Shades of Gray
folder
Angst › General
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
4
Views:
932
Reviews:
0
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Category:
Angst › General
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
4
Views:
932
Reviews:
0
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The Author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.
Forty-six & 2
On the southern end of Midtown, there's a hotel known as the King's Crown. At the top of this building is a penthouse suite that belongs to Travis Locke. He's not there often, just using it for times that he wants to have a party or just get away from the world and from Chris. So after Travis left the heroes at the convention, this was the first place he sought out to find some escape.
Landing on the roof, Travis punched in the security code and slid open the glass door leading into the recreation room. He headed straight for the bar and poured himself a glass of Vodka before taking the remote and turning on his CD player. Travis floated over to the U-shaped sofa and sank into its comforting cushions while listening to the glass-shaking tunes of Tool.
Letting the music fill the room, Travis tried to lose himself in the songs. When Travis was just a newborn baby, the extraordinary hearing powers he inherited from his mother kept the poor child awake all night as he was forced to listen to the sounds of half the city. Eventually, Dr. Quantum developed an incredibly advanced means of soundproofing a room that made it impossible for the child to hear anything outside his nursery. After the first few minutes of leaving the child alone in the sound-dampened room, they also discovered that he had inherited his mother's dependence on sound. When baby Travis started crying, the concerned parents rushed in to find blood running out his ears and mouth. From that night on, they left melodies softly playing in his room and Travis grew up to have a great love and appreciation for music.
He tried to tune out the world and forget about everything he'd ever known. The alcohol helped him get there but to his chagrin, Travis was finding it wasn't enough.
Testily rising from the sofa, Travis made his way over to the picture of his parents over the hearth and pushed it aside to reveal the safe behind. Opening it, Travis pulled out a pack of blotter paper that was divided up into several smaller squares. Taking the package back to his seat, Travis set the glass down on his end table and tore off a number of squares. Travis started placing dose after dose of LSD on his tongue, sunk back into the sofa and waited for the drug to take its effect.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Travis' first year at Garfield was a bittersweet one. For the first time in his life he was discovering the world outside of his island sanctuary. He was making friends. All this was tainted by the relationship he developed with Amanda Rhodes and what all happened.
He was fifteen at the time and on the baseball team. Amanda's brother was a pitcher on the other team. Travis saw her and instantly fell in love. Garfield was an all-boys school, so he didn't have a whole lot of experience with the opposite sex, but he just knew that when he saw Amanda at the game, she was the one he wanted to be with. Travis spent the next few weeks getting to know Amanda and a few more weeks after that trying to steal a kiss from her. When his lack of progress became too frustrating for him to bear, Travis called her an "ice queen" and dumped her.
A few days later when he was leaving the pizza place across from school, Amanda came running up to him, tears streaming down her face. She promised to make him happy. She said that all she wanted was to be with him. Travis called for his ride and when the limo pulled up, Travis reluctantly let her inside. For the first time, they began making out and Travis felt like he was in Heaven. This feeling was heightened when Amanda said she wanted him to be her first. He took her virginity and lost his.
For the next few weeks, things were great for Travis. He and Amanda fooled around whenever they were together, and that was most every day after school. Then after a ball game one afternoon, Amanda and her family were killed in a car accident. Just one of those acts of God that twists the knife and breaks off the point.
Travis was crushed and for the next couple of weeks was despondent and not able to get himself out of the house. Eventually though, life had to move on. Travis spent the remainder of that school year going through the motions of going to school, doing his homework and playing ball. He was pretty listless until tragedy struck at the Coliseum, a Laser Tag complex he owned. A supervillain who called himself Caesar kidnapped a school bus of Catholic school kids and had taken them to the Coliseum for some bloody sport. He had acquired some lions from the zoo and released the children and the animals into the Coliseum, then watched over the monitors as the beasts hunted down and killed the children in the arena. He tied some of them to posts and set them on fire. Fortunately for these teenagers, Caesar didn't think about the sprinkler system and so they were spared a gruesome death.
A number of local superheroes responded to the alarm and managed to stop Caesar. The teens that were put to the stake were the only ones still living, but were severely burned. They were rushed to the nearest hospital and Travis decided to do the socially acceptable thing and visit them. One of the three teens, Stew, was angry and blamed Travis for what happened. He belittled Travis and cursed him. The one good thing that came of this was his meeting and befriending another teen that was scarred in the fire, a young girl named Callie Poe.
