November 18th 2003
Ajax is eight years old when he starts feeling a strange pressure in his chest, like an impending doom was looming over him. He began having the urge to be near his mother, feeling as though he needed to be there so he could protect her. His dreams start forming ideas, and he can see his mother lying prone on the kitchen floor, or sometimes he is watching people walk past this small opening in a room, he can hear machines beeping and the smell of sickness is so vivid he physically feels sick. The people wear colorful outfits, except the man that comes in. Ajax cant see his face, only the mans stark white lab coat.
Ajax starts sleeping beside his mother, so when the dreams come he can make sure shes okay.
February 16th 2004
Ajax comes home from school to find his mother in the kitchen, prone and unresponsive even when Ajax holds her hand and begs her to get up.
His father comes home, and after calling an ambulance for his mother screams at Ajax for not doing it sooner.
At the hospital they are taken to ICU where they have his mother hooked to various machines. Ajax will always remember thinking she looked like an android with all the cords protruding from her, and remembers hating that he thought something so stupid at the time. The room was small, and a flap separated their room from everyone else. Through the cracks Ajax can see the nurses in their colorful animated hospital rags. His favorite is the one with the 100 and 1 Dalmatians on it.
A man in white comes in later, his coat is familiar but his face is not. The man is his mothers doctor, and he looks very wary and grave when he takes his father off to the side for a talk.
His father takes him home, and puts him to bed. At three in the morning his father is awoken to him screaming. Ajax wasn't sure why but it hurt when he was screaming, like something was reaching into his chest and snatching at his heart. Ajax was the reason he father didn't get to his phone when the hospital called. Two hours later when he finally got the message, instead of driving to the hospital, they drove to the morgue to see his mother.
June 10th, 2008
Ajax sighs softly, turning on his side in an attempt to get comfortable. He didn't remember his bed being so hard. And was his window open? It was cold, wet almost. And it smelled weird....
Ajax blinked his eyes open, letting out a startled squawk at the tomb stone staring back at him. His limbs fumbled as he frantically tried to get up, his heart sinking into his stomach at all they grey marble faces looking back at him. It was a cemetery, he was in a place of the dead at some odd hour of the night, no idea how he got there with his only source of light being the solar grave ornaments flashing dim colors of whites, reds and blues. Panic over took him, freezing him in place. He hadn't realized he had been screaming until a car pulled into the cemetery, the flashing lights signifying the police assuring Ajax he was safe. They took him first to the hospital where doctors checked him over and called his father. It seemed no damage had been done, except no one knew how or why he had been out there.
A week later Ajax read his fathers newspaper only to find that Eddie Tomeland, the man who lived within ten feet of the cemetery Ajax woke up in, had died of a heart attack the same night.
September 21st 2010
Voices. They were everywhere. Whispers Ajax could hear at night by himself, walking through the streets, at school. They never stopped, and at this point he was convinced he was going insane. At night he saw...things. It was getting to the point where he didn't know what to do.
His father checked him into a mental institution after Ajax came to him saying he heard a man talking in his room, telling Ajax he needed help, he was in the woods. There had been nothing he could do to console the boy besides calling the police, sending people out to search for this man.
The worst thing is, they found him. His name had been Heath Patterson, and he had been shot three times in the back.
For the next three years Ajax was in and out of the mental hospital.
April 22nd, 2012
Ajax finished certifying to be a tattoo artist, and took up a class in mythology , where he learned of the mythical being known as the Banshee. They were to be omens of death, messengers of the underworld. And the more he read, the more everything clicked. By the end of it, Ajax knew he wasn't crazy, but he was still terrified of what he was turning out to be.
Finding work wasn't hard. He was drawn to a small shop a couple miles from where he lived. Ajax just kept finding himself standing outside, he could be driving and get lost, only to pull into the same parking lot everytime . Finally one day the owner came out to him. He had been sitting on the sidewalk, confused as to why he had walked here when the man had sat down. Tattoo's littered his body, and when he smiled his eyes crinkled in the corners. He sat down beside Ajax and offered the boy a cup of coffee, naming himself as Xavier Malone.
