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Summer Story Chapter Three, part three
Herre are the the previous parts, watching you walk by and licking their lips.
And here is the new part, all shy and blushing. Be kind, this is it's first time.
Lex spent the next several weeks in the hospital. It was beyond painful for him in the beginning. They had to work him over to get the rock and dirt out of his skin. Even though Whitney’s quick reaction had spared Lex of worse burns, he had second-degree burns on his arms and hands, his legs. From the expression on the faces of the people who came to visit him, it looked painful, and was every bit as excruciating as it looked.
For reasons his doctors couldn’t understand, he had lost his body hair. What wasn’t burned away in the fire seemed to shed in the hospital. All of it came away, from every part of his body. The horror on Whit’s face when he tried to smooth Lex’s hair down and ended up with handfuls of it was burned deep into his brain. It had taken everything in him not to cry, and he’d almost lost it when Whit broke down.
His doctors had tried to prepare him for a painful recovery; but to their amazement he began to heal right away, much, much faster than normal. Miraculous, they said out loud, Unnatural, they said to themselves.
The nightmares went on and on. He kept seeing the hospital hallways flash by with him on his back, awake and aware and screaming in pain as they rushed him into the emergency room. He could see the Kent’s faces hanging over him, white and sick. And Clark, who wouldn’t help him, crying and crying. The traitor.
His dad had brought it all together in a symphony of dreadfulness. He’d come flying into the hospital barking orders and belittling everyone, the staff, Lex’s surgeons, trying to take control over everyone and everything, making Lex wish sincerely for death. The topper was Lionel ordering the Smallville doctors to keep away from him and installing his own staff. And didn’t that make it pleasant for him when the Smallville nurses looked after him. That they didn’t’ permanently scar or injure him was, he was sure, an oversight on their part. He lived for the moments when Whitney or Pete or Lana came to visit. Sam even came home from school for a few days and spent most of his time there with him, reading to him and just talking. Sam was so smart, no wonder Whit thought the sun rose and set on his ass.
It was great when the Kents came to visit, too, but Clark—he didn’t want Clark in his room anymore. He couldn’t look at his lying face anymore, listen to his fake words. He was going to let him die in that fire… He was such a coward, Whit was ready to die for him and Clark stood there and *said* right out loud that no, he wasn’t going to help. Lex could feel his eyes burn and he pressed his fingers hard against his closed lids. He said no.
**************
Pete came over to Clark’s one evening after visiting Lex at the hospital. It was after dinner and the Kents were still at the kitchen table chatting and drinking coffee, and Clark was washing up the dinner dishes. He saw Pete coming up into the back yard through the kitchen window, and called out for Pete to come in.
“Pete,” Martha smiled and invited him to sit and have a piece of cake. She exchanged bemused glances with Jonathan when Pete turned down cake with a preoccupied ‘no, thank you’.
He looked uneasy and said: “Actually, I need to talk to Clark. Umm—can he come outside with me real quick?”
At Jonathan’s nod, the boys stepped out into the back yard. Pete stood silent for a long while and stared up at the night sky. Clark followed his eyes up and automatically began to pick out constellations from among the pinpoints of light in the darkness.
“Well, Pete started, jolting Clark out of his reverie. “Well,” he began again and looked at Clark who smiled at him.
“Pete.”
“Clark,” Pete didn’t return the smile. In fact, he looked ill. “I don’t know how to say this so I’ll just say it. Red—Lex, doesn’t want you coming to see him anymore.”
Clark’s smile faltered and his eyes searched Pete’s face for any sign that he was just kidding. “What? What? Why? Why not--”
“He doesn’t want to see you. I’m sorry. And neither does Whitney. He doesn’t want to talk to you, see you anymore.”
“What are you saying, Pete?” Clark laughed weakly. “They don’t like me any more?”
Pete looked down and nodded, he didn’t raise his head again and refused to meet Clark’s eyes. “I gotta go Clark, I’m sorry, I really am.”
Clark didn’t move as Pete walked away. He felt cold, frozen down to his bones. They were right to turn away from him. He was a coward. It was all his fault. He deserved this. It was the least of what he deserved. He had been a coward and now he was paying for it. His parents were still in the kitchen when he came back in and one look at his face brought his mother to her feet.
