Adventures of Matt Parkman, Chapter 10: Down the rabbit hole

[game_byrd]

Ryan cowered in the corner of Matt's apartment where he'd been told to stay, like a dog. And like an obedient dog, he stayed. At the moment he wasn't able to think about how degrading that was. The very strange man who had kidnapped him was working in the middle of the room, painting in a bold and decisive style. His eyes were frosted over, glazed and indistinct. He was ignoring Ryan entirely, something the boy had no intention of changing. Matt's attention was the worst thing he'd ever encountered in his short life.

He was shaking, so he held himself, knees drawn up to his chest. He was unable to come to terms with what had happened. It had all been so quick, just one day… just a few hours. He'd been hanging out with his friends, talking shit about what they'd do if they ever found a sparkly vampire and the various ways they'd kill it, when this dude drove up. He didn't even know the man's name. Surely someone had said it at the hospital, but Ryan hadn't listened, hadn't heard.

Now he felt some odd sort of kinship with him, or a bond or a link or an awareness… something. He had no experience or word to put to it. A part of Matt was in his head, calming him, steadying him. He clung to it like a drowning man to a piece of flotsam, like a terrified child to a security blanket.

Without that, without the feeling that someone else thought what was happening to him was reasonable and sane, he'd lose all grip on reality. It was already tenuous. When the weird man had looked at him earlier, sometimes Ryan just quit existing, or he did strange, inexplicable things, or he lost control of his body altogether. He didn't want the man to look at him again.

He was still damp from having wet himself at some point. He honestly had no idea when. He was still trembling. It was a constant thing as he fearfully watched his captor and waited. He wasn't sure what he was waiting for - something, anything. He couldn't leave, he knew that much. He wasn't sure why he couldn't leave, but he couldn't. His mind wouldn't form the right thoughts. He was compelled to stay. He didn't move, afraid he would attract attention.

Matt came out of his trance somewhat later and examined his paintings. All three were of a theme. He cocked his head at them. The first was very similar to drawings Molly had done years ago, showing a pair of eyes with the Company symbol between them. Back then, those had been Maury Parkman's eyes, Matt's father. The next painting was clearly of his father, his father's face and nothing else. His eyes were abnormally large, hypnotic. The last was also of Maury, this time pointing at a pair of figures on a bed: Matt embracing (perhaps making love to?) a voluptuous, brown haired, broad-faced woman. A thin sheet obscured the details of their nakedness. She was looking over her shoulder and smiling smugly at the elder Parkman, but her lover looked unaware of the presence.

Matt studied this last painting carefully. He wasn't sure what was happening in it. Obviously, there was intimacy and even now he felt an odd attraction for the woman. She was very pretty. But why would he make love in front of his father? What was the man pointing at? Why was she aware of him and Matt was not? The Matt in the painting was rendered in a different style - generic and stylistic, whereas the rest of it was unusually realistic. What did that mean?

And who was this woman he felt attracted to? It wasn't arousal at the picture itself, but at the idea of the woman portrayed. He was going to be with her. He knew it with certainty. He shook himself away from the thought. It hadn't come to pass yet. He hadn't even met her, but he'd know when he did. He looked between the three paintings. They all showed his father, who was dead without a doubt. Daphne had told him so. She'd seen it and he'd seen it in her mind. She hadn't lied.

Perhaps… it was a shape shifter who looked like his father or some kind of illusion? He furrowed his brow and picked up his journal, making notes of his impressions and speculations. He really needed to know more about this. He wondered why his visions this time were similar, three of a kind, and what that meant. He stood up to put the paintings aside and his sudden motion caused a flinch out of the corner of his eye. He looked over. Ryan was still where he'd put him. At his gaze the boy put his head down and hunched inward, not looking at him.

Matt put the paintings aside to dry and walked over to the boy, who kept his forehead on his drawn-up knees and didn't look up. He rifled casually through his mind. The young man had recovered a lot, but despite that he was still on the brink of hysteria. He was shivering with fear and it had gotten worse as Matt approached him. Parkman made him stop, leaving him to experience his terror without that outlet for it. His body found another. He wet himself again and felt a surge of hate at Matt for it. He began to consider how to kill him.

Matt raised a brow. He hadn't prohibited that, specifically, though it conflicted greatly with the directive to help him. You won't hurt me. You won't let anyone else hurt me. You'll protect me. Matt waited a beat as the commands sunk in. Something about them turned Ryan off like pulling a plug, as a sense of helplessness and impotence washed through him. His consciousness sunk into torpor. He didn't exactly fall asleep, but he became insensate, defeated. It was good enough. Matt walked back to his stool and sat on it, considering what he needed to do next.

