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Ryan, finally back at his house after what had seemed like an eternity at school, lolled on the couch bonelessly. He wasn’t even doing anything right now—not reading one of his large collection of Calvin and Hobbes or Get Fuzzy comics, not watching one of his many anime tapes—just lazing on the couch with his eyes closed. Ever since he had gotten out of the caves, Ryan had felt somewhat lethargic. At first he had just chalked it up to the fact that he’d still been at school, but now that he was at home and able to relax, he pretty much expected the lethargy to go away, since he didn’t intend to spend all day lolling around, of course. He still had things that he wanted to do—things that didn’t involve staring mindlessly at the ceiling or falling asleep on the couch—but as he lolled back on the couch and spaced out, it was really hard to remember just what those things were. Closing his eyes for just a minute, Ryan laid his head back on the soft pillows. Just need to rest my eyes for a minute… "Ryan? Ryan, are you just going to sleep the rest of the day away? You haven’t even had your shower yet." The calm, kind voice of his mom broke into Ryan’s semi-conscious mind, waking him up as surely as if she had rung a gong in his ear, albeit a great deal more gently. Rubbing his face with the back of his hand, Ryan blinked as he saw his mom leaning over him. "Howwzat?" Norma Crouger, long used to translating her son’s "it’s-too-fucking-early" speak, chuckled softly. "It’s about six o’ clock, Ryan. If you’re going to take a shower today, I think you should go do it now. Your father wants to take one today, too, and for that matter, so do I, so, I’d really appreciate it if you would go take your shower now." "Mmmkay," Ryan muttered, still only half awake. Norma shook her head in fond exasperation: Ryan could be a little strange sometimes, but he was still her son. XxXxXxX Yawning, Ryan made his way down the hall, a path as familiar to him as his own feet, so there wasn’t really a pressing need for him to pay attention to exactly where he was going at the moment. Blinking to try and wake himself up more quickly, Ryan continued down the hall that led to the bathroom, and by the time he had made it to the room itself, he was much more awake than he had been when he had started out. Pushing the door open, Ryan closed it behind himself and started to strip off his clothes. If anyone had been standing behind him when he took his shirt off, that person would have seen the blistering, tumor-like growths on his back, and if that same person had known about the Guyvers, he would have found the marks on Ryan Crouger’s back very familiar. But there was no one there to see the marks right now, so Ryan continued undressing in peace. Once he had gotten fully out of his clothes, Ryan opened a drawer on the far right side of the sink that held a large collection of his CDs. Pulling out a freshly-burned copy of Rent, though this one had only the songs that he liked the most. He stuck it into the CD player and turned it up just enough to keep him from falling asleep before he got to the shower. Once he was inside, it wouldn’t be so bad, since the falling water would keep him awake, if only just enough for him to be able to wash up. He still didn’t know quite why he was so tired all of a sudden, even after he had ended up sleeping for most of the afternoon. It was really weird, but as he yawned again, he made up his mind not to think about it anymore. It wasn’t like he had any really pressing responsibilities at the moment—any homework he had could be put off till the end of the week, and there was nothing that he had planned for the rest of the day that couldn’t be done another time, preferably when he didn’t feel so goddamned tired. The music was helping some, so he was able to keep himself awake when he was still outside of the shower. Once he got inside the shower, the splatter of heated water woke him up more quickly than the music had, but like the last time, it was only temporary, and Ryan was soon starting to doze again. Soaked to the skin from the falling water, he began to wash up. Once he was done with that, he washed his hair, then leaned back and enjoyed the hot water splattering all over him. With the way he was feeling at the moment, it would have been really easy to fall asleep in the shower. He knew that would be a bad idea, so he fought to keep his eyes open and stay awake, shaking the excess water from his hair as he stood back up to let the hot water rinse off the paltry remains of the soap that still clung to him. Turning off the water, Ryan squeezed the remaining water out of his hair, trying to keep awake longer and stepping out of the shower and grabbed his towel. Drying himself off quickly, Ryan hung his towel back up, turned off the CD player, and headed out the door to his room. Yawning again, he tried to