weekend detention {Open}

[Erik Stewart]

Erik had been here all of three years and he’d garnered himself something of a reputation. He’d an explosive temper and, though he seemed thin and frail, he’d a powerful voice when the need arose. Though most days he would spend his time in class hunched over his desk without incident, there were others where he deemed anything and everything was an offense, an insult, a reason for retaliation. The phenomenon was famous among his classmates and maybe even among the faculty. Anyone who had witnessed it, to be sure, would not forget it easily.

His English teacher – who spent each Monday and Wednesday in his company for an hour and thirty minutes, each in mutual dislike – had got in his face, had asked him something, to which Erik had replied “What?”, except it wasn’t a regular ‘what’. This one was accompanied by narrowed eyes and rigid shoulders. It was cast upwards through dark eyelashes. It was seething and quiet and teetered off the edge. This particular ‘what’ almost always preceded any one of Erik’s contentious outbursts (especially if it was verbally triggered), like a pipe bomb’s frantic beeping, and, as his roommates could testify, it didn’t necessarily need a question to show up.

“Y’ ain’t gettin’ shit from me. I ain’t care what y’do. Y’know what? Why don’t’chu call ‘er? Why don’t’chu call ‘er right now an’ tell her I said she’s full a’shit like you are, the whole place she’s runnin’ is full a’shit, and she can kick me th’ fuck out. I don’t care! I swear t’Christ I’ll walk out th’ door with a god damn smile on my face!”

His hick accent tended to get more pronounced and colorful while he was yelling indiscriminately. Erik, who had elevated to a dull roar, got up to his feet and made the door hinges shudder behind him, left the class in a stunned (and probably embarrassed) silence.

Erik received quite a bit of detention for that – two weeks, plus five days after he’d got up to leave her office with a muttered “whatever”. But the boy was in and out of detention constantly, and it wasn’t like he had an illustrious social life, even on the weekends. He spent most of his time scribbling on his worksheets, chewing his pencil and staring off into the distance.

Today was a Saturday, 9:15 in the morning; his detention would last an hour, but sometimes the presiding teacher would cute it short – after all, this couldn’t have been his preferred way to pass a weekend morning. They were different each time. Erik couldn’t remember his name.

Now he was drawing something – looked like a snake. He wanted it to be a tattoo, on his ribs, maybe, or his back.

[Marley Rose]

Marley trudged into detention - 15 minutes late. She didn't really care what they'd do because of her tardiness. It was too early on a Saturday morning for Marley to care about anything, really.

Marley's temper and shit poor attitude managed to land her in detention often before Hammel, and if anything the manifestation of her power only made things worse. Now, in addition to outbursts of profanity and insulting comments, she had the ability to deliberately destroy school property. And it just so happened that today she was serving time for melting the knob off of a classroom door so the teacher couldn't get out. In Marley's mind he deserved it for using her as an example of static electricity - which gave all the other kids more of a reason to make fun of her hair which always seemed to stand on end.

The presiding teacher glanced up as she walked in and sighed, writing something on a piece of paper which Marley assumed had something to do with her tardiness. She mostly ignored that, though, and tossed her backpack under a desk. She flopped down into the chair and groaned quietly.

There were only a few other people in the room: a girl loudly chewing gum and staring at the ceiling, A couple of 'tough guy' characters with their arms crossed on their chests, and a thin guy directly to Marley's left. He looked like he could be snapped in half like a twig. He was kind of odd looking, and focusing on what appeared to be a drawing of a snake. He didn't appear like a huge trouble maker, but Marley knew by the fact that he was the only other person in the room who had brought something to occupy himself, that he had to be a regular. She pulled out a sketchbook of her own, and set it on the table in front of her. Only the regulars knew how brutal the hour long silence could be. Only the regulars knew to bring something to occupy themselves so they don't create more trouble.

[Erik Stewart]

Erik was engrossed in his drawing. He wasn’t a very good artist, but he tried his darndest to get what he wanted on paper – because what else was he going to do for an hour? – and he thought it came out alright. It was, predictably, a drawing of a snake. Its middle coiled in on itself, making a circle. Its mouth was open and its forked tongue was sticking out. If he could get someone to put all the individual scales on it, he thought, it might come out pretty cool. There was money to think about, though. His parents didn’t supply him with much and he rarely had any extra cash to spend.

He didn’t notice Marley come in and he didn’t notice her for a good ten minutes afterwards. He only looked up when the teacher left, shutting the door behind him; probably just stepped out to take a bathroom break or something. Erik leaned back and stretched out, feline-like.

