Recent Posts

“I want to play a game”

”Is it find the letter?” Locke asked of his computer screen over his shoulder before diving the upper portion of his body back into the largest box that had arrived for him. Packing peanuts stuck to his jacket and rolled under the bed, making him growl in frustration. Kendra had sent him an email saying that she was going to send him a few packages with things he was going to need, and that there would be a list so he could check to make sure it all was there. Perhaps he should be looking at the bright side, that she was taking his running away this well, though it was the usual debate between the two for him to get to voice his opinion, but as always Locke looked past the silver lining and right into the storm clouds. She could have just emailed it, but no, that would have been too sensible. So far he had found his Saw movies which all had been rubber banded together. He figured that without him being around to keep an eye on the twins Kendra wanted his horror and psychological thriller movies as far as possible from the five year olds.

A smaller box had been opened already, the contents of which had been some clothes that he had left behind. Just enough of the peanuts had escaped him earlier to stick to his folded t-shirts and decorate the carpet as if it had snowed strange figure eight snowflakes. Upending the boxes would be the quickest way to find what he was looking for, but Locke had the sense to know doing so would mean a greater clean up later.

Locke paused in his unpacking to watch the movie for a moment. The needle pit scene. Classic. A lot of people felt squeamish around anything medical, especially needles. He almost laughed watching as Amanda was tossed in. It was not that the sight of the thrashing or the clearly unclean tools of injection that made him smirk, so much as the similarity between her situation and his own. Not that he was a former junky being put through a test of his will to live, but he was for all purposes stuck in a pit, fumbling for something that was hard to distinguish from the rest.

Science and Locke had never gotten along all that well. If there was any way to mess up an experiment, he'd find it. Bean plants never grew, math never worked out, and he didn't even want to think of what would happen if he took chemistry. His friend liked to joke that Locke would probably mix two chemicals together and create some weird type of toxic gas that would bring about the end of chemistry at their school forever. Just like how some people couldn't whistle, Locke was incapable of performing the most simplistic of science experiments. It wasn't that he didn't understand the ideas or the concepts, or even that he had the wrong equations. Locke just sucked at science class ever since he was in first grade, and the consistent D's on his report card were a testament to the fact. A mutual feeling of hatred existed between the two. The only thing remotely scientific that Locke had any skills in had to do with computers and electronics, and that only came from his father's lessons. So for Locke to be spending time in the library looking through the scientific books was more then a little unusual, especially since he wasn't being forced there by a teacher or guardian.

Stacked at his feet were texts on anatomy, a strange topic to pick off of a shelf. Maybe if he had it opened to pages on the female body it would make more sense for a teenage boy to be looking at, or if he were artistic in the drawing sense. But neither was the case with Locke. He wasn't interested in sneaking in looks at a naked female body, and his drawings were usually limited to doodles in the margins of paper or whatever the art teacher assigned for the day. He had a book opened up on his lap that illustrated the way that the muscles were shaped on the body, trying to make sense of the scientific mumbo-jumbo that the author felt was needed in order to make the book of any value. Locke stared at the page until his eye went blurry and he got a headache. The temptation to hurl a book across the room had never been stronger. But what had he expected? There wasn't going to be an instructions on how to make your own walking human body. The things he'd been trying to make were only vaguely similar to humans. His most successful attempt at making a golem had had two arms and two legs, but there weren't really fingers or toes on the hands and feet, and the head sort of just was a slightly raised bump between the shoulders that supported the arms. Temper rising Locke closed his eyes to focus on his breathing.

One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three, he counted off, breathing in for three, holding for three, and exhaling for three. After a second round of this the Californian opened his eyes to try and face the book again. The reason for this self inflicted torture was that he wanted to make another one of those things again, but had not been able to. Maybe the reason was that he wasn't putting it together in the right way, that it wasn't structurally sound. It could be like tossing clay onto a potter's wheel. If you didn't do it just right, if the clay wasn't exactly in the center, whatever you tried to make would be lopsided or collapse on you. Studying how a human body was comprised might make it easier to make something, and who knows, maybe in the process Locke would figure out how to make something more efficient.

So far all it was doing was making him hate doctors with a greater intensity. The names of the muscles were all too similar and too awkward to try and say. Disgusted Locke threw the book, staring angrly at the wall across from him.

The blank stare on Locke's face should have answered Ghost's question. It said that he had heard the words before, but never in that order or that context. Somehow he got the feeling she wasn't talking about a disorderly room. "I'm guessing it is someplace in here that I haven't gotten to yet, and I'm pretty sure that I'm right about that. I've only been here three hours, most of that was spent asleep." This was one of those moments where he wondered if adults knew things or not. Granted since he had said he had only just arrived there had been a severe emotional breakdown on her part, and she didn't look that old. Still it was kinda a big thing.

Locke hesitated before standing up again. The carpet had been soft and nice to sit on, not to mention warm for the Californian who would think a trip to Alaska in the winter would be a form of cruel and unusual punishment. His leg made a slight protest, but it felt more stiff than anything. Wiggling his toes there was something familiar beneath him. Sand. Gravel. Both things he knew how to work with, both eager but unfocused. Something rode along with the two ingredients that Locke didn't recognize. It felt good though, and his leg felt a bit sturdier. 'I'm not going to need a helmet am I?"

