(Untitled)

[m_pinocchio]

When he wakes up, his head is hurting. That isn't entirely new--he's been waking up with headaches more often lately, and this one isn't even the worst one he's had. But the room is unusually dark, smelling strangely musty, and he groans and rolls over, his hand going instinctively to his face

Comments

[little_moons]

The feeling is too fucking familiar, and immediately, when the world shifts and I find myself someplace new, I start to panic. It's only for a moment, only long enough for my heart to race, blood rushing to my head so fast I nearly keel over right there on the sidewalk. The sidewalk...

I drag in a breath, blinking wildly and looking down a dirty city street I don't recognize, and without thinking, I reach out for whatever's nearest, my hand curling in the soft cotton of someone's sleeve.

[out_of_realm]

Tom staggered, hard enough that his back hit the glass wall of the bus shelter, jeans and boots he hadn't been wearing a moment ago heavy and stiff on him after months of nothing but shorts and sandals.

"Jesus..." he said, biting down nausea and grabbing -- Neil, thank god, when he staggered against him. He had the start of what was likely going to be an awful headache.

"Neil?" he said, turning the other man to face him. "Are you okay? Have you seen Mike?"

[little_moons]

Staggering against him when I'm suddenly spun around, I look over his shoulder, down the street, trying to find something familiar. But it's just a fucking street in what could be anywhere.

"In the last five fucking second?" I ask, giving him a look that's half incredulous, half panicked, "No."

[out_of_realm]

"Oh shit," Tom said, not even paying attention anymore, breath wheezing out of him as if he'd been punched. The pot hole ridden street, the view of a slow moving river and a bridge where he could just about make out "The World Takes."

"I know where we are," Tom said, swallowing. "When I was stationed in Jersey...This is Trenton. I know it is."

[m_pinocchio]

He shouldn't be surprised when he opens his eye again--the one--and it's dark, nose full of musty smell, pain everywhere. He rolls to the side, coughing, fingers clenching in the sheets. He's not surprised. Some part of him had been expecting this.

Some part of him--smaller, but there and increasingly vocal--is expecting to be in Hell.

He sits up, groans, buries his face in his hands, and nausea rolls through him at the feeling of the skin under his fingers. Tight, too warm, too smooth in places and too pitted in others. The way his eye feels about twice as big as before, half-lidded, frozen that way and milky as the eye of a corpse.

What do you want me to do.

He shoves back the covers, drags himself to the edge of the mattress. There's the slip of paper on the nightstand, the drawn shades, the sound of rain on the window. Not that way, then. So what?

What in the fuck do you want me to do.He doesn't even know who he'd ask. Or if it would be a question. That he has to be here at all, that he has to try to puzzle his way out of

[little_moons]

I open my eyes, and I'm already running. Jaywalking out in front of traffic, darting in front of cars like I just yelled at Tom for doing. He's behind me, I know, and I don't wait for him. We don't have time to stand around and talk about shit.

I'm banging into the phone booth, tearing open the phone book and flipping through the pages again, wishing I'd had time to memorize the fucking number last time.

Pinocchio, Michael

By the time I even look up to see where Tom's at, I'm already dialing.

[out_of_realm]

"Did you get him?" Tom demanded, breathless from dodging traffic and voice clipped, edging towards panicked. "Are you sure it's the right number?"

[little_moons]

"How the fuck should I know? How many Michael Pinocchios to you think there are in this fucking city?" I ask, hunched over the phone with the receiver pressed to my ear. It rings, and rings, and I hiss out an angry curse, muttering, "Come on, Mike. Pick the fuck up."

[m_pinocchio]

He opens his eye, and really, he's not surprised at all, not even at this, because he's suddenly, shockingly sober, and he remembers all of it. Everything.

He wants to scream. He doesn't. He wants to cry. He doesn't. He wants to wake up back in his own bed with his husbands there next to him and his daughters in the next room, and of course he doesn't. He lies there in his old, narrow bed, not even his anymore, scratchy, strange sheets against his bare skin, everything throbbing gently, everything pain.

Scrap of paper on the bedside table. Phone and pills and booze in the kitchen. Gun on the endtable. He knows it would all be there, if he got up, if he looked. All of it a dead end, all of it one huge taunt.

And what he's been tricked into doing. What he's done."What the fuck do you want me to do?" he whispers, turns his face into the pillow and closes his eye again. Rain drums on the window; normally he'd find it soothing, and now it's just more torture. Every second of this is torture

[little_moons]

I knew it was going to happen. I knew it the moment we stepped in through the door. That doesn't mean I was ready to see it. That doesn't mean I was ready for any of this. It was just muzzle flash, a brief glimpse of gore, his life blown clear out of him, but I don't even have time to shout, don't have time to do anything at all.

The world tilts and I catch myself on a lamp-post, bending over and emptying the contents of my stomach on the sidewalk at my feet. We have to move, we have to get to him sooner, but I'm standing on the street, in the rain, puking into a gutter, and the sudden rush of embarrassment that washes over me is so strong it nearly brings tears to my eyes.

Or maybe the tears are for something else. Whatever.

[out_of_realm]

"Come on," Tom said woodenly, no inflection. He spread his hand on the back of Neils' neck for a moment, trying to bend down, offer more than that, but he was shut down. He'd been shut down since the flash of a muzzle in the dark, and something thick and tar like was spitting in the pit of his stomach.

"Come on," he said again, pulling Neil upright. No inflection. He shook his head, licked his lips.

"We have to go. We gotta get there quicker."

[little_moons]

Wiping the back of my hand across my mouth, I straighten up and stumble after him, shoulders hunched and my eyes fixed to some point in the distance. It's only a few blocks from here, but it feels too far. Like we'll never make it. Like we'll never make it in time.

And there's a tiny part of me, a part I shove aside before it can get too loud, that's afraid to go back there. Afraid that it won't make any difference. He won't listen to us. He's too far gone. He doesn't fucking care. Tom warned me, but I'd been so sure... I was so fucking sure.

There's someone coming out of his building, and I hurry ahead, slipping in before the door bangs shut and holding it open for Tom. I can't look at him. I don't want to see if that look on his face matches the dead sound in his voice.