He decided to finish off the cocaine. He had nearly two doses worth left, but he didn't want to short himself on the next one so he'd just take it all now. Or at least, that was the rationale he used with himself. After it was gone, he'd switch to the morphine. He snorted it and wrinkled his nose. He'd be glad to be rid of this stuff. It made his nasal passages numb to start with, then drip annoyingly later.

As the euphoria began to hit him, he looked around the room lazily and had a sort of waking vision. He looked at his paints, touching each one and becoming fascinated to see glimpses of the paintings they'd be used in. Then there was fire - his work consumed by fire. It seemed like there was a long gap between painting and burning though. He stroked his fingers over the canvases he'd set out for his work. He knew what he'd paint on them. He could see it in his mind already. He picked up the brush and made it a reality.

His first painting was of himself shooting up with heroin, a blank canvas in the background, his paraphernalia arranged haphazardly in front of him. The second was of a small yacht at the marina, the name "New Sun" and a serial number clearly visible on it. The last was a cemetery with a fresh, unmarked grave prominent in the foreground. He knew it was Ryan's.

He picked up his previous batch of paintings and became lost in the meaning of the three images. The scenes they represented flowed in his mind, forwards and backwards, possibilities, moments and choices coming together and apart. It was really his father, working for the Company in the past, in the future. Molly had dreamed of him and was dreaming of him again, still frightened. She dreamed of both Matt and Maury, they were the same, interchangeable, both terrifying to her.

The broad-faced woman loved his power. He hated her naked ambition and didn't respect her, but he made love to her anyway. His father disapproved. She tried to seduce him. It worked, but it was Matt making love to her again, not his father, and this time he didn't hate or disrespect her. He saw her as human and whole, flawed and perfect. He drowned himself in her. She kept him sane, gave him direction, she loved him for and despite his abilities. She didn't fear him. She only feared that she'd be cast aside and left behind, used and discarded. He knew he'd do that too.

He started, coming out of the trance somewhat. His phone was ringing. He blinked and fished out his phone. It was Janice. He put the phone down, having no interest in talking to her. He couldn't imagine what she was calling about anyway. His left hand hurt him where he'd been stabbed. In the future he knew it would hurt more, becoming infected. He enjoyed the rest of his trip, phasing in and out of awareness.

When he was finally coming down, he felt depressed and struggled to remember what had been revealed to him. He could only retain snatches of it. His shoulder hurt enormously. He washed down some Tylenol, but had the odd feeling he was forgetting something important. He lay down on his futon and failed to think of what it was he was supposed to be doing. He had the nagging feeling it was more than one thing. He felt very restless and irritable, but he finally slipped off to sleep.

He woke up blearily, with an odd awareness that Ryan was nearby and watching him intently, for once not entirely consumed by fear. He hated him and he still feared him, but he'd calmed in the hours Matt had slept. Parkman rolled over and blinked at him, then wiped at his eyes. The boy scurried back to his corner and drew up his knees, making himself as small and inoffensive as possible. He expected a beating, or something worse, like another bizarre, magical attack.

Matt brought up his mental defenses, toning down the full impression he was getting from the boy. He didn't want to feel how the young man felt about him or see what he expected Matt to do to him next. It didn't make Parkman feel good about himself. In fact, it made him a little ill. He shoved aside the feeling. Ryan was no better than that street urchin who had flipped him off and thrown rocks at him a few weeks earlier. Matt reminded himself of what a pain-in-the-ass he was, stupid, violent, a thief, a drug dealer, who sold date-rape drugs and had done enough to deserve whatever he got. Matt blocked out his own awareness of Ryan's humanity.

He looked at the previous day's paintings. Actually… when was it? It was dark outside. He checked his watch. It was two in the morning, so he supposed that made it the previous day after all. Matt scratched his head and looked over at Ryan. He asked, "What do you know about heroin?"

The young man struggled to put his thoughts in order coherently. It was much more of an effort than it had been for him yesterday, before Matt had worked him over so thoroughly. "Uh… it's… it's a drug. You shoot up with it. Makes you high."

Parkman sighed. He noticed the kid was even denser than he had been, but didn't realize why. The boy wrapped his arms tighter around himself, seeing the disappointment Matt didn't bother to conceal. Matt looked away, picking up the painting of him shooting up.

