Borrowed Time (Adam Milligan Lives AU)
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Whumptober 2023 Day 23: Shadows/stalking/who’s there?
Unsettlement rolls in Adams stomach as the sounds pick up. It’s just the wind and the trees and the plants, he knows, perhaps a squirrel skittering in the underbrush, but he feels uneasy as his fingers brush the wilting petals of an unknown flower. He licks his lips nervously and plucks it, going to stand. He slips on mud and stumbles, twigs snapping.
Something moves again, on the opposite side and he whirls, heel in the dirt and flower in hand. His backpack falls into the muck and the strap catches on his ankle. A shadow in his peripheral leaps just out of sight when he turns, back into the dark trees and out of the street lamps. Adam swallows, heart picking up and swallows nervously. Despite the air, sweat prickles on his skin.
Or
It’s a noisy walk home, and Adam is starved for some company and good cooking. Shame that the cracking of twigs and skittering of leaves is causing so much anxiety.
Series
- Part 23 of AnotherInternetUser's 2023 Whumptober
- Part 1 of Borrowed Time (Adam Milligan Lives AU)
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Whumptober 2023 Day 21:Vows/Restraint/Don’t move
He knows biology, he knows anatomy, he knows his muscles and bones and the tendons in his elbows, the buccinator muscle that helps you smile and the cerebellum that helps him balance, the axons and dendrites and his central nervous system prepping him for movement and chaos. He knows it all. He could point out each carpal bone in the wrist and each muscle of the thigh.
It’s an entirely different thing seeing it in real life, on a living, writhing human being that screeches and bleeds and begs. It’s nearly foreign watching tissues and muscle pulsate and groan and sinew snap, skin flayed in pieces and veins popping. Anatomy terrifies and disgusts him as he watches it in real time, cinched to a table as creatures, they have to be creatures, they can’t be human, gnaw on the flailing form of his mother.
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A few years ahead of their time, the ghouls are furious and writhing with revenge, and Adam can only listen and bleed as his mother is the brunt of it.
Series
- Part 21 of AnotherInternetUser's 2023 Whumptober
- Part 2 of Borrowed Time (Adam Milligan Lives AU)
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Whumptober Day 15: Makeshift Bandages/Suppressed Suffering/I’m fine
His mother is dead.
Adam sits. He sits and holds a hand to his stomach, body exposed and skin prickling against the air, blood spilling over his fingers and coating his palm. It’s warm and smells of iron. It’s thick in his nose and viscous on his skin, on his thighs and chest and in his eyes, wetting the flannel shirt that’s been thrown across his lap.
A man kneels in front of him. He has blood on his face and a gun on hip, but he is not injured beyond a split knuckle and a bruised eye. His hands hold an old first aid kit and rips a shirt. He says his name is Dean and that monsters are real, and dumps stinging power into his wounds.
Adam doesn’t really care. His mother is dead.
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In a turn of events, ghouls show up sooner and Dean ends up in Minnesota in the nick of time. For Adam, anyway.
Series
- Part 15 of AnotherInternetUser's 2023 Whumptober
- Part 3 of Borrowed Time (Adam Milligan Lives AU)
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Summary
Whumptober 2023 Day 9: Polaroid/Mistaken Identity/You're a liar
His voice is shrill and cracked when he speaks, breaking it pitch as he stares at the TV in a shady motel room in the dead of night. He sits on a bed who sheets haven’t been washed, rigid in posture and flaring with shock and anger, wounds burning as he moves. He gestures to the screen, muted and dull and stares at his newly discovered elder brother, who gives him a tilted look.
Across the buzzed screen, pixilated and fuzzy, is an image of his face. It’s an old school photo of his, smiling brightly with wide eyes and looking on the verge of a laugh. His mother stands next to him, arm wrapped around his shoulders and smiles softer, but no less kind, warm with hair framing her tired eyes. Underneath the photo is his name in bold letters, followed by a nauseating headline.
Adam Milligan, 14, found bludgeoned to death alongside his mother, Kate Milligan, who’s cause of death has yet to be determined
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The aftermath of butchering ghouls and gore hits Adam when he sees the news of his death on TV. Only, he's not dead, and he's desperate to go back home.
Series
- Part 9 of AnotherInternetUser's 2023 Whumptober
- Part 4 of Borrowed Time (Adam Milligan Lives AU)