Hello people! After How Could You's success I'm back with another short story. This time it's been beta'ed by the wonderful Vanadium Oxide (if something seems odd, blame them. Not me)! Thank you again :)
WARNING: This story might be disturbing and upsetting to some audiences. I'm not a mental health expert and do not condone anything in the written. This work is purely fictional. If you feel upset, depressed and/or helpless please seek people in your environment and experts.
Thank you.
NUMB
Numb
Numb
Numb.
Percy felt nothing. No joy; no pain. He was desperate, he was alone. He lived life on autopilot, not as an active player. Things he had once cherished became of no importance. The time didn't seem to pass as he laid still on his bed. The darkness seemed to crawl to him whenever he closed his eyes, so he refused to do so. She.
No. She came back. I have to come back. I have to return as well.
He pulled away from his friends and loved ones. Messages on his phones were left unanswered for days, for weeks. Their group of chosen ones had fallen apart entirely — not that they had ever were particularly close. Grover felt his mood swings but could not do anything about it as even he was pushed away. Percy never picked up any calls. Except from Annabeth who lived miles and miles away.
"Please, Seaweed Brain," she begged. "Please get help. We all can see that you're hurting. Please come back to us. Please, I beg of you."
He sighed. "I will," he promised. I will eventually. Eventually.
It came back. The darkness. "No," he groaned underneath the sheets.
He kept his eyes wide opened. The darkness could not win. It would not win. He would not allow it to win! Black ink splattered across the room, spiders crawling from every corner, large spiders. Arachne falling. Annabeth falling. He was falling.
"Together," he had said.
"Together," she had replied.
But the only one losing his mind was he, Perseus, the famous son of Poseidon. The savior, the warrior, the legend, the pawn. It was as sick joke nobody was laughing at. His breaths shortened. Air, he thought. I need air. The anxiety tightened his lungs.
He pushed the sheets away, but it made it only worse. Darkness. Misery. His curse. Percy was suffocating. His body was shaking. He coughed, he needed air, he longed for air. The pain in his chest made his heart nearly burst. "Think about her, think about her!" he gasped desperately.
Annabeth. His love. His anchor. His sanity. Her blonde curls, her piercing gray eyes, her gorgeous smile came to his mind. Her evil grin. Her dull white eyes. "Percy, help me!" Her hands turned into a dark green.
"I can't see! PERCY!"
Her fingers morphed into claws. No, this wasn't Annabeth. It was a monster. He had his sword in his hand. He clutched riptide. This wasn't Annabeth. This was a monster. She crawled on the floor. He had to do what he was trained for. What he did all these summers ago. Over and over again. "PERCY PLEASE!"
"You're not real!" he gritted through his teeth. Was he in Tartarus or back in New York? Did it really matter? It was all the same.
"PERCY!"
He swung his sword. "No," he whispered and sank to his knees.
Annabeth's head rolled to his feet. Decapitated. Slain by her own lover. No.
Numb.
Numb.
Numb.
His body relaxed. Or rather, the tension within him mellowed to a tolerable level. He found the air, discovered his breaths. Percy could breathe again. His room wasn't Tartarus. He was safe, he was in New York with Sally, Estelle, and Paul. His bloodshot sea eyes found his mirror. He looked like shit. And he felt worse.
This dream. This vision. It had haunted him ever since. And it repeated itself everyday ever since. Inescapable.
"You have been cursed your entire life. Nothing but merely a toy in a grand scheme you are incapable of understanding. A weapon that will come in handy when in due time and tossed away when not needed," the goddess of misery had laughed.
She was right. He was cursed. He was nothing but a pawn kept under the control of gods that had been playing him the entire life. The worse part was that it was meant to be that way. There was no chance of escaping. He could not rewrite fate. He could not undo this cruel joke: This injustice.
It was meant to be.
Percy's psychiatrist looked at him. She knew deep down there was no help for him, but she had to try. For his mother at least. The boy was smart. He thought that there wasn't any hope left. But still, he cooperated. Cooperate enough to pass.
