In The Garden(of memory) [3/?]
8/11/17 07:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
roxyTitle: In The Garden(of memory)
Author: roxy
Pairings/Characters: Sam/Dean, OCs
Rating: R
Word Count: 4080
Summary: Struck with a spell, Dean suffers memory loss, losing everything that makes Dean "Dean". Sam is at his side, working to break the spell, but soon begins to wonder if it's helping Dean or hurting him.
A/N, warning: non-con in this update
At AO3
Part Two
Lost
Mike sat cross-legged on his bed, back against the wall. He watched the sunlight rise, enchanted by the way it slowly filled the window, how even though it glowed golden like melted butter, the thick, wire-reinforced glass it poured through turned the light watery and slightly gray when it filled the room. He watched with interest as the walls went from a deep, slate-gray to a faint, robins-egg blue. The light tinted the gray blanket rumpled up under his feet a blue-green, it whitened the sheets. Light was fascinating. Mike could spend hours watching the way it moved, how it changed. He'd probably spend whole days watching, if allowed, totally mesmerized by the progress of the sun.
A distant bell rang; he shook himself, suddenly aware that he'd not been aware of time passing. Mike slid off the bed and shuffled into the tiny, green-tiled bathroom attached to his room. He leaned against the sink and stared at the him in the mirror, the endlessly fascinating him. He drew his fingers over his face, staring intensely. This face...he poked gently at his cheeks, pulled his lids wide to stare into his eyes. Nothing there, just...a nice enough shade of green, maybe, but if they were a mirror to the soul, well, then maybe his soul wasn't much to write home about. He pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes, until finally he gave into a breathy chuckle. He looked like a doofball. He looked like...Michael.
Michael Allen. That's who he was—no, that's what he called himself. After the doctors had poked and prodded and finally realized there was nothing he could draw on, nothing left in his pea-soup brain to call upon—dissociative amnesia, they'd labeled it—they'd asked him to pick a name, maybe one that fit who he felt like. He'd felt kinda like...Michael.
Mike.
The name didn't fit in a satisfying way, but it didn't feel like he'd just scooped it out the air, either. When Michael had bubbled up out of the pea-soup in his head that first time, it'd made perfect sense. A nurse had tacked the Allen on when he couldn't come up with a last name. Her grandson, Mike thought she'd said. Yeah, it was good enough. The only other name that'd made any sort of sense to him was Sam, but somehow—he smiled into the mirror like it shared a private joke with him—he couldn't really imagine himself as a Sam. That was a name for someone with...style. Presence. Someone who stepped into a room and filled it, not a zero of a guy who oozed around the edges of it, melting into thin air.
Mike shrugged the slightly gray turn of his thoughts away, and ran a line of toothpaste over the skinny little brush in his hand. He slid the brush between his lips and scrubbed away, humming a song as he did. He liked the song—it had just appeared in his mind one day, spilled out of his mouth unaware. He'd been in the day room when it happened, and one of the old guys—the one that talked to himself and constantly groomed the tufts of wiry gray hair shooting out of the sides of his head—grinned when Mike started humming the song. Told Mike it was Hey Jude, from a time when music was actually music. Maybe. Mike didn't know about music. Didn't know the why of this song, or where it came from, but it had to be something of his, right? It meant something...maybe something important, whatever it was. Well...didn't matter. He brushed and hummed and sort of sprayed foam all over, and didn't care. It was a good song.
Mike leaned over the sink and spit. He carefully rinsed his mouth before he spit and then rinsed again, his eyes going to the archer slit of a window, leaking gray light into the room. His mind thinned and drifted, in no particular direction, while his body completed its hygienic tasks. Muscle memory—convenient.
There was a tap at the door, it opened to Trevor and his cart. He held a morning kit out to Mike: liquid soap, deodorant, shave cream and a razor. He waited while Mike washed and shaved, chatting idly about nothing much at all; ward gossip, the price of gas, and how much he wanted to trade in his old gas guzzler for something sexy. Or at least, efficient. The whole time he talked, Mike focused on the mirror, not meeting Trevor's eyes. It was looking at Trevor that had got him in trouble. He'd seen that Trevor was good-looking, a nice guy—at first. Big, white smiles, always joking, always a friendly pat or hug, until it changed….
There was something wrong with Trevor. It unsettled him. Scared him, maybe. The way his eyes roamed over Mike like he owned him, like he was looking at dinner. Laughed at him like he knew some secret joke. The way he was standing in Mike's doorway now, filling it, crowding Mike into the fog….
He finished, and held the kit out in shaking hands. Trevor grinned, took it back and tossed it on his cart. "Okay. Breakfast time, you ready to get dressed?" he asked and Mike nodded. What else could he say? Trevor waited a few minutes, but when Mike didn't move, he snickered, gave Mike a wink and moved on to the next door.
