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Everyday Freak of Science: part 5

(I, the author of this work, do not consent to this work being crossposted/translated without my knowledge or used to train an AI, ever.)

Masterlist

As soon as my voice is under my own command again, I speak. "J-Jade, what's going on? W-where are you t-taking me?"

"It has become clear to me that you cannot be trusted with feeding yourself. As such, I will have to ensure you are eating properly- both in quantity and in content."

No. No. Is he really going to resort to that? No. No. No. Please, please no.

He opens a door and shoves me inside. Is this another office? There's a safe, a glass-topped table, two couches on either side of it... where is this?

The clacking of heels, approaching the door. They pause. Jade's voice interrupts the brief moment of silence.

"Pardon me, Azul. The VIP room is in use."

A sigh. "Jade, I've told you not to use the VIP room for lunch alone- be that by yourself or with Floyd."

"It's a rather urgent matter, Azul."

"Alright, fine... ten minutes."

Footsteps, again, leaving.

Okay. I have ten minutes. That's how long I have to survive.

The door opens. Jade enters, holding a plate of various kinds of fish- mullet, obviously, but also wrasse, shrimp, sturgeon, and cuttlefish. Not one hint of green is on that plate.

"Come on, Requiem. Open up." He stabs a piece of cuttlefish with his fork and holds it up to me.

I don't want to. He's just going to force it into my throat- I don't want that.

"Come on." His voice is surprisingly soft and gentle.

"No." In contrast, my voice is firm and wavering; unsure.

He sighs. "You leave me no choice."

I close my eyes for only a second before opening them to see Jade waking over to me, fork in hand, plate in other. He takes a seat next to me and puts the plate onto the table. Then, his free hand is opening my mouth; bracing it to keep me from closing it.

I close my eyes and brace myself for the inevitable force-feeding. Please, higher-ups, don't let this happen.

My mind is on the brink of breaking, I can feel it. Fragments of memories I want to forget tap at the sides of my thoughts, threatening me with reliving them if this keeps going the way it has so many times before.

A piece of cuttlefish is placed gently on my tongue. My recollection sabotages my sense. Shards of my past form into stained glass windows, depicting what I yearn to never see again.

A researcher, dressed in a white lab coat stained with blood, holds a pair of tongs, a piece of cuttlefish clutched tightly in them. Another researcher and another still, white-clad bodies in the corner of my vision, blue latex gloves holding my mouth wide open. I scream. The cuttlefish is forced into my unwilling mouth, down my throat, and, though I try, down it goes. Any human in my position would cry, but I can't. My eyes just don't do that.

I gasp. Where am I? Where are they? What... what room is this?

Slowly, my vision steadies, and the blurriness gives way to a shape. Several shapes. And colors, cool colors. Purple... a couch? There's some teal... a black stripe?

Oh, that's Jade. I can see the whites of his eyes better than I can see his irises. Wait, there's someone else, with off-white hair...

"Azul?"

"I heard screaming," he clarifies. "What's going on?"

"Requiem, are you okay? You just fell to the ground," Jade starts, entirely ignoring a shocked Azul. "You seem calmer now... what happened?"

"I-I was there, back in the lab, they were- please, don't let them-" my voice breaks into a sob. Jade gets onto the ground, one knee on the floor, and holds my upper body against his own. Strong arms hold my weight and I lean into the warmth, desperate to eject that experience from my mind. When I pull away from him, I notice his jacket is darker where my face touched.

I raise a hand to my eyes. They're wet. I'm crying. Jade notices.

"The crying is an effect of the potion. I know, I know, it takes some getting used to."

Azul speaks up again. "What happened? Why is someone crying in my VIP room?"

Everyday Freak of Science: part 7

(I, the author of this work, do not consent to this work being crossposted/translated without my knowledge or used to train an AI, ever.)

Masterlist

Jade pauses, considering his next words. His apparent brother, however, either doesn't realize that or doesn't care, because he interrupts.

"Blacktip reef shark? Why's one of them in here?"

Jade doesn't sigh, but Azul does. How peculiar, the speaker doesn't mind it but the witness does.

"I was getting there, dear brother. This particular blacktip reef shark has some... issues involving food. He cannot digest plant matter, but appears to have flashbacks when eating meat."

