Felixentric

Scene 22: Dreams and Other Things That Die

He wished for a way to unsharpen the needles. There should have been a way to refill his veins with the blood they oh so dearly deserved. Something that would turn his heartbeat back on. Something that would unbreak who knows how many bones or unpop all the blood vessels that caused the hemorrhages around his irises.

Felix ran down the streets, but he was motionless. Where are you? Tears were streaming down his face. He ran on a continuum of street, moving under him like a treadmill.

But he knew exactly where he was. There was a glow over the treetops, so bright that it looked like the sun was coming up out of the horizon even at eleven at night. People were yelling and, as he grew nearer, the fire came into view. It licked the trees around, but only a few caught fire.

People were running from the laboratory, charred and terrified.

When he got close enough, he saw who he was looking for, but charging did him no good. There was a crowd of people - police officers, firemen, but mostly scientists - holding him back. The authorities told him to get away from the flames. The scientists told him to get away from the creature in the middle of their pack. "Get back! Get away from him! He's dangerous."

"No!" Felix screamed, reaching out to the "dangerous" being, trapped somewhere deep in the crowd. Hale reached back, his face covered by other bodies, but his arm outstretched and clawing for Felix's grip.

"Please!" Felix yelled. "I need to help him! Let him go!" But the people continued to grab at the figure in the center, pulling him back and forcing him down. "You're hurting him. Stop!"

Hale was proof that citizens of Jupiter had seen a banefade before; they just hadn't known it. Not having known what a banefade looked like, they only thought he'd been a goblin or alien. But the scientists surely knew what he was.

Especially when he morphed outside of their laboratory, probably trying to up his strength with the banefade form and break loose. His green eyes were glowing in the cave of scientists hunching over him.

He was wearing the blue tweed jacket with white stripes on the collar and wrist cuffs, though, blood was splattered all over it at this time. Even his copper rings were drenched in blood, from his hands touching the areas of his gut where they had stabbed him. And his glasses, broken on one side, were falling off his face. His iconic look was all wrong. Where had the protegee child gone? Where was his confidence and the light behind his soul?

He'd been chopped down like a tree.

Shining objects glinted in Felix's vision, as multiple humans grabbed his arms and tried dragging him away. Needles were embedded in Hale's back. Machines were connected to wire, connected to his wrists.

And then they pushed Felix out of the circle. Felix punched; he kicked, but he could no longer see him. The last of the brother he ever saw was a large pool of his glowing blood around the crowd's feet.

Felix's heart dropped when the screams stopped.

Felix was dragged backwards, all the way across the field. He trashed, but was only getting weaker. Fire burned up the night, taking over the upper levels of the laboratory and crumbling it to the ground.

Glowing eyes, going dark.

Fire, rising through the treetops, but not enough to burn the entire forest down.

Pavement.

Watering the cracks, with neon liquid.

Hale disappeared after Felix passed out. No body. They probably transported the body to a new lab and continued tests on his carcass.

This was when Felix woke up. He gasped and grabbed at the air above his face, as if able to catch it in the palms of his hands and replace it directly in his failing lungs.

Hale was dead.

At maximum volume, he couldn't help thinking, If I were this God I keep hearing about, I'd have the power to save my brother. Why didn't He?