Human Nature [PARKER]

PART ONE

[ word count: 1383 ]

[ INTRO | WEIRD SCIENCE ]

SCREAMING, THAT'S ALL ALISON REMEMBERED HEARING. She could remember the ringing in her ears as someone screamed, a sound that came out as a cry of despair, helplessness and pain. She could feel her heart break into pieces before she realized that it was her scream that replayed in her head.

Flashing lights, it's what she remembered seeing before she blacked out. The light kept fading in and out as if she was being moved, or maybe it was moving? It kept changing, from blinking white lights to red and blue then a blinding stream of white light.

Pain, that was what she felt all throughout her body. Alison felt like she couldn't move without every bone in her body screaming. When her eyes opened and she was temporarily blinded, she tried to sit up. But before she could properly do so she felt her limbs give out underneath her. Her elbows seemed to creak and groan as she pushed herself up. She winced when she was forced to lay back down, alerting the men in the room of her conscious presence. Peter, Alison's best friend, was the first one at her side. He almost leaped to her side, kneeling beside her with her fragile left hand in his hands. "Hey," he greeted quietly, his lips brushing over her knuckles. "How do you feel kid?"

Alison groaned, closing her eyes tightly due to the harsh white lights of the hospital room. "Peter," she asked, confused as to why she was there wherever there was. It sure as hell wasn't her room, she deducted while grasping at the sheets. They weren't as soft as hers were, nor Peter's. These sheets were rough, and they smelt old not like Alison's which smelt like lavender. "Where are we," she asked him as her eyes started to become adjusted to the lights. She opened her eyes slowly, the first thing she saw being Peter's face. The familiarity almost made her smile then she remembered how much pain she was in.

"You're in the hospital," another voice answered. Alison's eyebrows furrowed as she shifted her gaze to the foot of the bed, she saw her father with almost a distressed look on his face. He looked different, he had bags under his red eyes — which he never had, surprising considering how much he worked —, his tie had been loosened, and his salt and pepper hair was pointing in all different directions making him resemble a mad scientist. Something was wrong. He never looked like this. Alison's father, Cristofer ran a hand through his hair in an attempt to make it look somewhat decent after noticing his daughter looking. He sighed heavily, "Peter could you give us a minute?"

Peter, aware of the news he was about to deliver to Alison, nodded quickly. At this point he felt worse than he did at the beginning. When Cristofer told Peter about what happened to the older man's wife, Peter was devastated. He didn't even want to begin to imagine Alison's reaction. He wanted to stay, he wanted to hold his best friend while her father told her the bad news. But he knew he had to give the Rivera's their space, especially now. So he stood up from his position and gave Alison one last kiss on the forehead before leaving the room. Alison stared at her father, confused.

She looked down at her hands, staring down at her bandaged hands and clamping down on her bottom lip — which she quickly found out was broken — in thought. What happened to her? Did she get into a fight? Did she cut her hands on glass, did she fall out of a collapsing building? Cristofer sat to the girl's left, and placed his hand on her leg softly as if he was afraid of breaking her. "Honey, I have some news," he started causing Alison to look over at him, "and you're not going to like it," Cristofer sighed and looked down at his shoes. He blinked back tears, refusing to look weak in front of his daughter, his precious, little girl. Alison slowly inched toward her father, confused and feeling lost. Cristofer sniffled, wiping away tears and running his hand over his face. He shifted, turning to look at his daughter. It was then when she saw the unshed tears in his eyes and Alison could feel her heart simultaneously beating faster against her ribcage and breaking into pieces. Alison had never seen her father cry nor with tears in his eyes. It was a rare sight, her father was a tough man it took the most horrible things to make him look the way he did now. She had seen her father with disheveled clothes and hair, but never tears. Meaning that whatever happened was one of the most horrible things Cristofer had witnessed, and Alison had a feeling that that horrible thing had something to do as to why she was currently laying on a hospital bed in pain. "Ali you were in an accident," he informed her and all of a sudden, Alison had to shut her eyes as she was bombarded with memories.

When the Christmas break started, Alison was eager to learn more about her parents' career so she applied for an internship at Horizon Labs, their workplace. Her mother worked as a botanist while her father worked as a neurologist, and since she found her mother's work more interesting than her father's, she signed up to work alongside her. She remembered how excited she was, the little kid inside her head jumping up and down in glee. At first everything had gone perfectly, Alison seemed to had made acquaintances with a few employees and everyone was treating her nicely. She hadn't fallen down nor embarrassed herself yet, so everything was fine in her opinion. Then her mother left her alone, after that everything went to shit. She didn't really remember much, but she remembered enough. She could remember how she got curious about a new plant that Horizon Labs had discovered that could heal anything. She remembered how she accidentally spilled a whole container filled with whatever chemical was inside onto the miraculous plant. She remembered the gas and how its toxic fumes filled up her lungs making them feeling like they were burning. She remembered the pain. But one thing stood out to her: a voice. Amidst all the chaos and the pain she kept hearing a voice yelling out her name.

Then she could clearly remember the voice. Her eyes widened at the realization, it was her mother.

As it dawned on her that Eliza wasn't in the room with her dad, Alison had to refrain herself from going into a frenzy. "Mom, is she okay," she asked, her heartbeat rising rapidly. The beeping of the EKG machine started to annoy Alison and she stopped herself before she ripped it out of the outlet. All of her thoughts about the annoying contraption flew out the window, however, when she took a look at her father. He seemed broken, even worse than before. It made Alison furrow her eyebrows, "Dad where's Mom," she tried again. Cristofer stayed quiet and Alison watched as a teardrop fell onto his trousers. It made her heart drop to her stomach, her throat feeling dry as the worst thoughts entered her mind.

"Alison," he began, pausing momentarily to swallow the lump in his throat. "Your mother was the one who found you. She didn't—," his voice broke and Alison all of a sudden felt like her world was falling apart. She feared for the words that were to come out of his mouth to be the ones she didn't want to hear. "They couldn't find her body, Alison," he started choking on his sobs and Alison felt her heart break in two. "She's gone Alison."

Alison didn't remember much after the three words were spoken. All she remembered was the tears streaming down her face and the feeling of her chest aching. It hurt worse than when she failed a math test, it hurt more than when she inhaled the smoke from the lab incident, it hurt even more than all of her joints that were screaming in agony. It hurt, badly.

Mom's dead, and it's all my fault.