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The glass slips from his hand and tumbles into the sink. He watches the water spill down the drain. His hands are shaking, a painful tremor wracking through them.
He watches the water drip, drip, drip— and tries not to be reminded of a dark sewer with what was left of a man, sitting, bloated with vermin.
It's hard. Everything is a reminder; the payphone on the wall, the gun in his bedside table, the teeth buried in his gut-
His own face. He doesn't like looking in the mirror, these days. His left eye is in a perpetual squint, vision slightly blurry. His iris is tinted with red, so dark it can only be seen in direct light. Flat scars stretch from beneath his eye and down his neck, covering a good portion of his upper back and left arm. It's riddled with thicker scars, pockmarked and ugly, as well as white streaks that mark his veins. There's a big warp in the skin on his shoulder, shaped like a pupiless eye.
His forearm has rough flesh and the indentation of a little girl's teeth, and his fingers are knobby and never stop shaking, even on the good days.
He presses a hand to his stomach. Though sealed up by whatever was in that cure, there still remains raised ivory. Large, sharp teeth buried in the skin. The doctor said they might be able to remove them, but Bryan is terrified by the idea of being put under by anesthesia. The loss of control, the version of you that thinks and hopes and loves falling away.
That's what it felt like. Beneath the pain and terror and the roar of blood in his ears, he had felt himself slipping away.
He's scared, everytime he falls asleep, that when he wakes up —if he wakes up— it will be to the splattered gore of his wife and unborn child. Their blood trapped beneath his nails.
He isn't ever not scared, these days. Maybe one day he won't be. Maybe one day they'll put him under and cut out the parts that make him a monster. Maybe he'll wake up normal.
But that's a long, long way away.
"Bryan?"
He flinches hard, hand knocking against the cup still abandoned in the sink and sending it clattering. He whirls around, one hand gripping the edge of the sink and the other searching for the strap of a bag that isn't there.
"Woah, hey. Hey, it's just me." The woman in the doorway is beautiful, with dark hair and soulful eyes. Her hands are raised placatingly.
"Michelle." He rasps. His voice fucked. His vocal chords hadn't been completely repaired by the cure and it left him with a grittier voice. He thinks, if he tried, he would be able to roar. He doesn't try.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you." She says, voice gentle. Her eyes are sleepy, the bags under them dark. He must have woken her up when he'd left to find a glass of water.
"No, i'm sorry. I just…had a nightmare." He always has nightmares. They're always just memories.
She pads closer, barefeet stepping over the cold tiles of the kitchen. There's a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She places a gentle hand on his shoulder, and he tries to relax.
"Hey, it's okay." She tries to catch his eyes and he lets her. He doesn't know how she doesn't flinch when she meets them. "Are you alright?"
He closes his eyes for a beat before meeting hers again. "…Yeah. I'm fine."
And he is. Really. Sure he's scared all the time and his nights are spent dreaming of monsters and the taste of human flesh, but he's here. He's home. He has his beautiful girlfriend and they're going to raise a kid together.
She'd come to get him from the hospital, the one he'd stumbled into after slipping out from under the national guard and finally escaping that damned city. Against all odds, she'd seen Bryan and told him she loved him. She'd embraced him, even though he was covered in blood and his face was all wrong. She'd shushed his rushed apologies and promised him they'd talk about it later.
They had. He'd told her what he'd wanted to say, gave her his real response, and whispered to her why he'd been so scared of raising a kid in the first place.
He knows now it hadn't been fear, not really. Not the kind that sent your blood pumping or jackrabbited your heart. It wasn't the sort that whited out his thoughts and drove prey instinct into the back of his skull.
It had just been nerves. A simple fear that he wouldn't be a good dad, that Michelle could do better than him. A fear that family would become all that he was.
But he knows there are worse things to become. And who's to say that will be all he is? He's working at the post office now, never driving his little white truck past the city limits. He's gone out to coffee with some coworkers and tentatively befriended Squash, the office cat.
He has a life. He's living it.
He just wishes his shaking hands would get the memo.