in a cross-legged position, she looked forward at the door. Doing her best to remain calm, she breathed in deep, the smell of King’s wounds no longer affecting her as it did initially.
“I talked to Silvio. He like explained that,” she trailed off. She wasn’t exactly sure what Leon meant. But he’s been proven right. Carefully, she considered her words before continuing, “He explained that everything we’ve seen from you … that, I don’t know, that it’s different? But most of all, it doesn’t seem like anyone is willing to really talk to you. So, here I am, trying to. Cuz most of all, he said you might be lonely.”
As Adrienne spoke, the Lab Rat’s breathing began to slow and even out; the initial adrenaline rush of being startled was wearing off, and there was something about her willingness to sit with him that seemed to have a positive impact. His eyes flickered toward her and then back down to the floor, back and down again, still giving the impression of listening to her and listening elsewhere.
“Brave bird,” he murmured; his fingers curled, blood caked under his dirty nails. He lets one booted foot slide out, leaning back against the wall with his head tilted just slightly up.
Was he lonely?
“The little man... says to give our gratitude. Sometimes it’s too quiet. Violence is my language, but the common characters aren’t always keen to listen. Birdie is no common character.”
“I’m nobody special.” She refuted his statement politely. Adrienne wondered for a brief moment by what he meant by little man but she didn’t want to be rude. Maybe he was just referencing himself ironically? She moved on, speaking with a little more confidence. “I don’t speak that language very well. Wrong profession, huh?”
King actually chuckled, tilting his head back a little further. His throat worked visibly as he swallowed, the violet web of veins so stark against alabaster skin even in the dim light.
“Little Llllllevi belongs here,” he rumbled without a fraction of hesitation--though he seemed to struggle a bit with effort to use her actual name. “Speaking in strikes and slings, exsanguination and sweat... You have never shrunk back, pretty lady, always coming back. The strength to challenge outrageous odds creates the true survivors. Proof of power. Monsters like me aren’t the only ones who want to live like that.”
This struck Adrienne as odd. This wasn’t the first time that Zane King had complimented her. Hearing it in person was quite different. She knew in the last few months, she’d become a little defensive with those that praised her. While Knox had challenged her to become better or Silvio had genuinely appreciated her efforts, there were more like Jon Willis day in and day out. Seeing her as an object of desire and becoming combative when questioned. This however was a thread she wanted to pull on. However, she wanted to pay him the same courtesy. She had done it in her promotional piece but this seemed different. Before it was like reading off a piece of paper. Now …
“May I call you Zane? Or is there something else you’d prefer?”
That question… gave the Rat pause. No one had ever asked him what he liked to be called… if he even had the capacity for preferences. For a moment he was still, his brow knit, staring at the floor.
“Give me any name that tickles your tongue,” he says finally, looking at her sidelong. “Lab Rats don’t carry names.”
All of a sudden, Adrienne felt like someone, something punched her in the gut. There were times when her name wasn’t all too important. To those who knew, being stripped of everything you were just for someone else’s enjoyment was about as low as one could go in life.
“Zane. I don’t want to be presumptuous but you look like you’ve survived a lot yourself. Not just tonight,” she paused, giving an apprehensive glance towards the markings on his body. She floated a pretty obvious theory out loud, “But for a very long time.”
Deeper and further away. An unshakable air of melancholy.
The Lab Rat King watched her for a moment or two in silence. For just an instant, his eyes flickered to the side, once again listening to something only he seemed to perceive, before returning to the present with a subtle nod.
“The borders blur between battle and breathing, outlasting and effervescence…” He coughed unpleasantly behind his muzzle, though he seemed to attempt to hold it back, swallowing roughly before continuing. He leaned against the wall again, ignoring the oozing wounds on his back. “When a beast has known only suffering and survival, we stop feeling the life pounding ichor in our veins unless we fight. Return to fight again and again and again to prove you cannot be broken. Show your teeth. Survive them all.”
He closed his eyes with a sigh, the dark shadows of his sunken eyes appearing all that much deeper.
“Brave bird is trying to survive something, too.”
Self-consciously, Adrienne stared down at her gold wedding band. Not wanting to make any sudden movements, she avoided her normal impulses.