Travis and Callie spent the next few days while she recovered in ICU getting to know each other. He found the more time he spent around her the less he wanted to be anywhere else. Everyday at school, he looked forward to that final bell when he could go to the hospital and see Callie. He couldn't recognize it, but Travis was starting to fall in love.
One day after visiting Callie, he ran into a pair of oddly fascinating teens. They were twin superheroes, Flora and Fauna. Not especially pretty, but there was something about them that attracted Travis' attention. Something that aroused his"¦ interest. If he had paid attention in science class, he might begin to suspect that he was being affected by the pheromones they emitted, but Travis remained oblivious. He talked with them for a while before asking them out to dinner the following night. They both happily agreed.
That night the three of them had a delightful dinner at Mario's, an expensive Italian restaurant in Midtown, until a superhero named Jack-o'-Lantern came flying through the window. A full out brawl took hold as the twins got in on the action when the villain, Corpselight, came crashing in after Jack. In the chaos of battle, Travis got caught in one of the Jack-o'-Lantern's pumpkin coil bombs which completely trapped him beneath steel coils. By the time the fight was taken outside and the police and emergency crews arrived, the girls were gone and dinner was ruined.
Totally encased in the coils and cut off from the sounds outside, Travis had begun to bleed from the ears and mouth as he had when he was a child. He was rushed to the hospital and given the best care the hospital had. The nearest hospital just happened to be the one that Callie was staying in and when she heard that the hospital had Travis Locke staying there, she made her way down to see him. Callie spent more time beside his bed while he was recovering than she did in her own. When Travis was ready to be released, he told Callie he would like to see her on a regular basis.
Over the course of the next few months, they moved from friends to lovers. Callie had third degree burns over her body and face, but Travis didn't seem to notice. It wasn't her beauty that he had fallen in love with. By November of last year, he started to have some concerns about Callie. She was incredibly jealous, often getting moody and mildly violent whenever he looked at another girl the "wrong way."
Things worsened in December when he went to his big yacht, as opposed to his bigger yacht, and found the twins, Flora and Fauna, waiting for him. Sans clothing.
His mind was telling him no, no, no. But his body kept crying out, God yes!
Finally his will gave in to the pheromones that the twins were secreting and Travis joined them in his bed. At the height of climax, Callie walked in on the threesome. Travis instantly snapped out of the twins spell and went running after his girlfriend. But by the time he got up on deck, she was gone. Callie never returned his phone calls and her parents wouldn't let him in to see her. It was Christmas Eve before he would see her again.
He was driving down the interstate, listening to some Nine Inch Nails when he heard a police band broadcast saying that the Coliseum had been broken into again. Parking on the side of the road, Travis took the quicker and more direct route by flying down to the entertainment complex. He wasn't about to let some criminal mess up his place of business yet again.
When he got there, he found the place was empty except for some guys dressed up like Catholic priests carrying large crosses, which he quickly found out were disguised submachine guns. Travis swiftly took out the six men and then turned to find the culprit behind this crime, a woman dressed up like a nun and wearing a porcelain mask. Travis didn't give her a chance to speak or act. He flew down the hall and slammed into her. Her head impacted solidly with the wall and she slumped to the ground unconscious. Travis removed the mask and staggered back as he saw that it was Callie.
Travis was devastated. He once went to church and said his prayers and did confession, but now he was starting to question things. He was loosing his faith and "thanked" God for giving him "one hell of a Christmas present."
Before New Year's, Travis learned that Callie had multiple personality disorder as a result of the fire. On one hand, there was Callie Poe- sweet, innocent young schoolgirl. On the other was Sister Mercy- the jealous, vengeful, vindictive "righter of wrongs."
Travis was desolate. Everyone he had ever loved- his parents, Amanda, Callie- they had either died or gone insane. He was beginning to believe that to love someone was to doom them to death or worse. That anyone who got close to him would suffer.
Travis began going to clubs to try and escape his life. He was attractive enough, rich enough and popular enough for the bouncers to let him in, even though he was underage. He started drinking as often as possible and when that couldn't bring him the escape he desired, he started using drugs. Life was something that he didn't cherish. He missed his mother and a part of him wanted to join her.
* * * * * * * * * * *
When Travis woke up, it was ten-thirty. He had fallen asleep on the sofa after the acid flashbacks and now was late for school. Splashing some water on his face and putting on some deodorant, Travis flew to school and ran to class.
"Thank you for showing up, Mr. Locke."
