Oblivion by Mirage
Summary:

A past transgression jeopardizes Sydney's life.


Categories: Post IOTH Characters: All the characters
Genres: None
Warnings: Warning: Language, Warning: Violence
Challenges: None
Series: None
Chapters: 21 Completed: No Word count: 45808 Read: 61395 Published: 24/12/16 Updated: 14/07/23
Story Notes:

 

                                                    

Chapter 1 by Mirage

 

 


 

I'm going to kill them all.
 
If they don't shut the hell up, I will kill them all.

 

"Please," he murmured softly. "Please be quiet."
 
Sleep, after all, is essential; sleep, nevertheless, was denied him: their unceasing chatter was relentless, and as maddening as a leaky faucet.
 
"Come on," he groaned and repeated the request. "I asked politely."
 
"That's your problem," came the lofty reproach. "You're a pushover."
 
A pushover, he mused.
 
We'll see about that.
 
He curled his lean body tighter, flexed broad, stiff shoulders and then swiftly rolled onto his hands and knees and lifted his eyes to the sky.

Bathed in insipid moonlight, he appeared, at first glimpse, to have shed his human sheathing and slipped into something a bit more feral.
 
When his mouth opened, however, his words rang clear.
 
"Shut up," he shouted. "Shut the fuck up."
 
Depleted from his exertions, he collapsed onto the cold, splintering pine floor. Yawning boisterously, he stretched and stared up at a stained, crumbling ceiling that simply stared back at him; the ceiling, he thought, mocked with its rigid indifference.
 
The ceiling, he supposed, was afforded that privilege.
 
He grimaced at the discordant laughter and swatted languidly at a black housefly that was guilty only of bad timing, miscalculation. His timing was marginally worse: the creature escaped unharmed. He observed its ascent with a sneer of disdain. "You're dead next time," he snarled. "You and the others. You're disgusting. Everything about you disgusts me and one day-"
 
Sharp laughter interrupted him.
 
"Oh, god," he screamed into his hands. "Stop laughing. Stop that laughing. Please."

He shouted himself hoarse, shouted until he was gasping for breath, until anger dissolved into agony, cries, strangled whimpers, into something that sounded neither human nor animal; it was the eerie creak of architectural collapse: shifting beams, crumbling foundation; he'd learned to mimic his humble refuge: pitch- perfect squalor.
 
He lifted his head several inches, and dropped it onto the floor with as much force as he could muster. And then he listened.
 
Yeah. That's it. That should teach them. That'll do it.
 
Thems the breaks kiddos.
 
Now shut the ever-loving fuck up
.
 
Dear blessed silence.
 
Brief blessed silence.
 
"No," he groaned. "Oh, please. Why? Why!"
 
It was inexplicable.
 
The impact should have alarmed them; it should have quietened them.
 
They should have feared for their own safety, their lives. They knew what he was capable of, after all; they knew he would jar them and smash them.

Even if doing so killed him, their not-so gracious host, as well.
 
"No," he shrieked. "Not that! Don't say another word about that place," he demanded, stumbling to his feet. "I don't want to remember that."
 
He tugged frantically at his hair, tore loose a double handful of dark locks and then threw a punch at the emptiness.
 
"I want to forget. I have to forget. Forget," he cried, shadowboxing in tiny circles, battling demons only he could see.

At last he wiped his brow with a wrist and shoved his hands into the pockets of his faded demins. "Oh, my god," he said, panicked. "Oh, god, no. No," he cried. "What did you do with my pills? Answer me," he demanded. "Which one of you bastards stole my pills?"
 
The bastards, however, didn't reply. Instead, they continued their dark symphony of hisses and whispers, their laughter.
 
They are laughing at me.
 
He squeezed his eyes closed; his face twisted in agony. "Don't say that name. Not that name. Stupid shrinks! Stupid fucking shrinks. No! No, I'm not going to do that. I would never do that to anyone. I won't do it. I won't," he swore with his mouth.
 
His feet, however, took him across the room and hastily past a twisted oxygen cylinder cart. "I won't do that. I would never hurt anyone," he vowed solemnly, disregarding the undulating blanket of flies that neatly concealed the decomposing body on the floor. "I would never do something like that to anyone," he said, stepping through the fractured archway where a door once stood and into the cold night.

"Never."

End Notes:

Happy Festivus (or whateverus).

Coexist (regardless of how you roll).

Peace.

 

 

 

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