Ajax remembers that a lump had formed in his throat, and it had been hard to breath. He felt like something was wrong, but Xavier was smiling and still trying to give him the coffee. Thats when Ajax knew this was the place for him, protecting this man with the crinkle faced smile and the tattoo's on his arm. He took the coffee, and they have been drinking coffee together in the same place every day for years now.
August 10th 2013
The feeling started today, like the feeling he had before his mother died. Ajax was concerned with how much time he had been spending at the tattoo shop, most of the time unable to tear himself away from Xavier. The man seemed tired, his skin several shades lighter than it should be. Ajax didn't need the nightmares to tell him that, but they did anyways. For three solid nights all Ajax conjured in his dreams were Xavier, sickly and gasping on a hospital bed. He's dying. Xavier is dying and its all Ajax can see, and so he gets his jacket and heads to Xavier's home, beating on the door frantically as images flashed before him. Xavier was going to die.
By the time Prentiss opened the door Ajax was screaming, the palms of his hands digging into his eyes in an effort to stop the visions.
"Xavier!" Ajax took Prentiss by the shoulders, searching the boys startles face. "Where is he? Is he okay?"
When Prentiss only stares at him, he has the urge to scream again.
"Zhut up! Ztop zcreeaming!" Prentiss pushed Ajax aside, pulling him down the stairs after locking the door. "Deed 'e teel 'ou hee waz zick?" Prentiss asked while they were loading into his car.
"What? No! He never told me he was sick! F*ck!" Ajax hated being drawn to this, seeing these things and being right about them. "How bad is it?"
Prentiss pursed his lips, convinced the boy was lying. Xavier had to have told Ajax about his disease, how else would the boy even know he was sick?
When Prentiss gave no response Ajax stopped trying with him, instead praying for Xavier's health on the way to the hospital. Once there Prentiss lead him through matching corridors until they reached the ICU section where Ajax was finally able to lay eyes on Xavier.
The man looked so tiny against all the machines he was attached to, his breaths shallow and wheezing, as if he were struggling. His skin was waxen, and the way his eyes sank into his skull had Ajax muffling another scream.
Death. He could smell it in the air.
"Xavier! Why in the hell didn't you tell me you were sick?"
Xavier wasn't able to respond, but looked to Prentiss as if to ask why he had told Ajax.
"I had a dream." Ajax answered for them, rambling as he fumbled for one of Xavier's hands. "And you..."
"I died?" Xavier finished softly, blinking at the boy in amazement.
"Yes. You did." Ajax nodded, tears spilling down his cheeks. "Why though? Why are you dying?"
Prentiss answered, knowing it would be too painful for his lover.
"'E 'as AIDZ."
Xavier died only hours later.
October 1st, 2014
Ajax was working on a customer, tattooing for them a sailors ship when he began hearing it. They were so quiet, at first Ajax ignored them. But as time passed they grew louder, only ceasing when he stopping using the tattoo gun. He couldn't leave a tattoo half finished though, so Ajax started up again, the buzzing of the gun bringing with it voices.
"He can't remember." It was like static, but Ajax could still make the words out.
"He is going to forget Xavier."
"He is going to forget everything."
Ajax came to a complete stop, biting his lower lip desperately. He didn't want to hear anymore. It was by pure force he was able to click the gun back on.
"He is going to DIE!" It was screeching, so loud it caused Ajax to drop his gun, and as it clattered to the floor he could see Prentiss, falling just like his gun had.
"XAVIER!!"
Tattoo's unfinished and customers angry, Xavier left anyways after Ajax's outburst, only to arrive home and see the same thing Ajax had seen. Prentiss was sprawled on the living room floor, having suffocated because his lungs forgot how to function.
