entropy
Zack has always felt like the least remarkable person he knows. Okay, sure, so he's kind of good at math or whatever. He's got one whole skill, and it's not an exciting one. He doesn't have Jason's ability to create worlds out of thin air with only a pen, or his father's unfathomable capacity for kindness.
Four walls.
Exactly the same size.
The height might be the same as the length, even.
It's alarming. He wonders, vaguely, if this is what rooms in the Ministry of Love are like.
Either way he wants out. The order is disturbing.
I wouldn't have chosen it.
Wouldn't have voted for it.
Wouldn't have said it was a good idea--fuck it, it wasn't a good idea.
It just happened when I wasn't paying attention.
Oversight. That's all.
The shivers run down his spine. He shouldn't be afraid. This is important and necessary and /it's for his own good, it's for ZACK'S good/, and he knows Zack will never hate him and he really doesn't have anything to worry about. He just needs to open his mouth and speak.
But his stomach won't stop lurching.
God, he's never been afraid to speak his mind before.
It started with trigonometry, of all things.
Trigonometry in a small bedroom, walls that were such a light blue they were nearly white,
fingers that always seemed too thin around a fracturing gray mechanical pencil,
pupils stretched wide in dim early-evening light.
Fucking spa. It's not like there was ANYTHING better for them to do, nope, why would I give a damn if they go a goddamn spa and leave me here to do all their work.
He flexes his arm; it reopens the cut.
Zack.
Zack's fault.
No.
His own fault.
A thin line of blood forms, begins to drip along the curve of his arm, slow, in toward the elbow.
Zack.
"You know they call these 'potato crisps' in Britain."
"No, I didn't know. Learn that from Doctor Who?"
"Nah, Neil Gaiman, I think. Said something about a 'crisp packet'... oh, maybe it was just a packet that was of a crisp texture."
"Wait, Neil Gaiman is British?"
The wounds are hideous, gashing flowing things, everything stained dark red, flesh tossed about like garbage. The deep lacerations form wild, savage patterns.