Prompt 79 - Marigold - "Prank Gone Wrong" - ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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Jan. 26th, 2008 11:49 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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tamingthemuseTitle: Prank Gone Wrong
Fandom/Pairing: None--OC
Warnings: Mentions of drug use
Rating: T
Summary: Dreams can be killed so very easily.
A/N: This is a fictionalized account of a true story.
Prank Gone Wrong
The rich smell of dirt drifted into his nostrils as he turned the ground beneath his feet. The tiller vibrated in his hands and through his entire body, jarring his bones and making his teeth rattle in his head. The sun beat down on his head and back as sweat erupted from his pores, dampening his shirt. It trickled down between his shoulders and followed the lines of the muscles straining beneath his shirt, making it cling to the lines of his body.
He took off his hat and wiped his brow with the back of his tanned arm to move the salty water away from his eyes. He couldn’t wait until next year. This would be a distant memory and he would be ensconced in the hallowed halls of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, discussing physics and math with people who could understand what he was talking about, not those who gave him blank looks and strange glances when he drifted into his more esoteric conversational threads.
He heard motors in the distance and turned to see three cars driving down the lane, rock dust swirling in their wake as they sped along. The laughing group got out and motioned for him to come in from the garden and he waved from the far end of the row, turning the tiller to head back toward the house and his friends.
He shut off the motor and ran his hands through his sweat-drenched hair, pushing it off his forehead. “What are you guys up to today?”
Their eyes were distant, looking beyond him. “Not much. You have to work much longer?”
Chuck shook his head. “Nope, I’m nearly done. Goddamn, I’m thirsty.”
One of the girls, Amy, held out a pitcher of lemonade that was slick with condensation. “Here, Chuck—drink some of this.”
He tipped the pitcher into his mouth and drank it down. It was cool and soothing to his dry throat and the tangy flavor satisfied something deep inside him that he didn’t know existed until that moment. “Thanks, Amy. Can you hang around for a while?”
Heads nodding in unison, they sat down in the shade as he started the tiller again, turning to cut deep into the black soil to create his mother’s garden.
The marigold sun reached its petals down to caress his bare skin from its home in the sky blue velvet sky. Cotton ball clouds chased birds across the fabric as he watched with fascination, never having seen such a thing before.
He could hear the different sounds of nature around him. They seemed amplified in his ears; the sounds of the ants as they scurried around the ground gathering seeds from the grass battled with the sounds of the grass itself, growing and rustling in the wind that seemed to spring up out of nowhere. The bark on the tree crackled and groaned as the tree stretched its leaves toward the marigold’s petals. He could hear photosynthesis as the leaves converted the sunlight into food, the clear crystalline chimes of bluebells near the house as they danced in the sun.
The dirt beneath his back felt sharp and soft at the same time. Each small particle seemed to slice into his marshmallow skin while cushioning him in its loving arms. It smelled rich and ripe to his overly sensitive nose, reeking of dead things buried and living things living, searching for sustenance from the soil.
His fingers clawed their way into the silt and found a worm, wriggling between his fingertips as he lifted it up to look at it. He saw its mouth filled with razor sharp teeth, opening and closing indiscriminately as it looked for more dirt to digest. He tore it open carefully to examine the dirt inside its digestive tract, watching as it moved slowly in a stop-motion film that was live in front of his eyes until the worm stopped moving.
Losing interest, he stood carefully and staggered over to his friends still gathered under the shade trees, staring at the leaves. “What are you guys doing? What was in that lemonade?”
It was Amy that giggled. The sound hit his ears and rattled his teeth like the vibrations of the tiller. It crashed his red blood cells as they moved through his veins and arteries and pain so intense it doubled his body into a pretzel raked him from head to toe.
Covering his ears and closing his eyes tightly, he bent over and screamed. “Stop it, stop it! Don’t do that!”
He fell to the ground and waited for the reverberations to stop. They gathered around him and looked down on his writhing body, each voice setting off a chain reaction in him.
“How much did you put in there?”
“How many did we have left? Was there ten or twenty?”
“I don’t remember. We bought—what was it, fifty?”
“We each took two—that makes it what, twenty?”
“Can you even fucking count? There’s only eight of us—that means that we gave him thirty-two. Thirty-two hits of acid. He’s gonna be fried for days.”
“Fuck. Fuck! Why the hell did you do that, Jim?”
“I don’t fucking know! It just seemed funny at the time.”
“We better get out of here. His mother’s going to be home from work any time and we don’t want to get caught with him in this kind of shape.”
