Rated: PG-13 ~ Warnings: mild horror, angst, blood ~ Pairing: none ~ Notes: N/A Another two months came and went, taking with it, precious time that could have been used in making new music or touring around. Lucas, to put it bluntly, went crazy with boredom after a week and a half and sorely wished he could do something productive with his time, but found he couldn't; his body was still too weak to do much of anything. The dreams of a barren city still haunted Lucas' subconcious, forcing him awake several times a night, drenched in a cold sweat. He was hoping the dreams were over with, but they only seemed to have gotten worse. They always started out as the same barren city with him standing in the middle of the road, the sound of wind-rustled paper the only noise anywhere. The similarities stopped there and usually progressed into something worse as each night passed. The latest scare was seeing his twin as if he stepped out of some 1980's horror movie. Blood, dirt, and grime left a light coating over Rowen's body, looking as if he rolled around in a pit of the mess. His eyes were glazed over, unseeing; his lips, tinted blue, were lightly parted and gasping for air; his body rigid, as if someone shoved a pole down Rowen's centre to make him ramrod straight. Tiny puffs of air could be seen when Rowen exhaled, but Lucas knew it wasn't air; air couldn't be the colour of the blackest black Lucas had ever seen. At each inhale and exhale, Rowen's chest rattled, as if something was loose there. The exhaled air became thick, like a fog, but it pulled his and Lucas' body down to the ground as if gravity were doing it. The force felt like thousands of weights were on Lucas' chest, giving him no room or time to breathe, only time to panic and scramle for air. But just as Lucas felt like he'd pass out or he'd be crushed to death...air rushed into his lungs as the weight was lifted and the air cleared. Lucas was almost scared to look at his twin, but he had to see Rowen; he just had to. Staring at the crushed form of his twin, Lucas' eyes widened. It seemed he had been spared, but Rowen looked as if a steam-roller hit him and rolled right over him without a care in the world. Shattered bones lay in a mess of blood and grime, but the horror didn't end there. Recently shattered bones mended into a disfigured form, standing drunkenly and staring blankly at Lucas. Rowen's mouth opened and a shrill shriek pierced the air just as the disfigured form took awkward steps towards Lucas, its distorted and bloody hands reaching out for him. Lucas was unable to move, staring with wide eyes at the form that was once Rowen. The mouth with which the shriek was coming from had no lips, the bottom jaw bent and broken at an odd angle. The face, when Lucas looked at it, held little resemblance to his twin, but Lucas knew that this disfigurement was once his twin and he could see a familiar hazel-green eye hanging half-out of its socket - the other was missing - and the familiar wefts of hair sticking up and out from a mangled skull. The figures hands touched Lucas, sending waves of ice and pain through his body, causing him to shout out and jerk away from the hands. Undeterred, the figure lunged at Lucas, its shriek shattered Lucas' eardrums, making him deaf. Lucas tried to dodge the disfigured form, but let out a scream when he felt his eardrums shatter. Falling to his knees, Lucas held his hands over his ears, feeling blood seeping through his fingers and down the side of his head. Just as the figure went to touch Lucas again... He awoke with a startled cry, his hands automatically going up to his ears and pressing his hands against them, relaxing only when he felt no blood and when he heard the crickets chirping just outside his window. He vaguely heard someone opening his door and his bed dipping with the weight of another person, but he jerked out of the way when a hand gently touched his cheek. "Don't...don't touch me," Lucas mumbled, shaking his head, now rubbing his ears. This had been ongoing since Lucas had awakened and Rowen still didn't know why Lucas would jerk so harshly away from him. He tried to get Lucas to talk to him, talk about the nightmares his twin was experiencing, but was brushed aside every time. Now, Rowen wasn't going to push Lucas, but damnit, the way Lucas was pushing him aside and the way Lucas was acting, something was wrong and Rowen was going to find out sooner or later. "Lucas, you know you can talk to me," Rowen said softly, reaching out for his twin again, only to be rejected again. Lucas shook his head, shying away from Rowen's questing hands. "You don't know what it's like," he whispered. "What I see when I close my eyes...it like stepping into a movie. Bodies and blood and silence...it terrifies me." He shakes his head again, looking up at Rowen. "I keep seeing you in my dreams, covered in blood and dirt. You stare without seeing, your body straight as a board and your breathing erratic. You exhale a black fog that forces us to the ground, almost crushing me...but you fare far worse." The fear is clearly seen in his eyes as he tells Rowen of the nightmare. "I hope the nightmare ends there, but it doesn't. Seeing your shattered body reform into a mangled and deformed figure and then having it come after me is fear like I've never felt before. I wake up soon after a shriek pierces through your lips and shattering my eardrums and your mutated, deformed fingers touch me..." Rowen's eyes widened further and further as Lucas told him about the dream he just had. Had he been in the same situation, he'd likely be just as Lucas was reacting; but to see your own twin get crushed to bits and then become a disfigured being...it was a frightening thought. Swallowing, Rowen shook his head. "How long have you been having these...dreams?" he asked. Lucas chuckled humourlessly. "Since the accident," he replied. "They've only progressed in intensity since then." He rubbed furiously at his ears, glancing at Rowen. "The only person I see is you...becoming a mutated body after being shattered to tiny bits only