"Do you know who sells it, where I can get some?"

"Yeah. Mexicans do that. They gotta gang. Pedro knows them, but we don't sell that stuff." He hesitated, then twitched rhythmically and repeated, "I don't sell." Twitch. "I don't sell." Twitch. "I don't sell."

Matt looked over at him and made him stop, giving him a confused look. He put the painting down and picked up his journal, getting his pen. "Tell me how to get in touch with Pedro."

Ryan pulled out a cell phone and scrolled through the address book on it. Matt raised his brows, wondering at that. At any point, the boy could have called for help. Did he not think of it, or was one of my commands to him interfering with that? He tried to remember exactly what he'd told Ryan to do, but his memory was fuzzy. He shook it off. It didn't matter. The kid was here.

He wrote down Pedro's number. Ryan also helpfully volunteered his address and added, "No one can sell heroin other than chinks and spics."

Matt looked at him levelly, disliking his word choice. Ryan didn't seem to mean anything by it - they were just convenient labels. Don't use ethnic slurs.

The young man looked confused. Matt narrowed his eyes at him. Ryan, who had relaxed slightly at being able to provide useful information, shrank back from the scrutiny. Matt exhaled tightly as he discerned the problem from Ryan's mind. He said, "An ethnic slur is a derog… a bad way to talk about groups of people, like blacks or Asians or Hispanics or Jews. Don't use those words."

"Don't use… bla- those words? Which words?" He was trembling again, eyes watering.

Matt put his pen down. It was easier just to give him a list, so he did. Ryan listened attentively, his tremors fading as he managed to have an interaction with Matt that didn't end badly for him. Parkman scratched at the bandages on his left hand idly as he looked at that and considered that Ryan might not be so dysfunctional if he didn't jerk the kid around so much. His hand itched and distracted him from that line of thought. What was I doing? Oh yeah, finding out about heroin.

"So there's just a couple groups selling it. Is it stronger than morphine or cocaine?"

"I dunno. I've never used it." After a bit, he added, "They say it's more addictive. There's a lot of places you can inject yourself so you don't get caught, don't leave track marks. I saw this one whore once, who had like a dozen track marks and she had to go real cheap or do it back door if she-"

He stopped as Matt waved him off. "Ryan, I don't want to know that. Stop." Parkman shook his head, trying to get rid of the disturbing images he'd seen in the man's mind. "Don't even think about that." This elicited another wave of confusion as Ryan thought about not thinking about something until Matt told him, "Just… count to one hundred, okay?" Ryan began to count out loud. Matt added, "To yourself." Ryan continued to count audibly, but now he whispered. Matt gritted his teeth.

He listened until Ryan got to eighteen, whereupon Matt got up and went to take a shower. When he got out, he directed Ryan to go clean up, though he realized the kid didn't have any clean pants. There was no way he'd fit into anything of Matt's. He'd look like a clown. On the other hand, Matt reflected, what he looked like hardly mattered. He could send him into the store alone and undignified while Matt waited for him outside. He resolved to do just that and gave directions to make it happen.

A few hours and a trip to an all-night Wal-Mart later, they were sitting in a donut shop near Los Angeles' largest marina, waiting for it to open. Matt had a boat to look at. He wasn't sure if it was here, but he had to start somewhere and it was the only lead he had. For once, he didn't feel like painting again, though he had to admit the urge to take one of those morphine tablets was there in the back of his mind. He hadn't taken any of the legal medication yet. For some reason, that nagged at him.

More in the front of his mind, at the moment, was a little experiment Matt was conducting. Ryan was staring at the donut case, having devoured his single pastry almost the moment Matt gave it to him. He wanted more and Parkman was aware of that, but he was waiting to see if the man would ask him, order more himself or just suffer in silence.

The older man knew he still had money - he'd asked before they left the apartment, making Ryan turn out his pockets and reveal everything he had on him. The kid should only have thirteen dollars left after buying jeans, but it was plenty to get donuts. He was certain he hadn't given him any command that might keep him from asking or helping himself.

The foremost thought in Ryan's mind was that he might eventually be given another donut if he was just patient enough, if he made it clear through hints and passive-aggressive appeals that he wanted more. He seemed to think, at least on some level, that Matt would take care of him and provide for him. Matt was curious how this would play out - if he'd ever get smart enough to realize that wasn't the case.

Ryan went hungry.