S3, E9 | The Wrong Idea of Sickness

> Friday, 3rd December 2038 <

“Inmate 64470, your phone time is up” a large, black woman in a brown uniform remarks with casual dismissal of any claims otherwise, “get out of the booth and follow the guards back to your cell.” Spouting vigour back toward the prison’s officer, a thinner black woman follows the order that was given to her, making sure to not do so without offering passive insults she knows the penitentiary’s staff is unable to present her with consequences over.

Three booths over, a head of artificially-darkened hair sits in a chair with the palm of her hand wrapped around a handset telephone, eyes propped open out of surprise. “I didn’t think anyone was gonna answer the phone” Sophie confesses, her tone slightly more enthusiastic in light of the unanticipated result, “I’ve been trying dad for the last couple of days, but he’s never answered.”

“I’m not really surprised by that” a flabbergasted Elaine retorts, briefly looking over her shoulder to the child that continues to play in her living room, keeping half of an eye out amidst her newfound preoccupation. “Neither am I” Sophie responds, hanging her head with a slightly defeated smile, the only interaction she’s had with her father being the one that had come about one year after her incarceration.

“I heard the two of you got married... Congratulations” the inmate remarks, changing the topic to a more light-hearted note in light of the change in her demeanour, her entry to the set of phone booths having come without the expectation of the visit being fruitful. “Oh, thank you. We’re, uh-” Elaine replies, still carrying the slight touch of an artificially-pleasant tone in her voice, “-we’re very happy together.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured as much” Sophie smiles, staring at the beige-painted tabletop that she sits at, nodding along with the reply she provides, “I always thought the two of you got along well.” Turning her back to the window, the watching mother sets her full sights upon the living room whilst going without a word, her silence noticed by the other end of the line and understood. Though not on purpose, Elaine’s refusal to speak is brought on by the outright uncertainty over what to say.

“Did dad tell you about the last time he saw me?” the imprisoned girl wonders aloud, genuinely curious as to what the family has been up to since her arrest, “the time a couple months after my sentencing?” Pressing her lips together, Elaine stares intently at the floor as she considers how to reply, still effectively shaken too greatly to process the conversation that she’s vocally accepted being a part of.

“Yeah” the woman answers honestly, nodding as she crosses her arms with the watch in tow, its screen facing upward in the palm of her right hand. “Did he tell you what happened?” Sophie follows up, trying to make the most of the short and unsure answers that she receives from the other line. Still widened, Elaine’s eyes start pulling as far from the watch’s face as it can manage, trying to create separation before the woman who holds it forces her stare back to the device.

“He said he couldn’t recognise who was sitting behind the glass” she confesses, a response that- although greatly displeasing- is one that the inmate had already grown to expect. “He said that whatever ‘it’ was is someone he didn’t consider his family or his daughter” Elaine continues, adding emphasis to the remark that doesn’t necessarily need anymore than it already carried, “now we don’t talk about you.”

Though she hadn’t believed that pleasantries would be offered in the event of an answer to her call, the fact of her status within what remains of the family strikes Sophie harder than it’d been anticipated. Though only a mere inch or two, separation establishes itself between the inmate’s ear and the phone itself, still allowing her to hear the woman on the other line as she stares blankly at the concrete wall that sits across from her.

“Not long after your father and I got married, we found out I was pregnant” Elaine continues, noticing the dead air that lingers between her replies to be the reception of her remarks by the young woman on the other line, the call’s continuation making it clear that an ear is still listening in. “You’ve got a baby brother named Galen now. He just turned four about three months ago” she proceeds, again met without a verbal reply from the other line.

“I’m sure he knows it’s not possible, but your father is trying to forget you” Elaine confesses amidst the additional silence she’s met with, not knowing what else to say in order to fill the space where words are meant to occupy. “He doesn’t mention you, he’s packed all of your things away in the attic and he’s just-” the speech continues without interruption, the pause only coming when she, herself, brings it into existence, “-he’s just tried to move on from you.”

On the other end of the line, Sophie’s eyes hold a blank, empty stare toward the tabletop that she sits at, barely able to make out the words that her sister’s stepmother offers as her emotions struggle within in an effort to find out which one will present itself. “Liv went out to meet with Ian a few days ago. We heard about the follow-up documentary he wanted to film” Elaine explains, shaking her head in refusal before continuing, “your father will never do it.”