The minute the door shut, Mike slithered out of his sleep pants, into a pair of jeans that had been washed to a baby-blanket softness, topped it with a dark-gray, long-sleeved t-shirt. He tugged on the sleeves until they almost covered his knuckles. He sat on the edge of his cot and made sure the three little buttons at the neck were fastened. Mike quickly covered his bare feet with a pair of thick socks, brand new. He smiled; for a minute or two he just perched there, flexing his feet, enjoying the warmth, imagining the socks loved his feet the way he loved wearing them. After another stolen minute, Mike stood with a sigh and stepped into a pair of thin-soled sneakers, the type that had no laces.
He shuffled down the hall, past the nurses' station, past the day room and into the small, humid room they had their meals in. No one looked up when Mike stepped in, most of the others were absorbed in their food, or caught up in some story only they knew. He looked for a place to sit alone, stepped around a couple of guys who were working themselves up into a rolling argument over what looked like a too-crisp slice of toast. Mike turned on his heel to quickly walk away when one of them let out a blood-curdling scream. Mike stumbled, felt a quick blaze of...something shoot through him. For a startlingly sharp, crystal moment, the pea-soup clogging his brain lifted, his hands curled into tight fists as he shifted his weight. He inhaled, sharp and deep, ready, completely there.…
Until it happened again, the way it always did; thick, black taffy glugged through his head. He blinked slowly as he sank...deeper and darker and deeper; a drowsy, dull wave of nothingness washed over him. His bones felt tiny, his body felt spread thin. Head down, he shuffled past the outbreak as a couple of orderlies hurried up, zoned in on the trouble brewing.
Something had happened, but he wasn't sure what or when and he didn't give the disturbance much notice. He ignored the screams of outrage, the tears, brittle little fear-soaked yelps, all of his concentration focused in on the chowline. At this moment in time, nothing was important except the possibility of oatmeal, the sunlight trying to peek around the heavy window blinds, and his daily dose of decaf coffee. He sleepwalked through the line, waking finally at the end to find himself holding a tray: oatmeal, a slice of toast, a pat of butter and a tiny plastic bowl of chopped peaches in syrup. He wasn't sure he liked canned peaches. Too slippery, like intestines when you made a fist inside—
"Good morning, Mike, how'd you sleep last night?"
It was William, one of the few staff who didn't make Mike feel a bit on edge. The thickly-built orderly trailed Mike to a not-so-crowded spot. He waited patiently while Mike set his tray on the scarred table, waiting like he really cared about Mike's answer. Mike carefully sat down, managed something like a smile before answering William as he always did. "Good."
It was actually, mostly, true—Mike had stopped mentioning the nightmares he had occasionally, and the weird, twisted thoughts that waited until he was nearly sleeping before ambushing him. In the beginning, his doctors had seized on those thoughts like dogs on a bone. Mike never had understood why, couldn't get how they were significant. Monsters were everyone's childhood bane; everybody had nightmares. Maybe his brain refused to grow out of it, is all. He had to admit, the dreams made him feel...well, uneasy, yeah. In his first few waking moments after one of those dreams, the world felt too sharp, too bright, and he was always afraid that if he took too many steps, or wondered too hard, he'd fall into an endless pit. Mike shivered hard. Falling. The very idea made his stomach twist unpleasantly.
"Mike? Mike, you with us?"
Mike looked up, right into William's dark eyes. He had long, long lashes, dark, curled back at the tips. Gave him a wide-eyed look that Mike liked. He liked that William was big, really big—shoulders a mile wide. When William walked, his steps were slow and steady, and his shoes made big, solid thumps on the floor. William made Mike feel grounded. Safe. He wished he could ask William to hide him from all the stuff he didn't understand.
"You sure you're good?" William asked, laid a hand on Mike's arm. His hand covered Mike's forearm completely, gently pinned it to the tabletop. Felt nice. The thick, brown fingers curled around his arm made Mike aware of how sun-deprived his own was, messy speckles spread everywhere on his flesh, mottled little dots...like blood spatter. Mike frowned and flexed his fingers against the table top, watching the spatters, freckles, shift with the movement. He ignored the push to rub them away. He could see himself doing just that in his mind's eye; his thumb moving over his skin, the way the specks would flake off, drift away like dust, like rust....
He blinked. William had moved, the warmth of his grip fading from Mike's arm.
Rats...He didn't like it when he was ambushed by weirdo thoughts, not in the daylight. They were supposed to be a nighttime thing. They tripped him up; they were stupid, no matter how the doctors tried to convince him having those thoughts were okay, maybe even useful. That there might be clues to who he really was in them. Considering the kind of thoughts they were, he couldn't say the idea sat well with him. He shivered. Bloody, whackjob, scary thoughts.
What...what if he was a serial killer? There was a program he'd watched in the hospital, about a man everyone had liked. A nice guy, a helpful guy who'd had some kind of devil inside him. Mike was fairly certain he didn't have a devil inside him—but would he know if he did? What if he did? The doctors said all kinds of things, trying to help—that it was possible some traumatic event had put his memories in solitary. They might not be gone, they might just...be hiding. Might come back, like all at once, or in dribs and drabs. Or, maybe, possibly...never.
Never….
