Disclaimer: Not mine. Also, the title is the name of a song by Morrissey. I do not think this violates ffn's new lyrics rule, but if it does, do me a favor and tell me instead of just clicking the report button? Thanks.
Persecutory Delusions
Chapter 2: You are the Quarry
When he goes to sleep that night, Skittery dreams.
He is outdoors, in the school parking lot. The summer sun beats down on the asphalt with more force than should be possible anywhere other than the Sahara. There are no cars here and for some reason the usually busy street that runs by the school is now just as empty as the parking lot.
Standing there, enveloped by silence, he is not alone. Skittery cannot see anyone else, but he knows this undeniably.
Suddenly, he hears a whisper from somewhere behind his left shoulder.
"Skittery…"
He turns around and sees nothing but more asphalt stretching outward in an endless plain. His school has disappeared, and the only thing that's left is the blacktop. All life has been scorched or poisoned or chased away, he does not know which. The sun shines ever hotter, and the voice comes again, this time from the other side.
"Skittery." It is stronger, closer, more insistent. Skittery turns. He is still the only visible form of life on the monstrous expanse.
Then, as Skittery stares around wonderingly, all hell breaks loose.
The blacktop begins to twist and contort, writhing and churning and breaking in waves like the sea in a gale. They rise above him, whipping toward him violently and only narrowly missing causing him death or fatal injury.
The world is beginning to fall apart. The sky darkens, and Skittery cannot tell if the asphalt-waves are blocking the sun or if a storm is brewing. A strong wind whistles about him, and he swears he can he screams.
Above it all, the voice.
"Alexander!"
For some reason, Skittery does not wonder how it knows his name. All that matters is where it's coming from. He whirls around, searching for the voice's source, when all of a sudden, everything snaps back into place and the world is calm again.
The asphalt drifts back down to its normal inanimacy, and the sun brightens once more. The wind dies down and the screams fade with it.
Skittery breathes deeply, inhaling the stillness. Then movement begins again, but this time in a totally different and not unwelcome way.
A pair of arms comes to rest around Skittery's neck and a body presses against his back. He leans into the person behind him. Whoever it is is familiar somehow, though he can't quite think why. All he can tell is that the someone is human, male, and only a little taller than Skittery.
"It's okay," the person behind him says, "I'm here now. I won't let anything happen to you, Skitts."
The person's hands whisper lightly over Skittery's chest, and his mind begins to mirror the earlier chaos as his breaths grow shallow. He can no longer think straight. He can only feel. The person speaks again, his voice low and soothing.
"I love you," he murmurs, and everything changes.
The world goes cold as the sun disappears again. The arms around Skittery become frozen shadows ending in cruel claws. And a new voice sounds, contrasting sharply with his rescuer's. This one is growling and threatening and omnipresent.
It is the same voice Skittery heard outside the bus yesterday.
"You are ours!" The claws pierce his chest and skewer his heart.
Skittery awakes suddenly, but he does not bolt upright, or scream, or cry out in despair. He simply lies there, face pushed into his pillow, body clammy with sweat. He tries to breath, to gain control of himself.
It was only a dream. He's still alive. The creatures aren't here. He is fine. He is not in danger. At least, not any more than usual.
Skittery is relatively certain that stress produced the dream. He should have known he'd have nightmares about Them eventually.
Still, that doesn't explain where that one part, the one calm, beautiful part came from. That person… had been so familiar. And he had to have known him, because only Skittery's close friends ever call him Skitts. But which of them could it have been? None of them believe him, and none of them would even try to protect him from the creatures.
And none of them feel That Way about him. Skittery is sure of that.
He sighs and glances at the digital clock beside his bed. In glowing green block letters it tells him that it is 4:30 a.m.
An hour until sunrise and nothing for him to do.
The prospect of lying in the dark and staring at the ceiling for an entire hour frightens Skittery a lot more than any of the contents of his dream.
He decides to go downstairs and make coffee. After all, if he's going to be awake, he may as well be all the way awake.
Around ten minutes later, Skittery sits cross-legged on the couch in his living room. He has not bothered to turn on the lights, but the floral print on the couch's upholstery is just visible by the flickering light cast by the TV. Skittery isn't actually sure what he's watching. It's mostly just for background noise.
He's not thinking, either. It's far too early in the morning to think. Mostly, he's waiting. Waiting for the sun to rise. Waiting for his family to wake up.
Waiting until he has the courage to confront Them.
As he sips his coffee, Skittery fiddles with the remote. Channels flash past his eyes on the screen, each one full of the same bright lights and blinding smiles. It's pretty much all infomercials at this time of day, but occasionally he sees a news program or some ancient sitcom. Every so often, Skittery can hear a car go by outside.
It's peaceful. He feels like he doesn't have to think or to worry. He can forget about Them for a while, can forget about whether or not he's crazy and what his friends will think if he is. He can forget about who the boy in his dream was. He can just listen, and watch, and wait.
A few hours later, his mom trudges down the stairs. When he hears her enter the room, he says quietly, "I made coffee."
She nods and goes into the kitchen.
When she gets back, she's considerably more talkative.
"How long have you been up?" She asks, sitting down next to him.
"Around two hours," he says.
"Nightmare."
"Yeah."
"And you don't want to talk about it."
"No."
She sighs. "I wish you'd talk to me more, Alex—"
"Please don't call me that."
"Skittery. You know you can talk to me, right? I'm not pushing you away?"
