𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐒

𝙡𝙤𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙜

where felix kranken realizes hes a bit of an asshole but also doesn't (huge shitpost thats only like... 1500+ words long. just abt how i think felixs life went a few weeks after the missing stuff... i'll get out an actual oneshot soon)
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Felix turned in his bed.

It was a thin, shallow thing, one that he had to be careful about moving on because if he flailed his arms too wide or kicked his legs too far he would hit a limb against the wall. His eyes traced the crack in the ceiling, the bumps he'd counted a million times over. The still-burning cigarette he left in the ashtray that let out smoke in an almost straight line towards the place where the crack would get a bit more pronounced.

The instant coffee mixed with a hint of vodka in his mouth, the book in his hands he stopped reading a long time ago. The sun had truly come out that day, heating up his room to the point of unbearably warm temperatures–the reason he forsook his bed to wedge himself between his desk and the bedframe. The reason he'd read and re-read the newspapers about the incident until he had to pick up another book because he began to feel nauseous.

His mind had already began to stray from the paragraphs once more, eyes wandering to the pink plastic basin filled with black water and two towels. Both equally stained with blood. He would throw out the towels eventually; throw out the stagnant water too. Didn't matter if Linda gave those towels to him.

Suddenly, he had the strangest thought.

He should finish off that cigarette.

Reaching up, he felt around for the ashtray he left the cigarette in.

And when he finally found the cigarette, it was out.

For some reason, that snapped something.

Snatched away the thin veil around him, revealed his nausea and his guilt and his always shaking hands. Ripped it to shreds, tossed it at his feet, and reminded him that it hadn't been Felix Kranken who was friends with Jack Walten, it hadn't been Felix Kranken who laughed and sang along with Molly on her birthday, it had been a carbon copy. He was never a good person, he was a ghost trapped inside a man who died a long time ago. Died the day he strangled the neck of a tequila bottle at some bar edging the border of town.

It was only a matter of time before something like the crash happened again, the hands of the clock ticking away the seconds before Felix Kranken stood up and did something absolutely stupid again. Memories of early days fleeted through his mind, silent faces flipping through his vision like a motion-picture film. Drawing on the school bathroom stalls, taking his first cigarette, his first drink. Report cards, missing assignments, ditching class because he couldn't stand the dull monotony of the classroom.

Felix was having a withdrawal.

Several, in fact, and they'd all been waiting in the shadows, growing and bubbling up like some type of undiscovered plague. Felix blinked at the sound of a knock on his door. Probably Sophie. She knocked once, did it again, more strongly, and then ended the sound in one last feeble rap. Felix would let her. He didn't want to talk, didn't want to act, didn't want to feel. He would come out for dinner. That would be enough.

"Felix?"

He didn't respond, looked back to his book like he was actually reading any of it. Waited until her footsteps trailed away from the door, colorless shadow disintegrating under the door until it was no more. Looked back up, studied the dust particles suspended in bars of sunlight. Imagined he was one of them.

Overexposed photos rested on his walls, lifeless, glaring, scornful. Almost white. Half black. The picture they'd used for Jack's missing poster was one he'd left in the light for a bit too long, let it rest too unevenly and made it too grainy. He knew he should care, he knew he should be caring for the only person left in the Walten family–one who'd been calling him Uncle Felix for god knows how long. He didn't care.

All he felt was guilty coupled with a weird sense of drowning. A strange type of control came with the drink, one that Felix had grown adept to and often used to drown out every last goddamn memory in a grey fog made from the remains of his intoxication.

The time him and Jack had sat on the hills and smoked as Jack showed Felix the ring he planned to give Rosemary, the time Rosemary had let him carry baby Sophie for the first time and laughed when she placed her grubby fingers on his glasses, the time Molly had been born and Jack cried with joy. All gone. The bottle dictated what stayed and what went, and Felix was addicted to the bottle.

He wondered how long it would take Sophie to lash out, to take out all the bottles in his either overstocked or understocked pantry of them and toss them out the window. How long it would take for people to realize he wasn't fit for taking care of her.

He was nothing but a noncommittal shadow, a face among faces that fell away as soon as it got the chance. An uncertain glance, a suggestion of something that could only exist in the walls of his stupidly humid room.

Felix watched the basin. The stagnant water. The flies that had begun to investigate the room. Traced the formatting of the paragraphs against the book in his hand, could only take away blurry black lines and small clumps of faded letters. He closed the book, crawled over to his desk, took the bottle off the top.

Biting off the cork, he took a sip, shuddered at the tepid taste, and put the bottle where it was before his impulsive urge to drown out actual thought came along–didn't plug the cork back in. Carried it with him to bed, snuck under the covers and tried to hide himself from the weight of his mere existence; his past, his present, his future. All swirling in this big, suffocating thing that hunched his shoulders and made his breathing laborious to attempt.

He toyed with the cap, ignoring the way his covers only made him feel warmer–not the bitter, burning warmth he set his shower water to because he was too lazy to wait for it to cool, the slowly-building type of warmth that made his palms clammy and his skin itchy to the smallest of touch. Felix could see inside the basin from where he laid, could see how the water had tinged the towels a faint ruddy color; he needed to wring those out soon.

After a bit, he twirled the cork in his hand, heaved out a sigh, and tossed it towards the door, watching it bounce along the floor and spin to a stop near the leg of his desk. The leg of his desk was nicked–Jack had hit it against the doorway when he was helping Felix move in and simply laughed before towing the rest in. Felix wondered how many lies he'd told Jack at that time. Small, little white ones that festered and grew until they were huge and impossible to ignore.

Eventually, he turned, fiddled with his alarm clock until it was set to nine pm knowing damn well he'd take an extra thirty minutes–not asleep, simply refusing to get up. Refusing to act until he had to. Sophie was used to it by now. Everyone who knew him was.

When Felix would sleep over at Jack's house–and this memory was very indistinct (as all his memories were)–he'd have Edd and Molly's excited faces hovering over him in the mornings; that was the only thing that helped him get up. Their eager ramblings about new assignments and new friends, all the more bitter when Felix realized he'd never hear those again. Didn't deserve to either.

If they weren't there when he woke up on that overstuffed couch, he would swing an arm over his chest and see if he could calculate where the shadows were headed until Jack pressed a coffee cup against the upper part of his torso and smiled down at him. A smile he didn't deserve. Not then, not now.

Now, he would usually wake up before his alarm–no particular reason for it. Maybe the heat or something. He'd let the alarm ring out for ten minutes, take another ten minutes to stare at his wall, then another five to flip around in his covers and stare at the alarm clock on his side. Another five to look at the cracks where ceiling met wall. Another five to stare at nothing, mind under a blank spell until it wasn't.

Felix turned in his bed.

-

the little loop is a bit of a wink wink towards how he feels every day is the same. anyways i will stomp on felix kranken until he is nothing but an ant and carry him around in my pocket thank you for coming to my ted-talk

cannot begin to describe how much i love "the man who sleeps (1974)" that's what this is inspired by go watch it plsplspls