if crazy
equals genius
Logically, nothing was sound. Logically, nothing could be sound, but only because no one had found what was necessary here. It didn't mean that it was impossible, but difficult. Like finding a cure for cancer, and just because that wasn't procured yet, it didn't mean that something more here couldn't be learned or created. If nothing else, the level of people out there with the ability to heal, it was a possibility. He could smell it. The differences in blood. It was a blessing and a curse, to be able to learn these things through sight and scent without having to ask. To hold more knowledge in a random bumping of shoulders than any other aspect of life. Instinct mixed with knowledge. But his care for life wasn't at its highest, it hadn't been in some time. That didn't stop him from wanting life to go back to the cruel fate it once was.
Enough of a previous outcast with little care or want. There was more to everything, but people kept to themselves. He could understand it, he was there once. Before all of the insanity, before not caring if he lived or died. Mostly because he couldn't just die and living like this was a nightmare and a half. Forever stuck with this enduring want, drive, need to feed. But it was more than that. The want to bathe in it. To engulf himself in the scent of the blood, the random body parts hanging around him, just delighted in the way the human body could endure and suffer. The war that waged inside his own mind, his own humanity and sanity. The way a knife could slice through flesh, intestines used like a rope. He wasn't a normal sort of creature and he knew just what that meant. What people would see him as, and it was never what he wanted or cared for it to be. Because either they saw a good man with petulance for trying to help people. Argumentative as he may be. Or it was that whole entirety of being a monster. A vampire, even though that wasn't exactly what he was. Just like one. An experiment gone wrong, that leaked into this life, this dimension, this universe. One man's mistake led to more than one life to be taken and for more than one man to endure it. This life no longer his own, and he wanted control back. More than just the control of a monster that was waiting, pacing, wanting to be released. Speaking to him as if it were some other personality. Some other version of himself or a devil on his shoulder. Telling him to do it, it will make it all better. The way the world could change, the strength he could maintain, how he was better than all of them anyway. Let them see what he was made of. What sort of beautiful cruelty he could create.
But right now, he wasn't dealing with any of that. He had put it all aside. Michael Morgan was living his life. There was no playing pretend, there was no playing games. He was just content to go feel normal. It was one of those things that he never felt he was. If it wasn't one thing, it had been another. From being a child who grew up with an attention disorder, but being too smart to handle much of anything. Breaking through every lock and skill that anyone ever wanted him to attempt. To finish everything in ways that weren't like they expected him to. He saw the world in another light and it was just the way he had always been. Moving through college and never wanting to bother with taking his pills. The issues with attention actually aided him in ways no one believed. He didn't care what they thought, it was a blessing to be able to have that. But he no longer could claim it. All of it, it was gone from him. Everything except the intelligence. It held, just like his ability to hold an argument. Just like his ability to look and see things that others missed. To sit and be quiet until he found a moment to finally stand up and create a new standpoint others ignored. It was just who he was.
And between having already seen things that his own eyes had no realistic claim of ever holding true sanity for seeing? For seeing people hold strength, change colors and form, watching a woman become a bat and back. To fall and glide free, to run as fast as a car down the street, see the world through another vision of color and energy. Beauty and tragedy that came with the blood that he held in his refrigerator and the world that stood and moved outside of this tower he had created for himself. Looking down on everyone because he couldn't handle the emotional roller coaster that came in people who only cared about themselves. To use you and claim they wanted to help. People didn't care about anything but themselves and it only served as a source of him not wanting to care about his humanity. For Michael to pull away from it and listen to that little devil on his shoulder. That imaginary bat that wanted him to just let himself go free. To fall and fly and take what he wanted in this life. He could, so easily, to use and abuse his own little gifts. He could take this place by storm without anyone realizing just what he had done. To go through Boston or more, to set a trigger in their heads. Of all those unaffected and just make them do as he pleased. To feed on anyone. To rule in a place he didn't care for. This wasn't home. Nowhere was.
His own parents, he couldn't be bothered with. Not because he didn't love them, but it was better to protect them this way. To keep this distance and not look too deeply into it. They could stay in Colorado, he didn't hold any real friendships. People stayed away for their own reasons, whether he was too much for them or he wasn't enough. It didn't matter, and it never would. Humanity was a failure.
