January 1st, 2020, Central City.
You Died
The letters lit up her dark and dreary screen, the only source of light in her room. She sat there in her computer chair, eyes fixated on the words with their stark contrast to the dark drab ruins and the consequences they carried.
"Goodbye one point five million souls."
'Twas a tragedy. Her former death marker laying no farther than a bridges distance from her with only a few dozen skeleton giants to bar the path. Her days of grinding reputation for her covenant had yielded little and cost her much.
She exited the game and glanced at the time. It was already seven in the morning.
"Guess we'll just go to sleep when we get home from school huh?" She asked herself aloud.
"Yeah... If 'ya don't boot up another game session for 'Just a couple minutes' " She answered back in this conversation with herself. This was the third day in a row she's gone with no sleep at all. She had a terrible habit of sacrificing sleep to make more time for the things that mattered to her: Lurking the net and gaming.
Coming down from the New Year's Day festivities she's been putting off sleep especially hard whilst her extended family had visited. She might of been an only child but she had a fair share of cousins, nieces, uncles and aunts spread across the states. Given how they monopolized her time during the holidays she pretty much gave up sleep to make more room for her alone time.
_
Yup. Three days in a row and there she sat in her pitch black room, curtains taped up against the wall to keep the light from bleeding through the edges. With what appeared to be great effort she hoisted herself from her chair and went to get changed into her day clothes, a dark attire designed to be minimalistic as to remain unostentatious. With a black long sleeved shirt, gray cargo pants and short white socks she drifted warily into the washroom to clean herself up.
Looking in the mirror certainly was a sight, not a pleasant one though. Her hair was bedraggled and the dark rings under her eyes would make a raccoon envious. There was little she could do to improve on the eye situations so she chose to comb and fix up her hair, a task which took a solid half hour to finish.
"Olivia! Your breakfast is ready!" Her mother called up from the stairwell.
"Just a minute mom!" She croaked back to her. Olivia's voice was definitely far from the prettiest. It sounded like it would be more appropriate coming from a frog rather than a young woman. Not a large frog mind you, it wasn't a deep voice at all. It was just kind of... Blegh sounding.
After getting out of the bathroom she made her way down stairs. At the kitchen table a breakfast of cereal, toast and a glass of orange juice awaited her, her mother and father sat down enjoying their own breakfast. She made her way down the stairs, holding onto the handrail for her exhaustion made her wobbly and tumbling down the stairs would make for a terrible start to her school day. She quietly seated herself and began to eat.
"Did you hear the latest news Ani? Some metahuman down in Keystone City dressed up in a costume decided to go and stop a bank robbery." Her father struck a conversation with her mother, not looking up from his newspaper as he spoke.
"Oh dear. I hope nobody was hurt because of it."
"Hmm... No, doesn't seem like anybody was. Still, beating the cops to the punch in stopping some bank robbers hardly makes up for the killings these metahumans have been doing." The mustached man shook his head, frowning behind his paper wall. "I swear whatever science mumbo jumbo they've got has messed with their heads."
Olivia didn't weigh in on the conversation. All too often she found that she got along with others best when she simply chose to remain quiet. Even innocuous statements made by her were like tinder, igniting irritation in those who hear her. She figured her voice was harsh on the ears, accepting this as her fate. After all, some people got to be born beautiful, smart, charming or fit. She got to be born frail and ugly sounding. Totally a fair trade, not at all a cruel slight by the gods.
_
After breakfast there she was, on the way to school. From the bus she emerged alongside her peers. She trudged through the doors and into the halls, swaying as though the wind could knock her over if the walls weren't in the way. Though she cared little for the others she could hear the conversations of other students around her. It appears the news from Keystone City reached their ears as well as it was the hottest conversation in the halls. Olivia just took a deep breath and sighed.
"How does news of something that minor happening all the way over in Keystone end up blowing up this far out?" she asked herself, muttering just under her breath while glancing about to make sure people weren't listening in on her. Not that it mattered too greatly. She already had a reputation for talking to herself. Just another arrow in the quiver of her bullies.
She reached her locker where an 'oh so pleasant' surprise awaited her. One of her bullies had taped a sign to her locker which read Losre. This simply prompted Olivia to engage a face palm.
"Oh goodie, mean spirited AND dyslexic. You sure do draw the best." She quietly muttered to herself through her palms before tearing the paper off from her locker and unlocking it so she can put her stuff away.
"Maybe today you'll be lucky enough to get run over by the bus, putting you out of this misery for good."
So she turned and left her locker, books in hand as she started towards her first class. Just as she was walking down the hall two boys were shouting from either end of the hall to each other. Nothing new really, the hallways were a constant mess of noise.
"Hey Arnold! You forgot your textbook! Here, Catch!"
Then it hit her.
Footsteps, shoes on smooth tile floors, talking! Voices, voices! Talking, shouting, crowds upon crowds! Heartbeats! Thud thud, the meaty twisting of intestines, lungs heaving, tongues slapping within the caverns of their mouths! Chalk on chalkboards, locker doors shutting, clothes shuffling, cars, buses, engines roaring, horns blaring! Blood squishing about in their veins! Vocal cords vibrating to the tune of words, the words! The voices!