Travis gave a thumbs-up to Mr. Blake, his science teacher, and then took a seat next to Andrew. Andrew and Travis were best friends and had been since Travis first came to James A. Garfield. Andrew was the son of Senator Ellis and was just as much a troublesome teen as his friend. He encouraged Travis to drink and to do drugs. He encouraged Travis to rough up the girls he had sex with, to take his pent up aggressions out on them.
Whereas Travis had short, spiky brown hair and bright, blue eyes with a "young Johnny Depp look" about him, Andrew had the look of a politician in the making. Neatly parted black hair, pale blue eyes, perfect features and he always wore his school uniform like it was a privilege, as opposed to Travis who did the bare minimum to look respectable.
Andrew sat at attention, apparently paying attention to what the teacher was saying while glancing at his friend with a slight smile on his face. Travis slumped into his seat and promptly laid his head down on his desk.
"Dude, you look hungover."
Travis took the sunglasses off and rubbed his temples.
"I am."
"Drinking alone? Why didn't you give me a call? I would've gotten drunk with you."
"Weird day. Just wanted to be alone."
Andrew nodded and went back to pretending to pay attention to the teacher. Travis carried on with his usual activity during class. Listening to WBAM being played through an office radio a few miles away, or listening to the sounds of a couple having sex just down the street from the school.
""¦bing tonight?"
Travis tuned out the sound of the couple down the street and turned to his friend.
"What?"
"The Colsons at it again?"
"Yeah."
"How many times?"
"Sounded like twice."
"Damn. New record for the old guy."
"Probably Viagra."
Andrew snickered, drawing the attention of Mr. Blake.
"I hope I'm not interrupting you gentlemen."
Travis smiled predatorily, like a shark smelling blood in the water.
"As a matter of fact, yes. If you'd keep it down a little, we'd appreciate it."
This earned some murmurs and suppressed laughter from the other boys and a frown of consternation from the teacher. Travis had pretty much free reign of this school largely due to the enormous contributions that Locke Industries makes to their finances. An intentional move on Travis' part to ensure that he could practically get away with murder at Garfield. Mr. Blake shook his head and went back to his lessons.
Andrew looked over at his friend.
"Dude." Andrew shook his head and then made a bowing motion to his friend. Travis smirked and was about to return to listening to the Colsons when he remembered Andrew was asking him something.
"What were you asking?"
"Oh. You want to go clubbing tonight?"
"Yeah. I'm thinking, let's see if we can score us some X."
"I know a guy we can talk to. The Oasis?"
"Nah, I'm thinking the Pretzel."
Andrew smiled and held his hand palm facing Travis'. Travis complied and gave him a high five.
"My friend, this is going to be a night to remember."
Landing on the roof, Travis punched in the security code and slid open the glass door leading into the recreation room. He headed straight for the bar and poured himself a glass of Vodka before taking the remote and turning on his CD player. Travis floated over to the U-shaped sofa and sank into its comforting cushions while listening to the glass-shaking tunes of Tool.
Letting the music fill the room, Travis tried to lose himself in the songs. When Travis was just a newborn baby, the extraordinary hearing powers he inherited from his mother kept the poor child awake all night as he was forced to listen to the sounds of half the city. Eventually, Dr. Quantum developed an incredibly advanced means of soundproofing a room that made it impossible for the child to hear anything outside his nursery. After the first few minutes of leaving the child alone in the sound-dampened room, they also discovered that he had inherited his mother's dependence on sound. When baby Travis started crying, the concerned parents rushed in to find blood running out his ears and mouth. From that night on, they left melodies softly playing in his room and Travis grew up to have a great love and appreciation for music.
He tried to tune out the world and forget about everything he'd ever known. The alcohol helped him get there but to his chagrin, Travis was finding it wasn't enough.
Testily rising from the sofa, Travis made his way over to the picture of his parents over the hearth and pushed it aside to reveal the safe behind. Opening it, Travis pulled out a pack of blotter paper that was divided up into several smaller squares. Taking the package back to his seat, Travis set the glass down on his end table and tore off a number of squares. Travis started placing dose after dose of LSD on his tongue, sunk back into the sofa and waited for the drug to take its effect.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Travis' first year at Garfield was a bittersweet one. For the first time in his life he was discovering the world outside of his island sanctuary. He was making friends. All this was tainted by the relationship he developed with Amanda Rhodes and what all happened.
He was fifteen at the time and on the baseball team. Amanda's brother was a pitcher on the other team. Travis saw her and instantly fell in love. Garfield was an all-boys school, so he didn't have a whole lot of experience with the opposite sex, but he just knew that when he saw Amanda at the game, she was the one he wanted to be with. Travis spent the next few weeks getting to know Amanda and a few more weeks after that trying to steal a kiss from her. When his lack of progress became too frustrating for him to bear, Travis called her an "ice queen" and dumped her.
