"Junior is an actor, a boy band member, a REPORTER, he goes to school!! someone let this kid just take a nap!! get some rest asparagus child, you can’t just keep burning the candles at both ends!!!" (From Scooter bc I forgot I had his blog???)
"Do you think I haven't tried?" Mom groaned, exasperated. "He doesn't listen to me! He's a loose canon!"
"Aye, ye ever heard of the Scared Straight program?" Scooter asked. "Ye frame him for a crime, say... murder. And ye get him arrested. The lad'll settle down once he's behind bars. And all yer problems'll be solved lickety-split."
"Oh, no. I don't know if I could do that to my boy." She paused. "Have you ever been?"
“Framed for a murder and arrested? Well, you know that Weird Prince…?”
He stopped. No, it wasn’t time to talk about that yet. He still hadn’t figured out who really was responsible.
“He’d thank y’for it. Probably’d get a cool tattoo in prison. Join a gang.”
Mom lowered her voice. "What about the weird Prince?" Her curiosity would kill her, plus, she didn't dare think about her son in prison any more than she already had.
“A while back,” Scooter said in a hushed voice, “the weird Prince was murdered. Everyone claimed to have done it, so no leads were possible to narrow down. I hadn’t been around then. No. I came back after. I found I had been replaced by an onion with a badge. A cop who existed, who suddenly then had not. Nobody remembered him. All traces vanished. But I found his board. The evidence. It traced back… to me. But it cannae have been. I’d been gone. Swallowed by the darkness. And because I wasnae an asparagus, nobody even looked for me. Aye, nobody remembered the Onion, but they saw the crimes linked to me. I was arrested. But then no other cops applied for m’job, so… they let me go. We have a terrible prison system here.”
Mom listened intently. "Yes... yes, I think I remember hearing about him now." She took a moment. "What was it like? The darkness."
“It was… so dark, that I felt the darkness through me. It was cold. Damp - nae, wet. Endless. Like a void. Like I had no body, and yet, I felt everything, and also nothing. I remember fear like I’ve never felt, and then… after a time? A peace. Peace that I’d never have again. I wasnae scared anymore. I was alone, and long ago had my thoughts vanished, as if I had forgotten how to think. I was asleep in a way I was awake to experience. It was a dark didnae make sense. Some restless nights, I miss it.”
