𝚙𝚊𝚒𝚗𝚝 ペイント 𝚕𝚎𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚛𝚍𝚘 𝚡 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚛

chapter two: everything is NOT fine! I lied!

     You walked into the hallway, the door slamming shut behind you. A sense of finality, cutting yourself off from whatever had happened outside. Retracting your steps you pressed your back into the door. You closed your eyes, splaying your gloved hands against the cold metal, allowing your head to fall backwards until it settled against the door. In two quick motions, you tore the gloves off your hands, stuffing them unceremoniously into the pocket of your jacket. You pressed your sweaty palms against the cool wood, feeling the cold of the night penetrate through. In these moments of peace, safe inside the comforting restaurant you worked in, you began to reflect on what on God's green earth had just happened back in that alleyway.

    Speaking of green... Your mind wondered in a coy voice of its own, bringing back images of what you had just seen a minute ago. It had been a while since such a striking color had made such an impact on your mind. You wondered how much time it would take for you to create the exact shade in your bedroom. It wasn't just green, it was a shade of fern, which meant a bit of yellow, a bit of blue, like the... things eyes. Even in the shadows of the alleyway, the sickly yellow lights from the street, its colors were striking. It was unfortunate that the creature was covered in blood.

    Your eyes fluttered open, staring at the white ceiling. Splattered paint created bumps along its texture, mysterious stains from the neighbors above, some new, some years old. You focused on finding familiar shapes and patterns in the mess above you, as your throat started to tighten. It made it harder to swallow. Whatever that thing was outside, you had left it to die. Obviously it was injured, this... animal? Turtle? It had to be a turtle, unless it was an alien you had stumbled across. What did you even know of mutants anyway? You had been taught that they were freaks of nature, abominations, monsters, but this one had kind eyes. Eerily human. Blue. Full of pain, begging for you to help; its stare had followed you from the alley.

    You squeezed your eyes shut, trying to push away its stare, to drag the dark recesses of your mind to cover its eyes. To no avail. You clenched your teeth, pressing the ends of your palms into your eyelids, rubbing them to try and banish away what was tormenting your mind. "You're hallucinating." You scolded yourself in an undertone, giving your head a shake. Your imagination always seemed to relish in running wild, and now, it seemed determined to gaslight you. Yes, that was a turtle, a humanoid one at best, standing on two legs with much better hand coordination then you could dream of. How quickly had it caught your broom? Where on earth could it have gained such fast reflexes? It was as if you had just stepped through an invisible portal into some popular cartoon show with a hyper realistic creature, begging for help with his luminescent eyes.

    And why was this guy so muscular?

    You jerked forward, straightening against the door. You tilted your head forward, squeezing your eyes shut, scrunching up your nose and blinked, once, twice, staring down at your hands. Tiny dots of yellow, practically freckles, stained your skin— from what? Who knew. Yaki had always joked about how the mysterious yellow sludge that always seemed to ooze out of the bags were the slime remains of some sort of horribly experimented on mutant. It was a dark, horrible joke, and you didn't like them. Especially with how mutants were becoming a recurring issue in the news nowadays. You didn't like to think about them. It had been one of the reasons you had been wary about moving to New York City in the first place. A place full of strange occurrences, from monsters to mutants, from aliens to a man in a scary metal suit. Sure, things had been quiet these last few years, but every day you went to work worrying. What if this was the day a stray bullet got stuck in your head while you were serving tables? What if you were kidnapped while throwing away trash bags? What if you took the wrong turn on the way to the grocery store and got robbed?

    You frowned at your hands, Sukiyaki's joke ringing in your head, dancing around the blue eyes of that turtle. You were sure that when she had made that joke, she certainly hadn't had in mind the mutant you had just abandoned to die.