@midjin
Jessica sat on the ground in the middle of the foreign city, pulling her knees up to her chest. She bit her lip and looked around with wide eyes. She had bitten her bottom lip so hard that she could already taste the copper of her blood filling her mouth. She was shaking, she noticed when she raised her hands. She clenched her hands into fists and held them to her chest, trying to calm herself down.
It was cruel. Being pulled from one drastic situation into another one. She didn’t even have the chance for her wounds to heal before this started– She didn’t even think she made it out of the police station.
She stayed in her place on the ground for a few more minutes, ignoring the looks she was getting from the others around her. They didn’t matter. All that mattered was finding her friends. If she was here, they had to be there too. She carefully stood, having to take a moment to get steady on her legs. She looked through the crowd, getting on her tiptoes.
“Matt? Sam..? Mike? Are you there?”
She called out weakly, her throat still raw from screaming so much up at Blackwood.
It’s been less than a month since his arrival. Transitioning into this lifestyle is still difficult for him with all things considered. He has no place to really call his own, but he’s managed somewhere to sleep, shower, and eat; it’s something, and to top it off he’s met people like him that his old friends would think are dangerous. Namely, Nathan Prescott. A loud boy who thinks with his heart and talks with his fists – Josh likes him the most, he thinks. There’s something ‘ugly’ in Nathan that’s inside Josh. A parasite infecting two different bodies, with two different results.
As unlikely as finding anything of substance was to him when he arrived, seeing someone he knew from ‘before’ was out of the question. It didn’t cross his mind at all... until today. She was just sitting there, covered in blood and bruises and dirt. The crowd seamlessly parts around her – it looks so unreal that he second guesses whether it is or not. Jess shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t look like that. Mike should be standing next to her with that cheeky asshole grin he always wears. They should be laughing and talking, but she looks ready to break with a strong gust of wind.
He pushes one – two, three.. four people out of his way, weaving against the flow of ‘blanks’ that never seem to react to anything, “Jess?” He calls, hesitant. It’s got to be her. It’s got to be REAL. There’s no fucking way this isn’t real. The space between them continues to shrink. “Jess!” Louder, clearer. His pace falters and slows as he comes up within arms length of her. It’s worse than he thought. The wounds, the look of desperate confusion, did he..? “What.. what happened to you? How – what are you doing here?” That was a stupid question. Did anyone know what they were doing ‘here’. “Did.. do you know what happened? Jesus..” ‘You look awful’ goes unspoken. He looked infinitely worse even still.
He wanted revenge and it looks like he got it, but it didn’t feel like he won anything.










