IdleChatter
Member
It wasn't that Patrick hated his life, necessarily. It was more of a....general distaste for his current predicament for the past four years. Even before he had been born, his parents had held high expectations for him. With his father an esteemed doctor and his mother a successful business woman, it was expected that they thought he would grow up to be something incredible. Maybe they imagined him as a scientist, helping NASA discover the unimaginable mystery of the universe, or perhaps they saw him as a world class CEO with businesses all across the globe. Whatever they first desired for him, he knew without a single doubt that this something they never would have thought of.
They certainly didn't envision their baby boy as a Harvard drop out. After five semesters, he showed up on their doorstep with the news that he decided that he didn't want to become a doctor. It went over about as well as he might of hoped. His mother cried. His father yelled. His grandfather basically disowned him and told him to get out of his house. You know, the works. The only part of his family that still even made contact was his eldest sister. Most of the time, that was only to make sure that he hadn't been murdered in his shithole of an apartment.
That is the short version of how he went from a rich boy from a rich family to a someone who was only a step above being homeless who happened to be from a rich family. The only thing that did keep him from living on the streets was the crappy, minimum wage job he worked. Don't get him wrong. He was extremely grateful to have it. He knew people on the streets, and to be truly honest, it looked and sounded like shit. He would take dealing with obnoxiously stupid coworkers and serving burgers to customers over that any day. At least it paid the bills, even if those bills didn't leave money for anything else. Like food.
Today happened to be one of those days where he actually did have money for food. It was a rare good day where he could afford more than ramen and could take the bus to the work. Of course, he had to walk back, but he liked to look at the silver lining. It was raining by the time he ended his double shift. The stores were only ten minutes away, but after sixteen hours on his feet, Pat wanted nothing more than to fall into the gutter and die. Vetoing the need for food until the morning, he started stumbling his way down the street towards his apartment.
His eyes more closed than open, he was a mere block away from sweet, blissful oblivion when his shaky feet slipped out from beneath him. With a loud, rather high pitched yelp, he crashed to the ground hard. He laid there for a few minutes, muttering curses and rubbing his sore bottom. 'At least you didn't hit your head?' his brain supplied helpfully. It just made him grumble louder and shove into an upright position to look for whatever tripped him.
The offending object sat a few feet away, the street lights glittering off the silver chain. It was a necklace. A rather old one that looked expensive at that. At the end of the chain hung a obsidian pendant. It was formed into the shape of an upside down raindrop. Intricate, fluid designs wrapped around what looked like pearls that had been fused to the surface. It was captivating.
Already soaked through, he crawled forward and gently scooped it up. The pendant sat perfectly cupped in his palm. An odd warmth seemed to come from it, like it had been sitting in the sunlight only moments before. Just as the thought crossed his mind, an intense pain bloomed in his chest. It stole the breath from his lung and sent him bent in half to the ground. With his forehead pressed into the rough pavement, he desperately gasped for air, fist clutching at his chest. It didn't matter. He could not breathe, and the pain just kept growing and growing.
What felt like hours and only seconds from passing out, the pain stopped as abruptly as it started. It left him startled but relieved, and he sucked in lungfuls of oxygen gratefully. It wasn't until his panting breath had calmed that he opened his eyes. The sight that greeted him took a few seconds to process. He blamed the near death experience for that. Scrambling upright, his startled gaze looked out upon a foggy, green field. That's it. There was nothing else in sight. Not a single building or road. Nothing remotely similar to where he had been less than five minutes ago.
He flipped around to check behind him only to jerk back when a figure popped into his field of vision. Already working on not freaking out, he shuffled backwards in an awkward crab style walk with a gasp. What the actual hell?