“Ian’s going to hold that over Livy’s head until he does” Sophie admits, quickly returning the phone to the side of her head at the conclusion the recipient of her call brings herself to, “I told him not to but he didn’t feel like there was any other ammunition he could use. I didn’t even know she was cured until he told me some girl from school clued him in on it.”

“She’s not cured, per-say... She’s just assisted in composing her tics and impulses a lot better than she was before” Elaine corrects, shaking her head as she stares back toward the living room, “and it doesn’t matter one way or another. Your father will pack us up and move us to another country as long as it means not having to bring you, or the past, or what happened up again.”

“Sure, and Ian will just follow you there. Ms. Kirkpatrick, I’m not sure you understand how adamant about this he is. He’s desperate to restart whatever kind of stardom he had when the doc first came out” Sophie explains, visibly distressed over the potential that’s brought upon by the man’s threat, “he paid off some of the inmates in here to rough me up a few months back just to get me to agree to do it.”

“Sophie, I don’t know what you want me to say” Elaine replies, finally stepping away from the kitchen in an effort of re-entering the living room, “it doesn’t matter what dirt Ian has on us, your father will not take part in anything that involves you or what you did.” Rolling her eyes, Sophie’s head begins to shake at the remark about Andrew’s stubbornness before they suddenly begin to squint, pressing closer together as a thought dawns upon her.

“Wait, why is Livy even hiding the fact that she’s better now in the first place?” Sophie questions aloud, leaning back in her seat with one arm crossed over the inner elbow of the other, “you guys are way too wealthy to be collecting disability or something over it. What’s with that?” Leaning down to collect her son from the floor, Elaine bounces Galen in her arm as she ventures toward the stairs, beginning to climb them one at a time whilst she replies.

“There’s a medication that she wanted to stay on and decided that the way to make sure we didn’t take her off of it was to pretend she was only making slight improvements” Elaine explains, too preoccupied with accompanying her son to his bed for nap time to speak as if the woman on the other line were any different from a coworker she’d known for years, her lines of dialogue now coming with an unintentional comfort.

“I guess she must’ve thought she was in too deep after the charade was kept up for long enough” the mother continues, eventually reaching the top-most step before rounding the corner for her child’s bedroom. “Were the pills laced with twenty four-karat gold?” Sophie wonders aloud, confused by her sister’s unwavering need for the medication that she seemingly can’t function without.

“No. According to her, they afford her an extra second or two to think things over. It slows time down or something along those lines” Elaine responds, her conclusion being one that subtly shifts the inmate’s confusion into something more akin to intrigue. “Unless she can’t function in school, that doesn’t make any sense” Sophie retorts, still unable to find the connection between the meds and her sister’s devotion to them, “is she being loaded with schoolwork or something?”

“Not exactly” Elaine responds, portraying a pleasant and happy face toward Galen as she lays him into his bed, putting him down for the nap she knows him to be in need of. “Apparently the same girl that told Ian about Liv is one of her bullies. Liv punched her in the face a few weeks ago” the woman concludes, struggling for answers better than the vague one she’s able to offer, “she’s pretty paranoid about that girl spilling her guts about it and it’s leading her to think stupid things.”

“Stupid things?” Sophie quips back, amused by the inherent ambiguity in that statement, “what the hell does that mean?” Taking a brief interlude from the discourse to set her son down for a nap, Elaine gently closes the door to his room before making back toward the ground level. “She thinks she’s suffering from the same thing that led you to jail” the mother replies, the way in which she speaks indicating that she knows not what to make of such a conclusion.

With a dismissive shake of her head, Sophie smirks at the notion whilst tilting her head back, trying not to laugh at the connection that’s apparently been drawn. “That’s flattering” the inmate jokes, bouncing one foot off the ground in a way that causes her knee to repeatedly lift and fall beyond the edge of the small table, “if you need to ease her mind though, I’d remind her that what made her punch that girl in the mouth is different than what led me to- well, y’know.”

Slightly becoming reintroduced with her earlier discomfort, Elaine takes notice of the ease in which the conversation now rolls before begging the question that lingers at the front of her mind. “What do you mean?” the woman wonders aloud, the inquiry one that adds little context other than the request itself, but being one that felt necessary to present in the moment.