keep his eyes open for the short time it would take him to make it to his own room—he was at least moderately successful with the effort. Once he was back in his room, Ryan headed instinctively for his bed, all but asleep on his feet and swaying like a drunk as he walked. He didn’t stumble once, but he did come pretty close to doing so. Collapsing on top of his bed, he closed his eyes for a minute, then, before he could get comfortable enough to fall asleep entirely, crawled up onto his bed and slithered up under his covers. With one last, jaw-cracking yawn, he plopped his head down on his pillow and quickly fell asleep. XxXxXxX Ryan was most acutely aware of the pain in his left hand at first—that and the soreness currently spreading over most of his front. Okay, so maybe it hadn’t been one of his better ideas to start playing that game of kick-the-rock with himself. Hauling his body off of the cave floor, though it really felt more like he was peeling himself off the ground, he shook off the rock pile from his arm. As he pulled the shard out of his hand with his teeth, he noticed the glowing thing stuck in the cave wall. It was kind of interesting, in a what-the-hell-is-that-thing kind of way. Hell, it was even interesting enough to let him ignore the pain in his arms—well, mostly. Getting back to his feet, he walked over to the glowing thing, all the while trying to ignore the blood dripping from his hand. Having water dripping from his hand was bad enough, but this was warm and sticky, two feelings he really hated when they were combined with each other. He almost had to laugh at himself for thinking that: here he was bleeding from the hand and all he could think about was the fact that he didn’t like the feel of blood on his hand. His mom was right, he was weird. Still, it wasn’t like he could really do anything about the fact that his hand was bleeding—at least not right now. He’d probably be able to take care of it once he got out of the cave, but for now there was something else to occupy his attention. It wasn’t more important, just more immediate. Poking the outer edges of the thing, he was slightly surprised to find that they were warm and squishy. It just wasn’t something he’d ever expected to feel while touching something that was imbedded in a freaking cave wall. Moving his hand around the outer edge, he was again surprised to find that his fingers encountered a raised metallic ridge. The metal itself was warm, and that was when he made up his mind that he wasn’t going to be surprised by anything else that he found while he was examining this thing, whatever it turned out to be. Moving his hand towards the center of the thing, he came to the end of the metal casing and ended up touching the squishy part again, though he’d made up his mind not to be surprised by anything that he found while examining the thing, he was still somewhat surprised by that, and when his searching fingers again encountered a warm, metallic piece, he paused. Feeling around this new protrusion, he discovered that it was round, just like the rest of the thing. That was kind of interesting. Tapping on the metallic half-sphere with his pointer finger, he heard a soft clicking sound. Intrigued, he tried it again—there was that same clicking noise again. Bored, he pressed down hard on the small metal dealie in the center of the round whatever-it-was. The click was a lot louder that time, but that wasn’t the only difference: the round Whatsit burst into a huge mass of writhing tentacles, long, cold, slimy tendrils that wrapped around him from head to toe. His clothes were soaked through by the cold slime within seconds, and Ryan had a brief moment of annoyance about that. But that was before the cold, slimy tendrils started squeezing him tighter and tighter. Ryan could feel the round metal dealie nuzzling itself against his forehead, and for a minute Ryan wondered just what was going on with that. Then he started to feel another set of tendrils crawling across his face. The things felt like they were maybe a little thinner than his pinkie finger. Two of the tendrils shoved themselves into the tear ducts of Ryan’s eyes, and when he opened his mouth to scream, one of the larger tendrils shoved itself down his throat. The smaller tendrils crawled across his face again, and two more of them shoved themselves into his ears; then another pair forced themselves right up his nose. Ryan thought that he fell to the ground after that, but it was kind of hard to tell with him not being able to feel anything at all. As the slimy Whatsit curled tighter around him, Ryan felt more of the large tendrils crawling across his stomach. Three of them dug into his abs, punching their way through his navel and wrapping around his guts. Ryan was pretty sure he screamed after that, but it was hard to tell, since he was passing out at the time… |
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