eerieindiana | fic - Missing Pieces (Reply)

As promised, here's the second installment, which is actually number 5 for day 5. Confused? Yeah, me too.

“Ugh, man, this is just sick,” Dash moaned, peeling off his shirt, which was covered in some unidentifiable substance. “I mean, I’m no stranger to dirt, but damn, I don’t even know what that is.”

Marshall, who until that point hadn’t been paying much attention, happened to glance back in Dash’s direction—and froze.

“Simon,” he whispered, quiet enough so Dash couldn’t possibly overhear, and even almost too quiet for Simon to hear, “what… what am I looking at?”

Simon swallowed, his eyes huge. “I, um, I think they’re… wires.”

Indeed they were—wires, poking in and out of Dash’s skin from just below his shoulder blades all the way down his back, following the length of his spine. Marshall felt his stomach roll in revulsion.

What the hell?! What is he, some kind of mega-weird creation gone bad? he thought. Like… like Frankenstein’s monster?

Dash, sensing something was amiss in their silence, turned around to face them, and when Marshall’s eyes fell upon his torso, he couldn’t stop himself from gasping. But it was Simon who actually voiced the question aloud.

“Dash… what happened to you?”

Dash looked down at himself, at the large, X-shaped scar right over his heart and another, longer scar from his ribs to his hip. Then he looked back up and met the two boys’ shocked stares. To their surprise, he just shrugged.

“No idea.”

“No idea…!” Marshall sputtered, not believing his ears. “You’ve got wires in your back, and you’re saying you don’t know what they’re from? How can you not know?!”

“I just don’t, okay?” Dash snapped, his expression suddenly turning savage. “Fuck, I don’t know my name, I don’t know where I’m from, so why the fuck would I know how I got the wires or these scars?!”

Marshall still looked horrified, but Simon had the good grace to look sympathetic instead. “Dash,” he said, gently, “we’ll keep looking—“

“No. Ya know what? Drop it,” Dash said. “I don’t care anymore. I really don’t.”

“But, Dash—“

“Simon.” Marshall put a hand on his shoulder. “He’s right. Let it go. If he doesn’t want to know, then we don’t need to worry about it.”

Simon looked up at him in surprise, but then he saw the look in his eyes. Dash might have decided then to stop digging into his past, but Marshall sure wasn’t about to. Curiosity drove him like an obsession—he was going to keep investigating, whether Dash wanted him to or not.

I don’t like what that means for them, he thought, and couldn’t help but shiver.