ABOMINATIONS

QUENTIN

It was cold and dark, and Quentin was scared.

He didn't gain consciousness properly until the bright headlights and the sound of a car horn forced him awake and led to him on the concrete with a scraped knee. The car sped away and he looked around. There was light rainfall, and he didn't know where he was. How far had he even walked? What happened?

His memories were faded, blurry. He remembered being knocked out, Brett and Quincy talking, and pain. A lot of pain. He shook his head, trying to knock something back into place, and when he moved his hand to scratch his neck he heard clinking. His left wrist had a metal cuff around it, a couple chainlinks hanging off of it. "What the hell?" he said out loud, scared and confused. He felt something weird in his mouth when he spoke, and when he lifted up his hand to investigate he could feel the two smooth, long tusks jutting out from his lower jaw. One of them had the tip broken off. Quentin had no idea what was going on.

When he stood, his legs wobbled, and his eyesight blurred and shifted back into focus. He didn't have his phone. He didn't even know who to contact. Even though he wasn't clear on the details, he knew that his brother had done something bad to him, had gotten him into that situation. And Brett. Quentin felt a pang of white-hot rage in his gut when he thought of the young scientist. He didn't know how he knew, but he knew it was his doing, and he was angry at him.

He knew he had to start moving.

His calves burned. It felt like his left shoulder was dislocated. His entire body felt like it was pulsing, but still Quentin continued on, not really sure where he was going but just moving in one direction. He had no idea where he was, and with the massive tusks coming out of his teeth he didn't want to ask someone for directions. He reached up to wipe his face and when he took his hand away it was covered in dark red blood. He didn't feel pain from any of the wounds on his body but as he looked at his arms he could see he had more. Bruises lined his arms and he had some cuts here and there. When he tried to think back to what caused them, his mind was still blank.

Finally he reached a gas station and snuck in the bathroom without making eye contact with the cashier. He looked at himself in the mirror in disbelief. His left eye was purple, puffy, and swollen. There was a deep cut above it that was oozing blood slowly. There was dried blood by his nose and mouth, and just as he thought, his right tusk had its top cracked off. When he touched the jagged top of it, the pain was so bad he cringed and grabbed the side of the sink to steady himself. Quentin shook his head to try and clear his thoughts. He turned on the sink and washed the blood off of his face, making sure to take care around his swollen black eye. When he got all of it off and rinsed his arms and hands, he dried off with a flimsy paper towel, the only one left in the dispenser. At least there was one, he thought to himself.

The wound on his forehead was trying to start bleeding again. He needed a bandage for it. In the back of his head he knew that he had no money, but he checked all of his pockets anyways, finding only a few loose coins. He sighed, pressing his damp paper towel against the forehead wound for a moment. Steeling himself, he turned and left the bathroom.

Trying to look invisible and inconspicuous, Quentin pretended to shop for a few moments while slowly making his way toward the band-aids. He risked a glance at the cashier, and he looked like he was preoccupied with his phone. Quentin didn't have a coat on or anything that he could easily hide something bulky, so he grabbed a package of bandages off the shelf, coughing as he opened it to hide the sound, and slipped a few of them into his pocket, closing the box up as well as he could and putting it back. He meandered around the store a little bit more, feeling paranoid, and he finally walked out as normally as he could manage. When he got a couple blocks away he finally let out a breath he didn't realize he had been holding, wiping his forehead to get rid of the newly leaking blood, and put on a band-aid by guessing where the cut was. He hoped it would stop it from bleeding, but he knew that he looked completely stupid and suspicious, so he started trying to think again about where the hell he was going to go. The one thing he knew was that he couldn't go home; Quincy was definitely an enemy at this point. Some of his memories were coming back to him in feverish flashes -- a syringe, and echoing, haunting laugh, electric crackling inside his skull, and then nothing. It was like his memory had been wiped. He had no idea how he got so many bruises, or a cuff and chains around his wrist. He thought about going to the police, but he probably wouldn't be taken seriously. His story sounded like something a crackhead would make up.

He decided that his best bet was to go to the police, no matter how crazy he would sound. It was either that or sleep under a bridge, and that didn't sound appealing to him. The rain was starting to pick up, and Quentin was cold, his shirt fully soaked through. He crossed his arms across his chest, shivering. Cars zoomed by, and not a single person stopped to talk to him, offered him a ride, or ask if he was okay. This city was an unforgiving one.

