Disclaimer: Not mine.
Persecutory Delusions
Chapter 4: No Progress
Over the years, Skittery has learned never to be surprised by his friends. Jack, for example, once actually managed to convince his History teacher that the entirety of western Europe had broken out in nuclear war and that the US would be following shortly, and ever since then, Skittery has not been able to look at him quite the same way.
Never, though, has he had as much reason to be surprised as he has now.
Skittery started to worry when everyone refused to tell him where they were going. Not just Jack; that would have been normal. But also Blink and Mush and David. And usually, Mush at least would cave and tell Skittery whatever it was the rest of them were concealing.
Not this time, though. The mouths of Skittery's friends have remained firmly shut throughout the car ride, and now that they've stopped Skittery can see why.
If anyone had told him where they were going he probably would have thrown himself out of the car rather than have gone along with it.
The car window tints the plain brick building outside a slightly greenish color. The building's hulking form glowers across a half-filled parking lot, boxlike and cold. Its glassy windows try to stare into Skittery's soul, but he will not let the place have him.
Not like it has Snitch.
"Come on, Skitts," Blink calls from outside the car, "Visiting hours are almost over."
So they're finally letting him have visitors? They must have made progress.
Skittery does not want to see progress. Not on Snitch.
He pushes the car door open as quickly as his unsteady hand will allow him. After he stands up, he stops, and stares resolutely at his friends.
"No," Skittery says, calmly and clearly.
"Skitts," Mush says, "Seeing him will be good for you. I know you miss him. You can talk about—"
"No!" Skittery says, "I won't. I can't."
He is backing away from them, slowly, like a wounded animal.
"What do you have to be afraid of? You knew Snitch best of all of us." David says, ever the voice of logic.
Screw logic. What did logic ever get Skittery?
"No," he says again, and runs.
Skittery has no clear idea of where he's going. All he knows, at the moment, is wind and footsteps and white hot rage at his friends' pretension.
They shouldn't have done that. They fucking shouldn't have. They know what happened between Skittery and Snitch that night.
But it didn't affect them, did it? They weren't there. They didn't have to stand back and watch their best friend go out of his mind. They didn't hear how his voice cracked like he was twelve again. They didn't see the expression on his face while he picked up the knife: the way the bright smile was twisted and torn and ragged like a tattered flag in the wind.
Skittery nearly lost it himself that night, seeing Snitch's face. He is never going to let that happen again. If he can't save Snitch then he'll save himself.
Skittery does not stop running until he can barely breathe. He takes a few halting steps even as he stops.
That's when he falls over by the shoulder of the road he's been on, and tries to get a hold of himself. He does not shake with repressed anger or sorrow. He does not punch the earth. Not a tear escapes his eyes.
He is too busy trying to remember how to breathe.
For a while, Skittery sits there relatively calmly, propped up on his arms. When his breathing is close to normal again, he stands up and starts walking. He will not break down again.
Skittery is grateful, at least, for the distraction from the matter of the shadow-creatures.
The direction Skittery has picked leads back into town. The hospital is not exactly close to the rest of civilization, but it's not a difficult walk, and soon Skittery is downtown once more.
If he were a better person he would go to the factory and confront his fears, late in the day as it is.
Too bad he's a coward.
Skittery does not watch the people around him as he walks home, and he sincerely hopes that they do not watch him. His steps come quickly and he takes the fastest route he knows.
Boredom isn't looking so bad anymore. Skittery doesn't want to think. He doesn't want to deal with his friends, or his family, or even himself. He wants out.
When he reaches home, he trudges sullenly through the slightly overgrown front lawn and pushes the door open. Even though only his mom and his sister are there, it seems more crowded than usual. Skittery does not look forward to when his dad gets home from his business trip next week. The house seems too small for one person, let alone four.
It's around eight o'clock. Skittery wasted almost three hours being traumatized by his friends, and also succeeded in missing dinner.
Joy of joys. He accomplished exactly nothing.
