Relevant Tags: [Gerard Keay] [Child Gerard Keay] [Gerard Keay Has EDS | Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome] [Monster Gerard Keay] [Implied/Referenced Child Abuse]
When he was small, Gerry fell down the stairs.
He misses the first step, and tumbles down, down, down and everything is spiraling around him. He doesn't scream, or Mum just doesn't care. His arm looks the wrong way around. He bends it back the right way. He does scream, then. Mum doesn't care.
He doesn't wear a cast, and the bruises he goes to bed with are gone by morning. He'd never been to the doctor before, and he still hasn't been. There's no story to be found, did he ever really fall?
He's falling, falling, twisting, and stars are blinking around him. He basks in confusion that is not his own.
When he was small, Gerry fell down the stairs. A few years later, he fell down the stairs again.
He is running from yet another monster, hunting yet another book, and falling down yet more stairs. At the end, he lays sprawled on cold concrete, stars blurrily swirling above him, scraped knees and hands stinging in the chilling air, and warm not-blood pooling around him. None around his head, for all that matters.
It doesn't matter much. He makes it home with less vertigo than he'd left it with, and thanks no one that Mum isn't around.
He dreams of empty skies full of eyes, and foolish monarchs who desperately claw for crowns of blood. [Doesn't she get it? She's lost her head! Can't wear a crown without a head. Ha! Why, then it's just become a noose!]
He wakes up with both hands on his neck. The bruises stick around for weeks, this time.
It's years from even then, that he thinks he hears someone say 'You should get that checked out.' Not to him never to him, but it was probably sound advice anyway, and if it wasn't… Well, it would be a novel experience.
And novel it is, breathing the cloying scent of hospital, chewing on his third lolli in an hour, and watching the good doctor stare slackly through her papers. He bounces his knee and solidly cracks the candy in his teeth. She smiles brightly at him, straightens her papers, and proudly announces his clean bill of health. She adjusts her glasses and walks right out, some odd tune on her breath. [All as expected, Mr. Keay, you're in perfect health! Well, could stand a few more greens, but couldn't we all?]
Gerry notes the spirals drifting from her pages, and promptly looks away for his own sake.
He's out of the hospital when a body cracks against the ground with a sickening thud. He doesn't stop himself from looking this time, and notes that her glasses are a very pleasant red, and they contrast nicely with her green eyes. He notes the swirls in her blood and hair and bloody hair, and stumbles away, an odd tune swirling about the air.
He's falling, falling, and green eyes gaze cheerfully, red glasses melting into stars into sound into swirls.
He doesn't visit a doctor after that. Not until it's really too late, and he's falling, falling, falling asleep, and the surgeon is slice, slice, slicing into him. And if he had sooner, would they have found anything? Likely not. Likely he'd be one of those patients, whose sad stories pepper social media. The doctor says there's no problem, and the problem kills the patient.
Likely, Gerry already is such a patient.
He's waiting on a bench outside [a] THE hospital, that hospital, and the night sky is filled with blinking eyes. Of course this is how it's always been. He looks into a tar-black puddle of water, and notes that his central eye looks a bit cross with him. A hand lands lightly on his shoulder. Ah, it's the good doctor! With her cheerful, vacant, swirling eyes and dripping, vibrant, curling red hair, and cut flesh showing just a tasteful amount of bone. [You bout ready, then?]
The surgeon doesn't scream when he cuts to the source and sees the tumor. He doesn't scream, but it's close. Eyes in unusual, unexpected places tend to do that to one. Gerry blinks a lidless eye at the surgeon. The surgeon heaves air. The team carefully works to remove the odd tumor.
Gerry doesn't wake up. The surgeon doesn't go mad.
It's a bit boring to do the same thing over like that.
A cheerful woman with red glasses and damp hair sits on a bench outside the hospital, waiting.
Ay! Ay! Ay! Ay! Was my brother's birthday, so we got lemon cheesecake today! Ay! Ay!
This work is a promptfill for the September 2020 Prompt Set by downwithwritersblock on tumblr.
A certain detail near the end is inspired by Chapter 5 in "Please Don't Eat the Flowers" by Sloane on Ao3. Give them a read!