Chuck lay still on the ground, listening to his teeth grinding and trying to ignore the group standing over his prone form. He could feel heat building in his body from the inside, burning his guts and incinerating his balls as his temperature rose. He started pulling and tugging at his clothes, ripping seams and tearing cloth to get himself free from the restraint that seemed to be holding him hostage.
His mouth filled with dust as the cars roared away from the house. He crawled on his hands and knees over to the hose, pulling it off the side of the house and turning on the spigot (how did he remember it was a spigot?) to let the water rush out of the end and over his crisping skin. He was cooking in the light of the marigold sun that had somehow obtained a face, a face that looked suspiciously like his father’s with his permanent frown and turned-down corners of his mouth.
His last conscious memory was lying in the puddle of water as it spread around him and under him, holding the hose and letting the water run in and out of his open mouth.
Phyllis had a bad feeling when she drove up the lane. The tiller was in the middle of the row, still running but abandoned. She looked around for Chuck, hoping that it was just a bathroom break; she was stunned to find him lying in the middle of a mud puddle with the hose still in his mouth, his lips blue and his chest barely moving.
She ran into the house to call an ambulance, then went back outside to roll him onto his back. Unmindful of her clothes, she sat down in the middle of the mud and cradled her naked son in her arms, rocking him back and forth as an unearthly keening started deep in her throat.
“Oh baby, what happened? What have you done?”
His eyelids fluttered open and he reached up to touch her face, smearing mud along her cheek. “Mommy? Mommy, I don’t like this.”
She heard sirens in the distance; the ambulance would be there soon and she would have some answers for the questions that fogged her brain. “What happened, Chuck?”
“My friends—they came and gave me some lemonade. I think there was something in it, mommy.”
“What was it, Chuck? What was in it?”
His head fell askew, and then he raised his head as far as he could. “I don’t know, mommy.”
She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the side of the house. She could see all their hopes and dreams going up in smoke. Chuck’s scholarship to MIT, his brilliant mind, lost in a haze of something ethereal and unknown.
His mind was his ticket out of this tiny town, his passport to the world. She looked down at the naked, babbling man in her lap and tears began to roll unheeded down her face for a life that may well be lost to him.
She heard the ambulance screech to a halt, skidding in the growing puddle of the continuous stream of water that she had neglected to turn off. With one hand she reached up and turned the spigot off, still cradling her boy in her lap.
Dully, she answered their questions as she watched them strap her son to a gurney. Without a second thought for her clothes, she climbed back into her car and followed the ambulance into town to wait for the answers that would confirm her worst fears.
Dreams die easily.
Fandom/Pairing: None--OC
Warnings: Mentions of drug use
Rating: T
Summary: Dreams can be killed so very easily.
A/N: This is a fictionalized account of a true story.
Prank Gone Wrong
The rich smell of dirt drifted into his nostrils as he turned the ground beneath his feet. The tiller vibrated in his hands and through his entire body, jarring his bones and making his teeth rattle in his head. The sun beat down on his head and back as sweat erupted from his pores, dampening his shirt. It trickled down between his shoulders and followed the lines of the muscles straining beneath his shirt, making it cling to the lines of his body.
He took off his hat and wiped his brow with the back of his tanned arm to move the salty water away from his eyes. He couldn’t wait until next year. This would be a distant memory and he would be ensconced in the hallowed halls of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, discussing physics and math with people who could understand what he was talking about, not those who gave him blank looks and strange glances when he drifted into his more esoteric conversational threads.
He heard motors in the distance and turned to see three cars driving down the lane, rock dust swirling in their wake as they sped along. The laughing group got out and motioned for him to come in from the garden and he waved from the far end of the row, turning the tiller to head back toward the house and his friends.
He shut off the motor and ran his hands through his sweat-drenched hair, pushing it off his forehead. “What are you guys up to today?”
Their eyes were distant, looking beyond him. “Not much. You have to work much longer?”
Chuck shook his head. “Nope, I’m nearly done. Goddamn, I’m thirsty.”
One of the girls, Amy, held out a pitcher of lemonade that was slick with condensation. “Here, Chuck—drink some of this.”
He tipped the pitcher into his mouth and drank it down. It was cool and soothing to his dry throat and the tangy flavor satisfied something deep inside him that he didn’t know existed until that moment. “Thanks, Amy. Can you hang around for a while?”
Heads nodding in unison, they sat down in the shade as he started the tiller again, turning to cut deep into the black soil to create his mother’s garden.
The marigold sun reached its petals down to caress his bare skin from its home in the sky blue velvet sky. Cotton ball clouds chased birds across the fabric as he watched with fascination, never having seen such a thing before.
