Ben

The young Benjamin, known to his own chagrin as Benji, was a creature placated and amused–kept without much thought to those deeper things in life–by all the work he had to do. He wanted what most little boys would want: plenty of space to run and play, time in the day to get up to mischief, and, most of all, a body that was his own and not the bastardized, manifested, necromanced hell-creation he walks around in.

Resident of a colonial remnant of a ghost town and kept company only by his older brother, obligation was in no small amount. Days were full of things to do from the early hours of morning to the nightly death of the sun beneath the endless, rolling hills of...wherever he was, Benji was never sure. There were gardens to plant, wells to dig, water to fetch, weeds to pull, windows to repair, roofs to patch, game to hunt, shine to distill, and lots of holes to be dug. Maybe not clothes to repair, since the young Benji couldn’t be bothered to wear them most days, but everything else. What, or whom–if anything, and anyone–lay beyond his pastures, were largely not a concern to him.

The only times Benji could ponder such things as the outside world were in those instances his brother would leave, often for months at a time, with the intent to find some way to fix Benjamin’s plight. He’d return with gifts, but never answers, and the only thing Benji could dread more than being left alone for so long, was his brother returning, with each trip making him more restless and angry than the last. This growing unrest, and the outbursts they often brought, was frightening, and unpredictable. Soon, the simple, thoughtless Benji began to think maybe he should leave, or perhaps more accurately escape, to see what was out there that could possibly make his brother like this.

The crazy dreams of a sweet little southern boy become Ben’s very salvation, and he wakes up in a land of sultry summer nights and music playing on every street corner. Offered the opportunity to escape his life as a carny and start a new one as a musician, Benny finds himself, for the first time, free: free from the family farm, free from his brother, free from the Live Forever Carnival, free from Zahra and the midnight shows, and free from the clown in the closet. Frightened by this new independence, but now in arms with newfound friends, he starts his career as a trumpet player for the Runaways–the band formed and led by carnival companion Cecil Farley.

The Runaways begin their career as inexperienced, starry-eyed dreamers playing at any venue that’d have them, with Benny serving as the undying flame burning away any and all encroaching fog. After a stint of floundering in good intentions, a mentor for the Runaways comes in the form of a man named Ambrose Zamfir–a bassist with some fame to his name, and a gentle, humble disposition. While Benjamin experiences the world with his friends, he learns about it from Ambrose, who becomes his north star in his journey away from the carnival.

For the first time in his life, Benjamin can allow himself to feel and to believe he is normal: just another human being, chasing dreams and living life. The world is new to him, and it becomes his mission to make others see it so wonderfully as he does, by all means of music, song, and dance; he vows to preach a gospel of light and warmth through brass and wire.

!!DISCLAIMER!! This arc was created as a filler/transition arc, and that is still the purpose it serves. I have intentions to add some substantial plot/more characters, but I would like the lore to develop naturally, and as necessary, rather than forcing it. As such, a lot of this part of the profile will be unfinished and pretty bare bones; I only plan to explain the very gist of it.

All good things must come to an end. Such is the case for the Runaways. Though the band’s bittersweet demise was not all the product of bad things, Ben struggles the most in moving on. Unlike his companions, he seems frozen in time, mentally, emotionally, even physically. Getting drafted at the advent of the war was almost welcomed by him, as it was at the very least an end to a purposeless drifting. But war brings tragedy, and in his case, tragedy in the death of a friend he hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to.

Ben realizes, in this time, what he had already known: He is not human, he is not alive. A desperate search for answers, an aimless search for death, and finally, a violent and cynical darkness mark his time spent overseas. By the time he returns, he’s long outlived everyone he’s ever cared about, and exhausted himself of any hope that he’ll ever join them.

Faded and without anything to show for all his decades of searching, an older Ben settles into the truth that he always was, and always will be, the abomination. Even with the advent of the 21st century, Ben feels left behind in the past–even more out of place. With no more dreams to chase and no more nightmares to wake from, he drifts towards anywhere familiar, digging up his past belongings and settling in for a long, long life of nothing. No longer running from his own nature, and no longer being beholden to it, he finds a purposeless sort of existence as a cheap roadside psychic, gaining brief interactions and maybe a few bucks from the flickering, spectral apparitions he can sense around passersby.

Chance meetings with two astonishingly familiar total strangers bring Ben out of an endless purposelessness, and back into the pursuit of a cure. Only this time, there’s something tangible to look for–something, someone, long since buried and lost; the secret to resurrection, and an insisting that Ben is somehow the key to it. With the promise of understanding being so close, Ben can’t resist the temptation of answers; First the carnival, then the war, and finally, digging up graves.

The rest of the story is some amalgamation of spoilers and grossly undeveloped and nonsensical lore, and I won’t make us all cringe by trying to explain it or trying to pretend it’s cool. Take your guesses as to what happens (it’s as good as mine).