“She punched the girl in the face because she was bullying her. It’s what anybody else would do” Sophie reassures, believing herself capable of easily dissuading any of her younger sister’s concerns with a simple juxtaposition, “what I did happened because I couldn’t control it. There was just this urge in me that took over and I snapped. I don’t know what it was that came over me, but I know I couldn’t help myself but follow through with what my thoughts were.”

Her walk slowing noticeably, Elaine continues around the bannister and begins venturing toward the kitchen once more, pausing for a moment as a second question presents itself concerningly. “What do you mean by that?” the mother questions, quickly thinking better of the spoken wonder before restating it, “what did you mean when you said that you couldn’t control it?”

Somewhat puzzled, Sophie turns her eyes toward one of the corners of her wall-mounted table as she ponders the thought, formulating her reply internally before offering a final product. “I mean it was kind of like an urge that I had and couldn’t stop from acting on” she responds, trying to speak as if she were confident in the conclusion she makes, “when I felt like there was an opportunity to act on those urges, there was a part of my head that clicked into place and got me to take it.”

Falling silent, Elaine’s stroll toward the opposite end of the home comes to a conclusion directly at the halfway point between the living room and kitchen, her feet stopping their progression toward the still-running dishwasher as she stares forward without a word. Her bottom lip barely falling from the one that sits atop it, the woman meets her husband’s disowned, eldest offspring without anything of value, prompting the inmate’s smirk to begin lessening.

“Are you still there?” Sophie inquires, briefly pulling her head away from the handset to glance at the receiver before overhearing the faintest voice that pulls her back in. “Did you ever have those impulses before and not act on them?” Elaine soon wonders aloud, begging the question that she’s soon prompted to repeat, asked to do so by the other end who’d missed the first half.

“Did you ever have the impulses before? Your first... uh, I mean... before what happened with your mother...” Elaine corrects, trying to speak in ways that skirt over the deeds that landed the inmate behind bars, “...did you ever have one of those impulses before then and not act on them?”

The inquiry not being one that she’d ever asked herself even after all the years that have passed since her incarceration, Sophie leans back against her chair once more as she ponders internally, politely requesting a moment to consider. “I mean, it was nothing really violent like what I ended up doing” the inmate replies, shrugging her shoulders as the contemplations reach her mind, “I had impulses to break things or hit people before. But not stuff I acted on.”

“Why didn’t you?” Elaine questions back almost immediately, trying to take advantage of the sincerity that the young woman now in her mid-twenties affords her. “Because it was really overwhelming. The urges were strong and it’d make my hands shake and stuff, but it just felt too weird... Like I was going crazy” Sophie responds, trying her best to put the sensations into words, “things kind of felt fuzzy and they made me feel sick. Everything was just moving so fast that I-”

“-just wanted it all to slow down?” Elaine interjects, cutting the young woman off by finishing the statement on her behalf, catching the inmate by a slight surprise. “Yeah... I just wanted it all to slow down” Sophie concludes, allowing her answer to linger for a moment before her eyes squint, prompting her to wonder to herself internally the longer that she’s met without an immediate follow-up by the woman on the other end of the line, “why?”

= Generation Alpha is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series belong to Zachary Serra and his entity of Pacer1 from the start of Season 1 onwards =

“It’s just all a lot to sort of make sense of” Derby confesses, sitting with one of two ends to a hoagie in hand, the one that sits within her reach already having been halfway consumed, “I mean, it kind of adds up, but I still don’t fully understand why she’d hide it for so long.” Conceding equal loss, Andrew shrugs his shoulders as he bites into one of the slices of pickles he’d taken from within the sandwich’s halved loaf.

“We think she was just too embarrassed to admit that she was fibbing about it the whole time” he confesses, trying his best to blend the truth into the fictional tid-bits that he adds in. “Oh, yeah- that makes sense” Derby responds, struggling to bring herself to eat anymore than she already has now that she’s becoming privy to what the father wishes her to know, “I just wish she would’ve let me know I could’ve helped in some way.”

“She’s still trying to make sense of it all herself” Andrew reassures, waving off any other notion but the one he wishes to make evident outright, “when a family goes through what ours went through, it’s easy for all of the stress to convince someone of something that’s just not true.” Nodding, Derby displays her agreement with the man’s claims as obviously as she can, though it’s clear that some aspects still leave her struggling to process.

