The Synaesthete, also known as Fiona Tremaine, forced herself to smile as she sat at a desk in Paragon City's Wal-Mart. She had finally released Taste Test, and had been roped into doing a promotional deal at the superstore. Her publisher said it would be "great for publicity", since she rarely mingled with her fans.
The nightmares had been plaguing her. Every night, she went down to bed, buckled herself in, and tossed, turned, moaned, groaned, and woke up a few hours later--adrenaline shooting through every vein in her body and keeping her from going back to sleep.
She was tired. She just wanted to lie down and nap.
Well, moreso than usual.
It took every muscle in her body to keep herself from yawning in public as she personally greeted every person in line at her table to pick up a CD, feign interest in every subject they wanted to talk about in the short discussion everyone would have with her, sign the CD, and remain level-headed and calm instead of stammering and apologetic to any and all critics that wanted to throw mountains of excrement on her work.
And she still had seven hours left to go.
They wouldn't let her have Miss 523 as her bodyguard for this event, so all she had for company was simply a big, burly, silent man in a suit. His presence didn't console her at all.
She loved her fans. She just hated dealing with them. She always became tongue-twisted and nervous and bashful.
She desperately wished she could just go to sleep and ignore everything...
She woke up with a jolt and a pain on the back of her skull. Her vision was blurry--it only took her a few seconds to recognize a mixture of opium and benzos, judging by the blurriness of her vision despite her glasses and how everything was tinted in different colors and shapes.
She could see the lights were off--busted, judging by the broken glass on the floor and how some were flickering. Bodies and corpses littered the ground, each of which with numerous holes in them. Likely from bullets.
Wait, bullets?
Panic almost instantly set.
She tried to push herself up from the table, but promptly collapsed back onto the floor with a clatter, the chair tipping over and falling directly into her. It wasn't heavy, but it certainly had weight. And this weight, combined with her sporadic, scattering senses, kept her from doing anything except spasming and groaning on the floor.
The chair pressed down harder and harder on her. She knew it was just her muddled senses, but she could swear that the chair was...laughing at her. Daring for her to lift herself up.
She could hear the click of a gun behind her.
The chair was still laughing at her.
This is the ninth night in a row...
Her sleep schedule, what little there was to begin with, had gone what was known in the scientific and psychiatric community as "[censored] snooker-loopy". Miss 523 had heartily suggested she get more sleep, but she couldn't. She was absolutely terrified to stay in bed now.
Fiona Tremaine fwumped down on the table, chin firmly planted on the wood, staring at her drink in front of her. Nighttime cough syrup. The alchohol would act as a depressant, slowing down her mind. After all, that was what dreams were, weren't they? Just constructs of the mind. Pictures and images brought from the subconscious and played around with the mind based on personal experiences.
She had nightmares about everything now. From friends turning on her to being alone to people suddenly hating her to traumatizing childhoods to her life being a lie to the release of Taste Test. The last one particularly baffled her--not only was Taste Test not released yet, it wasn't even named Taste Test anymore.
What also baffled her were the ones about a traumatizing childhood. She was raised a normal, happy girl. Well, relatively normal--as normal as a synaesthetic psychic can get. Her parents pampered her, loved her, showered her with affection and adoration, and tried to teach her as much as they could. Which admittedly wasn't much, but whatever they couldn't teach they showered her in books about.
The neighborhood mostly left her alone. She wasn't bullied often, picked on, or even shoved around a lot. They either simply pointed to her as "that weird girl", or they ran off after just a slight application of psionic power.
These dreams were lies. Total and complete lies, no doubt about it. Fabrications. Phonies. Fiction. F...something else beginning with F.
Which was fairly obvious, considering what dreams are. But the fact she had to repeat this to herself concerned her.
What was also more concerning was the fact that, somehow, she had fallen asleep during this ramble to herself.
Apparently depressants did not work the way she thought they did.
Fiona Tremaine once again fwumped down on the table, chin propping her head up, staring at the drink in front of her. A familiar scene, except for the drink of choice--Vault. Lovely, lovely caffeine, that would keep her from sleeping. Her concentration was shot, her coherency was shot even further, but dammit it was all worth it in order to stay awake.
She was sick and tired of the nightmares. Literally sick--she woke up more than a few mornings nauseated. She was terrified to go to sleep now. She had spent almost all of her time that should've been sleeping with composing.
Her ensemble was finished, she just needed it to publish.
But these nightmares were still plaguing her. She had to write, rewrite, draft, throw away, then re-do all over again--pieces often came out sounding haunting and awful, rather than beautiful and wonderful. She drew upon nature for her music...she considered the world to be the most beautiful thing in the world, and drew upon the beauty of it to fuel her music. She fought to protect it in her hero persona, and she glorified it as something TO protect in her composer persona.