And if that was the case...Mike wasn't sure that it mattered much. Having a bowl full of pea soup for a brain was obviously only his problem, no one else's. No one had ever come looking for him, had ever called. Either no one cared, or there was no one. Mike shook his head, then looked up at William, whose forehead was wrinkled slightly, lips pursed just a bit as he stared down at Mike in concern.
"I'm good, man, just a little…" Mike held his hand up, flattened it and waggled it from side to side and William smiled.
"Gotcha, a little unsteady. Dr. Brand is meeting with you later on today—you be sure you tell him." William patted him on the shoulder, and Mike felt a warm, little pulse in his chest—a good feeling. Mike grabbed a spoon and dug into the bowl of barely warm oatmeal. He liked oatmeal, he thought, as he chewed and swallowed. That was a memory, maybe. But...he was pretty sure he liked it with a lot, like, a lot of brown sugar and butter. This oatmeal was kind of...pale. No, not pale, plain. No, bland. That was it. That word explained everything about the oatmeal. He smiled and swallowed another mouthful. Now if he could find the word that explained himself, maybe it'd help him get a handle on all of this.
+++
"Mike, tell me about the dream?"
Mike looked up, startled. When had he told the doctor about his dreams? He didn't remember mentioning them again, not after deciding they were a waste of time. But he must have. Dr. Brand was smiling at him. Fingers tapped softly on his desk. The way his head tilted slightly to the side sent sandy-blonde bangs drifting down over his forehead, in a way that never failed to make Mike smile back. Being in the office made him feel...easy, comfortable enough to pull back one of the leather chairs that faced the doc's desk, and collapse into a comfortable sprawl.
Talking to Dr. Brand was mostly okay. Mike liked the doc; his funny, scarecrow self—a little too tall and lot too skinny—his lightning smiles, and the way his longish hair curled around his neck and flicked the tops of his ears. The way real concern warmed his whiskey-colored eyes. Mike had no doubt the doc was one of the real good guys.
"Dream, Mike?"
Mike started. He'd been distracted by a mole, a little brown dot on the doc's chin that always had Mike itching to move it. It felt like it was in the wrong place….
"Dream...unh," Mike repeated, searching for just what it was he'd said, before a few images flickered to the surface. "I'm not sure...thinking about it, well, it was boring, really. I was on the road, driving, and I knew I'd been driving for a long time. I was tired, hungry. I stopped to get gas and food. I stepped out and looked back towards the car, a big, old-fashioned boat. A window was rolled down, and when I looked in, someone asked me to get them water. I knew who it was then, but not now. Weird, hunh?"
Doc just smiled, and asked,"You say you were driving...away from something? Something bad?"
"No. Just...just driving. And no monsters." Mike's reply was firm. He didn't want to hear about bad things. He straightened in the chair, all the good feeling gone, replaced by something tight and hot. He thought that maybe it was anger, but the budding feeling withered too quickly for him to get a handle on; he slumped again, tired and foggy-brained. It wasn't fair to feel that way here, not in a good place.
"Mike? Mike? Hey...do you want to tell me how you're feeling?"
"No. I don't feel anything. I'm just tired." Mike crossed his arms over his chest, dropped his head and did his best to disappear into the chair. Doc looked sympathetic. He smiled, and his whole face seemed to smile—Mike's mouth went dry. He held onto the arms of his chair, because for some truly crazy reason, his hands kept telling him it was okay to go on and touch the doc. Right. He might be crazy, but he wasn't stupid.
"Okay. It could be the new anti-anxiety meds. Give it a week or so to level out."
"Oh, yeah, uhm, okay, Dr. Brand. Understood." Time was up and Mike gratefully rose, shuffled out of the door towards his room.
Mike didn't want to disappoint the doc, but he knew it wasn't the pills messing with him, at least not completely. It was the constant darn struggle that wore him out, trying not to sink so deep inside that he disappeared altogether. Sinking down into the darkness didn't even feel good. It was just...easier to blank out. Easier to give in than to fight. Easier, most days, to get up and move if someone wanted his spot on the day room couch. It was easier to pass over his milk than refuse. It just made more sense.
It was confusing, in a distant sort of way, because there was plenty of evidence that he hadn't always been this person. It was written all over his skin. Staff tried to tell him there could be dozens of reasons why his body looked like a road map of violence. Accidents, getting caught up with bad people—heck, apparently some of the staff had decided that Mike had escaped the clutches of some nefarious slimeballs, like he was some kind of comic book hero.
Mike huffed quietly to himself. He knew better. He traced the shape of bullet holes, stab wounds. The ridges left by skin sewn, and sometimes not very neatly, back up again. Teeth, claws, even flame seemed to have left its traces on him. Mike never questioned that he knew what sort of scars they were, never wondered how he knew that the set of parallel lines on his left thigh were claw marks or the half circle of dimples on his shoulder were left after a vicious bite, the teeth of a—a—
He blinked, swimming back out of the familiar gray fog. Mike knew what the marks were—but not why. He stared, fingertips stroking over scars and dimples, slight, quick breaths giving way to nearly silent wheezing. Blackness nibbled light away from the edges of his eyesight. The familiar, thick blanket of heavy nothingness settled on Mike; he breathed through it, exhaling slow, deep breaths and muddled thoughts, eventually settling into a feeling of vague well-being. Mike floated along on it. This was the feeling he let drive him, what he felt on his good days. On those good days, he shuffled from bed to couch, to bed again, and he did it day after day after day and it was good enough.
