•Note• This is all the alt pov/Claude and Marko stuff I mentioned at the end of the Final part of Flora & Fauna. It's all over time-wise since I wrote it predominantly to help myself feel them out as characters. No clue how much sense it makes on its own and separate from F&F, but wanted to post it on the off chance anyone would be curious. <3
●Pith●
Something under his back creaked loudly. Too soft to be the floor of the caravan. Too lumpy and hard to be anything that could be legally marketed as a bed. His stomach felt too full, painfully so, and every slight motion, even the motion of sucking in a breath, made the heavy contents slosh. His tongue stuck out to drag along his lips, only to find that his tongue was as coarse as sandpaper. Something crumbled, falling into the seam of his lips and tasting vile. The coating falling away left the split lines on his lips raw and exposed. The metallic tang of blood muddled with the repulsive crumbs and he let his head fall to the side. Papery fabric crinkled under his face. His stomach suddenly lurched, shoving its contents up toward his throat. At the inevitability, he folded over the edge of whatever he was laying on and opened his mouth so wide he heard a pop in his jaw.
Black vomit poured out, the acid burning his already sore throat. The amount seemed beyond what his stomach could feasibly hold before he was finally empty. He ran his tongue over his teeth, spitting over and over again to get the burning, repugnant taste out of his mouth. Desperate to see, he rubbed the heels of his palms vigorously over his eyes until the crust was scrubbed away and he could open them.
Other than the inky puke filling an expertly placed metal bowl on the floor, everything was gray cement. The ceiling too, he realized as he looked up. And he was on a bed. The basic metal frame was dented on one end. All around the bed, so close to the edges of it that there was only enough space to stand up to dress, were white curtains. The hems were murky, stained from dragging on the floor. Someone yelled a string of curses and Marko flinched at the sound. Another voice yelled a name in an exasperated tone. It was all far away, down a long hall, based on the echo. Both voices vanished behind the distant slam of a door.
What happened last night? He wondered groggily.
He could remember setting up the stage for the performance at the bar. The name of the bar or the town they'd been in evaded his slurring mind. But he could remember the taste of the cheap beer someone had bought him. The feel of the same hand that had given him the beer sliding down his waist with the suggestion of a trade he was accustomed to acquiescing to. Usually the places the traveling musicians he worked for played at weren't the kind of places that had any qualms about serving someone his age. But this place had been different. The bartender had made a face when he ordered alcohol, then shoved a glass of ginger soda pop at him and walked away. That alone had made him want to rebel, to make a problem of himself.
So, when he was offered a pill half-way through the show, he swallowed it instantly. It didn't matter what it did. It hadn't mattered to him the first time either. But now, it seemed like it had mattered. His memories after that were a mess. Vague feelings of sickness, of his head being so light it was floating away, his feet so heavy that he couldn't lift them. The difference tearing him apart in the middle. A feeling like he was drowning and flying. Immense pressure crushing his chest even as he evaporated from his body and felt blissfully free from himself.
Somewhere down the other side of the long room, a door slammed open and hit the rough wall before two quick sets of steps came closer. Two shadows grew until they stood on the other side of the thin curtains. A hand reached out and gripped the fabric, whipping it open hard enough that the metal rings scraped across the rod. The noise made his brain shudder in the confines of his skull.
Two middle-aged women in wrinkled white outfits, the edges stained much like the curtains, entered the cramped space. Marko pulled his legs up to his chest uncertainly. He looked down at himself for the first time. Black crust was dried on the front of the pullover shirt he was wearing, the pockets of his dark green trousers were turned out.
Fuck. What if I owe them money? he thought nervously.
One of the nurses yanked the pillow out from behind his back and pulled off the case. Just as roughly, she took the blanket and the crinkly sheet, yanking them so fast that it pulled out from underneath Marko before he could move. She bundled them up under one arm and took the bowl with no reaction to its contents, then hustled out of the curtained circle and was gone again.
"Time to go, honey," the other said, her features were all more round and friendly than the other one. Her face was framed with a barely contained bundle of frizzy brown hair.
"Go?" Marko repeated as he looked back down at his emptied pockets. "I..."
"We need the bed."
"But I...I don't even know where I am."
"Pith," she answered simply as she took a thin stack of papers that were clipped to the end of the bed frame. Her eyes scanned the top sheet, then she gave him a sad look.
"Did any of them stay?"
"Them?"