“But she isn’t actually capable of killing anyone, is she?” the rebellious teen responds, watching the amused grin arise upon the face of her friend’s father. “Don’t get me wrong- anyone is capable of killing anyone. It’s happened for centuries, we’ve just advanced past the need for it as a whole” Andrew clarifies, quick to offer assurance in spite of the initial offering, “but Liv wouldn’t hurt a fly... Not unless it took the form of a preppy little nepo-baby like that classmate of yours.”

“Got it!” Derby enthusiastically proclaims, smiling out of place of uncertainty over how to initially react, a second curiosity soon finding its way over her mind, “can I ask though... why tell me all of this?” With the inquiry reaching his ears, Andrew takes another slow bite from his salty pickle stick as he searches for the answer in his head, allowing the girl across from him to reiterate the question. 

“I know you want my help keeping an eye out for Liv and all, that part’s clear” Derby reassures, returning her sandwich to the paper wrapper that sits before her, “but what’s so special about me that makes you trust me so much?” Nodding along with the young woman’s fair quandary, Andrew fits the final bit of his mid-meal snack between his teeth before preparing to reply whilst wiping his hands clean.

“My daughter had a friend named Caden when she was still with us. And at the time that everything happened, Caden was dating this girl named Izzy” Andrew explains, resting his right arm along the stoop that sits at the base of the window that sits beside him. “Izzy was the same kind of rebel that you are. She was very intelligent and was constantly overlooked because of the way she carried herself” the father recalls, a faint smile worn on his face, “but she was an excellent person.”

Nodding to himself, Andrew adjusts his posture in the seat to ensure he fully presses against the chair he occupies. “You remind me a lot of that girl. I’m hoping that you’re every bit as good of a friend and of a person to Liv as Izzy was to Caden and my daughter” the man concludes, pressing his lips together in lieu of the regret for their fates that he wishes to hide at all costs, “and because I need to be able to trust somebody, I’m decided to trust you.”

Genuinely flattered and appreciative, Derby’s face lights up with a smile that she soon forces herself to hide beneath the lowering of her face, a gratitude taken from the man’s comments that she’s too pleased to respond vocally to. For a moment, the rebel with a cause sits with the niceties before looking up, allowing them to acclimate themselves with her before assuring the man of his conclusion, “you can trust me” she responds.

Eventually returning to his car, Andrew starts the engine and fastens his seatbelt before sitting back for a moment and clearing his mind, eyes staring at the school building his vehicle had been left parked facing. With no specific expression on his face, the man lets the vents that face him strike with cold air as they attempt to progressively warm themselves, though the sudden chill does little to affect the automobile’s only occupant.

“Alright” he mutters beneath his breath with a straight face, nodding to himself before pulling his sights away from the scene that’s afforded to him through the windshield, eyes venturing toward the empty seat beside him. Retrieving a pencil from within the cupholders just off to his right, Andrew flips open the cover of a notepad and runs through the various pages that line it’s inside, eventually stopping at one filled with names and other information written in handwriting not of his own.

|

“Cry me a river, Coleen!” Susana shouts back from the foyer of their home as she walks off, directing her disdain toward the child that stomps down the main staircase. “What the hell is wrong with you!?” the woman’s daughter exclaims mid-descent, the frustration and vigour in her voice too obvious for the mother to ignore, “he’s done nothing to deserve this! You’re just trying to make him look like a bad father so you can walk into court pretending to smell like sunshine and rainbows!”

“That man is a filthy bastard! He’s the cheapest waste of air on the planet in addition to being a bad father!” Susana shouts back, her finger pointed in the face of her now equal-level offspring. “Then what the hell does that make you!?” Coleen fights back, raising her voice to meet the level that her mother’s pitch sits at, “all you do is pamper yourself every day with the thousands of dollars he’s already given you!”

“He should be giving me a whole hell of a lot more!” the teenager’s bitter parent rebukes, dismissing the claims that her daughter makes in favour of raising a different line of questioning, “why do you even bother defending that scumbag anyway!? He never comes around to see you! He never even bothered to send you a card in the mail for your birthday!”

“He doesn’t come around because you won’t let him until he starts paying you child support!” Coleen answers, the retort one that stumps her mother at first, immediately compelling her to confront the teenager that stands in her presence. “Did he tell you that!?” Susana bites back, eyes widened as she begins attempting to speak further, trying to follow the question up with her own retort before stumbling over her words and inevitably conceding, “you know what? That’s, oh- that’s...”

