#16 Christopher Moros

| November 16, 2011 | 0 Comments
> Enter

You’re dreaming, Chris tells himself, but it’s a lie and a bad one at that. Dream or not, he’s still rooted to the ground, too scared to even shiver as the tentacles don’t belong there thing destroys building after building. The world is falling around him, and he can’t run. His legs won’t obey him. It’s like they’ve declared autonomy from the rest of his body, and that means doing absolutely nothing.

A long appendage covered in too many suckers and eyes swings out above him and becomes embedded in the brick building above him.

Chris wishes he could have thought of something clever for his last thoughts, or maybe even something mundane like I hope someone remembers to feed the cat but his mind is stuck on oh shit oh shit oh shit

The first pieces of rubble break loose, followed by the rest when the Thing frees itself, and–

> Return

“So you do this for a living or something?” asks Chris, much later, and his hands are shaking too much to light the cigarette he needs to make his hands stop shaking but he’s nothing if not persistent. How he managed to roll it is better left unmentioned.

Ananke – which is his name, but Chris isn’t entirely sure on that entire statement, the name and the his part, but whatever – frowns at the cigarette but doesn’t comment on it. “It’s more like volunteering,” he says, still dressed in the same double-breasted suit that he was wearing a few hours ago when that Thing was around and causing trouble.

Finally, after a good five minutes of constant attempts, the cigarette is finally lit. Chris takes a long drag on it, filling his lungs with acrid, earthy smoke. “That’s pretty shitty,” he says.

> Return

Ananke starts sleeping on Chris’s couch. When that arrangement started, Chris doesn’t remember. Some time after the second time Ananke saved everyone’s asses. It might have to do with how Chris is the only person who was at both scenes besides Ananke, or it might have to do with how Chris offered to buy him dinner for the second save and Ananke followed him home and never left.

Guy saves your life twice. It’d just be rude to not offer something in return, even if it is a shitty meal and a shittier couch.

> Return

Oh god help someone help please help me help us help him

> Enter

“I didn’t know there were two of us,” says Ananke, without any recognition in his eyes.

Chris’s chest tightens briefly before destroying the Thing-With-Tentacles-Where-There-Should-Never-Be-Tentacles. “Me neither,” he lies.

> Return

“–and then suddenly, I can make energy bolts come out of my hands,” finishes Ananke, complete with the necessary hand gestures and sound effects. “How did you get your powers?”

“I made a wish.” He wants a cigarette badly, but that would mean having to leave the apartment and he can’t go now.

“Like with a genie? Does that mean you get two more wishes?”

He shakes his head. F***, really need that cigarette. “Used them all up,” he admits. Damn stupid idea, too, but genies are tricky bastards. They’ll twist your words around and make anything a wish (should have remembered what Mom said, but Mom doesn’t talk to you any more, not after you stepped out of Narnia).

“On what?” he asks, and that’s it, you need a smoke now.

> Return

This was wrong, all wrong. He wasn’t supposed to die here, not now and not like this. But he is. He’s dead and the blood is still seeping out of him but that will stop soon and he’s looking at you with his brown eyes that still look alive but he’s not he’s not he’s not

> Enter

“Go home,” says Chris, before trapping that Thing in a Bubble. One rotation, and it ages instantly and turns to dust.

“No way,” replies Ananke. His eyes are so bright and wide, looking at Chris as if he’s the most amazing thing in the world.

“Don’t expect me to save your ass again,” he bites back. What a liar.

> Return

He stopped smoking, but the urge is still present. He figured out how to use his powers to speed up through getting past the physical withdrawal but right now, he really wants a smoke.

“Wanna go get dinner?” asks Ananke, like fighting monsters from the Eighth Ring is considered to be an appropriate segway to a date.

Whatever.

> Return

“How did you wind up here?” asks Ananke, a few weeks later. He is still sleeping on the couch, but it’s large and comfy enough that even Chris, all six feet two inches and one hundred and sixty-eight pounds of him, could sleep on it and not wake up regretting it. Ananke is much smaller, and is using Chris as a pillow. “In this city, I mean?”

How is a great question but not one that he likes to think about. “I had a fight with my parents,” he replies, summarizing a six hour long yelling match that resulted in him storming out with nothing but his wallet, his laptop, and the clothes on his back. He never got the rest of his belongings back – Mom always went overboard and burnt the whole lot – but Dad at least helped cover the cost of replacing some of it. Behind her back, of course. “I left, got the first bus I could get out of town, and wound up here.”

“How serendipitous,” and it’s so earnest that Chris can’t help but laugh despite everything.

> Return

Third time unlucky, and this time Chris is the one bleeding out, or was, but he can’t stop time forever. His concentration will lapse and suddenly it will be all over.

“F***,” swears Ananke, for the first time ever since they met. He didn’t even swear when Chris caught him stark naked one time, curling up upon himself like what was between his legs mattered to who he thought he was. It’s different now, though, because Ananke’s hands are covered in blood when he first tried to apply pressure to the large laceration.

“It’s okay,” Chris tries to tell him, but the words get caught in his throat and blood comes out instead. He chokes, and suddenly there’s no more time now. The Bubble bursts and his life starts to flow away from him again. It’s now or never (again).

“I’ll see you soon,” he can’t say. Spins the wheel backwards and

> Enter

Category: 2011, Drama, Fantasy, Superhero

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