A few days later when he was leaving the pizza place across from school, Amanda came running up to him, tears streaming down her face. She promised to make him happy. She said that all she wanted was to be with him. Travis called for his ride and when the limo pulled up, Travis reluctantly let her inside. For the first time, they began making out and Travis felt like he was in Heaven. This feeling was heightened when Amanda said she wanted him to be her first. He took her virginity and lost his.
For the next few weeks, things were great for Travis. He and Amanda fooled around whenever they were together, and that was most every day after school. Then after a ball game one afternoon, Amanda and her family were killed in a car accident. Just one of those acts of God that twists the knife and breaks off the point.
Travis was crushed and for the next couple of weeks was despondent and not able to get himself out of the house. Eventually though, life had to move on. Travis spent the remainder of that school year going through the motions of going to school, doing his homework and playing ball. He was pretty listless until tragedy struck at the Coliseum, a Laser Tag complex he owned. A supervillain who called himself Caesar kidnapped a school bus of Catholic school kids and had taken them to the Coliseum for some bloody sport. He had acquired some lions from the zoo and released the children and the animals into the Coliseum, then watched over the monitors as the beasts hunted down and killed the children in the arena. He tied some of them to posts and set them on fire. Fortunately for these teenagers, Caesar didn't think about the sprinkler system and so they were spared a gruesome death.
A number of local superheroes responded to the alarm and managed to stop Caesar. The teens that were put to the stake were the only ones still living, but were severely burned. They were rushed to the nearest hospital and Travis decided to do the socially acceptable thing and visit them. One of the three teens, Stew, was angry and blamed Travis for what happened. He belittled Travis and cursed him. The one good thing that came of this was his meeting and befriending another teen that was scarred in the fire, a young girl named Callie Poe.
Travis and Callie spent the next few days while she recovered in ICU getting to know each other. He found the more time he spent around her the less he wanted to be anywhere else. Everyday at school, he looked forward to that final bell when he could go to the hospital and see Callie. He couldn't recognize it, but Travis was starting to fall in love.
One day after visiting Callie, he ran into a pair of oddly fascinating teens. They were twin superheroes, Flora and Fauna. Not especially pretty, but there was something about them that attracted Travis' attention. Something that aroused his"¦ interest. If he had paid attention in science class, he might begin to suspect that he was being affected by the pheromones they emitted, but Travis remained oblivious. He talked with them for a while before asking them out to dinner the following night. They both happily agreed.
That night the three of them had a delightful dinner at Mario's, an expensive Italian restaurant in Midtown, until a superhero named Jack-o'-Lantern came flying through the window. A full out brawl took hold as the twins got in on the action when the villain, Corpselight, came crashing in after Jack. In the chaos of battle, Travis got caught in one of the Jack-o'-Lantern's pumpkin coil bombs which completely trapped him beneath steel coils. By the time the fight was taken outside and the police and emergency crews arrived, the girls were gone and dinner was ruined.
Totally encased in the coils and cut off from the sounds outside, Travis had begun to bleed from the ears and mouth as he had when he was a child. He was rushed to the hospital and given the best care the hospital had. The nearest hospital just happened to be the one that Callie was staying in and when she heard that the hospital had Travis Locke staying there, she made her way down to see him. Callie spent more time beside his bed while he was recovering than she did in her own. When Travis was ready to be released, he told Callie he would like to see her on a regular basis.
Over the course of the next few months, they moved from friends to lovers. Callie had third degree burns over her body and face, but Travis didn't seem to notice. It wasn't her beauty that he had fallen in love with. By November of last year, he started to have some concerns about Callie. She was incredibly jealous, often getting moody and mildly violent whenever he looked at another girl the "wrong way."
Things worsened in December when he went to his big yacht, as opposed to his bigger yacht, and found the twins, Flora and Fauna, waiting for him. Sans clothing.
His mind was telling him no, no, no. But his body kept crying out, God yes!
Finally his will gave in to the pheromones that the twins were secreting and Travis joined them in his bed. At the height of climax, Callie walked in on the threesome. Travis instantly snapped out of the twins spell and went running after his girlfriend. But by the time he got up on deck, she was gone. Callie never returned his phone calls and her parents wouldn't let him in to see her. It was Christmas Eve before he would see her again.