Turning around to walk off, Susana leaves the conversation that her daughter is as eager to continue as she is to depart from. “Go ahead and tell me that isn’t the truth, ‘cause I know damn well what I heard the other day when I walked in to hear you telling him to pay up!” Coleen shouts back, the revelation immediately drawing her mother’s spite and hostilities higher.

“Who the hell do you think you are, little girl!?” the older-appearing-than-intended woman bites back, matching her daughter’s shouting tone whilst taking her frustrations out on the woman who calls her character into question, “I don’t need to justify myself to a spoiled little brat like yourself!”

“That’s rich coming from someone that spoils me with daddy’s money” Coleen blurts back, immediately sparking the visage of outright offence that her mother takes in the riposte. “I don’t know who the hell I am, mom! That’s the whole, fucking point!” the livid teenager continues to bicker, “I’m doing everything I can to set myself up to get out of here as fast as I can because no big, fancy house is worth the hell that you make my life out to be!”

“Oh, honey... Oh, honey!” Susana chirps back, filling the air with insulted and amusement-feigning empty words without anything of value to respond with. “I don’t care what I turn out to be! The only thing that’s important is that I don’t want to end up turning into you...” Coleen barks aloud, aware that her mother has nothing of importance to respond with, and instead takes the opportunity to dig into her skin, “... an empty shell of a woman whose only worth has been in opening her legs!”

From the enraged sight of her mother’s face to a sudden squeeze of her eyelids, Coleen braces against the open hand that strikes her across the face, knocking her to the ground without the faintest hesitation. “Get out of my house!” Susana commands, throwing her finger to the door that her daughter angrily throws herself off the ground in favour of, stepping out of the home and slamming the entrance shut on her way out.

Without so much as offering another word, Coleen storms down the driveway as her mother follows suit, cashing after her with bare feet whilst hurling half-baked insults. Falling on deaf ears, the words do nothing to prevent the teenager from staring her car and pulling out of the driveway before Susana could do anything to stop her, hitting the open road with intentions set on reaching preferable pastures as far from the house of horrors she drives away from.

Within an hour, Coleen’s vehicle finds itself parked along a sidewalk along the edges of the city’s downtown, stationed outside of an empty warehouse with shattered windows that no amount of eye damage can help from being noticed. Alone and left without a shoulder to cry on or a pair of ears to vent to, the disgruntled teenager angrily sits beside a barrel fire whilst sipping from a bottle of cheap wine so recently purchased that it still has the orange “on sale” sticker along its bottleneck.

Seething to herself, Coleen passes a glance at the glass bottle’s exterior to take notice of the liquor’s level, its surface roughly three inches away from reaching the bottom. “Holy fuck” she stutters, feeling the haze that comes with the speed in which she’d nearly finished the entire beverage, stirring from the effects that bring a brief chuckle out of her.

“You’re not supposed to be here” a masculine voice calls out from one of the adjacent corridors that lead from a nearby set of makeshift office spaces and into the wider factory floor that the buzzed girl occupies. Quickly leaping off the stool that she’d sat on, the startled Coleen accidentally pulls her arm back too quickly for her hand to tighten in time, instead releasing the condensation-covered bottle from her palm and allowing it to shatter along the ground.

“What the fuck!?” the hammered student exclaims, suddenly sporting a temporary sobriety in the face of the fear that she’d been stricken with at the unexpected guest, needing a moment to collect herself before she can identify just who it was that had interrupted her personal time. “Then again, you shouldn’t be drinking either” Andrew murmurs as he continues his approach, hands tucked into the pouch of the grey hoodie he’d adorned in the face of the cold, midwestern elements.

“What the fuck are you doing here!?” Coleen blurts out, recognising the man’s face with little issue as she continues to retreat, though her ability to move is far more hampered than that of her visitor. “I didn’t feel the need to forewarn you that I’d be showing up here since you couldn’t afford me the same when you walked up to my shop the other week” Andrew answers, his stroll both casual and unassuming, though its lack of speed is outmatched by the staggered teenager’s own retreat.

Keeping herself from toppling over, Coleen halts her back-tracking just as she passes the open flames, instead spreading her arms just enough to maintain something that attempts to resemble balance. Trying to regain her wits, the intoxicated minor watches the older man continue to slowly approach with an unamused expression, his unassuming demeanour allowing her enough peace of mind to organise her thoughts more effectively.

