Retiring (strong language, adult themes)

yxnomei · Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 11

Chapter 1, Tables, tablets and rubber evenings.

There were empty brown bottles everywhere, strewn over the floor, over the table and desk beside the television, beneath the chairs and next to him, on the bed. They poked from inside the drawers and blocked the bathroom door. They were in his pockets and one in his hand, not quite opened. They were in the outside flowerbed, just beneath the window leading to the streets, contrasting heavily with the pinks and peaches of lilies and lilacs but settled in the dirt well. But they weren’t made of glass and they were dry, as was the floor, table, desk, chair, bed, flowerbed and his hand. There were also smaller items dotted around the room. Small, insignificant mountains of small, white tablets and some small, insignificant brown volcanoes spewing more tablets as the door was opened and he stepped inside, wearing a dark green uniform. His boots crunched with every step and his insignia clicked as he left in his wake footsteps of white powder. He looked at the man on the bed, wearing an outfit which could not be more different. Light yellow lycra and a pink cape. There was a tablet hanging by the side of his face, stuck to his cheek with saliva and a gun on the bedside table.

Captain Taylor took out his PET and pressed a button on the side, sighing not so much from regret or sadness but of a man overly-familiar with the scene. The screen jolted to life but the character indicated on the screen lacked the sudden enthusiasm Netopia military PETs were designed around.

‘… what?’

The contrast between the two could not be emphasised enough. Taylor was a bear of a man, seven foot eleven and lean muscles beneath the uniform he was never seen without. A double-barrelled rifle was slung over his shoulders and he wore a belt of ammunition over his regulation jacket which reached his knees and his boots, since he had no fondness to clean looking, were never polished or indeed ever without any dirt on them. His navi, however, was different. An inverted ‘s’ with arms and legs made of a dark liquid rubber, not so much black but in the sense that the electronic light didn’t reflect any colour to be seen. There was no face, there was no insignia to recognise.

‘Flash is at it again.’

‘Again? How is he?’

‘He’s dead.’

The ‘s’ shape loosened and crumpled to the grid-based floor, what might have resembled his head looking to the ground. Ripples started appearing in the floor beneath what might have passed for his eyes with increasing regularity, disrupting the lime-green squares around him before the ripples reached his body and, in cascade effect, he started vibrating the ripples of his own tears. Taylor didn’t react.

‘We’ll need to sort out transport to move him and I’ll get people ‘round to take a look at what happened. Looked like he tried to drug himself… Evening, are you listening?’

‘Why didn’t anyone stop him? He’s watched twenty four hours a day, why didn’t anyone stop him?’

‘How? He can withstand car crashes with ease, gun shots with comfort and he likes being punched - apparently it’s “ticklish”. How the hell are we supposed to stop him?’

Evening didn’t react, just slumped to the side of the screen before another window popped up, flashing red indicating a sent signal to “the SciUni”. Taylor walked out of the room, leaving his PET and took a cigarette from one of the rifle barrels and closed his eyes.

--

‘Captain Taylor! Assistant Ensign Martyns reporting for duty! Sir!’

Taylor was small-minded, arrogant and easily aggravated but he was fair with his own levels of intolerance and resorted to venting his frustration through two groups of society. Army cadets and university students. However the two were becoming increasingly common with universities offering courses directly related to military activity and which make recruitment a logical choice for a career, despite having no involvement with military activities or any official rank for students. Taylor believed it was a waste of time and money, three years of higher education to start, at the very younger, a twenty one year old cadet whilst people of equal age who joined up at sixteen were squad sergeants and lieutenants. To avoid conflict and to appease egos for military students, however, they were offered provisional rank when on field assignments. Martyns was six foot two, twenty one, so in his last year and had earned contempt from Taylor for his inept salute.

Martyns ushered in three other students wearing white lab coats and started to move Flash’s body from the bed. Flash was covered with muscles, some looking unnatural and his eyes were open, a dark red cornea and grey iris. The saliva on his cheek had dried but the tablet remained, refused to fall off until Martyns’ foot slipped on the excess tablets on the floor and it fell, struck the ground with weightless force and exploded in a cloud of grey and pink and the room suddenly exploded with pitiful puffs of spectrum colours as the tablets jolted themselves into the air and detonated around the four students, rainbow clouds flooding the room, trapping the students in their own colourful vacuum and they dropped Flash on the floor, shielding their eyes and coughing vibrant streams of all shades. The PET inside beeped and screamed AAC files of whoops and howls, the screen emulating the wild spectral show surrounding it as Evening realised what was happening. Flash woke.

