Teen Titans is not owned by this Writer.
A desperate shrill can be heard from an old, run-down, dilapidated apartment building. Here in the dark - the boy, no the man, sits at the side of his bed holding his head in his hands.
'Why..? Why am I- Ihere...What did I ever do so bad..?' He questions the darkness that has become his unwanted companion.
Too painful to answer and reflect on the difficult road that has been assigned to him.
He slowly walks over to the bathroom to stare into a balding, wrinkled face with a hardened demeanor and vacant eyes and begins the humiliating ritual to evade the animal police.
He picks up the razor and wonders for a moment (never in his youth would he even think what is easily fleeting across his mind), then shaves off the hair from his stringy arms, back, beer-bellied chest, langy legs, and all of his dry razor-marked body. He steps back and turns into a shaven monkey (more like lab experiment) hanging by his tail from the ceilings light bulb.
As he checks on any he might have missed, he sees the lost boy staring stronger within his monkey form and wants so much to save him- but, how can he save himself? Then, the second part of his ritual is performed with such familiarity.
He squeezes a few drops into the decrepit bath tub and starts the water that turns into a rich brown hue. He raises his arm and sees the green shade breaking through the thinly scattered brown patches and wonders if he should push Cyborg to make the coloring more permanent or finding a stronger dye to finally combat this sickly mixing of green and brown.
This makes him expel his empty stomach to the state of his horrible existence- 'I love my green. I used to be ready to defend my green with a grin and a joke - now, I have to hide in fear. She makes me fear the world.'
He steps into the chocolate brown mixture and turns into one of the biggest animal walrus in this case, the tub can take so that there is more skin coverage. The light-bulb cracks and sends the tense walrus that has been attempting to relax to jump in fear at the engulfing dark as his eyes dart all around, looking for the shadow of his tortured mind.
Yes, the nightmare begins again.
Rage has come for her regular nightly visit- "So, enjoying your bubble bath, loser? How about I offer some mood-altering visions for a nightcap?" With that she has the murky water bubble and he can swear he felt something shifting in the water as slimy tentacles rise from the depths and encircle his limbs.
He turns his tired face away with the ghastliest of expressions but to his surprise there is no more sound that can be drawn from his embattled self.
In another part of town, Rachel has just buried two children- her daughter and her baby son. She has spent her whole life avoiding relationships in fear that she would have to face the possibility of her worst nightmare- her children suffering and dying before her very eyes.
She drops to the barren, dirt yard of her bland ranch home. Alone- she has always embraced this concept since she never really felt space 'alone' but rather one with the world. On this particular day, alone has abandoned her and left her empty. Her thoughts swim to the forefront undeterred and recreate those fateful nights as if she is living through them once more.
Flashback
"Garfield, please, I need you." Rachel dispairs.
"So? You've always said that you can do everything on your own, right? Besides, I just mess things up since I'm an 'idiot'." Garfield is now screaming to his surprise.
"Fine. Go and hide- you've made yourself perfectly clear."
"Yeah, whatever." He leaves. Rachel stares at the door he left from and wonders at the truth that he is the 'only guy they say she deserves'. This has become an on-going cycle of dark and ugly fighting that seems to feed off of the previous ones.
"Mom, it... It's happening... AHHH!... AHH AHH AGHH!" a voice can be heard at the far end of her house. Rachel runs with ropes in hand but is too late as she witnesses a half-boar child running towards the town.
"NO!"
She sees her baby boy in the same room as he shares with his crazed brother, and sobs to the mortifying signs of his painful transformation. Caught between two agonizing situations, the hero, still in her, needs to protect the townspeople from her older son's dangerous rampage and runs towards the town.
There she comes too late as the police congregate with the psychiatric doctors around a strapped delusional patient. She looks around at the devastation of his wild assault as she wonders how to convince them for her to take him home.
As he is howling and growling at the men who have strapped him down onto a guerney, the officers explain "I'm sorry Mrs. Logan, I know you have special permission from the mayor but he is now a hazard that you can't handle. Surely, you as a former hero can understand."
'Hero' that word repeats itself in Rachel's head as she slowly walks back on the same road she was frantically running across an hour ago, firmly gripping the ropes in her hand. As she finally reaches her gate she feels the unease in the air.
Tentatively, she opens her door and calls out to her daughter. Then, she makes her way towards the girl's room.
'She is not there... Where?' Panic again encompasses her being. She calls out again to her daughter as she gently pushes the bathroom door.
Her mind screams in pain as she sees a limp, bloodied condor-like girl, lying in the bathtub.
"I'mm...I'm sorry." Rachel stood frozen for a moment at all these hurts searing through her.
Then, as if watching from a distance, she sees herself drag a towel and wrap the open wounds that are gushing blood everywhere, lifts her child as she rushes for the living room phone that drops to the ground from her disorientation.
She leans against the wall for support and falls to the floor to pick up the receiver, she soon becomes aware the call is futile as the body becomes lifeless in her lap. She has lost another tonight.
The rest of that evening, she rocks her daughter in her arms- 'Go to sleep, my child. To a better world, where you shall be proud to live.'
The suns rays strike her face to the realities of her life- and the weight of her trials. She looks at the 'creature' before her and tries to look through her physical features to find the child within that is hers and is no more.
She carries her dead child to the yard and starts to dig a burial for her. The events of last night behind her, she has to search hard for any energy she can muster for she still has a baby child who needs her.