The Anxiety

First, your heart speeds up. You can feel it racing as it smashing against your ribs, trying to break free from it's cage.

Then your lungs turn against you. The very air you breathe burns, and you have to take every breath deliberate and slow through your mouth, yet you still end up panting until it becomes full blown hyperventilation.

Next is that horrible ache in your jaw. The only way to satiate it is to clench your teeth together, and that works. For a few seconds. You try everything, biting, chewing, pressing against them. Nothing makes it go away.

After that, you start shaking. Your hands tremble as you focus on them, your feet tap, you absolutely cannot keep your fingers still.

The last part, the worst part, is your mind. It knows why you feel like this and it throws it in your face. It starts with a small thought and spider webs from there. What if this, you could have that. It's your fault. It's going to go wrong. This is going to happen, that's going to happen, they're going to hate you, YOU MESSED UP, THIS IS YOUR FAULT, NOTHING GOES RIGHT WHEN YOU'RE INVOLVED, IT WOULD BE BETTER IF YOU JUST STAYED AWAY.

Avery Drabble : Pears

Sometime in the 90’s, I discovered my love for pears. It was completely by accident, as mishap while grocery shopping. 

I could not tell you what I had meant to grabbed, but I was not paying attention as I bagged a handful of fruit in the market. I was rather distracted by a child who had been following me all throughout the store, so I was not quite watching as I reached down and grabbed four or five pears. 

Avery Fact Dump 1

5’7

Strawberry blonde hair, thick and wavy. It is just long enough to pull into a ponytail. The elixir stops all changes to the body, so if he ever cut his hair, it would be back to that length within seconds.

Because he was an orphan living on the streets before Master Gustav picked him up, he is almost sickly thin. This also does not change due to the elixir.

Avery, a few quick facts

I have a nasty habit if chewing my fingernails. It developed as a nervous habit in the late 1800s.
---

I have a chest full of some of my favorite outfits, and sometimes I wear them around my apartment. 

Most of them are older than anyone on here. I have my old sailing clothes, what I wore while in China, the clothes I wore when I fled Italy, and the outfit I wore while fighting in America, among a few other treasured outfits. 

I also have leather pants and a leather jacket in there from the 80’s, and I do wear those around quite frequently. They are among my favorites.

Avery, Prompt: A story about a body part

The prompt was: I want you to look at a specific part of your body and tell us a story about it.

My wrists. I once spent a week tied to a man. He was my best friend, only man I ever fully trusted with who I am. We sailed together on the seas. We had run into navy men, French I think, or maybe Spanish. At the time, it was not a language I understood at all.

We were captured, because we were too drunk to fight. They tied the two of us together, back to back, with a mast between us.

Avery on his children

A note from Zayne: Avery did not know about his children. I've got a full explanation somewhere, but the short version is this: while Avery spent a lot of time in France with Evelyne, he did leave for months at a time. He may have sworn of sailing as a pirate, but he'd taken up a small fishing job, that sometimes took him all over that side of the world. Twice, he'd been gone for terribly long, once for 10 months, and once for a year. Charles and Ariel, the twins, were born during the ten months, and Jaylene the year.

Jaylene was 5 years old when we were introduced. She was not the least bit shy. When her mother introduced us, she walked right up to me and shook my hand. 

Avery on Evelyne's death

She was 30 that year. Two months before the wedding. Two months exactly. 60 damned days.

Disease, the doctors said. So many things wrong with her body. Her heart was weak, her lungs were weak. It was like her organs had aged too fast. HA, is that not ironic? While I never aged a day, she aged too fast.

They told me it might be an effect of the pregnancies, and that is how I found out about my children. I asked her after that, and she introduced them to me on her deathbed, before the disease went too far.

She…her mind went first.

Avery drabble

She was my everything
I met her when she was 19. I looked 25, but I was really in my two hundreds.
She was breath taking. Gorgeous. Bright green eyes, long golden hair. I towered over her in height by at least a head.
She had a laugh that made you laugh. Her voice was like music.
I loved her with everything I was. Her mother adored me, her father respected me. Everything was perfect.
The days I spent without her, I ached inside. It was a physical pain comparable to the tortures I withstood in Italy. But when I went back to her, I could breathe again.
She was my reason to live, and I lost her.

Avery: Trial 1, part 1

The first time Master Gustav used his elixir on me, it was imperfect. I never figured out what was wrong or what he did to fix it, but at the time he used it, it did nothing to heal wounds. As he did with all of his experiments, he used harsh torture to test his elixir. 

The night it happened seemed normal enough. I finished my chores, ate my dinner, and fell asleep reading in bed. I woke up sooner than expected, though. I was tied onto a metal table with leather straps that bit hard into my skin. The table was at an angle so my head was elevated above the rest of my body, but not wholly vertical.

Prompt: Avery Imagines His Parents

My parents…

Mum was not very tall, even to the small toddler I was. But her hair was long, I remember being able to reach it from the floor without standing. It was…honey colored. Golden. Her face was round… a small nose… Her voice was beautiful, like music, but quiet.

