Chapter Text
Pain.
He’s Always in pain. Since he awoke under the red sky, he’s felt pain. Sometimes the pain is all consuming, like a starving dog that always takes and never relents until it's full. Other times the physical pain is nulled by the mental pain. The pain of betrayal and anger that overrides his body and turns him into a puppet for its whims. He doesn't like to think about his life before the creatures with sharp mouths. Would it be calm and joyful or painful in its own way?
At least now he has a routine. He can hide to avoid creatures stronger than he, run when hiding doesn’t work. Running is something so familiar to the boy, he may not remember why, but he's very good at it. However when he chooses to run instead of the silly choice to fight the creatures. He feels an emotion he doesn’t like very much, sadness. Why he feels sad for his continued survival the boy doesn’t know. And the boy has more important matters to attend to than to figure out why. Food is easy to find in the form of roots and packaged goods. Water, he finds in crinkly bottles that he must quickly scarf before his throat gets to dry and crackly. The one time he took the bottle with him, the sounds attracted flying creatures that sent such bursts of fear through him, he thought his heart was ripping its way through his chest and lungs. He sat still in panic, trying to push his heart back into its cage and air back into his lungs for so long. He made a note to avoid any form of sound being on him that could alert the creatures after this.
He remembers flashes of a life without the omnipresent pain. A boy with a drum set tapping to an unknown beat. An older man in the kitchen humming while cooking pancakes for the boy to eat. A kind woman holding the boy with familiar warmth, smiling at him with all her heart held in her eyes. He Always looks younger in these memories, but that’s okay. When he tries to think more recently his head shrinks in pain. Thumping like a hammer punishing him before the gods, berating him for daring to break free of their molds. After a while the boy decided it wasn’t worth the curiosity to learn things he knows he views as important but has still forgotten. Naturally, if his body is punishing him for trying to learn, it should stay forgotten. His brain lets him remember the good things and if the memory’s closer to his age were not good, he sees why he shouldn’t remember.
Unfortunately, while in his waking moments his brain may be able to protect him. It appears that by sleeping his mind's power dwindles. Flashes of a group of children glancing at him. Side eyed looks by a young man with cool hair. A woman with a gun and another close by. A child with curly hair and a cap, one throwing a ball into a basket. Another with strange orange hair glaring at him. They all join his personal hell with the snapping body of a kind girl in a strange uniform. Another, a young man over a lake. And finally a third in the form of himself, being7 feasted on by those cruel flying creatures, he labeled them clickers due to the sounds they made to communicate around him when he first awoke. In all these bad memories the group would hurt him either by their words, calling him a murder and a bastard. While the young man with the cool hair would take a more physical approach, hitting him with an oar or his fists. However once again something in these memories Always seemed off. The boy doesn’t trust his dreams as much as he thinks his brain wishes him to.
Currently, the boy was hiding in a food shop. Huddled in the darkest corner and away from the vines andclosed and barricaded door. Luckily, this room had no windows so he didn’t have to worry about staying too far out of sight. He was wrapped up tight in a blanket to stay warm and humming a familiar song called “master of the puppets” he believed, while reading a book. In the book, one of which he hadn’t bothered to learn the title . All the characters were referred to as names, such as Frodo. The boy racked his brain quickl., if all these characters have a name, then where he is trapped must have a name, the boy himself must have a name.
In his safety net of blankets and close to his weapon of an axe and a sawed of guitar. Both of which are covered in red and black blood and have both been the only reason the boy has lasted this long, besides maybe his running and hiding ability. The boy slowly thinks, in all his memories he can't seem to be able to reach HIS name. You see, the clickers have a name. The small sprinting creatures the boy decides shall be packers since they are Always found in a pack. While the large flower-like demons should be consumers. Looking back at the book, in which Frodo and his friends need to get to Mordor. A cruel place with a red sky not so unlike the land the boy currently resides. He decides Mordor is fitting enough; it should work quite well as the name for his current nightmare fuel. Now all that is left is the boy, yet for some reason he just can't think of one. Naming other things is easy, yet for he himself no name from the book fits, nor names he dubs from words in his head. In the end he resigns to refer to himself as scramble temporarily. Seeing as he scrambles to survive, his head is in scrambles. His body is a Miss match of scared and scrambled together bandages. It’s fitting in a way to scrambles for his name to reflect this for now. Maybe one day scrambles will find a new name that fits him better, but for now he resigns himself to sleep instead or thinking about it. He needs to move again soon or the packers might sniff out his blood.
While scrambles lays his brown dirty hair onto the wall behind him. Closing his brown eyes and tightening his hold on his axe. He slowly drifts back off into a fitful sleep to be at least simi-rested for tomorrow's move. Unfortunately, due to this sleep, scrambles doesn’t hear the sound of the back door near silently opening in a way only a human could complete. And the curly haired boy in a cap alongside the young man with cool hair quickly entered the shop. Both panting for breath, and fearfully looking at each other as a consumer roars.