Skittery goes into the kitchen and starts pulling cabinets open. Theirs is not an incredibly well-stocked house when it comes to food, but Skittery came home too late to complain at his mom. It's an unwritten law in his house: if you miss dinner, you don't complain, or eat leftovers. You cook something else for yourself.
Leaning one arm on the counter, Skittery pulls a cookbook out from under the wall cabinets. He flips through it idly for a few seconds, and then, promptly, he drops it.
What the fuck?
Skittery stares wide-eyed at the cookbook, which lies somewhat forlornly, not unlike a fallen bird, on the kitchen floor.
That recipe says, very clearly, "Contributed by Thierry Quereux." Really. Skittery swears.
So either his eyes were deceiving him, or the infamous Thierry Quereux was also a chef. Which makes no sense whatsoever.
Skittery's fingers, as he lifts the cookbook, are as gentle as though he were handling old lace. He takes a deep breath and flips to the page he'd been looking at.
…Oh. Theodore Quince. Not Thierry Quereux. Talk about Freudian slips. Or maybe it was more Rorschach than Freud. Whatever.
Perhaps it's not that smart to keep ignoring whatever is going on. It doesn't seem to be good for Skittery's health. Mental or physical.
As Skittery's eyes rest on the broken trashcan, the sink overflowing with dirty dishes, and the moldy bread on the counter, he decides that he's not that hungry after all.
He thinks he'll go to sleep. It's not like he has a reason to stay up. That would just give him time to think.
As Skittery lies in bed with the darkness coalescing around him, the shadows outside his window are certainly not alive. At first, he is perfectly still. No senseless images cloud his mind, and no thoughts can penetrate the fortress of sleep Skittery has built around himself. Then, his eyes flicker beneath their lids in what is unmistakably an REM cycle.
Skittery is having the dream again.
He knows it's a dream even as he experiences it. It is just as vibrant as it was the first time, and the images are just as strikingly clear. No element has changed in the slightest.
It is, however, ten times as frightening as it was before.
The dream means that Skittery cannot forget. It means that however he tries, They will never leave him alone. It means that he will always wonder who the boy is.
This time, when Skittery wakes, it is still the middle of the night. Instead of lying back and catching his breath, Skittery stands up. He does not turn on the lights. He knows his room well enough not to need one. Skittery's careful steps carry him to his bookcase, and his fingers drift up to the Bible on the top shelf.
Then, with a sudden, uncharacteristically violent movement, he throws it off the shelf and pulls the book behind it into his hands.
It is too late. He can't ignore it anymore. They won't let him. He won't let him.
The dream has continued, and that alone is proof enough. But there's also the men-in-black, who, rather than dissuading Skittery from looking into the mal foncé, have actually geared him into action.
It is time, and he knows it.
When Skittery opens the book this time, he pages past the title page immediately and goes straight to the first chapter, which he finds is entitled, "Les manières du culte de la nuit."
It is slow going, and once more Skittery wishes for the French talents of his dear, clinically insane friend. By the time the sky is beginning to grow light, Skittery has only managed to decode two pages and those not fully.
None of what he finds is very new. Most of it was summed up in that encyclopedia article of a paragraph that Skittery found in the other book, or on one of the websites he'd looked at. Eventually, he realizes that if he doesn't get dressed he'll be so late for school that nothing the mal foncé can do will compare to the punishment he will receive from his teachers.
Skittery curses the guy who invented Mondays.
Today, no evil-looking shadows follow the bus, and the parking lot does not explode into darkness when the bus pulls in. Everything seems normal: the slightly grimy brick, the fresh paint on the door where janitors have just painted over graffiti, the chipped paint inside on the walls. Real as everything is beginning to seem, Skittery idly wonders if maybe it is all just paranoia.
Then, a note falls out of the vent on his locker.
It is a simple, crisply-folded sheet of white paper. No marks mar its outside, and it is folded so well you could easily use it as a straight-edge. Skittery folds it open gently, expecting either an apology or a question about his mental health from one of his friends.