Skittery glances at her, but looks away again quickly. "Of course."
They fall silent for a while, and the newscasters on TV are the only sound. Finally Skittery's mom says, "Thanks for making coffee."
Skittery smiles, and his mom smiles with him. Together, they watch the news.
It is Saturday, so the day begins slowly. Almost four hours after Skittery's mom comes downstairs, his sister emerges from her bedroom. It is at this point that Skittery decides he does not want to spend the day anywhere near his family.
He thinks he will go downtown to the factory. He may as well do something productive.
When Skittery goes downtown, he walks. This is mostly because he has no car, but also because he likes the exercise, and the way he is isolated from the drivers on the road and yet still part of everything.
His family lives on the very edge of the suburbs, closer to downtown than most of the other people he knows. It is not that long a walk, so Skittery is surrounded by skyscrapers within fifteen minutes.
His city, downtown, is not nearly as crowded as the really big cities like New York, but it can certainly hold it's own. The difficulty of walking quickly amidst the crowds that populate downtown far outweighs the benefit, so Skittery slows down considerably as soon as he leaves suburbia.
As he walks, he entertains himself by watching people. He finds that if you don't pay attention, all of their faces can blend into one. He tries not to let that happen. He knows what it feels like to be forgotten, to be left behind. So he pays attention to each stranger's face.
And then, all of a sudden, Skittery becomes very, very scared.
Down the street from him, there is a patch of something that Does Not Belong. There is a lone figure of pitch black amidst the sea of colors.
It is one of Them. Again.
And it is not just standing there. It is coming toward him, and very rapidly at that.
Skittery's eyes dart through the queue, desperately searching for an escape. The creature is coming nearer, nearer, nearer. He has to get away. Now. The only way he can see is to cross the street, because the crowd of people is too tight for him to move in any other direction. He's not sure which would be more dangerous: crossing against traffic on the busiest street in the city, or being caught by the shadow-creature.
He decides to take his chances with traffic. He dashes into the road. He squeezes his eyes shut tightly and prays.
For awhile, sounds make up his entire world. He can hear screeching tires, car horns, bystanders screaming. He doesn't stop, not even when he feels a car brush by him less than a foot away, because the clearest sound of all is that terrible voice.
"Come to us, come with us," it chants as he runs, "Dance our dance! Sing our song! You are ours, forever and ever, world without end!"
As he tears through the city, he is certain he can sense the creature at his back. The voice is joined by others like it, and they sing their twisted mockery of a hymn, playing the hounds to his fox. Still he does not open his eyes.
The world is coming apart at the seams. It whirls around him like the blacktop in his dream, and he can't think, can't stop, can't breathe—
And suddenly he runs smack into what he assumes is a person.
At the moment of impact, Skittery stumbles backwards, catches one foot against the other one and topples over, landing at the feet of the poor soul he's inadvertently assaulted. His eyes pop open and he looks behind him. To his surprise, he is no longer being followed. The shadow is gone and the voices are silent.
Only when he's certain that he's no longer the shadow-creature's quarry does Skittery look up to apologize.
He finds himself staring at Mush and Blink.
It was Mush he ran into, and it is Mush who extends a hand to help him up. All sorts of things to say run through his head—everything from "I'm so sorry" to "Watch where you're going"—but the only thing he seems to be able to do is to gape at his two friends.
"You alright?" Mush asks as Skittery dusts himself off. Skittery nods.
"You're in a hurry," Blink remarks.
"Yeah. Yeah, I am."
"What happened? You looked like you'd seen a ghost."
"I… sort of did." Skittery sighs resignedly and prepares to be called crazy. "Remember those things I told you about? They were chasing me."
Blink's face takes on a concerned expression that makes Skittery feel sick. He wouldn't mind as much if it weren't so damn sincere.
"Skitts," he says, "I know it's been hard for you since Snitch—"
So that's how it's going to be. God, Skittery hates it when they play that card.
He cuts Blink off. "Snitch and I are different people, alright, Blink? Just because he had… Just because he was like that doesn't mean I am."
"I never said you were! I just think that you should maybe… calm down a little, you know? Think a little more, maybe talk to someone about it."
"I'm not going to a therapist."
"But it could really—"
"Kid," Mush says suddenly, "Kid, I believe him."
Blink frowns.
"No, really." He touches Blink's arm, "I think he really does see these things."
"But just because he sees them doesn't mean they're real."
"Just because you can see me doesn't mean I'm real, but you're pretty sure of that."
"Yeah, but everybody can see you."
"Look, guys," Skittery breaks in, "I have places to be, okay? I'll see you Monday."
As he walks away, Blink calls after him, "Just think about it, alright?"
He turns back just long enough to see Mush smack Blink lightly. Then he walks in a direction he had not planned on until he heard Them chant.
He is going to the library.
A/N: I was serious about the not reporting me thing. I don't think you can copyright titles, per se, so it should be fine, but still. I like this story; I don't want it taken down.
SBM: I love psychotic characters. I'm glad Skittery came out well.
Charlie: This fic is proof of How I Cannot Write Gen. There was supposed to be no pairing, and now not only has Blush seeped into the background but Snittery is coming up in future chapters as well. So yes, there will indeed be Snittery.
Brunette: HA! I HAVE CONFUSED ANOTHER! …Er. I mean. All will be revealed in time. Yeah, that.
Madmbutterfly713: Updated!
Ellaeternity: Thank you!