seconds before." Rowen bit his lip, dashing all good reasons to not embrace Lucas and did so anyway. Lucas resisted at first, nearly freaking out when Rowen's hands touched him with his body following soon after, but calmed enough to slump in the embrace when he remembered that he wasn't dreaming. They were always so surreal, pulling Lucas into believing he was actually experiencing in being what's likely to be the last living human on the planet - from feeling the wind around him to the horrifying stench of rotting corpses, yeah it was pretty damn believable. The twins remained in a comfortable embrace for several minutes, only to have it break when the sound of glass shattering caused both of them to suddenly tense up. It was eerily reminisce of a week ago, when someone threw a large rock through one of the windows and causing a huge mess of the situation before it was settled. Now, though, they really didn't want to be dealing with it again and therefore stood to make sure that it wasn't what they were thinking. Looking around the first floor brought no true suspicion; there were no shattered windows anywhere, but there was a plate in pieces on the kitchen floor. Seeing nothing else out of the ordinary, Rowen and Lucas went up to the second floor and nearly ran headlong into Nicholas. Rowen gave a small shout of surprise while Lucas just stared at the man oddly. "Jesus, give someone a heart attack!" Rowen cried, frowning. Nicholas didn't seem to notice them and pushed past them to walk down the stairs, walking with a slight limp. Ever the insatiably curious, Rowen and Lucas followed Nicholas, wondering why the man was up at such a late hour. Nicholas had walked into the kitchen, walking over the broken plate as if it were nothing, wrenched open a cabinet, and proceeded to drop every glass that was in the cabinet. Springing into action, Lucas grabbed Nicholas' hands, forcing the other male to look at him. Lucas' eyes widened fractionally when Nicholas finally looked at him. "No..." Nicholas' eyes were the same unstaring gaze the Rowen in his dream had. Lucas' grasp went weak, letting Nicholas go back to what he was doing before Lucas grabbed him, carelessly dropping the glasses to the floor. Rowen came up beside Lucas, grasping Nicholas' wrists to stop him from breaking anymore glasses. "What the hell is your problem?" Rowen all but shouted at Nicholas. "Roe..." Rowen didn't seem to hear Lucas and stared at Nicholas. "It's three in the fucking morning," he said, frowning deeply. "What the hell are you thinking, dude?" "Rowen..." "God, seriously," Rowen said, tightening his grip when Nicholas tried to move away. "No, you stay here and tell me what the fuck is going through that head of yours." "Rowen!" Rowen blinked and looked at Lucas. "What?" "Look at his eyes," Lucas whispered, eyes still wide. "He's not seeing you or what he's doing." "And what is that supposed to mean?" Rowen asked, raising a brow. "His eyes remind me so much of the eyes you had in my dreams," Lucas replied, still whispering. "The glazed, unseeing gaze." He shuddered, looking at Rowen. "Something's not right here and I don't like one bit of it." "Well, what do you want us to do?" Rowen asked, glancing at Nicholas. "Surely we can't go anywhere without having to alert someone of what we're doing and that would wake up the entire household and waking up Josh when he really doesn't want to is something I do not want to re-experience." "Too true," Lucas said, nodding, "but we have to do something about Nicholas. We can't have him wandering around the way he is; he's liable to keep breaking things." "Restraining him sounds lovely," Rowen muttered, jerking Nicholas' hands when the man tried to get free again. "It's likely our only posibility until we can get him to a hospital," Lucas said, hesitating slightly before continuing; "but Roe, I really don't think keeping him here's a good idea. Something tells me that this is going to turn nasty." "Nasty how?" Rowen questioned, frowning lightly. "Like, apocolyptic nasty," Lucas replied, his hands going up to rub his ears unconsciously. "Call it a gut feeling, but I don't like it. It's making me queasy." "All right, we'll take him to the hospital," Rowen said, pinning Lucas with a scowl, "but if we get caught sneaking out without telling anyone, I'm blaming you." "I see no problem in that," Lucas conceded, smiling lightly. "Now lets go before someone does catch us sneaking around." With that, Rowen and Lucas forced Nicholas into Rowen's car, but only when they found a way to restrain the man's hands and they were on the way to the hospital. ~-~ "A parasite," Rowen mumbled, shaking his head. "Nicholas has a parasite." "A previously unknown parasite," Lucas reminded. "Said parasite, aside from being previously unknown, is currently inside thousands - if not millions of people worldwide." "Killing them off and spreading the parasite via air," Rowen finished, exhaling harshly. "What's going to happen to us, Luc? To Scott or Joshua? Will we die off because of the parasite, too?" He looked up at Lucas, a fearful look in his eyes. Lucas stared at Rowen, shrugging. "I don't really know, Rowen," he replied softly. "We were in contact with Nicholas, does that mean we may be infected, too? Oh, god..." Rowen's eyes widened more then; "the driver. We were in contact with him, too, and he was worse off than Nicholas." "We'll be fine, Roe," Lucas said, embracing his twin. "Don't think about it. We'll be fine." "How can you say that?" Rowen whimpered, letting Lucas hold him. "We probably have the parasite and we're going to die." "We won't die," Lucas said sternly, but he bit his lip and added softly in hopes Rowen wouldn't hear him. "Not yet, anyway." "See?" Rowen shivered, snuggling into Lucas' chest. "We are going to die and we can't do anything to stop the parasite from killing us." "We'll survive this, Roe," Tom said softly. "We always have in the past." Rowen sighed softly, knowing Lucas was right, but he just couldn't shake the feeling of dread he got whenever he thought about the parasite. ~TBC~ |