50 Originals - Prompt #4 - "Months"

Note: Alright. I realize I started with the fourth prompt instead of the first; I just wasn't feeling inspired by "hours" yet, so I went with "months." Bear with me.

Characters included: Kayne; side characters otherwise
Rating: PG
Warnings: Violence, but not graphic depictions; discussion of drug and alcohol use and withdrawal.
Summary: A short scene from the past life of Hurrikkayne Jensen, and a change in his personal definition of "months."



'Months'


Months.

For months, he had been falling more and more into desperation, drugs, and drinking. Twenty years old, and so messed up he hardly recognized himself anymore; frequently he wondered who the tall, bone-thin young man with the sunken gray eyes that stared back sullenly from the mirror really was. Surely not him, he would think to himself as he tried to comb his unruly dirty-blond hair into something even less tame. Not Kayne Jensen.

His favorite haunt was the corner-most stool at the always tightly-packed Tiger Lily bar; he usually arrived after the place opened and had to be run out at closing time. Still managing to survive on the inheritance from his late parents' successful apple orchard, he only vaguely worried about drinking his money away like that. For the most part, he concerned himself with brooding and picking fights, maybe gambling a bit on the side, and hating nearly everyone who had the misfortune of crossing paths with him for too long.

And then, in the midst of this repetitive lifestyle, there came a day that slowed time to a crawl and made the concept of months nearly completely unbearable to Kayne. He never truly remembered how the fight had begun, but felt certain it was related to thrown insults and deep hatred--after all, the creature was of the same species as those who had murdered Kayne's parents, and that in itself (with a bit of alcohol infusion to boot) was more than enough to lead Kayne to pulling his gun on the alien first. The creature's sidekick, however, was the first to shoot, a coward's strike, and with a searing pain spreading from his lower back, Kayne fell, blacked out, and woke up to the painful redefinition of the months that lay ahead.

Months to recovery.

Months to even sitting up on his own.

Months of struggle, more struggle than he ever could have imagined. The hospital held him because he had the money for them to do so, but they had little patience for an alcoholic drug addict who had gotten himself shot in a barroom brawl, and forced him into a cold-turkey cleanup that led him to violent bouts of withdrawal.

Months of withdrawal.

Months of an uphill battle that culminated in one word, one shattering word--"never."

Not in months. Not with all the physical therapy in the world for all the months in all the years in time. Never.

And as if in a whirlwind, he found himself set down on the other side of the storm that he had been fighting through, shuddering with the remnants of need for alcohol, hurting or wishing he could still hurt, battling not with an unruly drunk, but with a bulky wheelchair. Miserably, he wondered what nightmares waited to pounce on him in the months ahead.


-end-