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Michael Langdon, instead of aging up over night like he does in the show, ages like a normal human being and experiences considerably more that turns him against humanity.
Part One
Death
Grandma laid at the bottom of the stairs, her head twisted backwards, her eyes were empty. He'd watched the light drain from them. Michael stared at her from his position at the top of the stairs. He hadn't meant it. He'd just been so angry.
Now he couldn't take it back.
He stepped down the stairs, towards the woman's' broken body. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know anyone except the sitter, Nyla and she was dead too. His stomach growled. He was surprised by his own hunger. He sat down on the bottom most stair and put his hand on her head. Her blond hair was stiff with product.
Michael bit his lip. She was dead. What was he supposed to do? He was hungry and there was no one to feed him. He felt the wetness on his cheeks before he realized that he was crying. Silent tears.
This was his fault. This was the first time he'd ever felt bad about killing something.
"Im sorry." He knew it idn't matter if he said ti now, it was too late. "Im so sorry." He shook his head. What was he supposed to do?
He knew one thing. He didn't want to stay on that step any more. His legs moved on their own, taking him to the front door and outside. He blinked at the garish sunlight. He felt a rush of confusion. How long had he been sitting in the huse? Hours, at least, it had been night when the fight started. His eyes landed on the sidewalk, his neighbor Corynthia was walking by.
"H-help!" He cried. "Help!" This was silly. She couldn't help.
Still, she stopped dead in her tracks and looked up at him.
"Michael? Whats wrong? Whats happened?" She started up the walk.
"She... fell. Grandma fell and she wont get up." The walk turned to a jog.
"Show me." She ordered, her face becoming serious. Her hand was already in her pocket, fetching her cell phone. Michael turned back around. Dread filled him. He immediately didn't want to go back inside.
"Shes at the bottom of the stairs. I... I cant."
"Ok." She went past him. The house swallowed her for a moment. When she returned, she was grey. She knew, the same as he did.
"Shes dead." Michael said in a flat voice.He sat down on the step and put his hands on his knees.
"Honey-"
Tears filled up his eyes and overflowed into his voice. "No!"
She wrapped her arms around him, tight.
"Its going to be ok." She promised. He let himself break down, feeling the full weight of her loss wash across his body.
The next several hours passed in a blur of flashing lights, concerned faces, and empty promises. All he wanted was for it to end. He wanted to go inside and go to sleep. Instead he was escorted from one person to the next, questioned endlessly. What happened? How did she fall?
He didn't know, was his final answer. He'd woken up to find her at the bottom of the stairs. He had no idea how she'd gotten there. The final decision was that she was old and she'd tripped. No one even wondered if he had something to do with it.
It angered him that her death was so easy to dispute. Soon enough, though, he was gobbled up by the cancerous :A foster care system, and thinking about how Grandma Constance died was something he saved for the darkest nights.
His first family was with an officer and his pregnant wife. He stayed in the nursery for a week and a half before he was delivered to an over populated house with a fat lock on the refrigerator. He didn't stay there long enough to learn anyone's names.
The chaos was stressful, never meeting anyone more than a couple of times. He felt painfully adrift, lost in a sea of faces. Years gave themselves up in search of kindness and familiarity, but each time his hand extended with hope, he found himself burned. Sometimes literally. The worst of his foster homes were ran by angry, selfish people. Scars became his only memoirs as any thing he once owned was quickly stolen and stripped away.
He thought perhaps he was being punished. Grandma had never told him of his parents, only that they had died. He wondered if, maybe, he'd killed them too and grandma had been his second chance and he killed her and now. He tried to resist, but the urge was stronger than he was. In many ways it became the one thing he could depend on. He never went after people, they took too much concentration. He feared the cage, he'd seen the inside of too many cupboards to risk giving himself to incarceration, no matter how deep the urge ran.
Michael was ripped from pondering by the sound of his name being said. Veronica, his current case manager and the first one he'd met with in over a year, was impatiently tapping her custom perwinkle manicure against the table, watching him with a frustraited look on her bublegum pink lips.
"Sorry, what?"
She sighed at him, it was an emotion he'd become accustomed too. Frustraition from the people around him.
"When did you tune out, kid?"
"You were telling me there names. Judge and Lawyer who ever, right?" Her expression flattened.
