The Sane and the Lost

by Sky Blue CMC

Chapter II: The Great Escape

Author's Note:

This is the first chapter that was written by me, but on the whole, except for his possible plot-twists (in my later chapters), the plot is my idea. (This means that my plot-twists are my idea too.) This is Clara's point of view, at the end of A Day in the Life. Aaaaaaaaaaaaand I finally have a reason to add the Gore tag: Clara's mention of brings a flashback into Sylus' mind and speech. If you're an acute egghead/couchpotato, you'll notice a lot of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff, some of which isn't even Whovian! (ex. A Wrinkle in Time, a book that preceded the Doctor Who series.)

My brother was just sitting there, not doing anything. He wasn't eating his breakfast, and I'm fairly certain that it was for a reason other than it being flavourless. Flavourless it was, true, but there was something else: he had this kind of look in his eyes. A look like he was trying to forget something that had been haunting him for as long as he could remember.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Sylus asked.

Blimey! I thought. I was about to ask you the same question! "I saw something, brother Sy." I told him. "Something in your eyes. It was a mixture of pain and sadness and regret. I can only guess it's because that pink-haired girl you keep turning your head to reminds you of our dear mother."

"You can only guess right, Clara." he replied. He never did come up with a nickname for me, and I rarely used mine for him anyway. "And you have no idea how it feels."

"What are you talking about, Sylus?" I asked him. "We both have the same mother! What could you possibly mean by 'having no idea' how it feels?"

"You don't know." Sylus replied. "You wouldn't know. You weren't there when it happened. You weren't there when they came and literally tore out our mother's organs one by one! You weren't there when they replaced her brain with a CPU, her lungs with fans, her vocal chords with an actual voicebox, and her heart with a hard drive! You weren't there when she spoke her first words in her reformed state! The words 'What shall you have me do, Overseer Dash?' in that dull, monotone, emotionless voice! YOU WEREN'T THERE!!!!"

Sylus screamed that last sentence quite loudly. Not loudly enough for any of the workers to hear, but just so that about everybody in the cafeteria could. He made one fatal mistake: alerting the crowd. I could feel the tension as a hundred eyes stared at us, at him, and waited for something else to come out of his mouth. But nothing did.

I said something in his stead. I said to the crowd "Do you know how you make someone into a victim? Subtract love, add anger. Does he seem a bit angry to you?"

Everybody in the audience nodded their heads in agreement.

"Well somebody's never been to Purgatory!" Sylus responded to the nods.

"Don't listen to him," I said, "he's been having nightmares for as long as he or I can remember. He's not thinking straight!" And I knew full well he wasn't. I know what my brother is like when he's thinking straight: a reasonable, clever, innovative young boy. And this just wasn't him. Not that day, not today, not ever since he was experimented on. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. What matters is that I noticed that he wasn't acting normal, and thus concluded that he wasn't thinking straight.

Sylus was never this irrational, and I knew it was from more than a mere mixture of insomnia, starvation, nausea, and disorientation. He was imprisoned. Not just in these bloody walls, but it was as if the tears of the broken had washed away his soul. His sky-blue eyes, a colour that mirrored mine, were filled with a scorching flame. It was as if he wanted that flame to burn his memories away. I knew that if there was a time when my brother, my only friend, needed me the most, it was that day. He couldn't stay in this flameless hellhole alone! I thought. There's nothing we can do here. The Bells are immortal and confusing. Always ringing, yet seeming to do absolutely nothing... More like Bells of Inclarity if you ask me!

I decided to do what I've been able to do since birth. I channelled my next thought to him telepathically, so that nobody except him could hear me. The thought was simply this: We must escape as soon as we can, brother Sy!

My brother turned his head away from me, back at the pink-haired girl. "Come along, Pie, we're going to escape this blasted place!" he exclaimed to her.

I looked at the pink-haired girl, known as... Pinkawhichwho Whatsit Pie. I knew immediately why my brother chose to take her with him. He felt sorry for her. I had one thing to say to him. "I understand, I do." I told him.

"Good." he replied.

"Now, what's the plan?" I asked him.

"Who says I got a plan?" he asked me.

"'Course you got a plan," I said, "you took that!" I exclaimed, referring to his "You weren't there" speech that he took from a book, Give Me a Dash of Loyalty by James Mandolin, while only slightly modifying it.

"Maybe I'm an idiot!" Sylus replied.

"You're not! You're clever," I replied, "really clever."

"Even clever people do stupid things sometimes!" he replied. "And a man without a book is like a horse without a mane!" Another James Mandolin quote. I thought. Seems that books are the only pleasure allowed in this abysmal prison known as Bells of Clarity Asylum.

I thought a bit more on the matter, and decided that Sylus couldn't leave without his books. "Bad decision," I'd say to myself if I could go back to the past. But the last time travellers died six years ago, making time travel in any form impossible.

"Gather all your books, brother Sy!" I told him. "We'll have plenty of time to read and grow your 'mane' when we get to wherever we're going!" I hadn't even thought about where we were going to go.

Comments

[Sky Blue CMC]

5045541 Finally! It's done! It's finally done! hahahahahaha!

[Synthetic Soul]

What was that about time travel? I dunno, i like the story, but perhaps it needs a tad bit of realism added to it.

[Sky Blue CMC]

5047297 It's a reference to Doctor Who. There's going to be a chapter where they meet the Doctor and his companion Aurora (not canon to DW or MLP).

[Sky Blue CMC]

5047297 Time travel is impossible. There's nothing unreal about that.