[AU time! Please move to Baa'sek when event is over.]
We're all in our private traps
Clamped in, and none of us can ever get out
We're all in our private traps
Clamped in, and none of us can ever get out
Cyril bolted upright in bed, body slick with sweat and breathing loud and high. He stared at the darkness that seemed to stretch into the corners and swallow up the far ends of his bedroom altogether. He watched it like it was some snake, coiled and ready to strike, clearly something that could smell the adrenaline and fear rolling off of him in waves. But nothing attacked, and Cyril's breathing lowered, and he stiffened as the sensation of pain started to trickle in where the adrenaline left room.
A dull ache, and then, it localized, pinpointing in an acute stinging sensation that raked continuously along his torso with each inhalation. Slowly, he slipped out of bed, exhaustion clinging to him. It must have been the adrenaline--he felt as though he'd just run for miles. Carefully he picked his way over last night's clothes and into the adjacent bathroom, and flicked on the light to stare at his reflection. Dark hair a mess, dark circles rimming his eyes, loose white nightshirt hanging off of him, and then... right below his collarbones, barely visible, what looked like a thin streak of dried, dull red, leading down into the collar of the shirt.
He opened it. Watched his own fingers work the buttons, numbly noting that the beds of his nails were caked in the same red. His eyes trailed slow, uncomprehending, down his bare chest, eyes darting from gash to deep gash, bleeding freely in thin, fresh rivulets down his abdomen.
Cyril blinked, and the world returned to him. His senses exploded with the sounds of the nightclub he'd been in for the past few hours. The drink he'd been holding in his hand in a plastic cup had fallen to the ground, alcohol pooling around his shoes, lit up with a sheen of neon light. Hands now free, they flew to his chest, his stomach, probing the cloth dress shirt he wore to find cuts underneath... nothing. No wounds. No blood. No pain.
Cyril bent down to pick up the cup, not wanting to leave it where someone could fall, and nearly dropped it again when a scream ripped through the bass. Voices raised. Something about a body, bloody beyond recognition, left just outside the club in the bushes. Some man. Early twenties, maybe. No identification? Well, call the police, they'll figure something out. Get her back inside. Does she know him? Don't know, she won't talk, just crying. Everyone back inside. Remain calm, remain calm...
Remain...
Cyril dropped the cup and ran, breakneck, through the surging crowd, until he found the back door and burst through it with a frightened, gasping whimper. He scrambled on his hands and knees from where he'd landed, pressing himself to the cold brick of the club, hands over his mouth as he tried to find his wits. His hands flew into his inner jacket pocket for a handkerchief, and he brought it to his mouth to attempt to breathe into it--and inhaled the acrid taste of blood. Cyril looked down at the handkerchief, staring at the clean swipes of what could only be a drenched knife blade, dragging methodical crimson across the white cloth. Maybe he was mistaken. Maybe he was drunk. No, he'd been drunk before, and the rising panic and fear like bile in his throat was something far different than the buzz of alcohol.
It took an enormous amount of willpower to not drop the handkerchief--old, and embroidered with his initials, no less--right then and there. Instead, he stuffed it back into his pocket, and tried not to think about whose knife, and where, and what had happened to it, and whether it had plunged into the body of that twenty-something year old outside the club while no one was looking. He found his footing, and he ran, down the darkest street he could see.
And he didn't look over his shoulder. Not once.
