When it Rains (A Being Human Ficlet)
Title: When it Rains
Rating: PG-13
Characters: George-centric, Mitchell, Annie
Author: Tiffany Dreamglitter
Summary: Sometimes George has a hard time coping.
AN: Sequel to Fish N' Chips but can definately stand alone.
Disclaimer: If I made money from this, it would be a glorious day.
When it hits, it hits hard.
George wakes up with bile clogging the back of his throat and the desperate urge to scream and throw up. He doesn’t. Instead he pushes himself out of bed and smoothes out his sheets. He fluffs up his pillows and folds over his comforter and picks up his clothes that were uncaringly tossed aside the night before.
When George goes to the bathroom, he gets dressed, washes his face, and brushes his teeth without looking in the mirror. It’s on these days that he by-passes putting in his contacts because he can’t bear to face himself. Because he knows that if he looks up it won’t be George in the mirror.
If broken glass was seven years bad luck, then George was forever cursed.
On these days George didn’t join Annie and Mitchell for tea and toast because inside he wanted to break all of the used mugs and scream and rant. On these days he would make himself scarce in the hospital supply closet because he became the employee that patients always complained was simply incompetent, running invalids into garbage cans and putting down used sheets and such instead of clean ones.
Sometimes there would be a clenching in his gut and the monster inside simply reached out and snapped a patient’s neck. Sometimes George had to run away because the visions in his mind were too much to handle. Because the fantasies he had were about killing and he really didn’t even mind. It terrified him.
These were the days George went to the pub by himself and drank draft after draft of the same cheep beer that Mitchell hates. The light fades away with George sitting in the same dim corner, glowering at the bowl of shattered peanut shells. He wants to break them down more; break them down molecularly until there is nothing left. He wants the world to stop moving. He wants all the glass to break at the same time and he wants the shards to pierce through everyone’s heart and he wants it all to end. He wants to disappear.
On the streets, George often forgets where he is. He can’t hold his liquor. It drugs him like a dog, clogging his sense of smell and skewing his perception, forcing him down unfamiliar streets and upturned pathways with inverted colors. Part of him wants to run into the woods even though it’s not his time and unleash everything. He wants to give himself a heart attack. He wants to die. He wants so much that he can never have and it hurts. It hurts somewhere so deep that he can’t reach it; somewhere it can hide and torment him like his own pathetic miserable existence.
Sometimes George wakes up in the woods, nearly thrown that it isn’t the 28th day because he feels sore and guilty and nauseous as if it was.
Most of the time he wakes up in his own bed with memories of screaming and crying and things that should have never been said. The memories are worse than waking up with lost unconsciousness because they mock everything he ever used to be. The George he knew would never throw a tantrum. The George he used to be always smiled and ate kosher and was socially awkward. George would never call Annie a whorish twat or Mitchell a disgusting carnage-addicted monster. George would never toss his most prized possessions to the floor, and he would most definitely not lose his Star of David in a fit of rage.
On those mornings, George wants to curl up with the guilt and cry away the shame, thinking back on what it is like to feel so completely alone.
Those mornings, there is always a fresh cup of tea on his nightstand and his star somehow reappears around his neck. Those mornings, he walks into the kitchen with his tail between his legs and Annie will still hug him and Mitchell will smile as if what George had said didn’t hurt.
“It’s alright,” they say. “It’ll all be alright.”
Sometimes, George believes them.