He kept the same facade as the professional in front of him spoke. "Your son may need supervision. His thoughts in my session were alarming."
Suicidal tendencies. Sally looked at the amount of prescription pills. Enough to kill him once and for all. PTSD. Depression. Anxiety. Insomnia. Suicidal tendencies. Mood altering drugs. "What have they done to you?" she cried.
Percy smiled. It was a tired smile. It was a fake smile. "Too much."
No one else may know. No one was supposed to know how hard the demigod had fallen. Everyone else had recovered. They had scars on their bodies as proof, as marks of war. But the scars on his mind were too deep. Too worrisome to share.
Days passed. Days of dullness and of horror. Percy sat on his bed late at night. He had swallowed the pills dryly. He was fearful of water now, as pathetic as that was. He had lost trust in his element. He had lost trust in his father who had failed him yet again. He was befallen by the type of madness not even Dionysus could cure. Not even Apollo could do something. The gods weren't even trying after all this time. He was still their plaything. Too important to be killed, but not important enough to be healed. To be saved. To be appreciated. To be loved.
"Luke, you were right," he mumbled as he stared at the ceiling yet again.
The motion he somewhat felt… was it regret? Should he have joined Kronos' cause? It was too late to lament that. Percy was numb. He could not feel anything.
The dreams were horrifying. Cramps took control over his body. The medication did not stop them. They had quite the opposite. They amplified the visions. Annabeth lying on the ground. Terrified and screaming. Her body twisting and turning. Her eyeballs turned pitch black. The sounds of her bones breaking fueled the terrible crescendo of his ruined mind. Golden blood running from her nose. "PERCY PLEASE!"
Her screams echoed in his mind. Her voice shifted and changed. Was it Luke's voice? Was it Jason's voice? Who did it belong to?
It was his voice, he realized. It was his own. He didn't know how his own voice sounded anymore.
Percy jumped up from his bed. He could not deal the visions anymore. He grabbed a shirt and his jeans and fled. He would not disrupt his sisters sleep with his screams. He would not destroy his mother's new family with his groans. He would no longer be a burden to them. To anyone. To the rest of the world.
He ran. The shadows followed him. Was it a person or a griffin? Was it a bus or a hellhound? He could no longer tell them apart. "WHY? WHY ME?!" he yelled to the sky.
He could envision them laughing at him. All of them. "Why don't I feel anything?" he whispered.
It poured. His fingers were burning. He could hear the sizzles and smell the burning flesh. A drop hit him directly in the eye. The eyeball burst into pieces. It wasn't water, it was acid. His muscles were burning, and the flesh separated from the bones. Veins popped and the red blood dripped onto the concrete. No, it wasn't red. It was black. Percy was too tired to scream. He sat there quietly as bone after bone was set free.
He blinked. The nightmarish vision was gone. The water pouring down from the sky had healed him — calmed him.
He sank to his knees. His feet were soaked, mud hinged between his toes. His hands were dry. An idea came to his mind. The decision quickly processed. He would do it. Percy had to do it. For his sanity's sake, he drew his sword.
He looked down on the blade, its bronze glimmer reflecting his own be-ragged image in the dark-lit street. The reminder of the world he was thrown into when he was merely a boy. The last light in his twisted dark world. It would serve him once more.
He looked directly onto the pointy end. And then he stabbed. He slit. He laughed as he did it. The pain was delicious. Nurturing. He saw his friends in front of his eyes. They shifted from laughing at him, to crying and screaming in terror. He saw his mother and her new family in front of him. He would finally set her free from all of the burden he had placed on her.
His vision blurred. His motions haltered. Riptide fell out of his hands.
As his life slowly slipped away, he could tell he was smiling. He could feel something again. He felt relief. He felt peace. He wasn't numb anymore. He lay on the ground with the happiest smile one could imagine.
Numb.
Numb.
Numb.
He felt no longer numb.
The End
I'm sorry :(
I don't know why I have so many sad fanfics in my mind? Also, thoughts?