"Flashbacks? To what?"

"To whatever made him stop eating meat in the first place."

"He looks frail."

Well, that's pretty obvious- no need to say it out loud, Floyd! I'm changing the subject. Passive aggression sounds really appealing right about now, too. I'm doing both.

"Thanks!" I beam.

Floyd, Jade, and Azul now all look baffled, but Azul remains silent. The twins do not, and their shared confusion reflects in their voices.

"Eeh? What's Melanopte-chaaaan talkin' about?/What exactly do you mean by that?"

Yes! They've taken the bait.

"Oh, y'know... the strongest ones always died first. Never really lasted more than a week, poor things. Being too weak just meant ya never made it into your water- you'd just never live over an hour, and they wouldn't waste a tank on ya. But, frail? That's the sweet spot. We frail ones got to live."

I'm not really lying, exept in one regard: the strong ones didn't die. The researchers would preserve them and they'd end up with a bunch of machines around them, keeping them alive and totally out of it. I don't feel like explaining that, though, so I summed it up as "died."

Jade is looking away. I saw him nod. Floyd, however, is staring right at me. I stare back, but only into his left eye- that encounter with Jade has taught me my lesson about looking Leeches in the yellow one.

Finally, Floyd asks me the question I've been waiting to hear: "What the fuck are you talking about?"

I grin. He's swallowed the lure, too.

"The lab I was made in."

Uncomfortable scilence. One second, two seconds, four. Five draws into six draws into seven draws into eight- still, nobody dares speak or move. Twelve seconds. Thirteen. Floyd's eyes dart around the room, fliting from me to Jade and back again. Behind the nervous, teal-haired boy, Azul blinks. The stillness settles back over the room. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty seconds, and nobody dares break this suffocating scilence.

Twenty-two. Twenty-three. An off-putting twenty-five. Azul inhales deeply and resumes his quiet, shallow breaths. Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. I can feel Jade's eyes darting around the room. My gaze sharpens. Thirty seconds of this, and all three of them have willingly kept it going. Minimal interruptions, and it's only growing longer. Thirty-eight, thirty-nine... Forty.

How odd. Humans hate scilence, do these ones love it? Peculiarities, all three of them. Forty-two, forty-three, forty-four... We're approaching a minute now, and not one of these three unusual people has break it for any longer than a second. Fifty. Fifty-one. Fifty-two. Floyd is glaring at me now. Fifty-four. Fifty-five. Just five seconds more, and it'll have been a minute.

Five. Four. Three. Two. One. At long last, the scilence is shattered, a voice that surprises me with the anxiety and fear behind it practically echoing in the small room.

"Jade, what the hell is he talking about?"

I suppress a laugh. Floyd sounds downright terrified. He's talking quickly and staring right at his brother, but does not twitch. Interesting.

Jade stands. I am suddenly supporting my own weight, and the unexpectedness of that leads to me kneeling on the floor for a quick second before standing on my own two legs. Let's pretend I didn't try to stand so fast I fell.

"Well..." Jade leans in and starts whispering in his brother's ear. I can't catch much, but the words "issue" and "experiment" are easy enough to pick out of the conversation.

"Oh, okay." Floyd sounds a little defeated now. I guess it's an improvement from "scared," at least for him. "Why don't'cha just try cooking it? I'll go and make something right now!"

Before I can properly register what he just said, the exited twin is out of the room. The door slams behind him. Jade sighs and turns to me.

"Regarding your eating disorder: is the taste the problem?"

"Uh... good question. Never thought about it." As embarrassing as it is (not much) to admit, it's true.

Jade closes his eyes and contemplates. As soon as he's done that, they're open again and there's a piece of salmon on his fork. I notice that one of the cutting tentacles is gone- did Floyd eat it, or did I just miscount them to start? Maybe I'm going insaner. Is that even a word? Case in point, I guess.

Azul sits next to me. "I take it you've never worked at a café before?"

I think back. Part of my puphood was media- anime, movies, books, even the occasional podcast. They were used for many things- teaching me, testing me, entertaining me- sometimes it was all three. Those days were fun.