"Whatever," Locke said, sounding very much like a stereotypical teen when Mrs. Csendes argued that death wasn't the worse thing. It was a dismissal of what she said, but even with that he could not keep a small amount of hurt from coming out. She apologized and he mumbled an apology back at her. "Death is selfish, no matter if you're the one dying or the ones left behind. Nobody really wants death." You want there to be life because you don't want to say goodbye. Locke's leg was starting to bother him a little, as it usually did if he was tired. The damage that had been done to his leg had been pretty bad at the time, but with surgery and rehab he was able to walk again. Chris, Mai, and his insane friend Eaan had built up his endurance. Still Locke had his limits and with the amount of sleep that was in him, he was going to need to sit down soon. His leg gave a little shake reminding him of the fact, and he sat against the wall where he could keep Mrs. Csendes in sight.

He wasn't sure if he was being of any help to her, so Locke admitted it. "Seventy two hours ago I was pretending I was normal because that was what my step-mother wanted. I can be a mutant, but we can't say what it is. So I can't lecture or comfort you on how you use or how to use your powers. Hell I don't even know if I can do what I do right anymore. But I do know, that I loose myself when I use my powers, and for the first time in a long time, it feels right. By loosing myself, I get back who I am."

When you don’t speak much, you get to be pretty damn good at listening, which was about all that Locke could offer the adult. He had little experience with being a mutant. Trying to explain or reassure someone about how their own powers worked would be useless. Even taking out the mutant aspect he was unsure of what to say or do. How do you bring comfort to someone older than you? There is nothing that you can really say that they haven’t heard before, and whatever you say could just sound pretentious. ”Death is worse,” he said after a length. It might not have been the best thing to say, but for the Californian, it was the truth. He could hardly picture a fate worse then death, and he was familiar with death. The dark that threatened to close in on him was not death itself, but was as close as he was going to get while still on this earth.

He thought some more over what Ms. Csendes said, shaking his head no in response to her question about him fading. With his heart settling to a normal pace he felt very much the opposite of what was worrying the adult. He was not without the knowledge of being lost. Locke knew that when he made that thing, he was not entirely himself. The dirt and himself had become one. For some reason though, it did not feel as if he had lost himself. Being that dirt had been the first time in years that he felt something right. ”If it’s part of your mutation, then it’s part of you right? So how is it that you loose yourself when you’re doing what you do?”

Crazy as she was, Locke had to respect Henrietta a little. She had done something he was, well, not exactly afraid, but hesitant to do. She knew the limits of her power. Sure having the locks to bring a new meaning to a hairstyle with personality was not as impressive as some of the things that you saw on TV or read about in the newspaper. Heck, even Mr. Pessimist could not think of a way to turn hair power into anything that would ruffle feathers. Media only portrayed a mutation that you could be afraid of. Maybe over in Japan Henrietta might strike some terror and have a few people call her a futakuchi-onna, (thank you J-Pop horror films for that term), but honestly, how often was that going to happen? The fact still remained that Henrietta knew more about herself and her mutation then Locke could even guess with himself. Dirt he knew moved for him, sand did as well, but how much and what things other than dirt and sand he was unsure of. "Good to know what you can do," Locke commented. In a way he was jealous of her. Her mother might not have been cool with having a mutant daughter, but somehow Henri had found something in her that let her push her boundries.

Now how to explain Fluffy. Kendra might have seen the golem that Locke had wrestled the Easter, but the one who had been in charge of it only knew of a general shape to it, the way a person knows roughly what shape they are. "I don't really know.. It had arms I think, and legs."

Locke blanched when Henrietta mentioned having to talk to yet another person. For five years he had been in a sort of self imposed solitary confinement in which he made the rules for visitation hours. Even on the train, a place in which there is the compulsion to intereact with others, Locke had been able to keep to himself. All this conversation felt unfamiliar. It was a territory that he was unfamiliar with, new grounds that he did not know if he could make a stand on. Not with the little amount of sleep he was currently running on. "Do I have to do that tonight? Can't I talk with someone tomorrow?" Locke asked, wincing at how pathetic and whiny it came out. If he were Chris or Mai he'd get a stern warning not to complain. Great. Now he was behaving worse then a five year old in the grocery store. No wonder Henrietta looked less then pleased with him before.

Just for ease of talking Locke looked down at the ground. It was too hard to look anyone in the eyes and talk to them, even if the subject was something he was glad to finally be able to speak of. "I've been doing it all night, ever since I stepped off the train," the Californian started to explain. Fluffy was going to have to wait momentarily for him to sort out how to best explain about it in as few words as possible. "Dirt stuff, working with the ground. I made something once." He shrugged his shoulders, making his backpack give him a little smack. "Like I said, we didn't talk about it back in San Francisco, I didn't get a chance to practice." It was a half truth, for if Kendra was about Locke couldn't do anything. A brief period of time was granted to him while there was still sunshine in which he did not have to fill any obligations to anyone. Of course he was going to poke about with his powers in that time.