‘Argh! Jesus Christ, I can’t see! What the hell have you done now, Taylor!?’
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**Mari** · Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2005 10:17 am Post subject:

I oughta say I expected that. *chuckle* You haven't lost practice at all, and that's good. The setting appears to be confusing, but it's attractive at the same time. Grammar and spelling wise, spotless as always. Is it entirely AU or are you linking it to the current EXE timeline?

What an unbiased review, eh. >>;

P.S.: The other review is getting there, check your mail today or tomorrow.
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Neko · Posted: Sun Jul 24, 2005 5:55 pm Post subject:

Yay! I love your fics, you're one of the people that got me started writing cause your stories were so good :3 Glad to see you back Yxnomei.
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yxnomei · Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 11

Chapter 2, Cherry-bright.

She sat by my side, straight back and a line of water trailing from her right eye. Her arm was looped around the armrest and gripped the end with a shaking fist. Her hair, a vibrant blonde, had been straightened and loose strands ran down her face, some caught in the dry stream from her eye. She would jolt, stifling a tear and bit her bottom lip until it started to bleed. She was breathing heavily, her chest rose and fell with great emphasise and I often wondered whether I should move away. I didn’t know what to do – you never do, do you? She was… perfection. Bliss. Contention. I was content – no, I was happy! She was vibrant, exotic, she was my beautiful, intoxicating rose, wrapped herself ‘round my thoughts until there was nothing else but her, coiled herself around my body until I gave in, gave in to her warmth of her hearth, her heart, her soul, existence – there was an existence to her, in her presence, when she was there, someone to smell, to feel, to touch. Everything around me collapsed but her. Never left me for a second.

You understand, don’t you? No one does this because they want to – it’s because they think it’s necessary. Look at her, she was crying but I couldn’t hold her, I couldn’t comfort her, this was my fault. But I did this for her and no matter what anyone else says or thinks I don’t regret it. I made the right choice. I know that much, at least.

The hell you understand.

And I don’t know, because she’s gone. She got up, very suddenly, and walked to the kitchen. Took the sharpest knife she could find and placed it onto the table. Then took out the following items – white bread, lettuce, margarine, ham slices, cheese slices, peanut butter, mayonnaise, wholemeal bread and a plate. She despised people who used a chopping board to make sandwiches (and more so if they didn’t clean it afterwards). The bread was laid out on the plate, four slices and allocated them positions before carefully chopping up the lettuce with the knife. She ate a piece and then, quickly, slit her wrist.

She wanted to stand – I’ll always remember that. She wanted to stand while the blood poured itself onto the floor, surrounded her pretty white slippers and, before long, she stood floating atop a cherry-bright lake, ever-growing with each ripple from above. She closed her eyes, held her head high and took one last breath before it burst out of her in a scream. Her knees buckled and she fell to the cherry lake, a cascade wave rose from her fall and the lake shifted to the cabinet doors and seeped into the living room carpet. She refused to support herself with her arms but her vision was impaired, drenched in a cerise trace, kinda brings a new meaning to “seeing through rose-tinted glasses”, doesn’t it?

Sick bastard I am, thinking stuff like that, jokes about this.

I caught her in bed one day. Actually, one time I came, I saw her in bed with someone. She was on top, erm, legs around his waist and he had his head on the pillow but he wasn’t smiling. I suppose you wouldn’t really smile on that, I mean, in that situation. Maybe he liked it rough or something, you wouldn’t smile if it was rough, would you? I didn’t see her face but he saw mine, leapt up like he saw a ghost or something and ran out of the building. I’d hid before she caught sight of me, I don’t know why. It’s quite awkward sometimes because the redbrick walls clash so much with the outfit.

Who knows? Maybe I didn’t love her, what makes you think I loved her? What makes me think I loved her? Nothing. I wasn’t there for her; I’ve never been there for her, too busy elsewhere. At least I did this for her.

The ambulance arrived about six hours afterwards, I’m very good at making disturbances, you know, throwing cars into buildings, using my heat ray to start minor fires, that kinda stuff. Oh, around the Cross I actually stood in-front of the ambulance, shattered around me but I didn’t hurt anyone. I would’ve compensated for everyone’s loss but I’m quite poor, you don’t make much money from this kinda work. They don’t call me Flash for nothing – or maybe they do, what would I know?

She’s dead, you know. You know?
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Neko · Posted: Sun Aug 21, 2005 3:27 pm Post subject:

o_O

Well that was confusing but good. I love how you write in his mindset, it gives the fic that much more realism. Great job :3
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