Felixentric

Scene 1

Felix Ruby-Hohl only left his home in the last four years to a) take walks, b) talk with forest animals, and c) suck the souls out of human beings.
But this cold and murky night was a little different than any other, because Felix couldn't stay in his secluded, little world forever.
Janette's pleas had finally gotten to him. "Meet new people," she'd said, breaking his spine into chills. But she'd begged long and hard enough for him to finally say, "Fine! Fine! Stop asking before you give me an aneurysm!"
He didn't actually know what an aneurysm was, but Janette had used the expression around him more than enough times to learn that it wasn't something good.
Felix's night had started or ended - a debatable clause - with a the drinking party in an abandoned factory. The outside of the factory was lit with giant, stadium-sized lights. They flickered over a grassy but muddy field, used as a makeshift parking lot to host milling teenagers and unorganized cars. Around the field's circumference, monstrous trees grew up and up and up, eventually hunching over the teenagers. They were even taller than the huge "stadium" light posts.
The factory had blown out windows and cracked cement for walls. The party rambled through it, with bright colored lights on the inside walls and voices rising as the alcohol intake did the same.
So there Felix was, in the middle of the night, itching to go back home to start a sketch for another of his prodigal, acrylic paintings. He was, instead, standing in a possibly fatal moment outside of the factory doors with a meatheaded boy and a parasitic crowd that screamed for either boys to "throw a punch already!"
"It was an accident," Felix tried to explain, but the kid didn't take it. It was, in fact an accident that Felix had thrown the kid in the mud after having beer dumped on his shoulder; it just didn't look like it.
Afterward, the kid, with his thick arms and sweaty skin, first tried grappling Felix to the ground.
"Don't touch me," Felix hissed at him as he pushed the kid away. In the need to escape, he was shaking like a dog with fleas. His skin crawled and his hands were growing clammy.
"I'll touch you whenever and however I please," the boy spat back, with a mouthful of parking lot sludge. His gaze locked into Felix's. "Isn't this just what you wanted? Push a guy down; you obviously wanted a brawl."
But this was just the opposite of what Felix wanted, not just at the party, but in his lifetime. His mind screamed the word pacifism!
What a ditzy word.
What a ditzy, but brave word. Brave, especially as Felix stood there, with his fists still raised in defense. He told himself to put them down - that he wouldn't punch even for the sake of saving himself - but gulped at the idea of getting knocked upside the temple.
Because Felix might have been talented at sucking human souls right out of their bodies, but he wasn't very good at hurting people in the physical way. In fact, sucking human souls was actually quite peaceful on pain. The teeth dig into your face for a few seconds, but your soul is preserved before the blood spills out. By then, it doesn't hurt because there's no consciousness left to do so.
It was easy, too! Felix would just open the paranormal vacuum at the end of his left hand, currently covered by a thick and black leather glove, and latch onto any human face. Take the soul out. Put it in his pocket, in a jar, or on the kitchen counter. The end.
But getting into a fist fight? That would be neither painless nor easy.
The meatheaded kid spurred Felix on. "The city hermit finally comes out of his shell for a little adrenaline? Why so scared?" He began to imitate a chicken, in the raunchy drunken way where he tripped over his own feet. His actions were so out of his right mind, he mirrored the IQ of a chicken all the same.
Felix protested. Maybe living in seclusion in woods was a bit introverted and frowned upon by the rest of Jupiter City, but he wasn't as embarrassed as the kid was making it out to be. Felix started to speak up. "I'm not gonna-." hurt you?
A flash of the boy's fist shot through Felix's view, hitting his nose with a crack! Felix's head snapped back and his eyes hit the sky and strikes of a lightning-like sensation shot up his nasal cavity.
The crowd hadn't cheered so loudly until that moment.
By buckets, Felix thought in his own form of cursing. If I could just suck your soul, instead of play a silly game, this would be all over. But not in front of so many people. He wouldn't do it in front of anyone who could get away from him.
He tried again with pacifism! even though blood was rushing down his face and he wanted to scream instead. "I'm not planning on hurting you."
At this point, the bully was bouncing with questionable balance, from foot to foot, with his hands closed by his cheeks. He tried to punch again, but Felix snatched his arm out of the air.
There was no way Felix would let himself get hit like that again. With his other hand, he closed his grip around the wrist. It was like time had stopped. The moment was celestial. When the guy's muscles tightened, Felix twisted the wrist and swiped the boy's feet out from under him. The boy crashed into the mud. Felix pinned him with his bottom to his chest and dug his Converse into his wrists.