“Clark, what’s wrong, son?” His father asked. He got up and came to put an arm around his shoulders, and Clark’s face crumbled, and tears started rolling down. Holy crap, his dad thought, and frantically signaled for his mother to take over.
She dashed over to his side and wrapped him in her arms. “Clark! What’s the matter, Hon, what’s wrong? Is it Lex?” She directed him over to the table, and sat him down.
He dropped into the chair and let his head hit the table, and his shoulders shook as he struggled for control. “Pete. Pete—he told me Red said for me to keep away, Whit too. They hate me, and they should! I’m a coward!”
His parents exchanged shocked looks and his mom stroked his head. He looked up at them and caught his mom giving his dad one of those looks, the look that said you better fix this. How he thought? It wasn’t his dad’s fault he was a creep. His dad looked at his mom and his forehead creased up in the way it did when he was upset. He dropped into the chair opposite Clark and said, “Son—remember when we told you were adopted?”
Clark nodded his head yes as his mother made a sound of exasperation. Yeah, he’d been shocked, but it explained a lot, like why a redhead and a blonde had a son with black hair, and why he was so giant compared to them…
His dad cleared his throat and began again. “We waited to tell you until we thought you were old enough to handle it—now we have something else we need to tell you—and we want you to remember we love you.”
Clark’s heart froze. Oh god! He had some horrible disease! Or—he was a mutant! Like Fluffy. He was a mutant poodle…boy. He was a mutant boy--
Seeing his face go pale his mother rushed to tell him, “You aren’t sick Clark! Just…well.” She stopped and looked at Jonathan. Clark was still nervous—this was too mysterious, his folk’s didn’t do that kind of thing.
His dad stood and urged Clark to stand with him, “Come on son—I think you need to see this.”
They all went out to the backyard, and over to the old storm cellar, the one his dad used to store old machinery and chemicals. He unlocked d the doors and threw them wide. His mom shined a flashlight down the stairs, the light bouncing off hulks in the shadows and making the innocent cellar seem ominous. Clark swallowed and followed his dad down, stopped with him as he unlocked another set of doors in the wall of the cellar, and what he’d thought was recessed cabinet was another room.
His mom shone the flashlight at the wall while his dad searched for a switch.
“Ah. Ok, here goes.” Jonathan flipped a switch and the closet, room, whatever, was flooded with light.
In the center of an other wise empty space was a metal—egg? What the heck is that? And at the same time a feeling of familiarity, safety—what?
His dad turned to him and said, “You aren’t from around here Clark.”
Damn. It sounded like a line from ET. “What, that’s a—a space ship?” He joked.
“Well, yes.” His dad kind of winced and looked at him with worried eyes. “Yours.”
Clark laughed, got scared and laughed even harder at the look of worry and concern and … fear on his parents faces. “No, really, what is it?” he said, grinning, waiting for them to answer.
And then he was backing away. “Dad, mom, stop playing around! What is that thing?”
”You’re not—you’re an alien, you’re from the stars. We found you in a field naked as the sky, and speaking something we eventually figured must have been your original language—it seemed to be a language…I went back to the spot later that evening and this was here, in a hole in the dirt, and your footprints led away from it. Later we found meteorite scattered around the spot it came from, some were huge,and had come down in town. Just a few, but some people were killed, Lana’s parents… others. It was a horrible day for the town but a miracle for us.
Those rocks, son, you can’t get close to them. They make you ill, violently ill. We can’t be sure, but we think they can kill you. The rocks in that factory? They were the part of the meteors. You couldn’t have gone in side the building, you couldn’t have touched Red after the accident. The stones-- You’re not a coward, your body wouldn’t let you …”
Clark couldn’t stop backing away as his father told him this. Waves and waves of horror swept through him, his parents were insane, who would take care of him now—but that thing, it was a spaceship he knew it, and words were in his head, words he’d never heard before today, but he understood.
He grabbed his pounding head and screamed, whirled and dashed out- out of the cellar, out of the yard, ran until he couldn’t run anymore. He threw himself on the ground and looked up into the endless black of the night sky, and it hit him—he wasn’t human.
He wasn’t a human being. He rolled to his side and threw up, praying and begging that it was a nightmare.
