Erik Stewart

The Basics

Name: Erik, Lane, Stewart
Nicknames: N/A
Age: 17 years
Orientation: Homosexual
Desired Rank/Job: Student
Powers: Shapeshifting: Can transform into a snake most like the water moccasin/swamp moccasin, if a bit darker, and a bit larger.

Shapeshifting is painful physically and emotionally for him, so he will usually abstain from it. As a result, he is not very practiced and can only sustain the form for a few minutes. Afterwards he experiences an aching pain in his back, since it literally extends when he shifts; he also experiences pain around his collarbone and his waist.

Animal Communication: Can communicate with snakes.

It's assumed he can communicate with any type of snake, but he's only had the pleasure with the garden variety, due to their prevalence. They don't 'talk' per se, but they understand each other intrinsically as animals do.
If asked, Erik will often admit that snakes lack the camaraderie some other species of animals share among each other. They prefer their own territory, and sometimes even cannibalize one another...he's absorbed some of their aloofness, suspicion and their sometimes their droning hiss. He's also inherited something of a 'don't tread on me' attitude.

Play By: Jaco Van Den Hoven

Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Blue
Any Piercings? None
Any Tattoos? None
Any Scars? None
General Appearance:
Erik is thin or spindly – it depends on the person. He stands at just above average but his thin-ness or his spindly-ness makes him seem smaller. He has a long neck and a tapered waist that ends in a pair of skinny legs. A generous helping of freckles sprinkles his cheeks, his nose, and his often-bare shoulders. His hair is black.

He has the look about him that most boys do, just on the cusp of maturity. Those arms and legs seem long in comparison, and his elbows poke out, lending that fledgling awkwardness to him – like maybe his limbs had grown out too quick and left the rest of it in the dust. They connected like USB plugs to an undefined, smooth white torso, which ends in a near geometrical waist. There are some traces of freckles there, too.

While beauty is subjective, most people would agree that he looks, at least, odd; that his particular build, face and otherwise is beyond the norm. At worst he is disconcerting, with his thin pale face and his dark pupils, punched in the middle of his eyes…but at best he has a compelling, secretive attraction – deep sockets, brow lined in thought, and smelling often of cigarette smoke.

Personality:
Erik falls into an archetype. He’s usually “that kid”; he who sits alone at the lunch-table, snaps at teachers, skips class. They might see him with his head bent over his desk or in some remote corner of the school, but no one has actually seen him outside of the institute. He is spoken to when someone might need a pencil, but it’s more likely that he is spoken of; that time he said this to a teacher, or that to Sarah, and where did he get those clothes? All they know for sure is that Erik is often in and out of class, likely due to detentions.

There is more to him, of course, but that holds true for everybody. His ostracization is mostly self-imposed. Any offers are ignored and spurned; his jealous grip on secrecy demands it. He is frustrating to talk to or reason with, for his erratic temper and his overall spitefulness. He snaps at people often. He is generally rude, boorish, and aloof. He talks with an accent.

Erik lived most of his life in a Louisiana hick town, with a small residential area and two shops within distance. It was a claustrophobic and mostly unfriendly place to him, ripe with wildlife and faith and prying eyes, and it’s no wonder, really, that he simply cannot interact well. A place like Vermont is something of a shock, whether he admits it or not – and his anxiety often takes the form of misplaced anger. A lack of outlet lets it fester until Erik has no more places to cram it, and it spills out like a gas leak, burning as it goes. Anger seems to him a constant companion.

Erik has a notebook, though, one of the few things he possesses, and one quote has been torn out, circled, and put on his desk: “It was that night I discovered that most things you consider evil or wicked are simply lonely, and lacking in social niceties”, and he likes to think it applies to him. At least, he hopes so.

He thinks, too, that he may be imagining it, but underneath all that smoke and fury and swamp water, there’s a well of untapped trust and loyalty.