"Mary and Mark Nelson, MAry is a lawyer, shes working on becoming the next district judge for this area and her husband is Mark Nelson, he's a reporter. They have one son, Marvin-"
"Seriously? Mark Mary and Marvin? Does you think I'll stand out in their cute little family? After all, my name is Michael." Her tone equaled his in terms of snide:
"Thats the only reason they are every considering you is that your name starts with an M. Its a family tradition, apparently." She was lying to him, Michael felt it in his bones. He knew there was more to the story that she wasn't sharing.
"How long am I going to stay with this one?"
"You misunderstand, michael, they want to meet with you today because their considering officially adopting you." She let the words hang in the air and Michael stared at her for a long time. Adopting was a silly little story that they kids told themselves to make them feel better. Adopting was nothing more than a stupid little fairy tale.
"Really?" He reached across the desk and grabbed their file before she could stop him. If it mattered, she didn't try.
Their picture looked like ti came out of a catalog. Three smiling humans standing outside a plain white house with blue trim. Dressed, of course, in their sunday best.
Marvin was a straight B student, with curly brown hair and dark brown eyes. He was cute, Michael liked the idea of getting to know him better. Mary looked a lot like her son, curly brown hair, btu she had dark green eyes. Her husband had thick black hair and blue eyes. He looked like he went to the gym every day and probably didn't think about naything but calories and his d**k.
The most interesting thing that Michael saw was that Marvin looked nothing like his father.
"Is Marvin adopted too?"
"No."
"Hm. I wonder who was rooting around in Mrs. Nelsons honey pot then." Michael snickered.
"Michael! Keep that kind of thing to yourself if you know whats good for you. These people can take really good care of you, I dont think you've realized that. Dont you miss having your own room?"
He did.
"Do they really only want me because my name starts with an M?"
"They also said that your record is intriguing and they want to meet you. The criteria that gets a family to you isn't what matters, Michael. What matters is that they meet you. Your a real charming kid when you dont think so much." She slipped the file away from him. "So when you get off of school tomorrow, come straight here instead of back to Mr. Frankens."
"Im with the Jamesons now."
"Yes. Thats what I meant." The woman offered her most sincere smile. Michael nodded and stood up. He had to walk home, which was over two miles from the run-down foster care building. He wondered what a rich family like the Nelsons would want with someone like him.
The nelsons dominaite his thoughts the entire walk home. The Jamesons lived in a brick house on the corner between a grocery store and a park. The well meaning couple that owned it tried their best to make it a warm, comfortable place to live, though ti was entirely over populated. There were three other children crammed into the 1800 square feet, plus a dog and a grumpy old cat that wouldn't let michael get within five feet of him.
"Michael! Where have you been? Your alte for supper." The house father, Gary Jaemson, a tubby older man.
"Meeting with Veronica. she left you a message."
"Right. Right. ITs still warm, help yourself and then do the dishes, alright?"
Michael wondered if the Nelsons would make him do the dishes or if they would have a maid. At the very least, he hoped they had a dish washer. He didn't like doing them by hand, no matter how hard he tried, he always got crap under his nails.
Dinner was pretty much the same as it had been for the last several months he'd lived in the strained household. A thick brown stew and an empty sleeve of french bread. At least he had the crums to spinkle on the strew. He ate alone, everyone else was in the family room, staring at the television, or working on their home work somewhere in the house.
He wondered if they would make him go to school or if he'd have time to wander.
He washed the dishes and wondered how his life might change.
The next day he found himself feeling startlingly excited to meet a new family. The promise of his own bedroom. He hurried to the run down center as fast as his feet would carry him and stopped just outside the door.
What if he killed them, too? Or they found out that he killed grandma? What would they do to him?
He'd kept the secret so easily sometimes he burned to tell it. He stared at the handle to the door and frowned. He ahd to go in.
THe Nelsons were waiting for him in a small sitting room at the back of the center. Mary was clearly a very serious woman, she barely offered him a smile when eh came inside. MArk, on the other hand, was warm, embracing him when he came close.
Michael immediately wanted to like Mark, he looked at him when he spoke, making eye contact. For the first tiem in a very long time, Michael felt like he was being seen.
"I thought I'd get to meet Marvin as well?" Michael asked once Mark had run out of thigns to talk about.
"We dont see the point in making him meet every lost cause on the market." Mary answered, stiffly.
"He will have to meet you, though." Mark stated, smiling at Michael in a way that made him feel like they were sharing something special. Mary hummed.
 demon strait outta_hell · Sat Nov 09, 2019 @ 09:51am · 0 Comments |
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