TBC
And here is the new part, all shy and blushing. Be kind, this is it's first time.
Lex spent the next several weeks in the hospital. It was beyond painful for him in the beginning. They had to work him over to get the rock and dirt out of his skin. Even though Whitney’s quick reaction had spared Lex of worse burns, he had second-degree burns on his arms and hands, his legs. From the expression on the faces of the people who came to visit him, it looked painful, and was every bit as excruciating as it looked.
For reasons his doctors couldn’t understand, he had lost his body hair. What wasn’t burned away in the fire seemed to shed in the hospital. All of it came away, from every part of his body. The horror on Whit’s face when he tried to smooth Lex’s hair down and ended up with handfuls of it was burned deep into his brain. It had taken everything in him not to cry, and he’d almost lost it when Whit broke down.
His doctors had tried to prepare him for a painful recovery; but to their amazement he began to heal right away, much, much faster than normal. Miraculous, they said out loud, Unnatural, they said to themselves.
The nightmares went on and on. He kept seeing the hospital hallways flash by with him on his back, awake and aware and screaming in pain as they rushed him into the emergency room. He could see the Kent’s faces hanging over him, white and sick. And Clark, who wouldn’t help him, crying and crying. The traitor.
His dad had brought it all together in a symphony of dreadfulness. He’d come flying into the hospital barking orders and belittling everyone, the staff, Lex’s surgeons, trying to take control over everyone and everything, making Lex wish sincerely for death. The topper was Lionel ordering the Smallville doctors to keep away from him and installing his own staff. And didn’t that make it pleasant for him when the Smallville nurses looked after him. That they didn’t’ permanently scar or injure him was, he was sure, an oversight on their part. He lived for the moments when Whitney or Pete or Lana came to visit. Sam even came home from school for a few days and spent most of his time there with him, reading to him and just talking. Sam was so smart, no wonder Whit thought the sun rose and set on his ass.
It was great when the Kents came to visit, too, but Clark—he didn’t want Clark in his room anymore. He couldn’t look at his lying face anymore, listen to his fake words. He was going to let him die in that fire… He was such a coward, Whit was ready to die for him and Clark stood there and *said* right out loud that no, he wasn’t going to help. Lex could feel his eyes burn and he pressed his fingers hard against his closed lids. He said no.
**************
Pete came over to Clark’s one evening after visiting Lex at the hospital. It was after dinner and the Kents were still at the kitchen table chatting and drinking coffee, and Clark was washing up the dinner dishes. He saw Pete coming up into the back yard through the kitchen window, and called out for Pete to come in.
“Pete,” Martha smiled and invited him to sit and have a piece of cake. She exchanged bemused glances with Jonathan when Pete turned down cake with a preoccupied ‘no, thank you’.
He looked uneasy and said: “Actually, I need to talk to Clark. Umm—can he come outside with me real quick?”
At Jonathan’s nod, the boys stepped out into the back yard. Pete stood silent for a long while and stared up at the night sky. Clark followed his eyes up and automatically began to pick out constellations from among the pinpoints of light in the darkness.
“Well, Pete started, jolting Clark out of his reverie. “Well,” he began again and looked at Clark who smiled at him.
“Pete.”
“Clark,” Pete didn’t return the smile. In fact, he looked ill. “I don’t know how to say this so I’ll just say it. Red—Lex, doesn’t want you coming to see him anymore.”
Clark’s smile faltered and his eyes searched Pete’s face for any sign that he was just kidding. “What? What? Why? Why not--”
“He doesn’t want to see you. I’m sorry. And neither does Whitney. He doesn’t want to talk to you, see you anymore.”
“What are you saying, Pete?” Clark laughed weakly. “They don’t like me any more?”
Pete looked down and nodded, he didn’t raise his head again and refused to meet Clark’s eyes. “I gotta go Clark, I’m sorry, I really am.”
Clark didn’t move as Pete walked away. He felt cold, frozen down to his bones. They were right to turn away from him. He was a coward. It was all his fault. He deserved this. It was the least of what he deserved. He had been a coward and now he was paying for it. His parents were still in the kitchen when he came back in and one look at his face brought his mother to her feet.