“I suppose. I’m not sure what this is all going to end up like. I guess I’ve done okay for myself. More and more I think about this, I’d like to mean something in this business. Not like in the sense that I’ve got a list a mile long of what I’ve done. I’m not sure,” she lowered her head, sniffling just a little as the tone of this conversation starts to sink in, “I don’t think I can be what they think I could be. Sure, you’re right. I’ve fought hard. But, I’m nobody to look up to. I’m lying to myself. Lying to a lot of people.”
At that, King rolled his head against the wall, looking down at her with a small knot in his brow. He was silent for a moment while he appeared to be trying to figure out how to communicate his thoughts; translating his scattered and reflexive responses into another language.
When he spoke, his raspy voice was low again, as low as it had started. Trying not to startle a rabbit in the dew-strewn grass.
“Guarding the threads of your thoughts? Are your stitches fraying, little Levi?”
Adrienne considered what there was to tell. Anyone with half a thought could go look in Clearwater Times obituaries and connect the dots. In this strange moment of time. Inside a storage closet. With a man who earlier this summer had made an emphatic statement by obliterating her. With the same man who she felt some mutual understanding in what it means to stay alive, she concluded that half measures wouldn’t do.
“Danny’s dead.” She tried to hold back with a sharp gasp of air but couldn’t. She hadn’t felt this emotionally shot since well, the last time she met Zane King. Sobbing in between her words, she poured it out. “I watched him. I let him … go.”
Deeper. Further. Melancholy. Mercy.
The bloodshot amber eyes trained on her looked on with a softness never displayed before. Allowing her a moment to breathe, to occupy the space alongside him, he waited; the glass heart inside of him shivered, a crystal sculpture ringing to the mournful notes of her voice.
Fraying stitches… Taking them out would always hurt. Yet then, what was left after that but healing?
Without saying a word, he moved his hand slowly toward her, allowing calloused fingers to settle on her shoulder with a comforting, warm weight.
Brave bird.
The show was long over. Adrienne had said her goodbyes but like every show, she had to go home. Fantasy time was over as her mother would say. However, she was unfamiliar with the backstage area of the pavilion. Looking for the back entrance, she would slip out and get a ride back to her hotel. However she was lost. In her street clothes, clutching one strap of the backpack over her shoulder, she wandered aimlessly. She figured eventually she’d see someone that could point her in the right direction.
But she was alone.
Down the hallway, she heard a commotion. Like a chain rustling, she perceived.
Tiptoeing quietly, she approached the door. It was labeled with a red placard reading “Storage”. And it wasn’t closed. She couldn’t see anything through the crack.
The same noise again roused her curiosity. Someone was in here. Maybe a custodian.
Adrienne pushed the door inward gently so as to not make a noise. Her sneakers however scuffed the concrete floor as she stepped forward and peered into the darkness.
There was barely a moment long enough to draw breath before there was a sudden and heavy chain rattling, followed by a sudden lunge of a beast out of the dark. The dim, motion-sensitive lights in the room snapped on just in time to illuminate the battered and bruised figure of the mutant Lab Rat King-- he’d stopped short inches from Adrienne’s face by the collar, snarling beneath a black leather muzzle that just barely guarded her from the reek of iron.
With a sharp yelp, she stumbled backwards into the door behind her. Inadvertently, that closed both of them in. Realization of who was in front of her took over. Slumping against the door, Adrienne closed her eyes. She brought her knees up and buried her face into them, frozen as prey that knew that it was over.
The quavering silence and stillness that settled over the moment was perhaps more painful than any screaming or howling might have been.
For what felt like an eternity, King stared down at her with wild eyes, bloodshot and gleaming like amber under the incandescent light. Slowly, his shoulders began to slump and relax. The chain collared to his neck rattled gently as he took a step back, then another, slumping down against the wall behind him in a mirror of her place. His bloodied back smeared red against the old chipped paint as he sank down, leaving a dull and unnaturally dark trail.
He exhaled through his nose, the fierceness in his eyes gone. He looked… tired. So tired.
“Didn’t mean to rattle your bones, little birdie.” His voice was low and raspy, the damage to his throat practically audible. He observed her without hostility. “The fighting is done for today. Sore to our souls. Now we lick the wounds.”
