Selene - I use a spell checker. It doesn't seem to find anything wrong with my use of erroneous letters. If you'd like to edit in its stead, PM me an email I can send my first drafts to?
Notes: It's a pack of lies, children. Take nothing in the stories as fact. Some of it might be based on truth, but there's also an awful lot of padding.
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In school he was a troublemaker, the sole reason that the administration office had the number for both the health department and animal control on speed dial. He brought dead pigeons into class and hid them in his desk, or plucked feathers out and stuck them in his hair. He mixed chemicals in the science lab that shouldn't be mixed and often came up with disgusting smells or miniature explosions. Nobody could ever prove it, but it was suspected that he was the one who had 'accidentally' poisoned Jason Turbott's lunch. The kidney failure might have been coincidental. Or maybe he'd planned it that way.
He was suspended twice a year, finally kicked out for good when he was fifteen and they caught him dissecting the hamster that lived in Mr. McCormack's classroom. On the teacher's desk. With a stanley knife. The final, disgusting irony that he had performed the operation right on top of a self-help book. He couldn't remember the name of it now.
Unfortunately for him, being kicked out of school happened to coincide with being kicked out of home. No more pretty, middle-class house to go home to had left him on the streets with nothing but the clothes on his back and twenty bucks in his pockets. And nineteen cents, a stick of gum, and a lighter that was stuffed down his left boot... if you wanted to be pedantic.
He walked, getting by through a combination of shoplifting and breaking and entering into houses with for sale signs in their front yards. It took him three months before he was picked up by genecops - back in the times when they were actually concerned with keeping the peace, busted for something he hadn't even done. It was in the juvenile prison he was sent to that he met the drug dealer. Cadon Price, which was not his real name, was suave and smooth. When they got out, Cadon taught him how to eke out a decent living.
When Cadon died, stabbed in the chest by a heroin addict, he was the very first person to fall victim to the Graverobber's needles. Zydrate was a more profitable market. Acquiring the zydrate was markedly difficult and more dangerous, but the junkies themselves provided little trouble. Zydrate dealers were always too few. Nobody wanted to get their hands that dirty.
Oh, and by the way. The Graverobber's real name is Charles Winston.
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"I asked you to tell me a story about your childhood," Shilo said, looking up at the man perched on the edge of the dumpster, watching him toss a candy bar from one hand to the other. "That was a pack of lies."
"How do you know?" The Graverobber asked, bending at the waist and perching even more precariously in order to meet her at eye level. "I could have been telling you the truth."
"You said you'd never tell me your real name," Shilo pointed out, stuffing a dented box of cookies into her shoulder bag. "And dissecting a hamster on top of a self help book? That has to be a lie."
The Graverobber shrugged, sitting up properly again. He tucked the candy bar into a pocket in his coat and jumped down from the dumpster. "You don't think I could be that ironic?"
"I think you made it up."
"You're a very perceptive girl, Goldilocks," Graverobber drawled, a smirk stretching his lips. He offered her his arm for her escort. Shilo took it, bumping her hip against his coat with every step that they took. "What do you think my story is?" he asked her, interested to see what kind of nonsense she could come up with.
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He was the son of a homeless woman...
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"Excuse me?" Graverobber asked, half laughing, half offended.
"Shush!" Shilo told him, bumping her hip against his hard enough that it hurt her. She'd forgotten that this was the side he kept his kit. "Am I telling you about yourself or not?"
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A homeless woman, who might have been a hooker. Nevertheless, she took care of him as best as she could, keeping him healthy and educating him with the help of old newspapers and crayons stolen from diners. That's why he was so streetwise, he was used to living without a roof over his head.
His mother was the one who taught him how to live. She taught him about how to find perfectly good food without needing to pay for it, about the public showers near certain train stations, and the art of shoplifting. They never begged though, they were too good at making ends meet through other means.
It was when his mother died that he found his calling. She died of organ failure because she couldn't pay for a new pair of lungs and it was then that he realised that there was a whole untapped market just waiting for him. In addition, making money from the epidemic that had killed his only family was like a poetic revenge.
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"Poetic revenge," the Graverobber repeated thoughtfully, draping an arm around Shilo's shoulders. "Very nice."
"But it's not true?" Shilo asked, pre-empting the rest of his response.
"My mother wasn't a homeless hooker."
"She wasn't homeless?" Shilo asked, knowing that he could be tricky with words.
"No."
"She wasn't a hooker?"
"No."
"What was she?"
"A doctor."
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Sweet little Colin Loch wanted to grow up and be just like his mother. She was successful, a doctor with her own private practice, but somehow she still managed to find time for him. Colin's mother was single, he'd never known his father, but it was a common enough situation at school that he never felt sad about it.
Colin was a straight A student. He excelled especially in English and Science, winning several awards over the years. He was the teacher's pet, of course.
Colin graduated early, having skipped two years throughout his schooling. It was during college that things started going downhill. Like many college students, Colin lived on campus. And like many students, he took the opportunity of being away from home to experiment. Drugs, alcohol, girls... He'd never experienced it before and he found he couldn't quite handle it.
Drugs got him expelled. He couldn't bear to tell his mother. So he claimed that he had simply decided to take a sabbatical in order to gain more practical experience in the world. His mother was understanding, thinking that perhaps Colin just wasn't ready for college yet. She gave him an office job at her medical practice... And Colin discovered zydrate.
He didn't use it himself, not after his previous experimenting, not under his mother's nose. But he saw what happened to the patients who were prescribed the drug and he was fascinated. Colin studied the science behind the drug, he found the orgins and a subculture devoted to the drug's worship.
He pocketted samples and sold them on the street.
Then he began to sneak into the morgues in the city hospitals, using the excuse of passing along paperwork to the offices to gain entry to staff-only areas. He extracted zydrate with hypodermic needles. Soon he had stolen enough equipment and had amassed enough experience to do it all without needing to visit hospitals.
Colin moved from one city to another, telling his mother that he was going to go backpacking across the country with the money he'd earned working for her. He became a zydrate dealer instead. He changed his name, gained a reputation.
He became the Graverobber.
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"I still keep in touch with my mother. I send her postcards and call her on special occasions."
Shilo found that hard to swallow. "You were with me all of mother's day. We had dinner in my mother's crypt."
"I can honestly say I've never fed soup to a corpse before that day."
"You're making fun of me."
"It's just so easy to do."
"You're not getting any of my cookies."