“Clark, what’s wrong, son?” His father asked. He got up and came to put an arm around his shoulders, and Clark’s face crumbled, and tears started rolling down. Holy crap, his dad thought, and frantically signaled for his mother to take over.
She dashed over to his side and wrapped him in her arms. “Clark! What’s the matter, Hon, what’s wrong? Is it Lex?” She directed him over to the table, and sat him down.
He dropped into the chair and let his head hit the table, and his shoulders shook as he struggled for control. “Pete. Pete—he told me Red said for me to keep away, Whit too. They hate me, and they should! I’m a coward!”
His parents exchanged shocked looks and his mom stroked his head. He looked up at them and caught his mom giving his dad one of those looks, the look that said you better fix this. How he thought? It wasn’t his dad’s fault he was a creep. His dad looked at his mom and his forehead creased up in the way it did when he was upset. He dropped into the chair opposite Clark and said, “Son—remember when we told you were adopted?”
Clark nodded his head yes as his mother made a sound of exasperation. Yeah, he’d been shocked, but it explained a lot, like why a redhead and a blonde had a son with black hair, and why he was so giant compared to them…
His dad cleared his throat and began again. “We waited to tell you until we thought you were old enough to handle it—now we have something else we need to tell you—and we want you to remember we love you.”
Clark’s heart froze. Oh god! He had some horrible disease! Or—he was a mutant! Like Fluffy. He was a mutant poodle…boy. He was a mutant boy--
Seeing his face go pale his mother rushed to tell him, “You aren’t sick Clark! Just…well.” She stopped and looked at Jonathan. Clark was still nervous—this was too mysterious, his folk’s didn’t do that kind of thing.
His dad stood and urged Clark to stand with him, “Come on son—I think you need to see this.”
They all went out to the backyard, and over to the old storm cellar, the one his dad used to store old machinery and chemicals. He unlocked d the doors and threw them wide. His mom shined a flashlight down the stairs, the light bouncing off hulks in the shadows and making the innocent cellar seem ominous. Clark swallowed and followed his dad down, stopped with him as he unlocked another set of doors in the wall of the cellar, and what he’d thought was recessed cabinet was another room.
His mom shone the flashlight at the wall while his dad searched for a switch.
“Ah. Ok, here goes.” Jonathan flipped a switch and the closet, room, whatever, was flooded with light.
In the center of an other wise empty space was a metal—egg? What the heck is that? And at the same time a feeling of familiarity, safety—what?
His dad turned to him and said, “You aren’t from around here Clark.”
Damn. It sounded like a line from ET. “What, that’s a—a space ship?” He joked.
“Well, yes.” His dad kind of winced and looked at him with worried eyes. “Yours.”
Clark laughed, got scared and laughed even harder at the look of worry and concern and … fear on his parents faces. “No, really, what is it?” he said, grinning, waiting for them to answer.
And then he was backing away. “Dad, mom, stop playing around! What is that thing?”
”You’re not—you’re an alien, you’re from the stars. We found you in a field naked as the sky, and speaking something we eventually figured must have been your original language—it seemed to be a language…I went back to the spot later that evening and this was here, in a hole in the dirt, and your footprints led away from it. Later we found meteorite scattered around the spot it came from, some were huge,and had come down in town. Just a few, but some people were killed, Lana’s parents… others. It was a horrible day for the town but a miracle for us.
Those rocks, son, you can’t get close to them. They make you ill, violently ill. We can’t be sure, but we think they can kill you. The rocks in that factory? They were the part of the meteors. You couldn’t have gone in side the building, you couldn’t have touched Red after the accident. The stones-- You’re not a coward, your body wouldn’t let you …”
Clark couldn’t stop backing away as his father told him this. Waves and waves of horror swept through him, his parents were insane, who would take care of him now—but that thing, it was a spaceship he knew it, and words were in his head, words he’d never heard before today, but he understood.
He grabbed his pounding head and screamed, whirled and dashed out- out of the cellar, out of the yard, ran until he couldn’t run anymore. He threw himself on the ground and looked up into the endless black of the night sky, and it hit him—he wasn’t human.
He wasn’t a human being. He rolled to his side and threw up, praying and begging that it was a nightmare.
TBC
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Make it better. Please? Pretty please?
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