Sunny couldn't recall when he last felt good—genuinely good, without the use of heroin or jerking off to diaper fetish pics on Deviantart and shoving cans of Del Monte up his rear (don't ask). Better yet, why did it matter if he felt genuinely good? What difference would it make? It wouldn't last, nor would it fill his hollowed-out soul. His childhood friend and family were all either dead or missing (thanks in no small part to you, my friend—best not to think about that last one ,Sunny, or you'll feel guilt for what you did), he was thirty years old and without any idea of where he wanted to go in his life—hell, he'd dropped out of college when he learned the cancer had taken his dad—the only person he had left. He did not weep when learning of his mom's death, but his dad had been the opposite of that. It was through his father that Sunny had partly gotten his nickname.
His dad had never been particularly assertive, especially when it came to calling out Mom's abuses of Sunny and his two sisters, but when his mom died, Sunny and his dad would spend the afternoon watering the pitcher plants and the sundews in their garden. Dad had insisted on a "no devices" policy, at which Sunny had initially been pissed, but later came to appreciate this strict policy, as he would end up being glued to a screen, most of the time with a Brazzers logo in the bottom corner.
Sunny soon became uneasy, sitting at the bus stop just on the edge of Benjamin County and ready to haul ass to San Mateo County.
Where the hell is the bus, he thought, what's taking so long?
Every minute that passed multiplied Sunny's eagerness to beat it. It wasn't just the fact that he was essentially waiting to be caught (Why haven't they caught up to me yet? This almost seems too perfect). No, what was bothering him was this strange feeling in his gut. Despite having never seen this bus stop before in his life, Sunny thought he had perhaps seen it in a dream. The feeling soon coalesced and fused with his weariness of the police, forming some unspeakable brew of vague horror and actual mortal terror. He felt he'd become the hand-creatures from that Stephen King short story he'd read, I Am the Doorway, as if the world around him looked normal and acceptable to others, but was nightmarish and ominous to him.
It was miraculous they hadn't caught him. Almost fifteen years had passed and they still hadn't caught him after what he'd done to the boy whose name he could not recall at this moment. He had scored at the local fair. It wasn't hard. He used to be a guitarman (though not that great at it), and in places like county fairs, you can find smack if you know where to find it. Looking to his left, there were a million posters, all old and tattered, plastered to the glass pane of the bus stop. The only light for a mile was the single streetlamp right above him, ominous in its illumination amidst darkness that swam around him. The feeling he got at that moment was akin to when he had broken into Dresden High (After the WW2 Unit in American History, I remember the edgelords in my class would make bombing jokes about the school, the same edgelords who were at the mercy of the same kids who beat me senseless, the bullies doing it for fun), as a freshman, to steal some heroin that was purportedly kept in one of the faculty offices. By day, places like Dresden and this Bus stop were packed with people. The unease came from being in a place that should be bustling, but was dead silent. Almost like something was watching you, but not revealing itself, choosing instead to drive you mad though deafening silence. Sunny tried to shake this thought from his head, looking to drown it out by reading the boring posters on his left. A lot of them were out of date, but had not been cleaned up by the city. One was an ad for the annual family-run Italian Circus, reading "TICKET SALES START OCTOBER 13TH, 2015!!! BE QUICK 'CUZ THEY'RE IN SHORT SUPPLY!!!" Sunny was reminded of when Mom was still alive, and Dad had taken him to that same circus when Sunny was still in eighth grade. That trip had been more to escape her than to be father-and-son activity.
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Sundew
Horror*Placeholder teSunny Swanson has had a rough go in life. A drifter and a heroin addict, he waits one night for a bus to skip town. However, after surviving an accidental overdose while waiting for his ride, he wakes up in a hospital bed. Sunny plots...