He was driving down the interstate, listening to some Nine Inch Nails when he heard a police band broadcast saying that the Coliseum had been broken into again. Parking on the side of the road, Travis took the quicker and more direct route by flying down to the entertainment complex. He wasn't about to let some criminal mess up his place of business yet again.
When he got there, he found the place was empty except for some guys dressed up like Catholic priests carrying large crosses, which he quickly found out were disguised submachine guns. Travis swiftly took out the six men and then turned to find the culprit behind this crime, a woman dressed up like a nun and wearing a porcelain mask. Travis didn't give her a chance to speak or act. He flew down the hall and slammed into her. Her head impacted solidly with the wall and she slumped to the ground unconscious. Travis removed the mask and staggered back as he saw that it was Callie.
Travis was devastated. He once went to church and said his prayers and did confession, but now he was starting to question things. He was loosing his faith and "thanked" God for giving him "one hell of a Christmas present."
Before New Year's, Travis learned that Callie had multiple personality disorder as a result of the fire. On one hand, there was Callie Poe- sweet, innocent young schoolgirl. On the other was Sister Mercy- the jealous, vengeful, vindictive "righter of wrongs."
Travis was desolate. Everyone he had ever loved- his parents, Amanda, Callie- they had either died or gone insane. He was beginning to believe that to love someone was to doom them to death or worse. That anyone who got close to him would suffer.
Travis began going to clubs to try and escape his life. He was attractive enough, rich enough and popular enough for the bouncers to let him in, even though he was underage. He started drinking as often as possible and when that couldn't bring him the escape he desired, he started using drugs. Life was something that he didn't cherish. He missed his mother and a part of him wanted to join her.
* * * * * * * * * * *
When Travis woke up, it was ten-thirty. He had fallen asleep on the sofa after the acid flashbacks and now was late for school. Splashing some water on his face and putting on some deodorant, Travis flew to school and ran to class.
"Thank you for showing up, Mr. Locke."
Travis gave a thumbs-up to Mr. Blake, his science teacher, and then took a seat next to Andrew. Andrew and Travis were best friends and had been since Travis first came to James A. Garfield. Andrew was the son of Senator Ellis and was just as much a troublesome teen as his friend. He encouraged Travis to drink and to do drugs. He encouraged Travis to rough up the girls he had sex with, to take his pent up aggressions out on them.
Whereas Travis had short, spiky brown hair and bright, blue eyes with a "young Johnny Depp look" about him, Andrew had the look of a politician in the making. Neatly parted black hair, pale blue eyes, perfect features and he always wore his school uniform like it was a privilege, as opposed to Travis who did the bare minimum to look respectable.
Andrew sat at attention, apparently paying attention to what the teacher was saying while glancing at his friend with a slight smile on his face. Travis slumped into his seat and promptly laid his head down on his desk.
"Dude, you look hungover."
Travis took the sunglasses off and rubbed his temples.
"I am."
"Drinking alone? Why didn't you give me a call? I would've gotten drunk with you."
"Weird day. Just wanted to be alone."
Andrew nodded and went back to pretending to pay attention to the teacher. Travis carried on with his usual activity during class. Listening to WBAM being played through an office radio a few miles away, or listening to the sounds of a couple having sex just down the street from the school.
""¦bing tonight?"
Travis tuned out the sound of the couple down the street and turned to his friend.
"What?"
"The Colsons at it again?"
"Yeah."
"How many times?"
"Sounded like twice."
"Damn. New record for the old guy."
"Probably Viagra."
Andrew snickered, drawing the attention of Mr. Blake.
"I hope I'm not interrupting you gentlemen."
Travis smiled predatorily, like a shark smelling blood in the water.
"As a matter of fact, yes. If you'd keep it down a little, we'd appreciate it."
This earned some murmurs and suppressed laughter from the other boys and a frown of consternation from the teacher. Travis had pretty much free reign of this school largely due to the enormous contributions that Locke Industries makes to their finances. An intentional move on Travis' part to ensure that he could practically get away with murder at Garfield. Mr. Blake shook his head and went back to his lessons.
Andrew looked over at his friend.
"Dude." Andrew shook his head and then made a bowing motion to his friend. Travis smirked and was about to return to listening to the Colsons when he remembered Andrew was asking him something.
"What were you asking?"
"Oh. You want to go clubbing tonight?"
"Yeah. I'm thinking, let's see if we can score us some X."
"I know a guy we can talk to. The Oasis?"
"Nah, I'm thinking the Pretzel."
Andrew smiled and held his hand palm facing Travis'. Travis complied and gave him a high five.
"My friend, this is going to be a night to remember."