“Don’t tell my parents about this” Coleen calmly requests, blinking more rapidly than usual in an attempt to better focus on the situation at hand, trying to become more accustomed to the decrepit surroundings that they now share. “Your parents are never going to find out about this. I didn’t come here to dig up dirt to send to your old man” Andrew replies, his reassurance enough to direct the teenager’s mind toward a different line of thought.

“Why are you here then?” Coleen soon questions aloud, her ears taking a momentary notice of the cracking that the barrel fire beside her emanates before focusing on the sound of tiny pebbles being dragged along the concrete floor by the man’s shoes. “Because I’ve been led to believe that my daughter may have been justified in that punch you seem to be all worked up over” Andrew answers, his lips slightly puckered, “it sounds like you’re not as innocent as you make yourself out to be.”

“So? It doesn’t look like your daughter is as mentally-challenged as she makes herself out to be” Coleen retorts, a gesture that prompts Andrew to smirk as he conceals her chuckle. “No, she isn’t” the man confesses without much reluctance, his gradual approach continuing as he nods, “and from the sound of it, that’s not a detail you’re too shy about wanting people to know.”

“What does that mean?” Coleen questions back, her regained composure allowing her to take a more confrontational and purposefully-irritating stance than when startled. “Well amongst a whole lot of things, it means that I know who spilled the beans to Ian Tomlinson about my daughter not being entirely truthful about her predicament” Andrew responds, watching the change in the lonely teenager’s visage assure him of the accuracy to his claim.

“She shouldn’t be pretending to be autistic then” Coleen rebukes, a gesture that the man across from her can’t bring himself to entirely argue against. “You’re right, but that’s also not business that you should be sticking your nose in” Andrew responds, his slow, turtle-like pace leaving plenty of room to still exist between himself and the bratty teenager, “but with the kind of lengths you’ve gone to try and torment my child over it, I’m pretty sure you already knew what you were doing.”

“Maybe I did” Coleen replies without much in the way of hesitation, a response that prompts the man just ahead of her to press his teeth together and pull in a long breath that bellows out the sound of a snake-like hiss. “You deserve it, though. Your whole family is crazy” the young woman continues, watching the man’s feet stop in their place as she speaks, “your daughter’s faking being a retard, and your other daughter is a fucking murderer.”

His unassuming demeanour lowering into a dissatisfied grimace at the forced recollection of his family’s past, Andrew’s ear refuses to block out the conclusion that the young woman across from him leads into, his eyes instead falling toward the ground out of shame. “It makes me wonder if you knew they were fucking sick...” Coleen dares, becoming more brutal in her comments and intentionally malicious as she does, “...maybe you’re sick too.”

Concealing his anger excellently, Andrew seethes quietly as the girl across from him begins to laugh, amused as she becomes more emboldened in her malevolent mannerisms. “Let’s see, if one of you is a murderer and another is a liar...” Coleen persists, filled with liquid courage that only further aids in directing her toward the antagonistic mirage she erects in the man’s direction, “...maybe you’re the nasty kind of sick.”

With an unamused squint in his eye, the man’s face lifts toward the woman that stands across from him, plastering a softcore-esque seductive visage upon her face as she steps forward. “Are you the kind of sick that likes girls you’re not supposed to, sir?” Coleen quips as she steps forward, stumbling halfway through her question as she taunts the man that looks at her with a straight face, “maybe you just wanted to take a little peak at-”

“That’s not why I’m here” Andrew interrupts, shaking his head as he stares off into the distance, having anticipated some psychological inspection on the girl’s behalf, only to appear disappointed at how unseriously he takes her. “Yes it is. Why else would you follow a drunk teenager into an abandoned warehouse?” Coleen replies, closing the distance between herself and the unflattered gentleman.

“Is the wife not doing it for you anymore, sir? Do you need a newer, younger model?” the girl continues to question, humouring the older man across from her enough to earn a genuine chuckle from him, “we both know you came here to do something you’re not supposed to.” Finally latching onto a claim that he can work with, Andrew responds with a loud sigh as he nods, paying no mind to the teenager’s laughter.

“Yes... I did come here to do something I’m not supposed to” the man responds as he looks back at the girl, pulling his hands free from his hoodie’s pouch as she stands before him, her taunting turning to torment. “Woah, what the fuck!?” Coleen hurriedly gasps, leaping back in shock as the charade is dropped, falling to the ground and losing her balance amidst the panic.

