OOC: Fan Fic Origin for my RPG character.Prologue
Mid-November 1993 – Massachusetts
A light snow fell from the evening sky, blanketing the earth in its frozen embrace. A man walking his dog tracked thick footprints through the pristine powder, breaking the perfection of the moment. An icy wind cut through the air as he pulled the hood of his parka close, letting the fell wind brush past him. And past him it continued, kicking up drifts of snow and carrying them along the sidewalk. It was a cold winter night, the kind that kept most people indoors and bundled up beside their fireplace, and for most that was exactly where they should be. For more than the wind skulked around this dark night. As if bidden by the thought, two dark spider-like shapes emerged from behind a suburban garage and transformed into human form. They fell in step behind the man and his dog, and as he paused to greet them, they fell upon him, devouring both he and his canine counterpart bit by bloody bit. Only when they had satiated themselves, did they stand to stare at the distant hospital lighting the horizon.
“Human lives are akin to the perfect structure of a spider’s web. Each individual life is a singular strand on the overall pattern,” the first monster intoned. “Interconnected to so many others, and where two of those threads meet, they beget so many more. Even with a pattern as intricate as human evolution, it is possible for master weavers such as ourselves to influence the patter, to nudge a thread here or there or even pluck it from the very pattern.”
“Yes,” the other whispered. “Such is the case tonight. A thread is yanked forever from those it would touch, and a new one is set forth, with a destiny all its own.”
“No,” the first snapped. “Its destiny is ours.” An uncomfortable silence set in between the two and they allowed it to linger, content to observe from afar their machinations set in motion.
The footfalls were harried and panicked as men and women in white raced through the hallways of the hospital. A doctor with dark bags under his eyes stepped out of a room, shouting orders, hoping that someone, anyone, would hear him and respond. Within the room, a man in his mid-twenties sat by his wife’s maternity bed. Paul O’Gill shook with the sobs that had overcome him. Tears rolled down his face as he held Mary, his wife’s hand. Her face was lit bright with fever and glistening with a patina of sweat. The unborn child within her womb was fighting its own birth, and it was a battle she was paying the price for. Her screams reverberated through the hallways, shattering any wishful thinking that this night would turn out anything but tragic.
“Oh God, Mary,” Paul begged in a tired voice, “please just hold on.” He squeezed her hand tightly, wishing he could put all of her pain onto his back and carry it.
“It’s alright my love,” she whispered back, conserving what little life remained. Blood trickled out of her right nostril and followed the curve of her mouth like a newborn river before rolling quicksilver-like off of her cheek. Her husband wiped away the stream with the back of his index finger and cried out for the doctor.
“Dr. Martin! Get in here!” He tried to stand, wanting to rush to the door, but Mary pulled him back to her. “Mary, please. Let me get the doctor. It’ll all be alright.”
“No, Paul,” she said with a sad smile. “It won’t be.”
“Don’t talk like that,” he replied feebly, an iron weight settling into his gut.
“I tried to forget…or pretend that this wasn’t going to happen, but I always knew it would.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Paul,” she said with a sad smile. “I always loved you deeply. From that first time we met on that stupid ice rink.”
“I remember,” he wept. “I remember.”
She lifted her free hand, and it quivered with the exertion. Mary rested it once more on her belly and gently tapped the child within. “He’s going to be a beautiful and special boy.”
“A boy?”
“Yes,” she said, “and I want only one thing for him.”
“Anything,” Paul replied, nodding his head in agreement to a pact he knew nothing about.
“Name him Andrew,” she said. They were the last words she would speak to him as she began convulsing violently on the bed. Paul stepped away, his back pressing against the wall. The horror, the violence of the sight was more than he could bear witness to. The doctors came rushing in moments later and wheeled her bed from the room. Paul tried very hard to follow, wanting to be with her for every moment he could, but the orderlies held him back. He struggled against their arms, but it was no use. The doctors had taken his dear Mary away, yet her last words still hung in the air as clear as if she was speaking them then. “Name him Andrew.”
And so, on a cold November morning, Andrew O’Gill was brought into the world amidst the blood of his dead mother. The road ahead would be no easier.
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