There had been previous attempts to kill himself. Jumping from heights that should have killed him, stabbing himself, all but lighting himself on actual fire. That just hurt. What in the world was that supposed to accomplish? It sounded like a real possibility before. Even the holy water. It may as well have been bath water. Which, alright, so getting enough to perform some holy act on himself, even the oil, it just wasn't the way he wanted his hair. But what did his hair matter when he was the only person that had to live with himself like this? An image inducer hiding his red eyes and fangs. But he was superficial enough to care, even if he was the only one seeing it. Not a hair out of place. Nothing less than right. There was a way to hold yourself accountable, even though it was more now than it ever was before. Less people to explain things to, to talk to, but it was better this way.
Flipping through his phone, he went and found some music to play around with. A bottle pulled down from a cabinet as his phone was docked. This was his life. The sound of the drums, he was able to nod his own head to, hips moving as he stepped. It was more like that of a time in the past. Swingers. Something out of the roaring twenties. He slid across the tile, amusing himself. "You can set yourself on fire. You can set yourself on fire."
Memories from these past weeks, of himself and not so much. Of that other side of him that came out for those special weeks. The fact that he actually had a woman in his home. A familiar face, that he had literally lifted up and threw out of his own doors. Outside, to let drop to the ground. Yes, he was on the top floor of what was more of a penthouse suite than anything, but the fall. To throw someone outside like that? Even in his own quickness, that speed to rush himself off to the edge and jump down too. To position himself in a way to get to her quicker, to not allow anyone to see it, before he grabbed her up and moved before people caught sight of them. Only having dipped down just enough, to gain a better wind as if it were needed. Something about the ability to glide, as he kept her held tight in his own arms. Her own panic that could practically be smelled, the exhilaration from her own heartbeat and blood pounding in her ears.
To have cut himself after she became a bat in panic, over a pair of eyes that weren't right. Her own, that set off a chain reaction. One that he had been through and knew all about. The way it left a person feeling, lulled back away from any sort of sense of self. There was too much not right. The simplicity in just cutting himself and letting the blood drip out. His blood wasn't what was necessary, but he knew it. It was the scent, the call that held fast to it. One that brought a calming effect and a burning hunger from the taste. It was like his own but not. She was like him, yet not. More the real than he was.
The lyrics hit him in a way that was closer to home than anything. Less to do with the point of setting himself on fire, as he started his own dinner. It was more in the chorus and not just the residue of a torturer. The man he didn't want to be, since the beginning. The one he had fought on more than one occasion, but no matter what he had done or didn't do, he was stuck here like this. With only his knowledge, notes, personal insanity to endure, people who chose to play judge and jury, and his blood lust. The used and the abused. But more importantly the fight and will to not allow this to just happen to him. For someone else not to just have his body in the way that another had. He would fight it at all costs. He would live through this and not be lost in the way he questioned if she really understood she could and would be in the end.
"If crazy equals genius, then I'm a fucking arsonist. Hey. I'm a rocket scientist." Claws came out instead of using a knife. It was just for him, and his hands were clean. There was a constant need for that given what he worked with, and at home, no less. If something could slice through flesh like a hot knife through butter, it was going to be better than any knife he owned. Why not use what he naturally had now? Was this what acceptance looked like or just taking advantage of the situation? He didn't care anymore. He had played that part before, but unknowingly. Now it was a part of survival. His abilities being used to keep his usual blood drop offs quiet. Sure, there was access to them by his own research, but it did give an awful long look when it was delivered to your doorstep. But why wouldn't it be here? At least that way, it was simpler. There was no middle man, no rush to worry about. People trying to take what was his and have some mistake? These were things that happened in movies and he wasn't about to accept it here. Stupid, ridiculous mistakes for people who were less than meticulous as he was.
Heat was on underneath the skillet, but it didn't stop him from moving it out of the way. From wanting to ignore it all and have something a little more rare. To hovering his hand over the heat that sparked up. Teeth clenched, his own personal experiment as he smelled his own burning flesh. It was painful, but it wasn't actually touching it. Just in reach, with the deep intake of breath. A slow smug smirk lifting, as he thought about the level of pain he could handle anymore. Healing was one thing, but he held a newfound strength, it just didn't contribute to his inability to handle stupidity. That was a shame.