Though the young woman crawls back, Andrew remains standing where he’d initially stopped. “I’ve hated myself for it for as long as I can remember. The urges, the impulses, the having to pretend like I’m as normal and well-adjusted as everyone thinks I am” the father confesses, wearing the expression of struggle that comes with accepting the faults he’d tried to hide, “you’re completely right... I’m sick.”

“Wh- wh-?” Coleen stutters, crawling back with one arm out of total fear whilst using her other to press the shirt against herself, not time afforded to dawn it back upon herself. “I thought I could give my kids a better world to grow up in than my parents gave me. I thought they would have the chance to not succumb to their urges if I just showed them the love that my folks never gave me” Andrew continues to speak, beginning to resume his original approach toward the teen.

“The love that I tried to give my kids was as genuine as any other father’s would be. My family means everything to me. My parents couldn’t have cared less about it, but I am nothing without the people that I love” the father continues to explain, watching tears well up in the horrified expression of the strikingly keen student.

“Please...” Coleen whimpers, her bottom lip trembling as she desperately yearns to create separation between herself and the pursuing father, every ounce of regret she’s capable of having brings itself to the surface in such a moment. “I’m sick in the way that every father is sick... We’re sick in the way that we’d do anything to protect our families” Andrew explains, tears forming in his eyes as he walks forward, “if that means hiding some things from them... so be it.”

“Please!” Coleen screams, again pleading for the man to not follow through with the act that has her fully succumbed to fear, the howl she lets out bringing the man to a momentary pause. “For the love of your god, cover your fucking tits up” Andrew remarks, rolling his eyes as he looks toward the building’s battered ceiling, shaking his head in disappointment as the young woman begins shakily returning to her feet, “at least let this happen with some god damn dignity inta-”

Before he can finish his thought, Andrew watches the woman turn away for the faintest sight of aid. “Help!” Coleen screams as she takes off running in the opposite direction, leaving the man to shake his head as he turns to the side and lifts his hand toward her.

*pop, pop, pop*

To the tune of three gunshots, Coleen’s body slams into the concrete ground as a trio bullets rip through her back, two of them tearing through the front of her chest as the air goes quiet. Clenching teeth whilst growling at the sky, Andrew turns away from the gravely wounded teen as he angrily punches at the air, his fingers wrapped around the grip of the pistol that he’d used to shoot the helpless, inebriated student who’d never stood a chance at getting away.

With his free hand, Andrew shields his mouth as the young woman’s faint groans of pain ring throughout the almost entirely-silent factory. “Fucking hell” he murmurs through still pressed-together teeth, seething with the outcome of his actions before forcing himself to close the space that had separated the two.

“I swear, I thought what I had wasn’t something I could pass down” Andrew speaks aloud, knowing Coleen to still be alive through the continued groans that grow increasingly faint. “Everything that’s wrong with them was stuff they didn’t have to suffer through!” the father cries, dropping to a knee beside the dying girl’s body as he stares at the three bullet holes he’d inflicted upon her, blood rushing through the wounds in her chest.

“I learned how to get better. I learned how to ignore the impulses and keep everything under control, and then...” Andrew pleads, his sorrow turning into anger that he directs at the young woman whose death resides upon his hands, “...and then you ruined everything.” Nostrils flaring, the father watches Coleen’s hand extend toward the ground she’d yet to make it to before being gunned down, fighting to escape even when all hope is thoroughly lost as she gasps for air.

“You had to bring Ian... You had to bring that man back into our lives!” Andrew seethes, his hiss-like tone turning into a full onslaught of shouts that he aims at the cause of his strife. “He’s dead now because of you! And now you’re dead because of you, too!” the screaming parent barks, veins protruding from his skin as his vigour is fired at his victim just like his bullets had been, “and I swear to god, if almost twenty five years of overcoming those urges was for nothing ‘cause of-”

Stopping himself, Andrew lowers his voice back toward a reasonable tone, watching the girl take her last breaths before choosing to wrap up his remarks. “This had to be done” the man concedes, shaking his head as he watches the girl’s eyes begin to find their way toward a final, glossy state. “Nobody hurts my little girl” the man concludes, standing upright once more as the teenager bleeds out, staring into the factory’s distant walls, “I’m not going to lose another daughter.”

== Generation Alpha ==