Adrienne loosened the death grip around her legs and peeked across the room. For months now, this man across from her had been a regular feature in her nightmare. But there were some things that tore through the narrative of the terrors. One, how he talked. Actually how he talked past the scary parts. Two, the look in his eyes after their match. Finally, the seed that Silvio Leon planted. All she had to do was put on a brave face. Swallowing her pride and all of her previous assumptions, she set forth.
“I’m sorry for intruding.” She spoke softly, just loud enough for this small room. She was careful, tacking on a careful consideration. “I can go if you’d like.”
There was another break of deep silence in which King stared at her--again, with none of the monstrous hostility from before, but with a weary sort of curiosity. He blinked slowly, as though his eyes hurt. He cocked his head ever so slightly to the side as though listening to something on his peripheral, then vaguely shook his head.
“No intrusions, no incursions,” he told her, keeping his voice low to match. “The little birdie nesting here a moment isn’t a nuisance. There is always air to share for the bold and daring.”
The urge to flee lessened. She remembered all of the bravado she had going into their encounter. But looking upon him, trying her best to not stare too long at one area of his ravaged body, Adrienne realized that she was cruel in her assessment. Mitch Heart was wrong. But he wasn’t the only one. Adrienne, too, thought that Lab Rat King was just putting on a show. This was something else. This man’s situation seemed awfully familiar despite the varying circumstances.
“I think I owe you an apology. You didn’t dehumanize me. Instead, I did that to you.”
The look in his eyes after their match.
There it was again; as he watched her, clearly listening, the look in his eyes returned. Something… deeper and further away, with an unshakable air of melancholy.
He just nodded, exhaling; as though accepting the apology, he shifted over a bit against the wall, cocking his head toward the empty space beside him in offering.
Adrienne hesitated, throughout her mind bubbled that violent bout. His fingers prying her mouth open. The anger and aggression exerted from his throws and slams. The boot on her neck. But a quirky tarot card reader’s words resonated with her. Because ever since that night, he had been … friendly to her? She wasn’t sure if that was the right word. But moreso, if one listened to this man, he seemed to be truthful. He said the fighting was done for the day. Crawling over, she joined him. Resting in a cross-legged position, she looked forward at the door. Doing her best to remain calm, she breathed in deep, the smell of King’s wounds no longer affecting her as it did initially.
“I talked to Silvio. He like explained that,” she trailed off. She wasn’t exactly sure what Leon meant. But he’s been proven right. Carefully, she considered her words before continuing, “He explained that everything we’ve seen from you … that, I don’t know, that it’s different? But most of all, it doesn’t seem like anyone is willing to really talk to you. So, here I am, trying to. Cuz most of all, he said you might be lonely.”
As Adrienne spoke, the Lab Rat’s breathing began to slow and even out; the initial adrenaline rush of being startled was wearing off, and there was something about her willingness to sit with him that seemed to have a positive impact. His eyes flickered toward her and then back down to the floor, back and down again, still giving the impression of listening to her and listening elsewhere.
“Brave bird,” he murmured; his fingers curled, blood caked under his dirty nails. He lets one booted foot slide out, leaning back against the wall with his head tilted just slightly up.
Was he lonely?
“The little man... says to give our gratitude. Sometimes it’s too quiet. Violence is my language, but the common characters aren’t always keen to listen. Birdie is no common character.”
“I’m nobody special.” She refuted his statement politely. Adrienne wondered for a brief moment by what he meant by little man but she didn’t want to be rude. Maybe he was just referencing himself ironically? She moved on, speaking with a little more confidence. “I don’t speak that language very well. Wrong profession, huh?”
King actually chuckled, tilting his head back a little further. His throat worked visibly as he swallowed, the violet web of veins so stark against alabaster skin even in the dim light.
“Little Llllllevi belongs here,” he rumbled without a fraction of hesitation--though he seemed to struggle a bit with effort to use her actual name. “Speaking in strikes and slings, exsanguination and sweat... You have never shrunk back, pretty lady, always coming back. The strength to challenge outrageous odds creates the true survivors. Proof of power. Monsters like me aren’t the only ones who want to live like that.”
