FMI Drabbles (Focus: Dark Inversion)
In order to further delineate the FMI form, here is what happens when you remove a person's capacity for intimacy, piece by piece.
Order: Experiential, Vulnerability (Artistic), Physical (Platonic kiss), Emotional (Sorrow/Loss), Secret Sharing
Before StrexCorp… a ghostly thin memory, but, sometimes, briefly, he recalls having a friend.
The name is lost to him, and he… believed in something other than a Smiling God. How absurd.
Now and again, the man would stop eating for a while. Kevin used to join him, sometimes; the lack of food cleared his head, made his writing more interesting.
He's not allowed to fast anymore. His nutrient bag gets changed on a schedule, the old one twisted off and the new one affixed to the feeding tube. It's no longer under his control.
Not much is, these days.
His house was small, but homey; the walls had been covered in his paintings. The world around him - the physical beauty and sheer variety - was endlessly fascinating to him. On the radio, he mentioned it rarely; why discuss what could only be experienced through the sense of sight?
Somewhere in the remaking of his body, he lost the ability to see colors. Most of them. Now, he sees dingy greys, muddy greens. And black.
And his brain doesn't like it when he tries to consider whether something looks nice, so he gave up trying to think that way, decades ago.
Vanessa had always been waiting for him with a cup of coffee; he'd take it from her and peck her on the cheek, a quick thank-you for everything she did to keep the station running smoothly.
They killed Vanessa. He watched it happen, helpless to spare her.
They let him keep that memory.
Then they sliced open his mouth, sewed up the jagged cuts into a parody of a smile. Just moving it to talk feels like shards of glass under the skin, a skin that cracks and groans along the fault lines.
And he can't purse his lips anymore.
Sometimes, he finds the edges of a thought, the idea of maybe, at one point, having a sister, and maybe standing by a grave while they both silently cried.
The grave itself is vivid, but he's not sure who it's for, or who stood beside it. Was he even there?
Sadness is beyond him, now; he only has the one emotion, anymore. Or sometimes the sparkling edges of something like anger. Even fear is gone, now.
And his unreliable tear ducts have been replaced; now they're controlled by necessity, not emotion, and they spread black oil out over his eyes.
In his final moments before StrexCorp seized him, Kevin had shared with his listeners every secret he could think to share, knowledge the only power he had left. If there had been any left to listen to his words over the airwaves, they had been with him in that awareness of the coming darkness.
Strex has altered his brain, distorting meanings, removing words; even if he wanted to rebel, he couldn't put together the right thoughts now, much less communicate them.
The weight of the secrets he bears is hidden beneath compulsory misdirection; truth and awareness are now the enemy.
