Story Idea Thingum number el Tertio

Delirium

Beginning/ el spnashotto

Ah...it's nightfall.

Um…shit?

I didn't realise how stupid running away from home was until I did it. Except that when you do a super-melodramatic runner with the whole: "I can't take it anymore! I'm going the fuck away and never coming back!" thing with all the door slamming thing going on full force it's not really easy to go back. I could go back and blame the drugs…but then again they'd probably kick me straight out again and then not only would I have no home but no dignity to boot. Yeah, I'd rather stay stuck with being homeless. At least I have my dignity still standing.

Only thing about me that is still standing though. My legs can't stand anymore, I can't stand standing up and my hair isn't even standing in the pretty spikes I spent three hours doing this morning (before I decided to make a melodramatic escape). Yeah, because it's raining.

Running away from home in the middle of autumn when you live in London is stupid.

It's so not fair! I mean, in films, running away is always so cool and dignified and elegant in a rough 'uncut diamond' sort of way. It never rains, or if it rains the hero will have his silky hair stuck to his neck in a cute wet-dog kind of way, and he'll end up with the girl anyway. Under the rain, I look like a wet dog too. But I look like the dog that is wet because its owner tried to drown him when he was too ugly to sell.

My life is a depressing pit of depression.

Well, alright, maybe I'm a bit over-the-top. I mean: my parents are too busy working to take care of me, but loads of teenagers deal with this. And yeah, I get called a freak at school, but it happens to everyone. It's not my fault my parents decided to give birth to an ugly midget. My best friend once told me that he suspected my mom had an affair with a mouse before she had me. I don't see how he figures this one out. Personally, I think if my mom ever got into bestiality, she'd go for a horse or something. I don't know.

Sandro says I'm not qualified to judge which animal my mom would pick in case she got into bestiality. I asked him if he was into bestiality and he said that it depended on what I meant by bestiality. I didn't carry on. Sandro told me I was an idiot and stole my lollipop from my mouth.

Sandro's name isn't actually Sandro. It's Alex. But he says Alex is a boring name. Once I told him that Alex is short for the name of Alexander the Great, who was a very well-known person. Sandro told me to shut the hell up and get the hell out of his Heroes of Might and Magic hour.

Sandro's the second reason why I ran away from home. Sandro said I was too boring and it would end up eating me up from the inside. He said I should try to take a run and jump from a cliff or something. I asked him if he wouldn't be upset if I ran away. He said he didn't care. He said human beings weren't really his thing. I asked if this had anything to do with him knowing a lot about bestiality and he hit me and told me to shut up.

So I ran away.

Well, I didn't run away then. I ran away several days later, when my father decided to have a manly talk with me and question me about my plans for the future. I told him I was only eighteen and wasn't ready to make plans. He told me that when he was eighteen he'd already written down his plan in full details and pinned it next to his chemistry revision sheet beside his bed. I told him I hated him, that he didn't understand me, that I was fed up with him, and with mom (though I couldn't come up with a dramatic reason for hating mom) and then I packed a bag and ran out. I slammed the door and the number plate that Aunt Clarissa had given mom on her last birthday fell and shattered. I feel kind of guilty thinking about it now. It was cute. It had a little rabbit painted on it. I like rabbits.

When I ran away, I did something really stupid. Well, I did a whole of lot of different stupid things but one of the stupidest things (apart from the act of running away itself, of course) was forgetting my mobile. You can do a whole lot of things with a mobile. And right now a good game of Snake would have been ideal.

But there you go.

I'm stuck sitting on the doorway to a shop that looks decidedly dodgy, teeth chattering from the cold, hair and clothes soaked, mind sombre with brooding thoughts, waiting for the rain to stop falling and for a vision of enlightenment to hit me like a thunder strike.

It doesn't.

An hour later I'm still sitting on the same doorstep, still staring at the rain falling from the sky. The street is busy, people rushing past under umbrellas and splashing mud all over the place. Today is National Mudfest Day. Welcome to the world.

Hey, wasn't that a Fanta advert?

I think…

Ah, I'm so cold! And sleepy. I didn't sleep last night because I was on the phone to this girl. I can't even remember her name. I think she's a friend of a friend of a cousin of Sandro's or something. She says she likes me. I think her voice kind of sounds like those voices in the noodle adverts. I don't want to marry her.

Out of nowhere, a voice randomly says:

"He looks like a manager. Doesn't he look like a manager? I'm sure managers look like this."

I look up. A dude with ripped red clothes and pale skin and glitters on his shoulders and cheekbones and fine, weird golden wings is standing at the foot of the steps I'm sitting on, staring at me. Behind him is another dude, with pale skin and an explosion of black hair and black leather clothes over pale blue velvet twirling a tiny violet between his fingers and glaring at the dude in the ripped red clothes.

"Greetings, mortal boy," the dude in the ripped red clothes says to me, quite cheerfully.

"Greetings," I say, because I can't think of anything else to say."

"My bandmate and I have chosen you as our human manager," he announced grandly.

"Manager," I say.

"Yes. You see, we are forming a rock band. Like you humans have. And we need a human manager. You can be it."

I think.

"What if I don't want to be?"

The dude in red looks down at his fingernails, which are painted bright crimson.

"If you don't we'll just have to force you, won't we?" he says in a way that makes it sound perfectly reasonable.

I think.

"Okay," I say.

"Good," the dude in red smiles.

He hands me a dodgy looking piece of paper and a pen the end of which has been chewed so badly it's practically drooping. I don't bother reading the small script (the whole page is covered with it) and I sign.

I don't even like rock.

Note:

I actually began writing this with my closet friend. I mean, seriously: he denies being gay and yet he admits to his love towards his (male) co-worker, his lust for Neil Gaiman and we are currently co-writing a slash story. (he was like: let's cowrite something! I was like: sure, but it has to have some slash in it! he was like: what's slash? I was like: bois luving bois. He was like:…sure!)

Well, I wrote these two pages and then he wrote two more, but it didn't work out, so we're working together on another story.

Anyway, the deal with this one is: Damien just ran away from home. He meets Delirium and Etheriel, who are two faeries who basically want to form a rockband, because they are fed up with the endless lyre chanting of the faeries. They appoint Delirium as their manager. Damien does it. He then finds out that Delirium isn't only a faery, but the Prince of the Unseelie court (love son of the Queen of the Unseelie) and that he ran away from home. Damien now finds himself not only helplessly leading the runaway prince/faery rockstar into fame, but also targeted by the faery 'hitmen' sent by the Unseelie Queen. The rest will not be told here, because that would be spilling it for the readers who'll read this story if I find a co-writer :)

Co-writing potential: good, we could share the POVs between Damien (me, but switch can be arranged according to what you'd rather write and if I find you write Damien much better than I do) and Delirium.