Papa was very tall. He had gray hair that still had traces of black in it. He never touched me, for any reason at all. He was loud, and his voice was raspy from smoking. Everything about him was thin; his body, his arms, his legs, his face. He was…very dark skinned. He worked outside, I think, in the sun. 

I am quite sure my parents were wonderful people. But they were not fit to take care of a child.  Unless I made it very clear that something was wrong, and what specifically was wrong, they forgot I existed. I went days in the same clothes, without eating. I was about 5 years old when I left the house, and they never came looking for me. I am unsure if they even realized I had gone.

Avery Visits His Parents House

When I was 11 or so, something had reminded me of my parents. I decided to see if they lived at the same house they did when I was a small child and maybe even talk to them. 

The house looked the same, though a few vines had started growing up the sides. I crept up to a window and peeked in, curious as to what I would find.

Sitting at a small wooden table was Mama, Papa, and a girl a few years younger than me.

Prompt: Avery Gets Drunk

A note from Zayne: This isn't necessarily part of the story. This was a prompt I received for some practice writing Avery.

I sat at the terribly lit bar, slowly sipping at my drink. The place was surprisingly empty for a Friday night, and very quiet, so I jumped slightly when a larger man plopped on top of the stool next to me. He ordered his drink, something strong, and I eyed him wearily as I finished mine and ordered another. Our glasses were set in front of us at the same time, and the man grinned. 

He lifted his drink to me in a silent toast and proceeded to down the entire thing at once and slam the glass back down on the wooden bar. Taking it as a challenge, I mirrored his actions, slamming my glass next to his. With a smirk, he ordered two new drinks and passed one to me. With another toast, we knocked them back as fast as we could, slamming them down at the same time and ordering yet another. After a few drinks, we were having trouble staying on our seats. I lost count of exactly how many drinks the two of us had in our silly challenge before the barkeep refused to give us more.

Avery's Earliest Memory

Master Gustav, the day he lured me away, and how I ended up like this.

He approached me, told me he had work he would pay me for. I was a young boy who had naught to eat for at least two days, so any offer of money was grand. 

Avery Stuff

 A note from Zayne: A few years ago, back in highschool, I woke up int he morning to find I'd had a nightmare in the middle of the night, scribbled this down in the dark, and gone back to sleep. Just last year, I picked it back up and played with it, even dedicated a blog into turning this into a novel. I'm going to spend the next hour or so collecting that stuff, moving it all to a new blog maybe, and starting it back up without any of the original people on it. Maybe gather a new set of people to help spawn ideas. But for now, I'm going to move most of it over here, all of it titled Avery Stuff or the like.









For centuries, mankind has strived for immortality. For the ability to live forever, to discard all fear of death. In the year 1723, a man by the name of Gustav Culto created an elixir meant to give the drinker eternal life. It took may years of failed experiments that led to many dead test subjects (orphans he picked up off the streets who had nothing else to live for).
That is how he found me. Now, I am not going to give you a big sob-story about my parents dying or anything. No, all I will tell you is it was better for them and me that I was not in their care as a child. Though Master Gustav was no better.
You see, not only did this potion indefinitely prolong your life, no permanent harm could befall you. While any previous damage your body had sustained did not change, if you were to lose a finger or receive an otherwise fatal blow, it would heal instantaneously. Everything either healed shut or grew back, and nothing scarred. Master Gustav tested this thoroughly. He severed my limbs, cut and sliced every inch of skin he could reach. He took flame or heated iron to my flesh. Once, he even stabbed out my good eye. 

Drabble, 6/18

I stand before you, a clean slate, a blank canvas, waiting for your brush strokes to paint me a masterpiece in your image. I know that I will be your finest piece, your star . You will make me into such beauty that no eyes would be able to look upon me without tearing up.

Drabble, 6/18

He hurt. He hurt more than he'd ever hurt before, more than all the broke bones he'd acquired in his life. When people talked about heart break, he never understood they spoke of a physical pain. his chest ached and his lungs burned, like the very air they need was poisonous. Every breath he drew made it worse and worse until he prayed he could survive without it.

Drabble 6/18

But you are the smoke I try to capture, the tiger I try to tame. I know it will never be, but I must never stop trying, for fear you will become naught. You will turn out to be some figment my mind created to fill in the blankness you would leave behind.

To Anyone, Anywhere, who's ever felt down for any reason.

I want to hug you.

I want to take away all your problems

Shove them in a locked box

Drop it at the bottom of the deepest ocean

Tonight, I Am Infinite

This is meant to be a spoken word kind of thing. I might record myself reading it and post it later.


Tonight, I am infinite.
I am the stars, the universe, the galaxies!
I am never ending!
Laying in your arms,
I feel larger than life.
My mind is among the particles in space
While I am here with you
You are safe
You are home
With you, anything is possible!
I could step to the moon
Or walk on the sun.