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Percy was sitting on the couch, cold sun kissing his skin and whispering prayers. There was no wind, no cold breath from the open window. Only a very solemn chill throughout his body.
The curtains were still, unmoving, and he was staring at it like a dead man. The morning news threads itself through the apartment, small thumps of pitter patter against the hardwood floor accompanying it, weaving a beautiful pattern of domestic mornings.
Percy looks down at the empty glass in his hand, his little sister appearing on the other side, distorted and twisted, but nowhere near disturbing. He forces a smile and it appears strained and tired; Estelle doesn't know any better.
Tugging on his pants, she babbles. Percy doesn't understand any of it. Not for a few words he was able to make out, anyway. He nods and closes his eyes, like a sad attempt to make his smile look genuine. He ruffles her hair (he always hated when adults dismissed him like that), and she takes it as her cue to leave. It feels like they've rehearsed this a million times.
As she stumbles away, Percy begins dying.
It was 2005 again. He's sitting on his bed back at Yancy Academy, the smell of pine wafting through their dorm room. The sheets felt rough and the bed felt hard, like it was made of soft stone. It was warm yet his bones shook and rattled under his skin.
Beige walls are closing in on him. There's static filling his ears and eyes; it tastes of blue raspberry. The sun wasn't out but the sky makes him cry. His fingers were twitching and his clothes felt like sandpaper. Cobwebs cover his arms and he tries to swat them away, only to feel it again and again, wrapping around him tighter and tighter, his heart getting heavier.
Percy opens his eyes and his back at the apartment. Gleeful chatter echoed from their small kitchen, and gods did he hear them. His heart was brimming with bitter resentment. With no effort to boil it into a steam of envy, he picks up the glass off the floor. (When did he drop it?) It wasn't broken, not even scratched. (He feels blood stain the hardwood floor.)
Bright lights assault him and he feels like he's burning again. He's walking to the refrigerator, stiff and battle-ready, gripping the handle a little harder than he should. His eyes are stormy and his chest is still. He feels his skin fall off his bones like popsicles on a hot summer day and his organs are melting and making a mess in the kitchen. The floor is slick and sickeningly soft and—
“Honey, are you okay?”
“Fine.” Percy tries to loosen his grip before opening the fridge, taking out a bottle of Coke. It feels wrong in his hands.
“Are you sure?” Paul looks concerned and Percy hated it.
His chest feels like the sky and there's ash in his lungs. He remembers the angry red of lava, of the embers at camp, and both stare at him with beady red eyes; He can almost hear the growling and snapping of teeth.
“Yeah.”
He pours himself half a glass, filling the rest with water. Swirling it in the glass, he recalls the Phlegethon, the arai, Akhlys, and it's like he's back there again.
Drinking the watered-down Coke with vigor, he chokes, and it's suddenly all too much.
His hands are shaking and the ground is flesh. The tables are bones and his parents are monsters. He's breathing in poison and choking on his tears and, fuck, he's not in their apartment anymore.
He can't hear their voices, or feel their hands gripping his arms, or his mother's mournful cries. All he knows is that he's running. He's running and running and he remembers what it's like to be one with the sea again; unrestrained and wild, always the calm before the storm.
He blinks and he's running in different shoes. Mismatched green and orange shoes are pounding against the pavement and a familiar aviator jacket is hugging his body in all the wrong ways. Scent of dirt and freshly cut grass overwhelms him and his head aches like someone is hammering a nail in.
Shadows are curling around him and he's back in his childhood bedroom. Smoke and beer rub his throat raw and there's smashed glass littering his bed. It picks at his skin like ants hurriedly eating his corpse while his mother is working late, no doubt coming home at the crack of dawn, smelling like candy.
He's in Alaska again. The earth is fighting its way into his chest, like soldiers running into war. They want to drown him and there's no leg to grasp. It's entering his ears, mouth, and nostrils. He feels it touch his eyes and he wonders how he opened them at all. They bring a gentle sting, but maybe thats because everything else hurts too much. He doesn't know how long he's been there. (Time loses its value to people like him.)
He thinks he tastes grapes, but that doesn't matter when all he can think of is this raging desire to drown, like a moth drawn to fire.
The morning news continues to play in the background, unaware of the panicked calls being made in the next room. Unsure brown and so, so innocent eyes stare at the spilled Cherry Cola on the ground. Ants are gathering around it.