It turns out to be neither. The paper is not, as Skittery had hypothesized, plain and white. Rather, it is stationery which bears a complex and unrecognizable device where the letterhead should be.
"And we thought you were following our advice," it is printed in a simple serif font, "Do not touch the book again."
Skittery tucks the note into his pocket. Threatening as it is, at least he now has proof that he's not totally insane.
He's not sure whether to rejoice or to repent.
For most of the day, Skittery pushes both the note and the reactions of his friends to his little outburst yesterday to the back of his mind. It is easy to avoid them in class, and during lunch he simply switches tables. He is only delaying the inevitable, but so are people who get treated for possibly fatal illnesses, so he figures that it's not such a big thing.
The note is more of a problem than his friends. He can practically feel it burning through his clothes. The forceful words on it have seared the note's form onto Skittery's mind in Technicolor detail, and he can barely keep himself from taking it out and staring at it to see if it really is exactly as he remembers it.
Still, Skittery has every intention of ignoring it. Now that he's started reading that book… Something's changed. He's not scared anymore. Well, he is, but not in the same way.
Before, his fear was a knife of dark, dizzying nausea that stabbed through his body anytime he contemplated Them. Now, it's pure energy. It's like espresso for the nerves. His senses extend farther and stronger than they did before, and he has an odd kind of stressed-out mania.
The note does not make him as afraid as he is sure it should, but he cannot bring himself to care. Not when he may finally be on to something. Skittery is sure he can deal with the men-in-black if need be.
Halfway through lunch, he actually almost wishes it is the men-in-black he must deal with today, rather than his friends. He can see Mush crossing the cafeteria, face serious.
Skittery looks around for an escape, but none is apparent. As his friend approaches his table, Skittery avoids eye contact at all costs. He is not stupid enough to believe that if he ignores him, Mush will go away. Mush is kind of like a mule that way: stubborn, and not exactly the brightest crayon in the box.
Skittery hears rather than sees Mush sitting down across from him. Skittery is still steadfastly ignoring him.
"Look at me, Skitts," Mush says. Skittery does so. Now that Mush is here, there's really no point in avoiding it.
"What do you want?" Skittery asks.
"I'm sorry. It was my fault. I convinced them to take you there."
Skittery stares at him stoically, not speaking.
"I shouldn't have done it. I just thought it would help."
"Yeah, well. It didn't, did it?" Skittery says.
"I'm really sorry. I should have remembered that you—"
"But you didn't."
"I know. It won't happen again. I'm really sorry."
Skittery sighs. This would have been easier if it were anyone else. It's almost impossible to stay mad at Mush.
"Yeah," he says, "Just… just don't forget again, okay? I can't see him again. Not now." No matter how much I'd like to.
Mush nods and says, "See you later, Skitts."
Skittery does not watch as Mush leaves the table to go back to the rest of his friends.
He hadn't quite planned on forgiving them this fast, but at least it lets him concentrate on only one problem.
Skittery has shadows to hunt.
A/N: Sorry this took longer than usual. I have no computer at my dad's house, and that was where I was.
Volatile.virgin: Ah, thanks. I didn't know I could do long fiction, but then this story took over my brain and now it won't let go.
Madmbutterfly: Hey, if I called you on the laziness I'd be a hypocrite. And here is an update.
Charlie Bird: Of course. It's just like how I'm actually not as oblivious as I pretend to be, yes?Thierry, actually,is two people—there's a kid in my French class called Thierry and Quereux was my grandmother's maiden name.
Brunette: Oh God. I just realized I've been mixing drafts in my head. The guy in the front passenger seat is David, which I actually stated in one of the earlier drafts. I'm so sorry! I'll be more careful next time.
Kid Blink's Dreamer: Heh. I'm gonna take freaky as a compliment.
Thumbsucker Snitch: Thanks! I love Donnie Darko; maybe it's rubbing off on me.
Ellaeternity: You play banjo? That's awesome! When I shut people up, I just have to say, "Yeah, well, I like pie!" because for some reason mentioning that I play bass does not have the same effect.