Prompt #68: Hero
For reggikko. It's a little bit different than what I normally write, but I hope you like it!
Part 1 of 2. It's based off a dream I had a while back, that I was actually going to write a fic about, then decided I was too lazy to do so. Then, Reggikko sent me this prompt and I immediately panicked because I didn't know what to do for it, until I remembered this idea.
This part is a bit of a stretch in relation to the prompt - Pascal doesn't really do anything heroic until part 2, but he'll be heroic as hell when the time comes, so hopefully we can overlook that.
Warnings: None.
The speaker beside the door crackles and we all gather beneath it like moths, eager for the woman's voice to give us our nightly instructions.
"Building C, report to the Center immediately. I repeat, Building C report to the Center immediately."
#
The Center is at the end of a short path.
They call us there every night.
#
We wake up the next morning in our stiff beds and scratchy clothes.
We smell faintly anti-septic.
My head hurts.
There are bruises on my arms and legs.
I wonder why?
#
Two weeks have passed. The bruises have faded and no longer hurt.
I found a journal with my name on it - Pascal? How odd - and what appears to be my handwriting.
I can't be sure, though. There are discrepancies.
#
Everything is easy in Building C.
Our food is provided daily, at three different intervals. Our garbage is removed promptly.
We have a variety of outlets to entertain ourselves, spread out across four different rooms.
The restrooms are always clean.
Cigarettes, should one partake of the habit, are made available upon request.
But there are no windows.
#
She tells me her name is Jill (female, approx. 16 y/o) as she takes her seat across from me.
According to my
Are they, though, sometimes the handwriting is different, sometimes the memories don't match
notes, she is my niece.
She asks me my name. When I tell her, nothing registers. In a way, it's as if I haven't spoken. She just picks up a pawn and winks at me.
"Ladies first," she says.
She beats me easily, and tells me I'm "too predictable".
No, I am consistent.
#
According to my notes, Jill's mother is my sister.
Jenny. Female, approx. 40 y/o. Green eyes, blonde hair. Seems to favor a ponytail.
I find her in the common room, watching a movie. She looks at me with the questioning eyes of a stranger.
Jill wanders in from the dormitory, walks past her without a flicker of recognition.
Strange.
#
Dinner arrives, one plate per person.
There is an empty seat across the table, and that troubles me.
Has it always been there?
Jill pulls back a chair and sits beside me. She calls me "Uncle Pascal" with startling familiarity, as if she’s addressed me as such her entire life.
This, too, makes me uneasy.
I haven't told her about my notes.
#
2 weeks have passed.
I found a journal with my name on it - Pascal? Like some salty old fishing boat captain? - and what appears to be my handwriting.
I can't be sure, though. There are discrepancies.
#
Johnny (male, approx. 22 y/o) has green skin, green eyes, and blond hair.
My notes contain a plethora of information pertaining to him.
“Strangetown,” I’ve written. “What is ‘Strangetown’?”
“Jenny,” with a symbol for “female” and the word “sister” and an arrow connecting them.
“Jill.” Same as Jenny, but “Niece” instead of “Sister”.
“Pollination Technician.” A symbol denoting the sex (male), but little else.
“Nephew.”
He smiles when I approach him.
“Uncle Pascal,” he says warmly, making room for me on the couch.
My expression must have been comical, because his smile widens and he laughs. “Don’t you recognize me?”
“You know?”
His smile falters slightly. “Know?”
“Me. You know... who I am?”
He begins to squirm under my gaze. “Why wouldn’t I?”
I don’t know.
My notes just indicate that he shouldn’t.
#
Johnny’s constant companion is a young man with the unusual moniker of Ripp (male, approx. 22 y/o. Brown hair, blue eyes).
This comes to me suddenly, without the use of my notes.
I locate a fresh page in my notebook and write Ripp’s name across the top, detailing his physical appearance and mannerisms.
When Johnny introduces us, Ripp shakes my hand politely, but his eyes (blue, like his mother's, but how do I know that) stare at me with a strange kind of intensity.
“Do you remember Ophelia?” He asks, suddenly, still clutching my hand.
Johnny watches uneasily, almost apologetic.
“No, I don’t,” I reply, gently extricating my hand. “I’m sorry.”
There is no “Ophelia” in Building C.
There is no “Ophelia” in my notes.
But there is an empty chair in the dining room where nobody ever sits.
#
The dinner bell chimes, summoning us to the cafeteria. The table is already laden with trays.
A young blond girl with green eyes and what I can only describe as a “bubbly” (though I shudder to do so) laugh sits next to me.
She says her name is Jill.
She says I look familiar, but I can’t imagine why.
#
Two weeks have passed.
I found a journal with my name on it - Pascal? How odd - and what appears to be my handwriting.
The pages are stiff with blood, and most of what I had written is obscured.
#
A peculiar illness has begun to spread among the occupants of Building C. I myself am showing symptoms.
