Carlos screams. Anyone touching him now adays is a problem. Let alone someone with a one of the most deadly viruses known to man. Logan might be wearing gloves and a lab coat but that doesn't keep the blood from smearing between their clothes.
"Come on!" Snarls Logan who's gotten bigger since his admittance to the hospital.
Until recently Logan had been working as a resident in a teaching hospital in Seattle Washington. An experiment gone wrong landed him in an institution in their home town in minnisota. How he managed to get all the way to TN from up there is beyond Carlos. Everything is beyond Carlos who did try to fight but wasn't prepared for the tricks a doctor has up his sleeve.
A single needle full of pufferfish venom and Carlos can still feel everything but he can't move. Logan so easily can pick him up into his beefy arms and carry him out into the street in daylight. The neighborhood is empty today. All except for a screaming teenager out in the bushes next door. His bike a few feet away from him, what looks like a broken leg, evidence of fowl play.
Carlos can see blisters on this boys body. This child who is wailing in agony, begging for help, is someone Carlos can't do anything for. He's helpless as Logan loads him into the back seat of the car. Is it possible people are hiding in their homes? The boys own parents too scared to come out and help?
As his mind is flooded with rough visions Carlos pulls the pain in through his nose and lets out mumbles through his mouth consisting of the same phrase over and over, "Don't touch me. Don't touch me. Don't touch me."
Eventually sleeps has him. It's a restless sleep. Nothing but nightmares and the feeling of being dirty. Pus bubbles glowing. Infections in the skin connected in luminescent webs. Ideas of vomit with insects crawling around in the filth. He's begging for death when he finally wakes.
His wrists ache and his arms are tired. Tied behind his head and dangling from the metal pipe strung along the ceiling. He's in a warehouse. Dust lies everywhere. He recognizes this place. He's been here before. At one point in time he and Kendall danced here. That's back when Kendall first got his apartment. Before everything changed. Before that night when things got uncertain.
He can still hear the song.
His shirt rests over the back of a metal chair. His flat stomach has writing all over it in black sharpie that he can't make out from the position of his binds. His feet hover two feet off the ground. Up here it looks a lot further. A doctors table rests next to him with a clean blue cloth covering and a series of clean looking tools.
He's not exactly a logical person but he can put two and two together. He knows the term Gunni pig very well.
Kendall missed the sunset but he knows it wasn't too long ago when he wakes. His sheets are cold.
He'd been so upset with the accident of ruining his latest piece that he couldn't even begin to fix it. He had chosen just to sleep. Now he's got eight missed messages on his answering machine. His head is pounding and all he can see are the images of the screaming faces he'd dreamed about all afternoon.
He walks over to the machine and is about to hit the play button when it occurs to him how annoying literally anything anyone would have to say right now would be. How insufferable the sound of a whiny woman's voice speaking of mourning when in fact the dead girl in question is probably almost no one to the girl complaining. "Oh she was so young. Oh, what about her parents. I'm so sorry."
If Kendall has to hear that stupid phrase one more time he could slit his own throat. No, you're not sorry. If you were sorry you never would have looked at him like that. If you were sorry you'd have been looking out for Jo the night she got murdered. If you were sorry the whole thing would have never taken place. If you have nothing to apologize for and you do it any way it takes away so much of the importance of the words.
So he begins to cook some hash-browns on the stove and lights some incense. He turns on his radio and Ryan Seacrest is on talking about tomorrows time-square performances for New Year's Eve.
The list of artists rolls along and Kendall's crazy enough to imagine 'Big Time Rush' being among Austin Moon, Tori Vega, and Ke$ha.
The Weekend, Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, and the cast of Encanto finish out the list and he's finishing up his hashbrowns and moving to sit out on the window sill to overlook the small town down below. He has a perfect view of the dance studio from here that Carlos once wanted to attend. They talked about living together here. They even hung out in the warehouse about four blocks east of here while Kendall was doing reservations working on practice routines for his audition. Kendall wanted to join him. He loved the feeling he got when he danced with Carlos. There was nothing else like it in the entire world.
That was so long ago...
The lamps are lights of a soft white. The sheets are soft. The curtains are deep dark blue to match the carpets. The mini-fridge is stocked. The drying machine tumbles the towels she used today and the smell of fresh lynyn fills the air. She sips a cup of black coffee as she scrolls through articles online of different clinical trials Grey/Sloan Memorial has done throughout the years.
Her guitar is out on the king size mattress and beside it rests sheets of music she's been writing as well as the cork to the bottle of wine she's turning back as she reads. Who even uses a glass anymore?
She's been at this for hours and has yet to find any information about Logan's trial. Or the two interns that supposedly went missing working for him.
There's a knock at the door and she's hoping it's dinner. She hasn't eaten in two days for a system clean she had to do and now fish is the only thing on her mind. She had ordered wild caught salmon dipped in a honey and brown sugar glaze with fried carrots and steamed broccoli and unfortunately she does not smell this when she approaches the door.
Instead she smells dry, uncooked corn, man sweat, and wet horse.
She opens the door to find James standing there dressed like a rancher in an episode of Bonanza. She furrows a brow, "What are you doing here."
"Same thing you are. You gonna let me in?" His voice is deep. His jaw line chiseled. There's an orange and black bandanna tied around his neck and his eyes are very sad.
She arches a brow and steps out of the way, "What's with the southern drawl?"
"I've been spending a lot of time down at my Uncle's farm house estate, earnin' my keep. My lil' 'ol granny's down there. She's been making me a better man I suppose. I don't see the world like I did back at palm springs. My theater kid of a cousin Larmo says I've taken on a different role." He spots her guitar on the bed, "I see you haven't changed a bit."
"On the contrary. The music teaches me more and more every day." She smiles.
He nods, "I miss the music."
music... music... music...
The music that plays in the warehouse is not that which Carlos would dance too. It's like being violated. He's squirming as he hears Logan in the other room rummaging through things and he just knows that at any moment that deranged boy is going to come in here and start hacking him into pieces. He doesn't really want to but it's all so overwhelming and he opens his mouth to let out the most haunting scream. It isn't a call for help, or an attempt at getting rescued. Nor is it a slur in anger or hatred. It's simply a release of his own tension.
Logan peers into the room holding onto a rather large green and slimy object. A pod of some sort.
The face of the doctor is covered in a surgical mask and his hair is pulled back in a scrub cab. A surgeon persona for dramatic effect or is Dr. Mitchell actually trying to be cautious with his own disease. The yellow around his eyes are oozing and the veins in his exposed skin around his neck and forehead are pulsating in black. He sighs as he comes in to confront the- what is Carlos? A victim? A patient?
"I know everything in you is in denial of the possibility but please try Carlos. Try to see that a deep part of the Logan you once knew still exists and give just a little credit to that man in understanding that he still sees you as a friend." The doctor says to him in a voice that is seemingly unrecognizable.
Carlos shakes his head and starts rocking himself back and forth on the pipe vehemently, "Don't touch me! Don't touch me, Goddammit! Don't you fucking touch me!"
Logan sinks his gloved fingers into the pod in his hands to crack it open releasing a green cloud. He hovers the plant in front of Carlos and in moments the thrashing stops. Carlos once again slips into a deep and foreboding sleep.