+++
Day after day….
Mike stepped into the hallway, idly noting the exits as he shuffled towards the day room. Two exits leading to the outside, one door leading to the nurses station, a locked door, a janitor's closet, another locked door, supply room for the ward...he didn't know why he saw these things, he just did.
Mike wanted some water. There was a water fountain near the day room, so he headed there. Trevor saw him coming and smiled. Mike smiled back, not really meaning to—it was an automatic reaction, something learned here; you make brief eye contact, then smile, but not too wide.
Trevor dropped into step behind him, dogging his heels. Mike moved a little to the left, and walked just a bit faster. Too late, he realized that Trevor had two-stepped him right into a dead end, a dark section of hallway with locked doors, then herded Mike through the only open door into an unused, tiny room that had maybe been an office at one time; a small, airless, windowless, box. Filled with him and Trevor.
Mike shuddered and a low, animal sound of fear squeezed out of his throat.
"Hey, now, Michael Allen...you shush." Trevor stepped forward, quietly shutting the door behind himself. Mike heard the lock click, loud in the quiet.
Trevor crowded Mike into a corner of the room, hooked a few fingers into the open collar of Mike's t-shirt and pulled him close. "You know, I don't usually go for them when they get old and kinda beat up like you. But, there's just...something..." Trevor moved his hand, traced around one of Mike's eyes, making his eyelid twitch crazily. "Yeah, there's something about you. 'Bout them eyes, the way you look at me…"
Mike tried to take a step back, eyes darting from side to side, looking for something, anything that would help. There was a part of him that was so scared he couldn't breathe, but another, smaller part that was just plain pissed off. Mike shook with the conflicting emotions. 'Don't you let that fucker,' a voice inside his head snarled, 'don't you let him touch you.'
The last time some asshole thought he could rip a piece off him, he'd been eighteen. He'd left that fucker bleeding out of every hole in his goddamn head, knocked him cold an' left him face-down in a dirty alley. Even so, Dad hadn't let him go off alone for months after, and—
The dark fog hit him—more like a pile driver than the black-taffy-quicksand he was used to. Mike's eyes rolled up; his muscles went loose. He felt the buttons on Trevor's shirt dig into his chest as his knees gave out and he slid down Trevor's body.
"Knew it...knew you'd want this. Slut," Trevor whispered, pushing Mike further down until his knees hit the tile. Mike was lost in his head, wading through thick, smothering darkness. He came to—somewhat—with his cheek resting against the stiff curve of Trevor's hard-on. He blinked, trying his best to bring back that clear, sharp wave of rage, but he was mired in the fog. His brain shut down. He could feel Trevor rock back, feel him pull his pants down, and the thick, cloying smell of him filled Mike's nose. He moaned with the effort of trying to surface, but Trevor apparently took it to mean Mike was into it, pushed his thumb into the cleft of his chin, forcing Mike's mouth open. With the other hand, he pressed his dick against Mike's lower lip until it slid inside. "There you go, made for me, fit's perfect."
Mike's will drifted like smoke. Trevor chuckled, a mean edge to it, as he rocked in deep, deep until Mike gagged, his jaw jumping with the need to vomit. Trevor smacked him. "Hey, you bite me and I'll fuck you up, believe it."
Mike definitely believed him, so did his best not to cause Trevor any pain, even when black flecks swarmed the thick gray fog in his head, leaving him blind and deaf, even when air became a distant memory.
"Oh, shit, fuck, you're good at this, you musta been somebody's best whore out there. Fuck."
Mike swallowed convulsively, instinct making him fight to breathe. Trevor pulled back right before Mike passed out; he came in thick spurts across Mike's face, the heat and wet startling Mike into falling backwards, his ass hitting the floor. He hissed at the sting; come dripping into his eyes, his teeth grazing cuts in his lip. Tears and snot slid down Mike's face, mixing in with the ropy saliva coating his chin. He dragged the back of his hand over the disgusting slime, trying to wipe the evidence away. Trying to hide tears.
"Here," Trevor said, and tossed Mike a pack of tissues. "Clean up, then go sit in the day room."
Mike wiped frantically, cleaning his face and then shuffling out of the door, Trevor's instructions filling the whole of his mind.
After that first time, it was a thing that happened pretty regularly. Mike had no defense against it—the fog came up and Mike was helpless but to fall into it. Sometimes, he spent entire days in the fog, and the little thoughts and bits of nightmare and random good feelings he'd gotten used to disappeared. Mike got even quieter. Even the old guys stopped trying to talk to him, the yellers and biters all drifted away from him as well. He was a fence post, he was a hat-rack. He was a glass of water. He was a prism that sucked in all the sunlight and spit it out black.
