The beauty in nothingness...(Grayson)

[Akakios (DELETED 10882)]

Blistering agony racked his body, every muscle was tense and white migraine spots were dancing in front of his vision. It was a nightmare, one that he did not believe he would be able to leave anytime soon, and it was all his brain-dead boss’ fault. The moron had known that the new hire was currently useless, yet still, he put him on the rota for the busiest nights of the week – and in all his illogical wisdom he had decided that Akakios should be his teacher.

“So, um…how do you…um…put the new barrel in?”

Useless. They were all blinking useless, and he was at the end of the admittedly very short fuse when he turned around to give the other male a glare that could strip paint with its level of acid. “Incompetent,” it was all he said but it was enough to have the man backing up with his hands held up in the universal sign of ‘Don’t hit me!’.

Everyone around them turned to watch as the new kid was introduced to the side of Akakios that earned him the title of ‘Emotionless Hobgoblin’, a few of them even waved their hands about like frantic ducks in the attempt to get the kid to back up and just walk away. Of course, the new guy didn’t listen and instead just gave a kind of smile that screamed ‘Aren’t I cute? Can’t be mad at this face!’ what he didn’t expect, but everyone else did, was the total lack of shits that Akakios gave.

“How did you get hired when you clearly have no ability to do the simplest of tasks? You are without a doubt the most illogical hire that the manager has ever made, go and sit in the corner until it is time to clock out. I do not want to hear or see you until the end of my shift.” To make his point even clearer to the brainless troglodyte Akakios raised a hand and pointed over to where the stool sat, said stool was located in what was known by the rest of the staff as ‘idiots’ corner’. Most of them had spent four or five shifts sat twiddling their thumbs in that corner.

Around the room, winces could be heard, and the new guy was doing a rather good impression of a goldfish – Akakios as usual ignored all of this and got straight back into his job. No one here seemed to understand. The noise was too much. Their questions were too much. Everything was just too much.

The rest of the shift passed by with an awkward tension. No one dared to talk to Akakios, they assumed he was in one of his moods and didn’t want to be disturbed by anyone. So, they floated on by like ships in the night, never looking in his direction, even when he clearly required their help, they ignored him, and in return, he stumbled through the headache.

At 1 AM they finally pushed the last customer out the door, picked up their coats and left Akakios to close-up. The very second the last of them walked out the door Akakios reached up and finally turned off the noise. Silence.

Only in absolute silence did he feel truly at peace, it had the same feeling as a friend’s arms after a long day. There was something so beautiful to him about the absence of the harsh noise of the world. Hearing people couldn’t comprehend the torture that came from the racket they created, all they could grasp was the sweet music, the gentle sounds and elegant rhythms of their world. To Akakios birdsong sounded like nails on a chalks board, and music held no appeal. He could easily live in complete tranquil audio dimness.

Since birth he had been this way, it had taken him a while to accept that he didn’t have to fit in, that he was finished as he was without having to try to be ‘normal’. Where the rest of the world relied on their hearing he instead watched humanity closely and observed things that others overlooked. It was as if he had a direct link to the satellites that orbited the earth, and every day they would send him new visual data to analyse.

Once he had locked the club up for the night he decided that he wanted to walk for a bit, the cold breath of wind on his forehead soothed the headache, and the idea of seeing the trees at night was an inviting one. So, he pulled on his black leather jacket and started at a sedate pace out into the obscure night.

It was a route that he often took. Down past the park, on to the shop, hang a lest and then walk a couple more blocks before he was able to slip into the warm embrace of his sanctuary. He had been doing this exact walk since arriving in Harper Rock, it wasn’t the fastest, but it was the safest.

There must have been something in the air, some gas that killed his brain cells, because one minute he was walking his normal route, and the next he was slipping down an alleyway, completely oblivious to the man who stood not too far away from him yelling at him to turn back and keep walking the way he had been walking.

This was not a safe street; many things went bump in the night here, though to be honest, it was mostly gangsters that caused the most harm. Akakios knew this, he had had his fair share of run-ins with them, of course normally he had the sound turned on, so when he saw the five men dressed like TV thugs he didn’t even blink. Now, Akakios isn’t normally illogical to the point where he uses his first language on people he absolutely knows won’t understand him, but today his head hurt too much for him to even give a crap, so, instead of opening his mouth to tell the men to go away he held his left hand out flat with the palm facing the floor and balled his right hand into a fist with only his pointer finger out, he then slipped his right hand under his left like a train going through a tunnel (go away).

