𝐃𝐄𝐉𝐀 𝐕𝐔 • Percy Jackson.

07

    act I━━━━
𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐒𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐍 • edited.

   
❝ runaway lost boy. ❞

          ON THE FOURTH MINUTE counted by the ticks of a clock in the forefront of his mind, Amani walked out. He entered the busy city, it was around nine at night and sunset had passed leaving a coat of black across the sky. Perhaps he should have stayed, waited for the car, and arrived at the isolating penthouse where a butler would walk to his room every three hours to make sure he hadn't gone crazy. Perhaps he should have dealt with the deafening silence that encased the penthouse, but he also couldn't handle the talking in the headquarters. It ticked him off, itched his skin, and made his head feel static as it buzzed within his head, in ways that couldn't be relieved.

So here he was walking on the streets of Queens with three hours left until the clock struck midnight. He let the wind rush to his face from racing cars and let the street lights cast their hue of red, yellow, and green amongst the buildings and reflect onto his body. Tall skyscrapers, blinding lights, and faint laughs of irrelevance thrived with night summer rain sprinkling onto the street, leaving small wet droplets onto his face.

"Sir Amani!" He pauses at the voice, makes a 'tsk' from the tip of the tongue, and thinks Can't even take a walk in peace, before bolting. "Hey watch where you're going-ah!" He gave a quick shout of "sorry" to the pedestrians he shoved past. He winced when a woman completely fell onto the ground, losing her balance on her black heels. "Sir Amani!" The voice repeats again, it shouts across the honking of taxis, the talking of pedestrians, and into his ears like a whisper. "Shut the fuck up," he had screamed before running like a mad man.

He turns a corner. Then another. He runs straight and makes a left. He turns random corners as if insanity had finally reached him and he was a man in a maze running with no direction on his last thread of hope. He keeps running, until it turns into jogging, and then walking, and until finally he's panting on a rundown road with the rain falling in line with him.

His head is faced down and his eyes reflect his black converse lined with coats of wet water, drain water and dirt from the pavements. Holy shit. He thinks feeling a sense of quiet freedom in the depths of the night and the summer rain drowns his mind with an intoxicated thrill. Heavy droplets fall into his head and the sweat on his body is doused. "I think I lost them." He mutters in serenity, as he goes to look around.

It was certainly something. A quiet street with rundown buildings: small stores with rust built on the signs, lights turned hush, and cold stone apartments. Graffiti tied in between. Yellow hues shone from the streetlights, but the area seemed desolate with only the sound of mice and their shadows scattering off.

He breathes before running to one of the stores in hopes for something to shelter him from the rain.

He hides under an overhead roof lining, watching a curtain of water pour in front of him, before crouching onto the ground, leaning against the rough wall, tired from standing.

Perhaps he should have stayed for that final minute, but then again Drivers are never on time. The regret still lingers however, as he feels the sweater sticking onto his back and the way he has to roll his sleeves up to wipe his face for it to do nothing  because he's drenched and the water is already on his skin.

He overhears the echoes of faint police sirens and car honks. The rain starts to grow less dense and he thinks back to everything. He hates that. About his mother, about school, about monsters, about all the crazy shit that's happened, about Grover and how freaked he seemed earlier today, and Percy.

He stares at the trickling rain and the puddles swirling around the drains.

He feels like he's eight again. Sitting out staring at a window watching the bare night for stars. Or maybe the rain on the window wanting a certain droplet to win the race or even waiting for his mom to come back from work back when he cared. Perhaps he should have stayed for that final minute. It would save him from all this useless thinking. He wanted to feel that hazy fog again, it brought comfort because it was his routine or perhaps the sick feeling of deja Vu he used to have almost every day, he hasn't gotten it in a while. It felt foreign to him and he wonders if this is how he should have been.