"The people I was traveling with." More black peeled off the fronts of his teeth from being exposed to the air as he sneered.
"We have a waiting area in the hall, but no one is in it."
Marko huffed out a bitter laugh and hung his head. It made no sense for him to have expected them to stay and worry over him, but it still found a way to sting. "Can't I stay here? For a little longer?" he asked quietly.
She pursed her lips uncomfortably. "Where are your parents? I can send a messenger and there are places you can wait for them to come get you."
Marko shook his head. "They're not... I can't do that. They won't come."
"Is there anyone we can contact or-"
"No," he croaked. "Please let me stay."
The nurse sighed and clipped the papers back on the frame with a hopeless expression. "We need the bed. I'm sorry, honey."
The finality of the words made his body feel heavy. His eyes flickered over the bare mattress as he struggled to piece together a plan to escape a town he had never even heard of. He pulled in a shaky breath as he stood and walked around to the opening in the curtains. She moved past him robotically and sprayed something out of a glass bottle onto the mattress before putting on new sheets.
"Um... Is there somewhere I can clean up? A shelter or something?"
She turned back to look at him and the big eyes in her soft face were shiny with tears even as her hands continued to work. "It's Pith. Pick a street."
Keeping his pockets turned out at that advice, Marko turned and exited the ramshackle hospital.
Not that the hospital had been notably clean or welcoming, but compared to the outside it might as well have been Paradise. As soon as he stepped out from the double doors at the front and saw the town, he turned back to the building he'd just left. The sound of a heavy bolt sliding into place on the other side made it clear that going back in wasn't an option. The hospital was exclusive invite only, apparently.
Everything was formed out of such filth that he was afraid to walk on the street. It looked like the kind of mud that sucked people down until they were too trapped to even struggle. The unnaturally hostile environments he'd read about in scary chapbooks back in a simpler period of his life. The edges in some places were covered in a layer of ice that made the slimy dirt look coated in jagged, sparkling cobwebs. The metallic, sour stench of urine and blood made him wrinkle his nose as it overwhelmed the smell of vomit from his own breath. A smattering of people existed in view. Most of them were slumped over on wooden or cement porches of the buildings, wearing jumbled layers of every kind of garment to stay warm. Very few of the buildings had signage of any kind, making it impossible to know what any of them were. The eerie quiet split when a man wrapped in countless layers of threadbare coats and scarves approached with an outstretched hand.
"Hey, kid, you-" The man's battered, red-flushed face was obscured by white fog with each word he spoke, except for his eyes that darted down to Marko's turned out pockets. Whatever he'd been about to say, he decided against it and angrily dismissed Marko with a grunt and a handwave.
All the streets looked the same. The signs that anyone had bothered to put up were old. The paint split and faded, wood cracked, corners broken off. Nothing was maintained. One building finally stood out, purely because of the lack of damage to it. The structure was mundane, soulless cement like the rest of them. But it was newer. No chunks bashed out of it or stains embedded in the grit. Marko stood in front of it and tilted his head back to read the words above the square doorway. Embedded in the arch was a sparsely detailed shape of a robed angel with open arms. Underneath the angel, the stone letters read: The Lady Grace.
The inside was so comparatively clean that Marko felt filthier for simply entering and standing in the foyer. The floor was speckled tile, making the whole space automatically look more sanitary than the gritty floor of the hospital. There was a semicircle shaped front desk with double doors on each side of the wall. The room was ominously quiet and each cautious step he took forward echoed in the empty space. A man suddenly stood up behind the front desk, the motion bouncing the ends of his tightly woven, dark braids that were bundled on top of his head.
"Can I help you?" he asked quickly but kindly, as if he was mentally juggling a thousand other responsibilities and had only so much time for an uncertain guest.
"Um. Yeah. I was told I could get cleaned up here? Like a shower?"
"Okay, yes." He ducked back down, reemerging quickly with a sheet of paper and a pen before setting them in front of Marko on the upper portion of the desk. "I need you to go over this. That's all the information you need about rules while you're here and time limits for the amenities. We can probably get you in sometime this evening. The minimum donation is-"
"The what?"
"Uh." The employee pointed at a list of prices. "It's only-"
"I don't have-" Marko interrupted and shook his head in confusion. "I thought this was a shelter?"
"It is. Government funding only covers so much, so we have to...." He trailed off uncomfortably at his expression. "Where are your parents?"
