2020-05-10 - Out of Joint
After the Dream of the grow operation, Aidan has a pop-tart and some time to himself. More or less.
IC Date: 2020-05-10
OOC Date: 2019-12-02
Location: Huckleberry/Space 42
Related Scenes: 2019-07-06 - Consequences 2020-02-22 - Trashformers: More Than Meets the Eye 2020-05-10 - What If the Weed Smoked You?
Plot: None
Scene Number: 4632
Aidan has a pop-tart.
He also has a little pipe, but that's sitting on the coffee table. He's sitting on the sofa, staring at it. And nibbling around the edges of the pop-tart.
Frosted Strawberry. Best kind.
He's not a habitual stoner, not anymore. Not since the last time he was hospitalized, when it turned out he'd been self-medicating, trying to hold off the oncoming mania.
Huh. It's been a while now since the last time everything went wrong.
Dreams don't count.
Dreams where people-plants are grown and chopped and sewn and dried; and kidnapped people are cyborged, half-trash and half-human and screaming and screaming and you're strapped to a metal table leather straps and stainless steel instruments trying to open your head and an audience of eyes just eyes eyes and voices and you set the doctor's beard on fire and he burns and screams and screams and the roiling of the void and the voices say the voice says They say--
He's curled on his side on the couch and doesn't know where the pop-tart went, knees to his chest and arms wrapped around them, eyes closed. Maybe he finished it. Maybe it's down the side of the couch. The floor. He'll find it later. There are others. Two per packet. He's not hungry.
Deep breaths. Slow breaths.
They did right; this one was right. They did; they DID, whatever the voices whisper. He didn't use the flame.
screaming screaming the void applauding easy as breathing easy as dying
No one dead. No one hurt. Those weren't people, they were plants.
smell of bodies smell of blood smell of death
It's the minds that matter, right? The minds. Plants shaped like people and people shaped like plants, same as here, same as here, just the appearance switched. Same as the pot-Ents would feel in a grow here. Same thing. Just flipped over.
should have burnt it burnt them let it all burn
No. They did it right.
we chose you we saved you why would you forsake us?
i didn't i wouldn't
Sometimes fire isn't the answer.
...
Sometimes it is.
Aidan uncurls, sitting up awkwardly, eyes avoiding the unsmoked pipe. They land on the other pop-tart, instead. He picks it up and unfurls further, to standing, arms crossing protectively across his abdomen as he heads out to his tiny porch. It contains two folding chairs, one of which he curls into with the heels of his boots caught on the edge and his knees up against his chest again, and a small barbecue, filled with charcoal that bursts all at once into exuberant flame, higher than one would expect it could. The flames don't dance for him like they used to, but he can see an echo in the subtler way they flicker without his touch.
He gazes quietly into it, and nibbles around the edges of the pop-tart.
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