The five men just stood there dumbly for a moment, but the magic of a man using his hands to speak soon wore off and they were again moving towards him…

[Grayson Wyatt]

“Mr. Wyatt?” Her voice was soft and slightly concerned. Valerie Tanner had been working for Grayson for about six months now, and she had noticed that he sometimes seemed to zone out for prolonged periods of time. He would just stare at something, like the flash of a light, or the color of a fabric and he would be gone. When he finally did come around, it was usually marked with a sudden burst of vision and activity. He wasn’t difficult to work for, but these fugue states (or whatever they were) had been known to upend production. For example, he’d once spent the better part of an hour staring at a rotten apple, which had a worm crawling around on its insides. Afterwards, he’d basically said that they needed to start from scratch. Which was why, despite having some of the best and brightest minds Harper Rock had to offer when it came to fashion, Wait Fable had yet to produce anything.

“I’m just trying to decide which one I like more.” He said and Valerie let out a sigh and a mouthed ‘thank god’ which made Grayson chuckle just a little bit. The expression didn’t just reach his eyes, but seemed to make them gleam like little gems. “Come now, you have to have some faith in the process.” He said as he peered intently between two bolts of material before settling on one, his hand laying on the pattern. The fabric was local, which meant that it was a little bit more expensive than if Gray had designed something and then shipped his ideas off to someone who could produce them in bulk for cheap. His fingertips dragged slowly over the softness of it. One of the things he thought he would absolutely never get over - being a vampire - was how every single sensation seemed to be intensified. Touch was one of which he was especially fond.

“Everyone loves a comeback story.” He said as he handed off his selection to one of his assistants. Grayson had a background in modeling, and for a short time after he’d been turned, he considered returning to that career. But he found he liked design even more. A model attempted to create emotion through artificial means - like an actor constrained to still frames. This meant that a lot of what a model did was based not only on appearance, but also on spontaneity and luck. A designer, on the other hand, had to have a message in mind. It wasn’t just about making a garment that looked good; it was about people choosing to wear the Wait Fable brand because every piece said something about who they were.

“Harper Rock is not a bad place.” This said despite every evidence to the contrary. There were zombies roaming the streets along with other dangerous undead monsters. The crime rate for the city was ludicrous. There were overstressed and overworked cops - some of whom were corrupt. There were soldiers and a trigger happy militia. There were also vampires. Still, like a weed growing through the cracks in a sidewalk, it was a city that wouldn’t seem to die. Grayson liked to think that it was in a stage of transition. But he had seen the beauty it offered. He’d seen and felt real magic. All it took to change things was to frame them in a slightly different way, make them more palatable.

He was just one person and he was doing his part. “I have to run. I think I hear Adley calling.” He said, which was met with a roll of Valerie’s eyes. That seemed to always be what Gray was saying. He would sweep in for a few hours a night, make sure things were running the right way. He would offer up some advice, and make some important choices, and then someone always needed him. The name changed. Occasionally it was someone called Laken. Sometimes it was Aurora. Usually it was this Adley person though.

He swept out of the door after grabbing his hat to nestle on his head and his iced coffee. Only a short time later, he was walking down the street on his way to where he’d parked his car (He liked to set it in a packed lot to lower the chances of it being stolen), when he spotted a guy turning into a dark alleyway. Of course, with preternatural senses, he knew that there were some thugs waiting at the other end to give the guy a hard time. Gray had died because of a literal band of roving hooligans, so he considered it something of a civic duty to get the guy to course correct.

Which did not work at all. He called out a few times, but absolutely nothing. What the ****?! Was this guy trying to get his *** beat by some thugs? And now the ever-impulsive Grayson was invested. ****! He ripped the top off of his coffee (first things first, right?) and downed it before following along after. He arrived just in time to catch sight of some hand movements. Oh! Sign language! He recognized it almost immediately because Lakenna had lost her hearing in an explosion, and Gray had been having her teach him it. He liked it because every little gesture seemed to have its own particular meaning, which originated from some reference to something else. He was about to comment on it when he saw one of the thugs pulling a gun and he sort of lept into action. Or rather he plugged the end of the gun with the very tip of his index finger by vaulting past the deaf guy.

Which. Was probably really dumb. But Gray was known to do dumb things when he was trying to be helpful. Suddenly, the man with the gun was looking down to where the vampire was touching his firearm. He looked confused. “Oh hi! You’ve found my misplaced friend here. And look at this. This doesn’t seem right at all.” He said as his fingers slipped along the barrel of the gun, only to lightly coax it out of the gangster’s grip. For a moment, the human was transfixed by the expression in Grayson’s eyes, and that was all it took for him to give the weapon a toss over his shoulder. “Thanks for keeping him safe, but we must be going!” Okay. So it could have been the dialogue from some shitty 80’s comedy film. But. Gray wasn’t exactly known for being great at lying. He just kind of turned on the charm and hoped for the best. So he swiveled, grabbed the guy by the arm and began towards the open end of the alley. Hopefully they wouldn’t be followed. And hopefully nobody else had a gun. Right?

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