"I'll take that as a no. Do you know how cafés work?"

Oh, that's right, I'm talking to Azul. "There were a lot of shows and books... I think, around half had a café of some sort. I've always thought they looked cool."

Secretly, I've always wanted to live in one. When I was really little, I thought café workers lived in their shops, sleeping in an unknown place in the back. When I got older, I was shown a book about a woman who got a job at a café, and that got cleared up. Still, my little fantasy remained.

Azul does the "pay attention to me" throat noise that humans make when they want people to listen to what they're trying to say. "Well, you're going to need training. Jade and Floyd will handle that, but you do need to pay attention, okay? You can't learn it if you don't try."

I nod. "Okay."

The door opens. Jade walks in, small, clear glass of water in hand. I didn't see him leave. Back in the lab, people leaving was just one of those things I learned to ignore.

He takes the fork from the plate, drops the salmon in, and stirs. I watch, entranced, and Azul pushes his glasses up on his nose.

He holds the glass up to my lips. "Try this." I obey.

An experiment, something different, to see if I'll eat on my own-

Jade is shaking me by my shoulders. My voice- I'm yelling, shouting for help. "Calm down, calm down. You're okay. Look around. See where you are?"

Jade sounds calm and collected, and I focus on his voice. Firm, but kind. I use that to ground myself.

"I-I... I think I'm okay now."

The door opens again. I freeze, momentarily failing to recognize the boy in the doorway as not-a-fake-Jade. However, my mind is pulled away from that as soon as I realize Floyd is carrying a plate with the cuttlefish tentacle and some sort of sauce on top, obscuring its shape.

"Here ya go!" His voice is cheery, uncharacteristic of the room and its vibe. It's a little nice, to be honest.

I take the plate and Jade hands me a fork. When I poke at the sauce, it reveals the tentacle to be darker than it was before.

Floyd grins. His teeth are slightly thinner than my own. "I grilled it."

Distantly, I hear Azul tell the twins they're going to be training me. He sounds like he's in the next room over- I'm too busy staring at the plate.

...Can I bring myself to eat this?

One | Two | Three

-

hurt/comfort

you ever been with your fam having a good time

and suddenly youre back in a terrible no good prison dimension

and you cant tell whats real

cuz same

-

a short story about flashbacks and veterans

One | Two | Three

-

you ever need someone outside your family

to make you have the hard conversations

whether you want it or not

cuz same

-

also! warm water/ice/smelling something strong (like lemons!) can help ground people who are having a panic/flashback

i swear by the warm mug of water

(TW trauma, flashbacks)

So he ended up coming home from work at lunchtime today because he was having a panic attack. He didn't let me know beforehand that he was leaving, on his way, etc., which would normally be fine and not really matter, EXCEPT:

I was still in bed on my phone when he got home, and I didn't hear him come in, so he surprise-opens our bedroom door in his work clothes and looks at me with a miserable look on his face. This is e x a c t l y the same circumstance - even down to our room and his work uniform looking the same - as two years ago when he came home early one day and told me he got fired. And that firing 1. happened during a time when we were both already fucking unbearably stressed, 2. kicked off one of the worst years of my life so far, financially, emotionally, etc. etc.

It was the closest I think I've ever come to a full-blown PTSD-flashback-style sobbing meltdown. I think the only thing that kept it from being one was that it took a minute for my brain to register what was happening because I automatically went into fawn mode trying to console him. Like I've def had similar-ish meltdowns before, but this is the first time I can remember where it's been such a cartoon deja vu trigger experience. It was honestly scary?? Like fortunately he kind of pulled it together enough to comfort me and help ground me a little, but man, it was real bad.

And the worst part is, it turned out he forgot to take his medicine today!!! Like that's literally what started all this!!!! And it obviously isn't something he did on purpose, but I'm fucking mad about it!!!!! How fucking senseless and stupid!!!!!!!!

Like I was planning to make today a self-care rest day after having such a busy weekend, like I *already knew* I was gonna be touchy and easily overwhelmed. And then the worst set of circumstances just ✨happened✨ to happen today!!! Fucking cool!!!! My brain is literally fried, like I've been having waves of crying and dissociation and dizziness all day. Fucking love that for me.