Likes:
-Reptiles
-Country music
-The color blue
-Horror films
Dislikes:
-Invasiveness
-The color yellow
-Hipsters
-Romance/Comedy
Strengths:
-Keeping a secret
-Sacrificial, for the right people
-Honest, sometimes brutally
Weaknesses:
-Lying
-Ill-tempered
-Playing nice
Fears:
-Spiders
Secret: Erik is very secretive and he likely has many secrets, but not any significant ones at the moment.

Father: Pat Stewart
Mother: Lynn Stewart
Siblings: None
Any Other Important People: A black rat snake named Dead John (DJ)

Banks Springs, Louisiana. It was a small town – its most prominent feature was the church at the top of the hill. The area outside of town was completely uninhabitable. Just beyond the bank opposite of them laid a series of wetlands, simmering with heat and moisture and insects, fallen trees sticking out of them like dinosaur bones in a tar pit. There was some mysticism to it all. People ‘round town claimed to see lights flicker in the distance…ghosts or spirits or whatever, left by the in’juns as they called them. It was cursed land. Erik himself was prone to believe it; no one living here was extremely content with their lives, and Erik – well, he most of all, what with his condition. Might’ve been a curse as far as he knew, spirits of the native people casting retribution on the white man. Might’ve been the devil, too. Both?

His father had his gallbladder removed and this somehow left him couch-ridden for most of his days. He was a big man, and grew larger each year. His mother had been beautiful. Now she had fallen prey to paranoia and anxiety – there were some days she never left the bed, and Erik often fished outside and brought home dinner himself. He had no siblings, only cousins in Manhattan or Massachusetts, he couldn’t quite remember.

The people in Banks Springs were a close-minded and nosy folk. They singled out his family as being more unfortunate than themselves, for his mother’s eccentricities and Erik’s lack of faith. Erik never attended church and that was a fact – it was a blemish and a shame, and there were often long drawn-out fights over it. When he became older, there were fights about him staying out too long, too, and “fer makin’ his mother this way.”

It wasn’t until he was on the cusp of 14 years old that Erik began exhibiting certain traits. His first transformation was in private and half-formed. It frightened him; it was agonizing. Two weeks later the Hammel Institute came calling.

To them he was a simple meta-human, but to his parents he was a devil. Was not the serpent the guise of Lucifer?

Three years later, Erik lives at Hammel but has made little progress. He does not communicate with his parents ever since he’d been dragged from that rotting southern home.

Erik pulled open the fish’s gut. Its scales lay scintillating on the wooden port beneath him, where he sat, his feet grazing the green water. There was blood on his fingers, just splashes of it, on his thumb and on the corners of his white nails; when he dug his fingers in to widen the slice across its soft abdomen it got all over the tips, like he’d dipped it in paint. Erik didn’t seem to mind it, not even when he started to pull out its red entrails. They landed in strings at the bottom of the bucket.

“I don’t suppose you gut a lotta fish,” he shot, giving his cousin a once-over.

He’d been mostly hostile to his younger cousin. This was the first time they’d spoken openly other than a few words, maybe a grunt if he was lucky, even though they both slept in the same room. It’d been his parents’ idea to take him out, probably ‘cause they were both as fed up with Christian as he was, or with both of them, even: ‘go take him fishing’, they said, ‘go take him out for a walk’. Erik suggested he introduce his cus to the alligators – he’d gotten a slap in the head for that. Even now he considered pushing the younger boy into the algae-ridden waters of the Louisiana swamp.

As predicted, Christian was relatively useless at fishing or anything to do with it. He’d gone off to the city, “traded the saddle for the tie”, as the analogy went, and it’d rubbed off on him. Christian couldn’t do shit. Erik watched him bat away flies for a little, while he puffed away on his cigarette, the half-gutted fish growing slimy in his hands.

“You wanna try?” he asked, holding it out to him, hoping it’d make him squirm. “You can cut off the head.”

Name: Day
Age: 22
Experience: Idk like 7 years
How Did You Find Us? Rae
Ready To Play?yeh