It all came in a calamitous eruption. Every sound around her was louder than could be fathomed by even the wildest imagination. She swore she should of gone deaf but she was incapable of it. Her eyes vibrated as the feedback pushed her mind to it's limits and beyond. She clutched her head and tried to suppress her screams for their noise hurt her further still but it was impossible to resist, her voice boiling out from her body in a primal cry of agony.
The world around her had shifted in an instant. She could no longer see properly for the colors of their sounds flooded her vision. She could feel it all, like being submerged in an endless ocean of her own fingertips. Even that description fails to aptly describe the very alien nature of this intangible phantom limb of hers. It was sound, all sound. Every vibration, every wavelength, it was all part of her now.
The vastness of it was overwhelming, her mind taking in a vast flood of sound without any resistance like a hole the size of the ocean floor swallowing up the ocean in an instant. The nearest sounds rang through her mind at volumes many magnitudes greater than even the most powerful atomic bomb's explosion. It was like compressing all the sand in the Saharan Desert into a single grain of sand.
As the pure torment of this exposure wracked her body the tension it was under was simply too much for her frail constitution. She collapsed to her knees, her cries cut off as vomit gushed forth from her stomach, flooding her mouth as it splattered across the floor beneath her in an explosive purge.
She grew faint as the last dredges of her stomach's contents evacuated her mouth. Whilst the experience laid entirely within her mind the strain her mind's exertion had put her body through was a test her body was failing. Between her insomniac lifestyle and this deluge of mental input the world grew dark and her arms turned limp. She collapsed into the pool of her own vomit.
Her eyelids pulled close, drawing the curtains to this scene.
She could still hear it all though. The sounds never went away. It won't stop.
It won't stop.
It won't stop.
It won't stop.
It won't st
_
_
From an outsiders perspective after being struck by a heavy textbook that was poorly thrown by some student this girl just gave a bloodcurdling scream whilst falling to her knees before throwing up copiously and passing out, collapsing into the pool of bile. Needless to say the crowded hallway cleared out around her, a nice wide ring of bystanders formed around her listless body.
Pushing through the crowd of dumbfounded teenagers was one of the teachers, an older woman with brunette hair that was faintly mottled with flecks of gray. She knelt by the body, her face etched with concern at this sudden emergency, and rolled poor Olivia onto her side. She passed a hand in front of her mouth to check if she was breathing. Her labored breaths were shallow but breathing she still was.
The crowd quietly whispered to each other as they spectated the scene before the teacher stood and pointed straight at one of the students standing at the front of the crowd.
"You there! Go get the nurse here immediately!"
The student, briefly stunned from being so suddenly put on the spot, quickly nodded and pushed on out through the crowd to do as he was told. Shortly after that the boy returned with the school nurse in tow. She joined the teacher by the fallen body of Olivia, examining her for injuries and symptoms.
"I can't tell what happened to her. We probably shouldn't move her in case she sustained any injuries from the fall."
"Should we call nine-one-one?"
"We should contact her parents first. Go inform the office, I'll remain here to keep apprised of her condition."
The teacher stood up and went off to pass the word up the chain as to what happened while the nurse remained by Olivia, making sure she was stable.
_
Meanwhile in a busy stock exchange floor her father worked, observing the recent stock trends to map out his investment strategies when his cell phone rang.
"Hello? Samuel Babbage speaking." He answered the phone, standing by impatiently as he took this call. His expression darkened over the course of the call as they filled him in on what had happened to his daughter.
"No, that's alright, there's no need for an ambulance. I'll come pick her up immediately. Yes. Thank you, goodbye."
With a tap he hung up and started briskly power walking off towards the exits. While it would set him back to miss a day this family emergency demanded his immediate attention.
Some time later her father arrived at the scene, the nurse keeping tabs on her condition while directing student traffic past the scene of the incident. Sam strode up to the prone form of his daughter, frown chiseled upon his stony face.
"What happened"
"As far as we can tell she fell down and passed out. She hasn't sustained any visible injuries but the fall could have injured her head or neck."
"Damn. Just what I needed today." He spoke with a gravelly note of irritation. He reached down to pick up his unconscious daughter but the nurse cut him off.
"We shouldn't move her, it could worsen whatever injuries she might have sustained. We should call an ambul-" Before she could finish Sam interjected.
"Like hell we are! The closest hospital isn't covered under our health insurance. Just the cost of the ambulance charges will bleed us dry right now."
Disregarding the nurse's objections he wrapped his arms around Olivia and hoisted her over his shoulder where she draped listlessly upon him like a damp towel.
"I'll be taking my daughter now. Goodbye."
While the nurse wanted to object to his brusque handling of his potentially injured daughter the last thing she wanted was to quarrel with her parents and wind up getting reprimanded by her boss for it. With reluctance she held her tongue as Sam carried his daughter off to his car to drive on down to the hospital.
Member
EchoicChamber
Prinz
VitaVitaAR
Kalas
dragonpiece
Fallenreaper
Mixtape Ghost N
Damycles
Echotech71