Then he looked over. Erik had seen Marley before; he was sure of it. He hadn’t taken the time to memorize her face or learn her name, but they’d shared the same blasé punishment together, at some point. His blue eyes looked her over, as though sizing her up. He would’ve done the same whether she was looking or not. Erik had very little shame when it came to these situations.

Ordinarily, he would’ve kept on ignoring her and everyone else in the room. He was taciturn at the best of times. But today he was amazingly bored, and there was about forty minutes left of detention. Erik slid his pencil around with one finger, watching it twirl around.

“What’d you do?” he asked her, fully expecting it to be something boring, like she was tardy too often.

[Marley Rose]

Marley had doodled a bit on a new page of her sketchbook. Paper and pencil was NOT her medium. However when she was cooped up in a room like this there wasn't really an option to work with spray paint. Marley's favorite form of art was graffiti, and unfortunately practicing it on campus would probably get her in even more detention. But her little doodles would probably come to life on the sides of abandoned buildings eventually.

She sat with her hand pressed against her cheek for a long while. She didn't even budge when the teacher got up to leave the room. Her eyes didn't even glace upward until she heard a voice from beside her. She didn't skip a beat before answering, "Locked a teacher into his room... by melting the handle off the door." She shrugged, and a tiny devious smile crossed her face, still slightly amused by herself and the situation she had caused in a flash of anger.

She set her gaze back on her sketch book and continued to add lines and curves. Without looking back over at the guy she asked, "What 'bout you?"

[Erik Stewart]

So she wasn’t here for being late. She was here for melting a doorknob. This was more interesting than he would have liked to admit; Erik peered at her, observing her face. There were many things he was uneducated about and the sheer variety of powers was one of them. He didn’t know about ergokinesis so he figured she was one of those people who could conjure flames or heat, something like that.

Erik didn’t quite laugh, though that might have been his intention; it was more like a breath, like he’d snorted air through his nostrils harder than usual. The side of his mouth had curled into a smile. He was bold about meeting her eyes.

When she looked down at her paper again, he looked away, too, down at his paper. “Nothin’,” he said. “I just got a shitty fuckin’ attitude, I guess.”

Erik shrugged. It was true. He knew it was, he just didn’t do much to correct it; sometimes it felt like making people’s lives harder was his God-given duty, and there was no one more equipped to handle the job than him. His roommates could attest to that…and pretty much anyone who had come into contact with him. The kid had a wild streak a mile wide.

[Marley Rose]

Marley let out a barely audible, dry laugh when the boy said he just had a bad attitude. "You don't get shoved in this room on a Saturday unless you have a bad attitude," Marley pointed out, looking back up from her sketch book around at the other students, many of whom were nodding off. Even in their sleepy states you could tell that they had tempers. That was one of the uniting qualities of detention kids. Very rarely did you see a goody two shoes or a teacher's pet in the prison.


"I'll admit I'm usually here for bad mouthing a teacher. This time I was just presented a special opportunity I suppose," Marley added with a shrug. She had managed to hold herself together until she was out of the classroom. Then when some of the kids started calling her static cling again, her anger escalated and in a flash of rage she committed her crime.

She had tried in the past to have a better attitude, but every time she tried something happened or presented itself to her which made it all seem useless. Every time her attitude improved a bit she was sent away to a new foster family who believed in values totally different than the first. Or she got in trouble for her art, the only thing in the world she felt she actually loved. So she had decided she was just meant to be trouble, and there weren't a whole lot of people who could convince her otherwise.

[Erik Stewart]

”You don’t get shoved in this room on a Saturday unless you have a bad attitude.”

Erik shrugged. “You’d be surprised,” he responded. “Lotta these people, they just get in for bein’ tardy or havin’ cellphones in class…nothin’ major.” He was willing to bet a lot of the kids here, right now, were in here for minor infractions. Erik – and, he supposed, Marley – were probably the biggest news in the room. He wondered if the teacher had been issued any special instruction. Though Erik rarely started shit in detention…that just seemed counter productive, and there was a point at which he just wanted to go to his room and sleep it all off.

”I’ll admit I’m usually here for bad mouthing a teacher. This time I was just presented a special opportunity I suppose.”

“Hell, that’s all I ever get in for. Teachers ‘round here get all pissy ‘bout a couple a’ bad words…like they ain’t ever heard of ‘em before. What’s th’ fuckin’ big deal?”