A bell jingled quietly as Quentin opened the door to the police station. He wrung his hands together nervously as he walked up to the reception desk. The woman there was on the phone, and held up her pointer finger to tell Quentin wait a minute. He stood at the desk looking around and wringing his hands for a solid five minutes, listening to the woman saying "mmhmm. Mmhmm. Yes. No." Eventually she said "Alright, bye bye," and hung up the phone. When she finally looked at Quentin, she gave him a once-over, her eyebrows knitting together in concern and confusion. "You good, sweetie?" She asked, incredulous.

"Um, I think I need some help," Quentin mumbled, and he could feel the cut on his forehead trickling, not fully covered by the band-aid.

He could tell they didn't believe him. His story was vague, hurried, whispered, and Quentin couldn't stop shaking the whole time. "I'm not on drugs," he assured the officer he was talking to.

The man was a sheriff's deputy. His office was small, cozy, covered in pictures of his family. He sat back in his chair in a relaxed stance, his arms folded behind his head, his eyes focused on Quentin, his notepad forgotten on the desk. Quentin wasn't sure exactly when the officer had stopped taking notes, but it scared him, because that meant he wasn't being taken seriously anymore.

When he finally stopped talking, the room was silent for a moment. Quentin's hearing was so acute he could hear the watch on the officer's wrist ticking, his heart beating. Was that one of the side effects, like his tusks? The officer kept looking from his eyes to the weird cuff on his wrist.

"So you don't remember anything past that? Like why you have that on your wrist?"

Quentin shook his head, and the officer sighed, sitting forward and scribbling something in his notebook. "Son, pardon my asking but this will greatly help me. Do you have a history of mental illness?"

No sense in lying, Quentin thought. "Uh, yes sir, I have mild Asperger's."

The officer's eyebrows raised, and he scribbled something else on the paper. "I don't think that mixes well with whatever you took, son."

"I didn't take any drugs. At least I don't think so. I don't know what was in that syringe."

For a moment, the officer looked like he was going to say something, but thought better of it. He looked pointedly at both of Quentin's arms and then back up to his eyes. "All right. I think the best course of action is to take you in for the night. I've deemed you a danger to yourself and possibly those around you. We can talk more about this with a specialist tomorrow."

"What?" Quentin said, his voice rising. "Are you arresting me?"

"No, son, we're just going to place you in a cell for the night. That way you don't hurt anyone."

"I'm not going to hurt anyone!" Quentin said, his voice getting a little louder.

"You need to calm down," the officer said, standing and reaching over the table to grab Quentin's wrist.

"No!" Quentin shouted. "You can't keep me here!"

He turned and made a break for the door, the officer following after him. He was almost past the receptionist and out the front door when he felt a hand on his arm, ripping his shoulder that already hurt more out of place. With a scream of pain, Quentin yanked his arm to the side.

The next few events were a blur. Suddenly there was no pressure on his wrist anymore, and when he heard a loud thud, Quentin opened his eyes to see the officer sliding down the wall behind the desk, head first onto the ground next to the computers. There were cracks where his body had hit. He was unconscious. The receptionist's mouth hung open. Quentin felt like he was about to pass out.

The receptionist started shouting something, and he heard footsteps coming towards him, heavy boots on carpet, the jangling of handcuffs. Quentin turned, heading out the door, and running as fast as his legs and worn down body would let him. The rain was really coming down now, hitting Quentin in the face, hard and cold and in his eyes. There were sirens behind him, and the flashing of red and blue lit up the concrete.

He was nearing the outskirts of town, and he reached a wooded strip near a huge department store, running into the branches without slowing down. Behind him came the screeching of tires as the police cars braked, and Quentin didn't stop. His breath was heavy, heaving, his chest burning and his legs starting to ache. He reached an area at which he couldn't see the police car's lights anymore, and as he slowed down he tripped over a root and tumbled over a bank into a creek bed, hitting the dirt face-first.

"Blegh," Quentin retched, spitting to get the sand off of his tongue. The creek he had fallen into was only a couple feet deep, but it would have to do for now. He shimmied over to the edge, where there was slight overhead cover, his body throbbing all over. His ankle felt twisted, his shoulder screamed in pain, his eye was almost completely swollen shut now, and his band aid had come off during his sprint through the woods. Blood dripped into his swollen eye. Quentin brought his knees up to his chest and laid his chin on his folded arms, wishing he was home and everything was normal and okay. He hoped that this was all a dream and he would wake up, scared, but relieved because it wasn't real. He was trying to keep himself quiet so he couldn't be found, listening for footsteps but only hearing rain, staring up at the grey sky through the trees above the creek.

When he was certain that they hadn't followed him this far, Quentin began to cry quietly.