Title: Unhealthy Grief
Author: LM Simpson (Kady the Red Panda)
Pairing(s): "Teddy"/Zick
Rating: T
Warning(s): Madness, slash, dark themes,
Disclaimer: I don't own Monster Allergy. The character Nyarlathotep is one of H.P. Lovecraft's creations. Therefore, I do not own anything from H.P. Lovecraft's horror stories, either.
Other tidbits: While I do not really like horror movies much, I'm more tolerant of dark stories such as Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King (especially Stephen King).I'll admit to being rather newer to H.P. Lovecraft, but Nyarlathotep fascinates me because he can shapeshift (oh, and I like his self-titled short story too XD).Also, I just wanted to write another Teddy/Zick fanfic, but a far less conventional one. Yeah.
The divisions are based on the Kubler-Ross Model of the Five Stages of Grief, by the way.
0000
Denial
"Who dies from Pneumonia nowadays?" Zick asked, "Besides people from third world countries, that is?"
Greta said nothing to the boy at her side as she rang the doorbell. Johanna opened the door. Head to toe, she wore black clothing—a sweater and pants, to be exact. Her sweet face so torn with sorrow like it was at that moment could make even the Grim Reaper cry.
"Zick, Zob, and I are very saddened at your loss, Johanna," Greta said. She held a casserole dish, robin eggs blue and speckled yellow like a bird's egg, in her oven mitted hands. "Um, I know it's not much, but I made you a poppy seed chicken dish. I doubt that you have the energy to cook dinner after…"
"Yes, yes, I certainly haven't," she said. "It's just so hard to bury your own child. He was just sixteen years old. The last thing I said to him was 'good night' and nothing more…" Johanna broke down.
"No, no, it's alright," Greta said, "Don't feel guilty. You didn't know what was going to happen. At least Teddy died knowing someone cared about him."
The other mother continued crying.
Greta turned to her own son, tears brimming around her eyes like her glasses. "How about you go on home now, Zick? I'll be with Johanna for awhile."
He sighed. "Okay, Mom…"
Zick turned and faced the street as the gray sky and dying leaves proved it was early fall. By coincidence, the landscape matched his current disposition. Nature was at the near end of its inescapable life cycle, and in Zick's mind, there was no way that Teddy was undergoing his own autumn just days earlier.
Anger
"No!" Zick snapped a week later in his bedroom. "I don't want to see a movie!"
"Come on, Zick!" Elena said, facing him. "You've done nothing but sit in this room for the past week! You're going to go insane if you don't go out and get some fresh air, or socialize! Come on, let's go see a movie! Drag Racing Grandmas is starting in twenty minutes at that theater on Almond Street! I heard it's funny!"
"Why? Because grandmas in 'extreme' situations is 'funny?'" The boy, arms crossed, said with an acid tongue.
Elena's face beamed with red-faced anger. She got up and said "Call me when you lose the attitude," before leaving the room.
She caught up with Greta placing dishes in the half-full dishwasher on her way out.
"I tried. He still can't get over Teddy's death. He still doesn't want to do anything."
Greta sighed. "I guess that's just his way of grieving. He should be more or less fine soon… I hope…"
Bargaining
"If I can just see him one more time," Zick said, looking at his ceiling. The room was dark, as was the rest of the city during the witching hour. "Just one more time. Just one decent chance to say a decent good bye…"
He yawned. Whether he liked it or not, it was time to sleep. Maybe if he was lucky, Teddy would appear the next day. Teddy was mischievous and slyer than most would admit. He was just playing a prank on the town. That's what it was. It would be like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, when Tom and Huck were mistakenly presumed dead.
0000
A knock rapped against the door the next morning.
"Zick," said Zob, "You really need some fresh air. Come down, eat, and go outside for a few hours. You can't do this forever!"
"Make me, Dad!"
And make him he did. A stretched collar and shoved down scrambled eggs later, Zick was outside in a poorly put on vest jacket and hair long-due for a shower and a comb.
This is stupid, he thought as he walked down the neighborhood and towards town. He was by the mom and pop Oldmill Café when he noticed a familiar figure in the café, drinking a Styrofoam cup of coffee or tea.
"Eh?" He rubbed his eyes. "Is that… Him?" He dashed through the door, accompanied by a jingling bell.
