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Sometimes, Ghoul could feel his insides rotting.
He would stand there, or lay there, and feel maggots gnawing on his slowly weakening organs. Or he would forget to blink and film would start to develop over his eyes, and he’d have to close them shut so it would go away.
It felt so disgusting to be a walking corpse.
Injuries were the worst. He wouldn't bleed enough. He liked it, at first. But then, he realized, it felt so gross to have the main thing coming out of your wounds be puss and a stench rather than blood. They didn't even hurt, either. He could get shot repeatedly and then not notice till hours later, but only because the desert heat caused the smell of the holes to finally reach him and it would click in his brain what happened.
He didn't feel things sometimes. He was energetic most of the time, but when he wasn't it was just nothing. Like someone switched his emotions off. He tried to feel things. He tried to smoke, to get drunk, to watch porn and do everything else killjoys do to feel. And still, his brain would feel like a cassette that had the tape torn out.
Unless it was bombs.
It seemed almost ironic, that the one thing more likely to kill him than a shot to the chest or a toxin in his body was the one thing that made him feel something. He knew everything about bombs, and he’d make them just to watch them explode sometimes. He’d always have homemade hand grenades strapped to his belts, ready to detonate at a moment's notice. He didn't kill dracs most of the time, he had been one once, after all, but sometimes he would get caught up in the moment, and he’d cause the most damage.
Violence in general was something he had started to think about more. He would just look at one of his crewmates and imagine what it would be like to bash their skull in, to see their blood spill out. To see it ooze out, coating their hair and worming onto the floor. He hated thinking about it, but it brought him some feeling, atleast.
Most days, Ghoul didn't feel like a person. He felt like a corpse, like a husk, like a lich or something close to one of those things.
It got worse, one day. When the feeling was too strong and he took his knife, the jagged, rusty knife he got when he first arrived at the zones- and he began to slit his mouth. It was a mixture of two things: the feeling, and the memories.
You Should Smile More.
He was told it on school playgrounds, by kids who didn't know any better.
You Should Smile More.
He was told it by doctors as they forced pills down his throat.
You Should Smile More.
He was told it by the dracs right before they put the mask over his head.
You Should Smile More.
He was told it by exterminators who were just doing their duty.
You Should Smile More.
He got told it by killjoys at parties, at concerts, at clubs, at times when his brain felt like it was going to explode.
He cut from his mouth to the upper part of his cheek, looking at himself in the mirror the whole time. He watched the blood -for once, warm red blood – pour out of his arteries. He watched it gurgle down the drain and into the sewer below. His weak heart was beating fast, and he was shaking as his blood went from his knife to his hand.
He didn't stop looking until Jet walked in, and started screaming at him to put the knife down. Jet washed his gash off, and he sat on the edge of the tub as Jet used dental floss to sew his smile up. Jet didn't do a good job at it.
Ghoul didn't feel like a person even more after that. He felt like he was watching his life flash by. Watching his skin green and feeling the maggots crawl around. Letting the film develop over his eyes. He felt old most days. He didn't feel 16 anymore.
The others noticed, but no one said anything. No one knew what to say, really. But everyone helped out. Party would help re-dye his hair black and would re-stitch his jacket, Jet would make him dinner and give all the non-powerpup food they found to him. Kobra probably understood it best, despite being the most distant from him normally. They could just lie on the floor together, doing nothing at all, and somehow it could feel more meaningful than a conversation. Kobra helped him with his T doses, too. That was nice. Jet didn't know how to and Party was afraid of needles, so it worked.
Show Pony would get him to skate, trying to get him out in the sun. They would put a record Ghoul liked on whenever he went over. Cherri would read him poetry, forcing him to listen and not drift out. Newsie would build bombs and tell him about her week, and Hot Chimp would take him to get him new patches and markers and whatnot. Dr. Death would tell him war stories, which really kept him engaged. Dr. D was more than willing to tell them, too.
He still felt older. He still wasn't human. But things were getting better, he supposed. People were caring about him. And he was starting to care about other people, too.