I'm sure it's nothing more than ordinary cold. Just a cough and the sniffles.
Still... the guards seem unsettled.
#
Pills have been made mandatory.
Most of us are exhausted from staying awake at night, coughing.
The guards say it will be over soon.
Perhaps the Center is working on a cure.
#
Two weeks have passed.
My head hurts.
A male guard with green skin and green eyes hands me a small paper cup containing two tiny pills.
“For the pain,” he says sympathetically.
I smile and thank him for the pills, which I dry swallow before handing the cup back to him for proper disposal.
Everything in Building C is so easy.
#
Ophelia (female, green eyes, blonde hair, lots of tiny braids) is waiting for me in the exercise room.
“Do you remember me, Pascal?”
“Yes, of course. Why wouldn't I?"
She touches my face with one cold hand and smiles.
“Good," she says, and takes her hand away. "That makes it easy.”
"Makes what easy?"
She doesn't say.
#
“Jenny Curious, please report immediately to the Center. I repeat, Jenny Curious, please report immediately to the Center.”
Every eye watches as Jenny is escorted from the common room.
#
"It wasn't always like this," she says. We're standing in the doorway to the common room, looking at our fellow prisoners, and there's something eating away at me, somewhere in the back of my mind. Something that I can't get to.
"What do you mean?"
"I can't explain." Smoke blooms between her lips. She offers me a cigarette from her secret stash, and for a moment, I am tempted.
"No, thank you." The cigarette retracts. "Why can't you explain? Do you think I wouldn't understand?"
She shakes her head. "I don't understand, either. Not all of it, at least, not yet. Right now, though, I only have... fragments."
"Fragments? Like dreams, or memories?"
"Maybe. I think so. Like, I remember you. You used to give out rock candy on Halloween, with little instructions attached so we could make our own later. I remember Ripp, pushing me on the swing in fourth grade, and sneaking over to Johnny's house after dark to swim in his family's pool. And I remember babysitting Jill, and frantically trying to get melted marshmallow out her hair when the rice crispy treats went horribly wrong." She smiled as she rattled off this list of quaint delusions to me and I listened greedily, even as the words tangled together into a confused fog in my mind, everything foreign and unidentifiable.
Halloween. Rock candy. Johnny.
My mind is unable to locate any pertinent information, and she doesn't bother to elaborate for my benefit.
"I remember my aunt," she continues, and something stirs inside of me, a shaky half-formed image. "And I remember the view from my bedroom window, and how everything was dead. But it's all - vivid, like it only just happened, but new and sterile, too."
"How so?"
"I mean, they seem to just exist. I just - there's nothing else, no context, no sense of sound or smell or even time. I can see these things, but I don't know anything about them. The harder I try to remember anything before or after those specific memories, the more frustrated I become. There just isn't anything else. Just this handful of scattered flashbacks."
Ripp joins us, and the conversation shifts. Ophelia drifts away, the cigarette shrinking between her fingertips. I can hear the soft scratch of stubble as Ripp wipes miserably at his mouth.
"I'm worried about Jill."
I can see her behind him, still huddled on the couch where he'd left her, coughing violently into her fist.
"We're all worried about Jill, son."
For just one split second, he balks, and I don't know what I've said wrong. Then, he relaxes again, as if though nothing had happened, and I still don't know what I said wrong.
"We need to do something," he says, looking back over his shoulder at the ailing bodies sprawled across the furniture. "Soon."
#
One week has passed.
We have not visited the Center in five days.
Our meals have stopped arriving.
There are no guards available to give us pills and cigarettes.
Everyone is restless, hungry, afraid. They complain incessantly and bang at the door that leads to the bridge that leads to the Center.
No one yells at them to stop, from either side of the door.
They mill about, sniping at each other, searching for food. The small refrigerators supplied to us, ordinarily filled with drinks and microwaveable snacks, have long gone empty.
“What do we do now?” Ripp demands, looking from me to Ophelia to Jill.
I don’t know.
#
A terrible, rattling cough has begun to spread among us.
It appears to be accompanied by a high fever and strange hallucinations in later stages.
Someone says something about a quarantine, but for what purpose?
We are all infected.
#
Ophelia watches me from across the room, staring straight at me and holding my gaze unflinching when I stare back.
"It's getting worse," she says, and I don't have to ask for clarification; all around me is a symphony of sickness. So, I just nod.
“We have to go,” she says.
“Where?”
She smiles again, but this one is grim, unenthusiastic. A coughing fit overcomes her, and it takes her a moment to collect herself enough to speak the words I already anticipate.
“To the Center.”
-------------
Notes: I hope it wasn't (too) confusing. Some of it was intentional (Pascal has no clue what is going on), but since it's choppy and keeps resetting, here's a hint: Every 2 weeks.
Everything will be explained in part 2. But if you can't wait or have any questions, feel free to ask, either here or at tumblr.