Felixentric

Scene 31

When Felix got home, he didn't know if it was closer to three am or six am, but it was very late or very early and Quinn was wide awake. Sitting on the couch, with one lamp on and a look of discontent plastered across his face.

"Where was I? I know, I know!" Felix threw his hands up as Quinn jumped up from the couch.

"I was-."

"So worried. I get it."

His face went red, like all the other times they argued. First, Quinn was supposed to get pissed and then scream and scream at the walls and his bedroom and Felix's idiocy. But then he shook his head. His ears got redder and his cheeks didn't fade, but the anger didn't happen like that. He still looked like he was about to explode like a bomb, but his voice faltered. "Are you okay?" Quinn was giving up too quickly - too tired and too annoyed.

"I fucked my life up today, in four different ways." Felix said this, but he also didn't feel so anxious anymore. He felt better, knowing Hale was alive and that he didn't have to worry about representing psychology anymore.

Quinn tensed up at Felix cursing.

"And are you still sick?"

Quinn's eyes looked heavy. "I'm fine." But as Felix looked closer, he could see an outline of bruises and cuts around Quinn's face, like someone had taken a knife and stabbed in a circle around Quinn's entire face - above his forehead and through his temples and on his chin.

But there were also new bruises everywhere on his face, so they blended together and Felix's stomach wrenched.

"Are you still getting into street fights?"

Quinn looked away and nodded.

Felix stared for a moment and then walked into Quinn's bedroom to get to the bathroom.

Inside, he closed the door tightly and threw off his shoes. Realizing that they were covered in sludge, he worried for a moment that he'd dragged it all in like a wet dog. But he only took a deep breath and stepped in the shower. With his clothes still on, he flipped on the hot water and let his shoulders relax. Slowly, he peeled off his shoes and his sweater and his gloves and his socks... He stood a while and watched it all run down the drain, then shut off the water.

Clean as a pair of shined shoes, he wrapped a towel around his waist and walked back into Quinn's room. On his way to the laundry machine, Felix walked past Quinn - standing in the kitchenette and slicing something with a large knife. They didn't make eye contact and Quinn didn't speak up.

With clothes in hand and the bedroom, technically to himself, Felix closed the door and redressed. He cleaned the sopping pair from the bottom of the tub and hug his shoes off the fire escape to dry.

And then, feeling like a new person, he piped up his ears. Pinpointing the click, click, click of the knife on the cutting board, he stalked back into the bathroom and locked it tightly behind him.

In a moment, he was under the sink, pulling out four screws with his finger nails. A board covered up an area just behind the pipes and was big enough for a Felix-sized person to sit inside, but - recently - the room had been overtaken. Inside, pyramids of jars lit up and glittered. A few held one or two glowing marbles of light while some held up to fifty.

He could see the lights flickering on his cheeks and nose.

First, he shook his head. "I'm sorry," was all he whispered to them. And then, "I'll make it better." It was all he had to say.

Just as quickly as it had come off, he replaced the board and backed out of the sink.

For good measures, he flushed the toilet and washed his hands, then peaked out of the bathroom door.

The kitchenette light was still on, but the cutting had ceased. Instead, an ugly, scraping noise was in effect and shadows danced along the floor of the living room.

On his way out, Felix felt a rough chill. To the other side of the room, he noticed that the window to the fire escape was wide open. Of course, he'd just went out to hang up his sludged sneakers, but someone so delicate to the cold would have surely remembered to close it, right? But he didn't question it aloud. He just shut it tightly and flipped the brass lock.

And then he realized he'd left the bathroom light on. Going mad, am I? He crossed the room again and noticed Quinn's shadow cross the light from the bedroom door. He waited for Quinn to say something, but nothing happened. He turned around to see that the room was empty. "Quinn?"

Another scraping came from the kitchen.

He came closer to the doorway, peeking into the kitchenette where a light over the counter remained on and a lonely knife sat by a half-cut cucumber. "Hello?" He felt the air shift from behind him. He flicked his head around, readying himself for Quinn to come jumping out from under the bed or closet.

But, instead he saw a shadow. Not a person or a form, but something huge and cloud-like. It was the depths of the ocean in the form of a beast, and all it did was hide behind the open door of the closet.

Felix shuffled forward, reaching out to it with a palm like hammer - fist balled up and ready to smack whatever came screeching out at him.

His most hopeful thought was to keep thinking it was only Quinn, but only someone without a brain would be able to imagine a six foot, lanky boy taking the shape of something eight by three.

As he came closer, he began to feel stupider and stupider. The audience knew he was screwed, so why didn't he just walk away? Did he really need to know what was in there? He assured himself that if an intruder were there and swiped something of Quinn's... Felix was as much a dead man for doing nothing as the robber was for stealing.

"Get out of here!" Felix screamed at the door. Not a stir came through the apartment floor. Even Felix stopped just to the side of the door, a few steps away to seeing the entirety of the closet. He was quiet if even breathing. "I said get out!" he commanded again.

One second.

Two seconds.

Two minutes.

A creak came from the closet and he stumbled back...

And then charged forward, pulling back his fist to throw down. But no one was in the corner. Rather a small wad of spiderwebs hung limply between the adjoining walls. But... in the very side of his eye he saw a mass, soon realized to be a hand coming down to his body. He felt it land on his left shoulder, like a sack of flour falling from the roof of a building. Dark blue claws, about as long as pencils, enclosed his entire shoulder and tapped at the skin where his heart was.

He heard the grunts of breath right above his head and could imagine teeth as taloned as the fingers coming down on his skull.

Felix's own scream tore through the air as he fell to the floor and pushed himself into the spiderwebbed corner. But as he turned, there was no beast.

"Felix?" Quinn's voice came from the kitchenette, as if he'd been there all along.

Through dizzy eyes, he saw Quinn rush in and then his vision go blank other than the colors black and blue.