This struck Adrienne as odd. This wasn’t the first time that Zane King had complimented her. Hearing it in person was quite different. She knew in the last few months, she’d become a little defensive with those that praised her. While Knox had challenged her to become better or Silvio had genuinely appreciated her efforts, there were more like Jon Willis day in and day out. Seeing her as an object of desire and becoming combative when questioned. This however was a thread she wanted to pull on. However, she wanted to pay him the same courtesy. She had done it in her promotional piece but this seemed different. Before it was like reading off a piece of paper. Now …
“May I call you Zane? Or is there something else you’d prefer?”
That question… gave the Rat pause. No one had ever asked him what he liked to be called… if he even had the capacity for preferences. For a moment he was still, his brow knit, staring at the floor.
“Give me any name that tickles your tongue,” he says finally, looking at her sidelong. “Lab Rats don’t carry names.”
All of a sudden, Adrienne felt like someone, something punched her in the gut. There were times when her name wasn’t all too important. To those who knew, being stripped of everything you were just for someone else’s enjoyment was about as low as one could go in life.
“Zane. I don’t want to be presumptuous but you look like you’ve survived a lot yourself. Not just tonight,” she paused, giving an apprehensive glance towards the markings on his body. She floated a pretty obvious theory out loud, “But for a very long time.”
Deeper and further away. An unshakable air of melancholy.
The Lab Rat King watched her for a moment or two in silence. For just an instant, his eyes flickered to the side, once again listening to something only he seemed to perceive, before returning to the present with a subtle nod.
“The borders blur between battle and breathing, outlasting and effervescence…” He coughed unpleasantly behind his muzzle, though he seemed to attempt to hold it back, swallowing roughly before continuing. He leaned against the wall again, ignoring the oozing wounds on his back. “When a beast has known only suffering and survival, we stop feeling the life pounding ichor in our veins unless we fight. Return to fight again and again and again to prove you cannot be broken. Show your teeth. Survive them all.”
He closed his eyes with a sigh, the dark shadows of his sunken eyes appearing all that much deeper.
“Brave bird is trying to survive something, too.”
Self-consciously, Adrienne stared down at her gold wedding band. Not wanting to make any sudden movements, she avoided her normal impulses.
“I suppose. I’m not sure what this is all going to end up like. I guess I’ve done okay for myself. More and more I think about this, I’d like to mean something in this business. Not like in the sense that I’ve got a list a mile long of what I’ve done. I’m not sure,” she lowered her head, sniffling just a little as the tone of this conversation starts to sink in, “I don’t think I can be what they think I could be. Sure, you’re right. I’ve fought hard. But, I’m nobody to look up to. I’m lying to myself. Lying to a lot of people.”
At that, King rolled his head against the wall, looking down at her with a small knot in his brow. He was silent for a moment while he appeared to be trying to figure out how to communicate his thoughts; translating his scattered and reflexive responses into another language.
When he spoke, his raspy voice was low again, as low as it had started. Trying not to startle a rabbit in the dew-strewn grass.
“Guarding the threads of your thoughts? Are your stitches fraying, little Levi?”
Adrienne considered what there was to tell. Anyone with half a thought could go look in Clearwater Times obituaries and connect the dots. In this strange moment of time. Inside a storage closet. With a man who earlier this summer had made an emphatic statement by obliterating her. With the same man who she felt some mutual understanding in what it means to stay alive, she concluded that half measures wouldn’t do.
“Danny’s dead.” She tried to hold back with a sharp gasp of air but couldn’t. She hadn’t felt this emotionally shot since well, the last time she met Zane King. Sobbing in between her words, she poured it out. “I watched him. I let him … go.”
Deeper. Further. Melancholy. Mercy.
The bloodshot amber eyes trained on her looked on with a softness never displayed before. Allowing her a moment to breathe, to occupy the space alongside him, he waited; the glass heart inside of him shivered, a crystal sculpture ringing to the mournful notes of her voice.
Fraying stitches… Taking them out would always hurt. Yet then, what was left after that but healing?
Without saying a word, he moved his hand slowly toward her, allowing calloused fingers to settle on her shoulder with a comforting, warm weight.
Brave bird.