The Strangeling Part VII - (Weekend Freewrite 3/3/2018 - apricot)

Greetings fellow Steemians! Here is my 10th 5 minute* freewrite. The prompt is "apricot".

*Not 5 minute this time, 60 minute ;)

This piece is a continuation of yesterday's freewrite, and the third installment in an ongoing story. Let's see how long I can keep this up, using the prompts provided!

Part I: https://steemit.com/freewrite/@bennettitalia/freewrite-129-fingernail

Part II: https://steemit.com/freewrite/@bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-ii-freewrite-130-wasps

Part III: https://steemit.com/freewrite/@bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-iii-freewrite-131-solitude

Part IV: https://steemit.com/freewrite/@bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-iv-freewrite-132-gardening

Part V: https://steemit.com/freewrite/@bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-v-freewrite-132-the-attic

Part VI: https://steemit.com/freewrite/@bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-vi-freewrite-132-plaid

Freewriting is a daily practice for most poets and fiction writers, designed to loosen up and get things flowing, like stretching before exercise. Visual artists, especially those who draw or paint from life (figures, landscapes, still lives, etc) do something similar in "gesture drawings". After reading several of @poetrybyjeremy's freewrite posts, I got excited to try these again. Many thanks to @mariannewest for hosting this daily freewrite! https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/weekend-freewrite-3-3-2018-single-prompt-option

https://pixabay.com/en/medium-psychic-female-fantasy-woman-goth-1726601/

We picked our way across the meadow in the half light, still holding hands. The evening air felt heavy and sweet against my skin, a thousand tiny caresses. Up ahead and off to the left I could see the lights of the concessions building, a few people seated at the scattered tables out front, the employees moving about behind illuminated windows. Suddenly I was aware of how hungry I'd become.

I glanced at the Strangeling. How crazy did we look? How hard would it be to slip in, order some takeout, and walk away without drawing too much attention? Only one of the inside tables was occupied, three figures, sitting motionless.

The wasps. How could I have forgotten? I couldn't afford to let my focus lapse even a little bit, and here I had let it slip away almost entirely. Again.

The Strangeling was looking at me, her eyes wide and dark in the purple light of dusk. "We have a problem", I murmured.

"I know", she replied, her voice soft, betraying nothing of the intensity I had experienced firsthand at the oak tree. "How did they get here?"

I sighed. "They came with me".

She was quiet for a moment. "They're going to stay all night, aren't they?"

I nodded. "As long as we're here in the Garden. Every time one of the employees moves to tell them it's closing time, the Wasps will sting to distract them. Eventually the staff will just lock up and leave, ignoring them completely".

She focused on the concessions building. "I'm hungry", she said flatly. "How close can we get without them noticing? There's a takeout window."

I shrugged. "There are three of them. They've drawn a membrane. Their power over others is significantly weaker when cut off from the collective. They won't sting either of us anyway, me because they're surely charged with protecting me if I follow the program, and bringing me back alive if I stray. You because I told them what would happen to the hive if they tried. But if they were to catch on to the fact that I'm... ummm... 'ad libbing'... and decide to alert the hive, it doesn't really take that long for them to pierce the membrane. An hour or two at most. As far as getting close without them noticing us goes... they already are. Noticing us, I mean. Because we're the objects of their current mission. But they only Sense imminent threats to the hive, or, at the moment, to their little cell. They won't sense anything else about us. We'd have to actually intend to hurt them, or to balk their immediate objectives, for them to Sense it."

She shivered, visibly discomfited. "I... don't want to be around them" she whispered, almost a hiss. "I don't like them. They'll Sense the way I feel about them." I started to protest, but the words never left my lips. Suddenly I'd seen it: the reason why The Annex, where Strangelings were made, was in a completely different section of the city from the main building, which handled Chameleons and Wasps. Because Wasps and Strangelings were too different to abide each others' presence, their natures ran counter to each other, the Strangeling's individuality having been exaggerated to the point that it became a force of nature, the Wasp's individuality sacrificed to a collective.

A Strangeling's power did not function by overwhelming and obliterating the individuality of its victims, or by controlling or manipulating them, quite the opposite in fact: it triggered a resonance response which heightened the individual sensitivity of anyone it touched. Even the power of incineration was simply an extreme extension of this. It was done by taking the person's sensitivity from near zero to a hundred, or further, in the span of a few seconds. Not an experience the average person can handle.

A Wasp on the other hand... To a Wasp, the "other" was inevitably perceived as a threat, even within the context of its own collective. The Wasps' stings were designed to overshadow the individual personalities of others, to manipulate them into acting in The Hive's best interests, to deprive them of their own directives and replace them with The Hive's.

"We can't go back to my apartment". She spoke softly, her voice distant, as in a dream. What the focus on controlling her mods every second of the day and night must cost her, I thought. And then, to have to split that focus in order to think something through...

"We can't go back to my apartment because I need space to recover. I don't know if I can control it well enough when I'm this tired. No. I know I can't". Her eyes came back to me, fully present. "We can't go back to my apartment, so we have to go somewhere else, somewhere they can't follow. At least for now. We have to find Apricot."

©2018 Bennett Italia