He could hear the different sounds of nature around him. They seemed amplified in his ears; the sounds of the ants as they scurried around the ground gathering seeds from the grass battled with the sounds of the grass itself, growing and rustling in the wind that seemed to spring up out of nowhere. The bark on the tree crackled and groaned as the tree stretched its leaves toward the marigold’s petals. He could hear photosynthesis as the leaves converted the sunlight into food, the clear crystalline chimes of bluebells near the house as they danced in the sun.
The dirt beneath his back felt sharp and soft at the same time. Each small particle seemed to slice into his marshmallow skin while cushioning him in its loving arms. It smelled rich and ripe to his overly sensitive nose, reeking of dead things buried and living things living, searching for sustenance from the soil.
His fingers clawed their way into the silt and found a worm, wriggling between his fingertips as he lifted it up to look at it. He saw its mouth filled with razor sharp teeth, opening and closing indiscriminately as it looked for more dirt to digest. He tore it open carefully to examine the dirt inside its digestive tract, watching as it moved slowly in a stop-motion film that was live in front of his eyes until the worm stopped moving.
Losing interest, he stood carefully and staggered over to his friends still gathered under the shade trees, staring at the leaves. “What are you guys doing? What was in that lemonade?”
It was Amy that giggled. The sound hit his ears and rattled his teeth like the vibrations of the tiller. It crashed his red blood cells as they moved through his veins and arteries and pain so intense it doubled his body into a pretzel raked him from head to toe.
Covering his ears and closing his eyes tightly, he bent over and screamed. “Stop it, stop it! Don’t do that!”
He fell to the ground and waited for the reverberations to stop. They gathered around him and looked down on his writhing body, each voice setting off a chain reaction in him.
“How much did you put in there?”
“How many did we have left? Was there ten or twenty?”
“I don’t remember. We bought—what was it, fifty?”
“We each took two—that makes it what, twenty?”
“Can you even fucking count? There’s only eight of us—that means that we gave him thirty-two. Thirty-two hits of acid. He’s gonna be fried for days.”
“Fuck. Fuck! Why the hell did you do that, Jim?”
“I don’t fucking know! It just seemed funny at the time.”
“We better get out of here. His mother’s going to be home from work any time and we don’t want to get caught with him in this kind of shape.”
Chuck lay still on the ground, listening to his teeth grinding and trying to ignore the group standing over his prone form. He could feel heat building in his body from the inside, burning his guts and incinerating his balls as his temperature rose. He started pulling and tugging at his clothes, ripping seams and tearing cloth to get himself free from the restraint that seemed to be holding him hostage.
His mouth filled with dust as the cars roared away from the house. He crawled on his hands and knees over to the hose, pulling it off the side of the house and turning on the spigot (how did he remember it was a spigot?) to let the water rush out of the end and over his crisping skin. He was cooking in the light of the marigold sun that had somehow obtained a face, a face that looked suspiciously like his father’s with his permanent frown and turned-down corners of his mouth.
His last conscious memory was lying in the puddle of water as it spread around him and under him, holding the hose and letting the water run in and out of his open mouth.
Phyllis had a bad feeling when she drove up the lane. The tiller was in the middle of the row, still running but abandoned. She looked around for Chuck, hoping that it was just a bathroom break; she was stunned to find him lying in the middle of a mud puddle with the hose still in his mouth, his lips blue and his chest barely moving.
She ran into the house to call an ambulance, then went back outside to roll him onto his back. Unmindful of her clothes, she sat down in the middle of the mud and cradled her naked son in her arms, rocking him back and forth as an unearthly keening started deep in her throat.
“Oh baby, what happened? What have you done?”
His eyelids fluttered open and he reached up to touch her face, smearing mud along her cheek. “Mommy? Mommy, I don’t like this.”
She heard sirens in the distance; the ambulance would be there soon and she would have some answers for the questions that fogged her brain. “What happened, Chuck?”
“My friends—they came and gave me some lemonade. I think there was something in it, mommy.”
“What was it, Chuck? What was in it?”
His head fell askew, and then he raised his head as far as he could. “I don’t know, mommy.”
She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the side of the house. She could see all their hopes and dreams going up in smoke. Chuck’s scholarship to MIT, his brilliant mind, lost in a haze of something ethereal and unknown.
His mind was his ticket out of this tiny town, his passport to the world. She looked down at the naked, babbling man in her lap and tears began to roll unheeded down her face for a life that may well be lost to him.
She heard the ambulance screech to a halt, skidding in the growing puddle of the continuous stream of water that she had neglected to turn off. With one hand she reached up and turned the spigot off, still cradling her boy in her lap.
Dully, she answered their questions as she watched them strap her son to a gurney. Without a second thought for her clothes, she climbed back into her car and followed the ambulance into town to wait for the answers that would confirm her worst fears.
Dreams die easily.