+++
4
Author: roxy
Pairings/Characters: Sam/Dean, OCs
Rating: R
Word Count: 4080
Summary: Struck with a spell, Dean suffers memory loss, losing everything that makes Dean "Dean". Sam is at his side, working to break the spell, but soon begins to wonder if it's helping Dean or hurting him.
A/N, warning: non-con in this update
At AO3
Mike sat cross-legged on his bed, back against the wall. He watched the sunlight rise, enchanted by the way it slowly filled the window, how even though it glowed golden like melted butter, the thick, wire-reinforced glass it poured through turned the light watery and slightly gray when it filled the room. He watched with interest as the walls went from a deep, slate-gray to a faint, robins-egg blue. The light tinted the gray blanket rumpled up under his feet a blue-green, it whitened the sheets. Light was fascinating. Mike could spend hours watching the way it moved, how it changed. He'd probably spend whole days watching, if allowed, totally mesmerized by the progress of the sun.
A distant bell rang; he shook himself, suddenly aware that he'd not been aware of time passing. Mike slid off the bed and shuffled into the tiny, green-tiled bathroom attached to his room. He leaned against the sink and stared at the him in the mirror, the endlessly fascinating him. He drew his fingers over his face, staring intensely. This face...he poked gently at his cheeks, pulled his lids wide to stare into his eyes. Nothing there, just...a nice enough shade of green, maybe, but if they were a mirror to the soul, well, then maybe his soul wasn't much to write home about. He pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes, until finally he gave into a breathy chuckle. He looked like a doofball. He looked like...Michael.
Michael Allen. That's who he was—no, that's what he called himself. After the doctors had poked and prodded and finally realized there was nothing he could draw on, nothing left in his pea-soup brain to call upon—dissociative amnesia, they'd labeled it—they'd asked him to pick a name, maybe one that fit who he felt like. He'd felt kinda like...Michael.
Mike.
The name didn't fit in a satisfying way, but it didn't feel like he'd just scooped it out the air, either. When Michael had bubbled up out of the pea-soup in his head that first time, it'd made perfect sense. A nurse had tacked the Allen on when he couldn't come up with a last name. Her grandson, Mike thought she'd said. Yeah, it was good enough. The only other name that'd made any sort of sense to him was Sam, but somehow—he smiled into the mirror like it shared a private joke with him—he couldn't really imagine himself as a Sam. That was a name for someone with...style. Presence. Someone who stepped into a room and filled it, not a zero of a guy who oozed around the edges of it, melting into thin air.
Mike shrugged the slightly gray turn of his thoughts away, and ran a line of toothpaste over the skinny little brush in his hand. He slid the brush between his lips and scrubbed away, humming a song as he did. He liked the song—it had just appeared in his mind one day, spilled out of his mouth unaware. He'd been in the day room when it happened, and one of the old guys—the one that talked to himself and constantly groomed the tufts of wiry gray hair shooting out of the sides of his head—grinned when Mike started humming the song. Told Mike it was Hey Jude, from a time when music was actually music. Maybe. Mike didn't know about music. Didn't know the why of this song, or where it came from, but it had to be something of his, right? It meant something...maybe something important, whatever it was. Well...didn't matter. He brushed and hummed and sort of sprayed foam all over, and didn't care. It was a good song.
Mike leaned over the sink and spit. He carefully rinsed his mouth before he spit and then rinsed again, his eyes going to the archer slit of a window, leaking gray light into the room. His mind thinned and drifted, in no particular direction, while his body completed its hygienic tasks. Muscle memory—convenient.
There was a tap at the door, it opened to Trevor and his cart. He held a morning kit out to Mike: liquid soap, deodorant, shave cream and a razor. He waited while Mike washed and shaved, chatting idly about nothing much at all; ward gossip, the price of gas, and how much he wanted to trade in his old gas guzzler for something sexy. Or at least, efficient. The whole time he talked, Mike focused on the mirror, not meeting Trevor's eyes. It was looking at Trevor that had got him in trouble. He'd seen that Trevor was good-looking, a nice guy—at first. Big, white smiles, always joking, always a friendly pat or hug, until it changed….
There was something wrong with Trevor. It unsettled him. Scared him, maybe. The way his eyes roamed over Mike like he owned him, like he was looking at dinner. Laughed at him like he knew some secret joke. The way he was standing in Mike's doorway now, filling it, crowding Mike into the fog….
He finished, and held the kit out in shaking hands. Trevor grinned, took it back and tossed it on his cart. "Okay. Breakfast time, you ready to get dressed?" he asked and Mike nodded. What else could he say? Trevor waited a few minutes, but when Mike didn't move, he snickered, gave Mike a wink and moved on to the next door.