Defense, he told himself. No more than defense.
Janette called out from somewhere in the crowd, high pitched and confused. "Felix?" He spun his head in circles until he found her. She was staring at the bully's shoulders wrenching into the dirt. She bit her lip and took a step forward, then a step back, like she wanted to help but couldn't draw a map on how.
"Janette!" he called back. "It wasn't my fault!" It was kind of his fault.
"Get off me!" the boy yelled.
What was there to do? If he got up, the guy would attack again. If he punched, he wouldn't be Felix Ruby-Hohl anymore. He'd be another meatheaded idiot.
"Just get off of him and finish it," someone yelled.
"I want a fight!"
"Get it over with!"
The voices continued until a strong, but less jeering, voice came through. "I get it," the male voice said, quieting the others. A tall boy in a thick, leather jacket had made his way to the inside of the circle, just above Felix and the bully. His hair was flaming red and tall with product. It was someone Felix hadn't seen before, both as a person and as a personality.
Why had the crowd gone mute at the sight of him? A slick handgun hung in front of Felix's forehead, its muzzle pointed down at the bully on the ground.
The bully shut his mouth and stared up at it.
Felix's heart pounded. He'd never been so close to a gun. In fact, he hadn't seen one in real life before then and he certainly hadn't seen one pointed at someone else.
"He doesn't want trouble, man," the redhead said to the bully. "He wants it to be over, so when he lets you up, you gotta go home."
The bully's face hardened in one moment and then spat at him the next. His hands turned to fists, though still in the mud. He said, "If he doesn't want trouble, then he won't let you shoot."
"Putting a bullet through a ruffian's brain ain't no trouble, mister. It's community service." There was no hesitation.
The bully's teeth clenched.
The crowd began speaking again, in a buzzing mumble. Which would leave the crowd more worried? a) The bully walking away and leaving them entertainmentless, other than the average drinking and dancing? Or b) about who would call the police and paramedics to an underage party, if he got shot? Because someone would have to and, by the end of the night, they would all be in trouble.
"Get up."
Felix's stare slid against the side of the gun.
"I said, 'Get up!'" Was he talking to Felix or the bully?
Felix snapped out of his daze, his eyes piercing into the redhead's. Buckets. Felix scrambled up from the cement, his feet coming loose from the bully's arms, with winces and grunts. He stepped back, almost tripping over Janette, in attempts to move away.
Janette grabbed his arms, obviously to keep him balanced, but even when he was secure, she didn't let go. Her features were solemn and intense on the two boys left in the circle.
The bully stood up, staring down at the swamp on his jeans and then brushing at them, as if dirty palms could clean dirty fabric. The redhead was still pointing the gun at his hairline. His eyebrows knit; he seemed to realize he couldn't get to the chest of gold without fighting the dragon.
The bully could have said something in retaliation or fought back, but in a matter of seconds, he was racing away from the parking lot, through the line of trees that lead to the highway that lead to the city. Out of sight.
The crowd dissipated so quickly that Felix misjudged the scene as moving in a fast forward. Seconds later, the edgy, jacket guy; Janette; and Felix were left standing alone with each other in the sludge.
Janette's eyebrows crumpled, but she only stuttered.
"Why did you help me?" It was obvious that this was the right question to ask when Red didn't leave.
The guy wiped the nuzzle on his jacket, making Felix's throat tighten as if he might accidentally pull the trigger on himself. "I didn't. It was for myself," he said, catching Felix's eye. "But the reason it wasn't loaded? Well, that's another animal." He pulled the gun apart in a motion Felix didn't catch. There was nothing in the magazine but outer space.
Felix expected more from him. He expected the kid to explain himself, in the least. He expected anything more from him than what he'd gotten, because - after the moment it took to refasten the gun to his belt - the kid wandered away and back into the factory doors.
A cold chill plunged through Felix's stomach.
Felix jolted forward, about to run up to him and demand more.
Janette's voice halted him. "Felix-."
People raged on with the noise of mashed music. Green and blue and the occasional red lights flickered on and off from the windows, empty of panes and full of growing foliage, and people danced, speaking in yells.
He tensed and screamed, "I just want to go home! Is that so much to ask for?"
But, then again, he wasn't ready to go home just yet. The ginger had made a scene, questioned Felix's masculinity, and went several conversational loopholes out of his way just to be mysterious. Hence not introducing himself after saving Felix's ass and pointing a gun at someone's head to do so.
It was as if this young man wanted Felix to seek him out for a better statement on the situation.
If that's what he wanted, it was working.