But these nightmares tainted her mind. They kept her from sleeping, filled her with fear and terror. The last few tracks particularly emphasized this--they were quiet and lonely, rather than upbeat and passionate.
Fiona sighed and whumped her head on the desk. Then whumped it again, in frustration. Both her forehead and her eyes were becoming hot--the former from whacking it and the latter from tears starting to form.
God, she just wanted to SLEEP.
"...investigations are still continuing on the missing singer, 'Lazy Leanne'."
The radio cut into her thoughts, faster than a hot knife through butter.
Lazy Leanne? She was on the same label that she was, December September. Nice woman, guitarist, given the nickname "Lazy" due to her constant facial expression, eyes-half-closed with a devil-may-care smirk.
"She was last seen making her way to a concert, but never arrived at her destination. Her managers have been wanting to keep this case quiet, and thus very few people knew about the disappearance--however, an unknown leak has broadcasted this, and..."
Fiona didn't need to hear anymore. She had grabbed a bottle of Vault, slipped on a jacket, and made her way out the door.
She needed something on her mind, to distract her from all the nightmares. This was a perfect opportunity.
This would, however, require some help--she had no doubts that she wouldn't be at top capacity. So she'd have to grab some help, from various hero sources.
Fiona whipped out her cellphone and whipped out the phonenumber directory, turning the pages until she reached the "Registered Heroes" category.
Every inch of her body wanted to vomit. It was hard not to.
One had to admit it was incredibly elaborate. He probably spent a few days setting it up, getting everything just right. Just for her.
She was hungry. She could feel the pangs in her stomach gnawing at her, begging to be filled, contrasting with the nausea and urges to empty said stomach.
The scenery was simple. A blank square room, with one light on the top and one single door at the end, closed and locked. Unfortunately, it was the little additions to the scenery which really terrorized her.
There was not a single bare area on the wall. Papers were stapled everywhere, on the ceiling, walls, and floors, all of them depicting particularly gruesome methods of defecation. On people, bloody squirts, 2girls1cup, mountains of it, animals' own, every possible scenario played out.
What made it the kicker was two things, however.
1: She was incredibly hungry, having not eaten today.
2: There was a plate full of moist, delicious chocolate directly in front of her, steaming fresh.
A young, seven-year-old Fiona Tremaine sobbed as she curled up in the corner, eyes shut tightly, hands clamped over her eyes, teeth clenched. This was psychological torture, traumatizing on any girl, but especially horrific when designed for a synaesthete. Even if she couldn't see it, the images were already firmly entrenched in her mind. The mental images brought forth smells and tastes, combined with the scent of the inks flowing through her unprotected nose, mixing with the smells of the chocolate.
No matter how hard she tried, she simply couldn't get rid of it.
She was hungry. Starving, even. He had taken her food and shoved her in here, locked the door. Told her if she wanted to eat, she'd make do with "what was available".
Fiona rolled on the ground, sobbing and crying, choking on her tears and the sweat from the heat.
Ah, yes, the heat. That only made this worse. She was used to the cool air conditioning from her house and in school. She loved the cool air. It was nice and comforting.
This was, however, suffocating. She was drenched in sweat, her clothes soaked entirely as she gasped for air. In fact, it was almost physically painful--an observer, if there was one, would have little doubt this would induce heat sickness.
And most painful of all was the laughter. They laughed when they threw her in here. And they had laughed when walking away. She had little doubt they were laughing now, telling everyone else, no, BRAGGING about what they did to her.
The teachers probably wouldn't help, either. They were likely scared of her--a child with psychic powers, what's to keep them from prodding into their own mind?
The only thing that could happen is to wait until someone came along and took pity on her.
Fiona wailed, cut off in another choke her body finally (and rather violently) gave into the urges, hurling up...exactly nothing, due to an empty stomach. Dry heaves followed, quite frequently and quite painfully.
"PLEASE! SOMEONE HELP MEEE!"
26-year-old Fiona Tremaine lunged forward out of her bed, yelped, and then suddenly slammed back down into it thanks to her seatbelt. She stared up at the ceiling, gasping with just as much frequency as her dream-self did as her mind raced, trying to desperately come to terms with the fact that, yes, this was reality, and no, what just happened wasn't.
She lifted up her hands to painfully rub at her eyes--more to clear the sleep than to actually clear her vision, she was almost blind without her glasses. The same hands then reached over to take her glasses from her nightstand, putting them on her face, then reaching down to unbuckle herself from bed. A quick roll and hop later, she was out of bed, stumbling over in her usual sleepy demeanor--her eyes were still closed, but she could smell the location of the nearby objects, so she stumbled out of her bedroom effortlessly, changing facing directions with almost every comically-inept step.
This is the sixth night in a row...