The minute the door shut, Mike slithered out of his sleep pants, into a pair of jeans that had been washed to a baby-blanket softness, topped it with a dark-gray, long-sleeved t-shirt. He tugged on the sleeves until they almost covered his knuckles. He sat on the edge of his cot and made sure the three little buttons at the neck were fastened. Mike quickly covered his bare feet with a pair of thick socks, brand new. He smiled; for a minute or two he just perched there, flexing his feet, enjoying the warmth, imagining the socks loved his feet the way he loved wearing them. After another stolen minute, Mike stood with a sigh and stepped into a pair of thin-soled sneakers, the type that had no laces.
He shuffled down the hall, past the nurses' station, past the day room and into the small, humid room they had their meals in. No one looked up when Mike stepped in, most of the others were absorbed in their food, or caught up in some story only they knew. He looked for a place to sit alone, stepped around a couple of guys who were working themselves up into a rolling argument over what looked like a too-crisp slice of toast. Mike turned on his heel to quickly walk away when one of them let out a blood-curdling scream. Mike stumbled, felt a quick blaze of...something shoot through him. For a startlingly sharp, crystal moment, the pea-soup clogging his brain lifted, his hands curled into tight fists as he shifted his weight. He inhaled, sharp and deep, ready, completely there.…
Until it happened again, the way it always did; thick, black taffy glugged through his head. He blinked slowly as he sank...deeper and darker and deeper; a drowsy, dull wave of nothingness washed over him. His bones felt tiny, his body felt spread thin. Head down, he shuffled past the outbreak as a couple of orderlies hurried up, zoned in on the trouble brewing.
Something had happened, but he wasn't sure what or when and he didn't give the disturbance much notice. He ignored the screams of outrage, the tears, brittle little fear-soaked yelps, all of his concentration focused in on the chowline. At this moment in time, nothing was important except the possibility of oatmeal, the sunlight trying to peek around the heavy window blinds, and his daily dose of decaf coffee. He sleepwalked through the line, waking finally at the end to find himself holding a tray: oatmeal, a slice of toast, a pat of butter and a tiny plastic bowl of chopped peaches in syrup. He wasn't sure he liked canned peaches. Too slippery, like intestines when you made a fist inside—
"Good morning, Mike, how'd you sleep last night?"
It was William, one of the few staff who didn't make Mike feel a bit on edge. The thickly-built orderly trailed Mike to a not-so-crowded spot. He waited patiently while Mike set his tray on the scarred table, waiting like he really cared about Mike's answer. Mike carefully sat down, managed something like a smile before answering William as he always did. "Good."
It was actually, mostly, true—Mike had stopped mentioning the nightmares he had occasionally, and the weird, twisted thoughts that waited until he was nearly sleeping before ambushing him. In the beginning, his doctors had seized on those thoughts like dogs on a bone. Mike never had understood why, couldn't get how they were significant. Monsters were everyone's childhood bane; everybody had nightmares. Maybe his brain refused to grow out of it, is all. He had to admit, the dreams made him feel...well, uneasy, yeah. In his first few waking moments after one of those dreams, the world felt too sharp, too bright, and he was always afraid that if he took too many steps, or wondered too hard, he'd fall into an endless pit. Mike shivered hard. Falling. The very idea made his stomach twist unpleasantly.
"Mike? Mike, you with us?"
Mike looked up, right into William's dark eyes. He had long, long lashes, dark, curled back at the tips. Gave him a wide-eyed look that Mike liked. He liked that William was big, really big—shoulders a mile wide. When William walked, his steps were slow and steady, and his shoes made big, solid thumps on the floor. William made Mike feel grounded. Safe. He wished he could ask William to hide him from all the stuff he didn't understand.
"You sure you're good?" William asked, laid a hand on Mike's arm. His hand covered Mike's forearm completely, gently pinned it to the tabletop. Felt nice. The thick, brown fingers curled around his arm made Mike aware of how sun-deprived his own was, messy speckles spread everywhere on his flesh, mottled little dots...like blood spatter. Mike frowned and flexed his fingers against the table top, watching the spatters, freckles, shift with the movement. He ignored the push to rub them away. He could see himself doing just that in his mind's eye; his thumb moving over his skin, the way the specks would flake off, drift away like dust, like rust....
He blinked. William had moved, the warmth of his grip fading from Mike's arm.
Rats...He didn't like it when he was ambushed by weirdo thoughts, not in the daylight. They were supposed to be a nighttime thing. They tripped him up; they were stupid, no matter how the doctors tried to convince him having those thoughts were okay, maybe even useful. That there might be clues to who he really was in them. Considering the kind of thoughts they were, he couldn't say the idea sat well with him. He shivered. Bloody, whackjob, scary thoughts.
What...what if he was a serial killer? There was a program he'd watched in the hospital, about a man everyone had liked. A nice guy, a helpful guy who'd had some kind of devil inside him. Mike was fairly certain he didn't have a devil inside him—but would he know if he did? What if he did? The doctors said all kinds of things, trying to help—that it was possible some traumatic event had put his memories in solitary. They might not be gone, they might just...be hiding. Might come back, like all at once, or in dribs and drabs. Or, maybe, possibly...never.
Never….