Sounding like an angry hick wasn’t all he got in trouble for, though. There were times, too, that he transformed without consent or warning. He still considered his power more of a curse, but the boy knew full well the effect it had on people. Most were just plain scared of snakes. The sight of them made them scream and yell and run and piss their pants and Erik would’ve been lying if he’d said he didn’t find some pleasure in that – to be frightening at any given moment. Of course, there were times he felt genuinely threatened, but this was rare. Most of the time he just did it while he was mad.

He paused, then asked what he’d been curious of since they’d started talking. “How’d you melt a doorknob?”

[Marley Rose]

Marley stared at Erik as he talked, a slight smile pulling at her lips when his accent became apparent. It was like the angrier or louder her got, the more he sounded like some sort of drunk hillbilly. It amused Marley. Then he asked the million dollar question. How'd you melt a dooknob?

Marley gave a singular dry laugh and answered, "Hell if I know," and rolled her eyes landing them back on her paper. "I mean... I'm Ergokinetic so I can manipulate energy in all sorts of ways. Lately I've been creating random bursts of heat energy. I still don't know how the hell to do it. But I got mad and next thing I know the thing was liquid in my hands." It had all happened so fast, and Marley wished she knew exactly what she had done to prompt the heat. Marley knew she was more or less out of control when it came to her power, and she wasn't trying hard to change that. However in the hall a couple days ago she made a decision to use her power and it worked - and she wished it was that simple all the time.

The lights above them flickered and Marley sighed, "That's probably my fault too," she noted, as a second example of what her power could do. Even Marley wasn't sure of the extent of her ability. It was so foreign to her, even after being at Hammel for a couple months.

[Erik Stewart]

Erik considered. ‘Ergokinetic’…he’d never heard of that; sounded scientific to him. Somehow, though, it could melt doorknobs. It didn’t look like Marley knew the specifics, either, so he didn’t ask.

He thought it must’ve taken a lot of power to melt something. He imagined what he could do with a power like that and, Erik being Erik, he immediately thought of the morbid factor. What could Marley do to someone if she got mad enough? Melt their faces off, like in that Indiana Jones movie? And if it were uncontrollable…
He glanced up towards the ceiling as the lights flickered. “Coulda just been a bad outlet,” he said, with a smile cast her way.

She wasn’t the only one unfamiliar with her own power. Erik came from a severely religious background; his town was a god-fearing, small community. A homosexual navigating those waters was bad enough, but as a meta-human too, well, Erik didn’t stand a chance. His pastor had always told him he was Hell-bound for his sin and his sodomy. The boy couldn’t help that Jesus Himself had proved him right; why else would He extend His reach and turn him into a serpent? Was not the serpent the Devil’s messenger?

There were probably sermons going on right now, back at Banks Springs, Louisiana, about how Erik Stewart the town fag was living evidence of God’s vengeance. Needless to say, the whole situation had done a number on his sense of self-worth.

“So,” he said, “if I piss y’off enough you can…what? Set me on fire?” He put his hands under his chin. “Can y’microwave shit?”

[Marley Rose]

The boy looked at her as if he was fascinated. As if she were some sort of anomaly he never expected to see in his lifetime. It was strange to Marley, since there were so many weird things in this school she felt nobody should ever be surprised. But still, he prodded her about her ability, and stuck his hand under his chin in a way that made Marley feel like she was actually interesting. So she felt like she should probably answer the questions he posed. She wasn't used to positive attention, but so far the looks she was getting were from fascination, not disgust or fear.

"My trainers say that I couldn't possibly hurt somebody... but I'm almost certain that's not true," Marley noted, pointing to a red streak on her face. It was faded, and almost back to her normal skin tone, but in certain lights you could still see the scar. "I burnt myself with heat energy before," she explained. "I have scars everywhere from it."

"And then there's this," Marley continued, reaching out toward the boy. When her finger was within a few inches from him, a small spark formed between them. It was the same type of static shock that would occur if you ran around in socks on a carpet and then touched somebody else. Except a little stronger than Marley had anticipated. She hadn't realized how much pent up energy she had. "Sorry. I didn't think it'd be that bad... but basically I'm pretty sure I could really hurt somebody if I wanted to. My trainers just don't want to put that idea in my head. As for microwaving stuff I haven't tried it yet. But now I'm considering the possibility. I'll have to experiment."

