geist vlasti

Vlasti learned very quickly that the world would give him nothing.

His earliest memories were disinterested stares and completely apathetic voices from his parents. He was a neglected pet, barely tolerated by his caretakers while they busied themselves with things they found more worthy of their time and attention. A small child just got in the way of sex and drugs, after all, and him being around turned off most of the guests. More often than not, he was locked in his room during the nights, hearing mom and dad have their fun outside. By day, he was left to wander the empty house.

This was fine, really it was.

He learned to stop asking, before he could even walk or speak. No one would come. No one would listen. So why waste the effort? Every developmental step brought him closer to freedom, but it also brought more and more people who didn't understand. They called him too quiet, the child with a cold, judgmental stare. He scared them. They wouldn't give him anything, either. Nothing but what he had to force out of them. It was an arrangement that worked well for him.

Vlasti couldn't, at first, completely understand the level of neglect he endured. Being left alone suited him fine, knowing that no one could be trusted to care of their own volition. But some things of his he couldn't protect on his own. It was easy to forget how small and frail he was, forgetting that the icy steel he'd girded his heart and mind in couldn't protect the rest of him. It didn't bother him that his parents never brought him to see a doctor, never inoculated him. It wasn't his problem. Who cared.

He didn't notice when a discarded hypodermic slipped under his skin, completely lost under other sensations. Maybe he never even knew it happened. But none of that mattered to the disease that quickly siezed an opportunity to ravage a vulnerable body.

Despite everything, despite the stoicism and apathy that he'd gained far too early in his life, he cried as he lay paralyzed on his bedroom floor, body wracked with pain. Before this, it hardly mattered to him if he just disappeared, but now, he was afraid. He didn't want it to be like this, disease slowly and agonizingly crushing the life out of him.

He screamed, he begged, not understanding that something was listening. Whatever it was, it hovered around his dying body, a wingless, skittering vulture that hung from the ceiling on twisted limbs. Its head tilted too far as it looked him over and waited, patiently, for him to perish

Everything that left his throat was swallowed by an empty house, up until the moment that the illness wrapped itself around his neck and finally ended it. The thing that had watched him closed in.

It untangled his body and laid it still on the floor, and waited again. Vlasti woke, screaming for a moment before he silenced himself, realizing that aside from the dull ache of strained muscles, the pain was gone.

He was, for whatever reason, alive, and not sure if he liked the change or not.