And if that was the case...Mike wasn't sure that it mattered much. Having a bowl full of pea soup for a brain was obviously only his problem, no one else's. No one had ever come looking for him, had ever called. Either no one cared, or there was no one. Mike shook his head, then looked up at William, whose forehead was wrinkled slightly, lips pursed just a bit as he stared down at Mike in concern.
"I'm good, man, just a little…" Mike held his hand up, flattened it and waggled it from side to side and William smiled.
"Gotcha, a little unsteady. Dr. Brand is meeting with you later on today—you be sure you tell him." William patted him on the shoulder, and Mike felt a warm, little pulse in his chest—a good feeling. Mike grabbed a spoon and dug into the bowl of barely warm oatmeal. He liked oatmeal, he thought, as he chewed and swallowed. That was a memory, maybe. But...he was pretty sure he liked it with a lot, like, a lot of brown sugar and butter. This oatmeal was kind of...pale. No, not pale, plain. No, bland. That was it. That word explained everything about the oatmeal. He smiled and swallowed another mouthful. Now if he could find the word that explained himself, maybe it'd help him get a handle on all of this.
"Mike, tell me about the dream?"
Mike looked up, startled. When had he told the doctor about his dreams? He didn't remember mentioning them again, not after deciding they were a waste of time. But he must have. Dr. Brand was smiling at him. Fingers tapped softly on his desk. The way his head tilted slightly to the side sent sandy-blonde bangs drifting down over his forehead, in a way that never failed to make Mike smile back. Being in the office made him feel...easy, comfortable enough to pull back one of the leather chairs that faced the doc's desk, and collapse into a comfortable sprawl.
Talking to Dr. Brand was mostly okay. Mike liked the doc; his funny, scarecrow self—a little too tall and lot too skinny—his lightning smiles, and the way his longish hair curled around his neck and flicked the tops of his ears. The way real concern warmed his whiskey-colored eyes. Mike had no doubt the doc was one of the real good guys.
"Dream, Mike?"
Mike started. He'd been distracted by a mole, a little brown dot on the doc's chin that always had Mike itching to move it. It felt like it was in the wrong place….
"Dream...unh," Mike repeated, searching for just what it was he'd said, before a few images flickered to the surface. "I'm not sure...thinking about it, well, it was boring, really. I was on the road, driving, and I knew I'd been driving for a long time. I was tired, hungry. I stopped to get gas and food. I stepped out and looked back towards the car, a big, old-fashioned boat. A window was rolled down, and when I looked in, someone asked me to get them water. I knew who it was then, but not now. Weird, hunh?"
Doc just smiled, and asked,"You say you were driving...away from something? Something bad?"
"No. Just...just driving. And no monsters." Mike's reply was firm. He didn't want to hear about bad things. He straightened in the chair, all the good feeling gone, replaced by something tight and hot. He thought that maybe it was anger, but the budding feeling withered too quickly for him to get a handle on; he slumped again, tired and foggy-brained. It wasn't fair to feel that way here, not in a good place.
"Mike? Mike? Hey...do you want to tell me how you're feeling?"
"No. I don't feel anything. I'm just tired." Mike crossed his arms over his chest, dropped his head and did his best to disappear into the chair. Doc looked sympathetic. He smiled, and his whole face seemed to smile—Mike's mouth went dry. He held onto the arms of his chair, because for some truly crazy reason, his hands kept telling him it was okay to go on and touch the doc. Right. He might be crazy, but he wasn't stupid.
"Okay. It could be the new anti-anxiety meds. Give it a week or so to level out."
"Oh, yeah, uhm, okay, Dr. Brand. Understood." Time was up and Mike gratefully rose, shuffled out of the door towards his room.
Mike didn't want to disappoint the doc, but he knew it wasn't the pills messing with him, at least not completely. It was the constant darn struggle that wore him out, trying not to sink so deep inside that he disappeared altogether. Sinking down into the darkness didn't even feel good. It was just...easier to blank out. Easier to give in than to fight. Easier, most days, to get up and move if someone wanted his spot on the day room couch. It was easier to pass over his milk than refuse. It just made more sense.
It was confusing, in a distant sort of way, because there was plenty of evidence that he hadn't always been this person. It was written all over his skin. Staff tried to tell him there could be dozens of reasons why his body looked like a road map of violence. Accidents, getting caught up with bad people—heck, apparently some of the staff had decided that Mike had escaped the clutches of some nefarious slimeballs, like he was some kind of comic book hero.
Mike huffed quietly to himself. He knew better. He traced the shape of bullet holes, stab wounds. The ridges left by skin sewn, and sometimes not very neatly, back up again. Teeth, claws, even flame seemed to have left its traces on him. Mike never questioned that he knew what sort of scars they were, never wondered how he knew that the set of parallel lines on his left thigh were claw marks or the half circle of dimples on his shoulder were left after a vicious bite, the teeth of a—a—
He blinked, swimming back out of the familiar gray fog. Mike knew what the marks were—but not why. He stared, fingertips stroking over scars and dimples, slight, quick breaths giving way to nearly silent wheezing. Blackness nibbled light away from the edges of his eyesight. The familiar, thick blanket of heavy nothingness settled on Mike; he breathed through it, exhaling slow, deep breaths and muddled thoughts, eventually settling into a feeling of vague well-being. Mike floated along on it. This was the feeling he let drive him, what he felt on his good days. On those good days, he shuffled from bed to couch, to bed again, and he did it day after day after day and it was good enough.