[Erik Stewart]

Erik was learning new things every day. His trainer had invisible force fields; Phoenix had a pair of gay ass pixie wings; Marley had ‘ergokinesis’. He wondered what it would be like, giving people burns, melting metal, making lights flicker…hell, they’d probably lock him up and throw away the key. Erik was already garnering quite a reputation for being confrontational, abrasive, and even aggressive. He hadn’t bitten anyone yet, but he’d made plenty of threats, and false strikes.

He leaned away from her when she neared, but he didn’t escape the static shock. “Ow,” he complained, waving his hand to rid it. “Fuck.”

Yeah, he figured she could do a lot of damage with that, if she wanted. Powerful or intriguing abilities always captured Erik’s fascination. It was the only thing he really got philosophical with; everything else he couldn’t give two shits about.

“They’re definitely lyin’,” Erik agreed, giving her a sideways glance. “Wouldn’t wanna get on your bad side, huh?”

The teacher still wasn’t back yet. He wondered what he was doing…leaving a bunch of trouble kids in one room, and without supervision, was relatively ill-advised. Whatever; at least there was no one around to tell them to keep quiet. Erik idly stenciled in some more scales on his sketch.

[Marley Rose]

"Getting on my bad side has always been a bad idea," Marley noted, turning back to her own sketches. "Even before this whole 'manifestation' nonsense," she added, mocking the the word her trainers kept throwing around. It made the onset of her powers seem like some super formal, business like thing. It didn't describe the chaos that was the night her ability first reared its head.

Then again, Marley couldn't think of an appropriate word for the event. She could barely remember it. As far as she could recall, she blacked out and when she came to, the power was out, there were shattered light bulbs everywhere, and her face felt like it had been scorched.

A couple moments of silence passed before Marley spoke again. "So what's your deal?" she asked the kid. "What's your super special ability?" Marley never seemed to stop mocking Hammel or the idea of it. She still often felt like she was in a dream - like her ability and the other students abilities were all a figment of her imagination.

[Erik Stewart]

Erik shrugged. He aspired to explain it in the least amount of words possible. “I can turn into a snake,” he said.

The simple fact did a number on his psyche. Snakes were evil; this was a widely accepted idea, and Erik was not immune to it. Though he liked reptiles – and especially snakes – he was and always had been susceptible to the instinctual disgust that swept over someone’s face at the mention of them. This was compounded by the side-effects shape shifting thrust upon him: where a rabbit shape-shifter might become skittish, he was suspicious, aloof, and vengeful. Snakes often lacked the camaraderie other animal species shared. They preferred their own territory, sometimes even cannibalized each other, and threatened interlopers with a fateful bite.

He was no common garden snake, either. His form was the swamp moccasin, a serpent with venom bags brimming hemotoxin.

Unlike Marley, it didn’t seem like Erik wanted to discuss it much; he was looking at the black serpent coiling about his notebook paper. He idly filled in some of the scales.

“I can talk to ‘em too,” he added.

[Marley Rose]

"Cool," Marley said simply with a little smile, adding a snake into her montage of doodles. His power sounded fun - like something she would enjoy using. Not that exploding light bulbs wasn't a hoot... Marley would much rather be able to turn into or talk to animals. Or like in Erik's case, both. She would love to be able to turn into a bird and fly away. Or a tiger, and scare everybody off so she could just be a lone for a while. People would probably stop making fun of her if she could turn into a tiger.

"What kind of snake?" she added after a moment. "Like a huge ass python? Or a wimpy little garden snake?" She had decided it was cool way too fast. Once she thought about it, some snakes were so little and intimidating that maybe his power was kind of lame, after all. "Are you poisonous?"

[Erik Stewart]

He looked up again. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s a cottonmouth.”

Bigger than the average snake, with scales so dark they appeared black with only barely perceptible brown patterns; when it opened its mouth it revealed the distinctive cotton-colored white tissue that protected its fangs. One bite, provided it was packed with a dosage of natural venom, made the blood curdle and the muscle rot. It was deadly if left untreated and traumatic otherwise and said to be the worst pain one could ever go through. And why wouldn’t it be? The venom was made to eat flesh. Even survivors weren’t guaranteed to come out of the experience intact: some required amputated limbs or retained permanent muscle damage.

“I ain’t bit anyone yet,” he said, as if to reassure her. He’d bitten animals, but not people, and sometimes he wondered what kind of trouble he’d get into if he did. There was no denying that he’d thought about it, and there’d been close calls, too. “An’ it still sounds like you’d be harder t’mess with anyway.”

Erik shrugged, flashing her a one-sided smile.