"Teddy!" Zick yelled as he skid to a stop by the boy's table. He wasn't transparent, wearing chains, saying boo… not even pale. It was just Teddy Thaur, drinking coffee, if Zick's sense of smell was not deceiving him. He slowly reached his pointer finger towards Teddy's shoulder, until he poked it. Teddy jolted as the little bit of penetrated flesh lightly dipped down. His skin was cold, but not corpse cold.
"It is you! I knew it! You were just pretending!"
Teddy stopped sipping, placed the cup on the glass tabletop, and stared at the grinning teenager. "Uh… Yeah. I most certainly was, Ezekiel."
Zick was so overjoyed he did not notice Teddy's unusual (for him) language. "So, um, what are you going to do after you drink coffee? If you have nothing to do, let's do something together! Wanna go to the movies, hunt monsters, give the robotics team a visit?"
"…I was thinking more of visiting to the antique store across the street, or an electronics store. I have some things I wish to construct."
"…Fine with me. There's sometimes some really cool stuff at that antique store."
Teddy rose up, threw his half-full cup into the nearest garbage can, and left with the boy. Zick was so overjoyed he did not realize the shuddering, horrified customers and clerks, or the goosebumps on his arms.
Depression
"I've had nothing but nightmares for the past three days," Zick said at the breakfast table.
"Me too, son," Zob said.
"Strange… Me too," said Greta. "I've had trouble falling asleep. It's hard to when you expect nothing but crawling monsters and other horrors."
Both men concurred. Zick, however, abstained about discussing his particular nightmare, in which him and Teddy hugged. Then, while basking in his happiness, Teddy turned into a mass of clawed arms, tentacles, and eyes. As hard as he struggled, Zick could not escape the entity's clutches as it dragged him to a dimension populated with more grotesque creatures.
As overjoyed as he was to see Teddy, Zick felt more drained than he did when Terrence and Johanna came over to notify the Zick clan of their son's death to Pneumonia. He barely ate his cereal breakfast, or any of his other meals. He wanted to sleep, but like his parents, the evitable nightmares would ambush his subconscious.
As overjoyed as he was to see Teddy, his senses began tearing holes in his clouded judgment. The Teddy he knew was smarter than most people knew, but he did not know how to build complex electrical devices that blew his mind and current physics theories. And Teddy was prideful, but not at the point to spout prophecies detailing entities he never heard of—those with names he could not pronounce, let alone spell, and those who Teddy warned would tear apart the world. Teddy would never fancy himself a heretic prophet. Even he had limits.
Acceptance
"You're not Teddy," Zick whispered as Teddy embraced him in an alley. He was overjoyed that Teddy accepted his devotional affections, but it was at a much lower level than the acceptance that the real Teddy was dead… and the dread that the… thing hugging him was not the real Teddy.
"May you please repeat that, Ezekiel?" Teddy whispered back. It was an apathetic tone, not one wrought with confusion or anger.
"You're not Teddy. You can't be Teddy. Teddy's dead. Who are you, anyway?"
Teddy loosened his embrace. "Would you really like to know?"
"Yes! I need to know!"
He let go and stepped back. "You are a fool…"
Zick's face contorted into horror, then screeching at the top of his lungs as Teddy's body contorted into an unworldly being, even by the monster world's standards. The being before him was literally the creature of his nightmares.
0000
Zick, bound by a straight jacket, stared at the blinding, fluorescent overhead light. The drab walls possessed graffiti covered granite, and dirt and mildew saturated floors. The world was falling apart more and more every time he blinked. Teddy was right—the world really was falling apart by these beings, and "He-Who-Was-Not-Teddy" was one of them.
He blubbered and shuttered and sputtered before shrieking once more, "He's going to kill us! He's going to kill all of us! Let me out! LET ME OUT!"
A couple of doctors entered his cell. The sterile and clean room was, as far as they were concerned, the only pure things in that room. It was a shame a fourteen-year-old had to be confined there, but it was what had to be done after he almost murdered his own parents in a bout of madness. One tapped on a syringe filled with a solution to rid it of bubbles, stabbed the boy in the neck, and Zick fell unconscious to the ground to permit the employees and other prisoners few minutes of peace.