Day after day….
Mike stepped into the hallway, idly noting the exits as he shuffled towards the day room. Two exits leading to the outside, one door leading to the nurses station, a locked door, a janitor's closet, another locked door, supply room for the ward...he didn't know why he saw these things, he just did.
Mike wanted some water. There was a water fountain near the day room, so he headed there. Trevor saw him coming and smiled. Mike smiled back, not really meaning to—it was an automatic reaction, something learned here; you make brief eye contact, then smile, but not too wide.
Trevor dropped into step behind him, dogging his heels. Mike moved a little to the left, and walked just a bit faster. Too late, he realized that Trevor had two-stepped him right into a dead end, a dark section of hallway with locked doors, then herded Mike through the only open door into an unused, tiny room that had maybe been an office at one time; a small, airless, windowless, box. Filled with him and Trevor.
Mike shuddered and a low, animal sound of fear squeezed out of his throat.
"Hey, now, Michael Allen...you shush." Trevor stepped forward, quietly shutting the door behind himself. Mike heard the lock click, loud in the quiet.
Trevor crowded Mike into a corner of the room, hooked a few fingers into the open collar of Mike's t-shirt and pulled him close. "You know, I don't usually go for them when they get old and kinda beat up like you. But, there's just...something..." Trevor moved his hand, traced around one of Mike's eyes, making his eyelid twitch crazily. "Yeah, there's something about you. 'Bout them eyes, the way you look at me…"
Mike tried to take a step back, eyes darting from side to side, looking for something, anything that would help. There was a part of him that was so scared he couldn't breathe, but another, smaller part that was just plain pissed off. Mike shook with the conflicting emotions. 'Don't you let that fucker,' a voice inside his head snarled, 'don't you let him touch you.'
The last time some asshole thought he could rip a piece off him, he'd been eighteen. He'd left that fucker bleeding out of every hole in his goddamn head, knocked him cold an' left him face-down in a dirty alley. Even so, Dad hadn't let him go off alone for months after, and—
The dark fog hit him—more like a pile driver than the black-taffy-quicksand he was used to. Mike's eyes rolled up; his muscles went loose. He felt the buttons on Trevor's shirt dig into his chest as his knees gave out and he slid down Trevor's body.
"Knew it...knew you'd want this. Slut," Trevor whispered, pushing Mike further down until his knees hit the tile. Mike was lost in his head, wading through thick, smothering darkness. He came to—somewhat—with his cheek resting against the stiff curve of Trevor's hard-on. He blinked, trying his best to bring back that clear, sharp wave of rage, but he was mired in the fog. His brain shut down. He could feel Trevor rock back, feel him pull his pants down, and the thick, cloying smell of him filled Mike's nose. He moaned with the effort of trying to surface, but Trevor apparently took it to mean Mike was into it, pushed his thumb into the cleft of his chin, forcing Mike's mouth open. With the other hand, he pressed his dick against Mike's lower lip until it slid inside. "There you go, made for me, fit's perfect."
Mike's will drifted like smoke. Trevor chuckled, a mean edge to it, as he rocked in deep, deep until Mike gagged, his jaw jumping with the need to vomit. Trevor smacked him. "Hey, you bite me and I'll fuck you up, believe it."
Mike definitely believed him, so did his best not to cause Trevor any pain, even when black flecks swarmed the thick gray fog in his head, leaving him blind and deaf, even when air became a distant memory.
"Oh, shit, fuck, you're good at this, you musta been somebody's best whore out there. Fuck."
Mike swallowed convulsively, instinct making him fight to breathe. Trevor pulled back right before Mike passed out; he came in thick spurts across Mike's face, the heat and wet startling Mike into falling backwards, his ass hitting the floor. He hissed at the sting; come dripping into his eyes, his teeth grazing cuts in his lip. Tears and snot slid down Mike's face, mixing in with the ropy saliva coating his chin. He dragged the back of his hand over the disgusting slime, trying to wipe the evidence away. Trying to hide tears.
"Here," Trevor said, and tossed Mike a pack of tissues. "Clean up, then go sit in the day room."
Mike wiped frantically, cleaning his face and then shuffling out of the door, Trevor's instructions filling the whole of his mind.
After that first time, it was a thing that happened pretty regularly. Mike had no defense against it—the fog came up and Mike was helpless but to fall into it. Sometimes, he spent entire days in the fog, and the little thoughts and bits of nightmare and random good feelings he'd gotten used to disappeared. Mike got even quieter. Even the old guys stopped trying to talk to him, the yellers and biters all drifted away from him as well. He was a fence post, he was a hat-rack. He was a glass of water. He was a prism that sucked in all the sunlight and spit it out black.
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