Transformers Fan Fiction ❯ The Human Stain ❯ Chapter 1 ( Chapter 1 )

 

The Human Stain: Chapter 1

 

A man cannot free himself from the past more easily than he can from his own body.  ~André Maurois

 

 

1997 - Santa Cruz, CA

 

 

“Catch it, Claire!”

 

Streaked blonde hair blew over the shoulder of a tan teenager, just before she leapt up and caught the whirling red disc as it came whizzing over her head.

 

“Got it!” the girl crowed triumphantly, sinking back into the sand upon landing. She held the frisbee above her head like a trophy before pumping her arm up and down. A salty breeze stirred wisps of lighter hair against her darker forehead, creating an even greater contrast. The girl was, in essence, the perfect vision of a Californian girl. She was taller than most, standing at 5'8” with the build of an athlete. She wore a white tank top and frayed denim shorts that had once been jeans before the owner severed the pant legs with scissors. A pink peace symbol had been haphazardly sewn into the back left pocket, and the right was adorned with a small fabric rainbow held together with two small safety pins.

 

The initial voice belonged to a shorter brunette, who was facing Claire but ten feet away. She wore shorts as well, but these were made of a canvas material. Her top consisted of nothing but a yellow bikini top. Both girls wore two-pieces beneath their clothes, but the brunette had opted to take her shirt off in the Land Rover they had arrived in. Like Claire, she was a sun-worshipper but tanned much darker. Claire's friend knitted her brow, crouching lower to the beach to prepare for the return of the frisbee. “Throw it back!” she cried, cupping one hand to the side of her face to make herself louder.

 

“Jeez, Jen!” Claire scowled, put off from her victory dance momentarily. “Give me a sec here. I rarely catch this thing.”

 

“That's why we're here.”

 

Claire stuck a tongue out at the other teenager before angling her arm back and letting the frisbee take flight once more. She aimed a bit higher than Jen could catch, sending the flat pan sailing high over the girl's head.

 

“Oh, c'mon! What was that!?” cursed the dark-haired girl, throwing her hands up in exasperation. “You did that on purpose!”

 

Claire watched bemusedly as her friend trotted off after the piece of rotating plastic, and dusted off the palms of hands against the sides of her shorts. A few granules of encrusted sand broke off on contact, falling below to rejoin the rest of their kin. The ocean was a constant, dull din off to her left and the chimes and cries of the boardwalk were to her right. Jen's cries of indignation drew her attention forward again, and she grinned.

 

Squinting against the bright daylight, Claire laughed as a spotted dog drove past her, kicking up beach in his wake. Jen soon followed, shooting Claire a daggered glare as she ran past. “Help me! That mutt got it!”

 

Giggling despite herself, the sixteen-year-old took third place in the race after the animal. The trio zigzagged between sunbathers, families with small children, and others enjoying the bright afternoon by the beach.

 

Claire was so caught up in the chase that she nearly ran right into a boy with hazel hair and brown eyes. He had appeared to come from the boardwalk, and held a chocolate ice cream cone in one hand. His wavy hair slung over one eye, and he was dressed casually in jeans, sneakers and a brown shirt with frayed sleeves. The front was emblazoned with the Nike logo in white. “Claire!”

 

“Wha…? Huh…?” Momentarily taken aback, Claire threw a harried glance over her shoulder. Her body temporarily followed the direction of her head once she recognized the other teenager. “Hey, Simon!”

 

“Having trouble?” He motioned after Jen and the departing dog.

 

“Just a bit,” she conceded, smiling so that the corners of her eyes crinkled with the effect. Her heart began to speed up, and it had nothing to do with her short sprint.

 

“Need help?” Simon leaned closer, and Claire momentarily lost concentration on what she had been doing.

 

“He's heading for the water!” shrieked Jen.

 

That was enough to tear her focus away from the boy, of whom she had developed a crush for the past summer. “Uh, no, we got this one! Thanks!” She started to turn away.

 

“Sure?” she heard behind her, his voice slightly softer than before.

 

She hesitated, and then forced a grin back across her features as she gave him a quick wave over her shoulder. “I swear.” Simon Walters was a good-natured (not to mention handsome) guy, well known and liked at Santa Cruz High School, and nearly every girl within two grades of him had a horrible appreciation for him. It was too bad that the only thing she could appreciate now was her own bad luck when she realized how close she could have been to striking up a conversation with him had she not a more pending issue to tend to.

 

“See you around…” he trailed uncertainly.

 

“See ya!” One last, apologetic look was thrown Simon's way, begging him to understand. Driven forward by more than her need to get her frisbee back, Claire ran on with the urge to separate herself from her own embarrassment. The more distance she put between herself and him, the less she felt.

 

It didn't take long to catch up with Jen, and soon Claire pulled up so they were running neck and neck. Claire matched her best friend stride for stride but kept pulling further ahead by virtue of her longer legs.

 

“I'll get him!” she shouted back over the wind whistling past her ears.

 

The dog remained teasingly ahead of the two, scampering at full speed only to veer sideways before coming to a halt and wagging his tail spastically back and forth. As soon as they gained ground, the animal would take off like a shot again. The frisbee was tucked firmly between his front eye teeth, and it was obvious it was all a game to the creature. Eyes bright and panting, the dog reached an area where a large outcropping of rocks signaled the end of the beach. Without anywhere to go, it had indeed bolted for the water.

 

“Is that thing suicidal!?” yelled Jen, her voice coming from somewhere behind Claire. They were both gasping for breath, and this haggard quality was imparted upon Jen's voice.

 

Her own sides heaving from the sprint, Claire skidded to a stop just where the surf slicked her toes before receding back into the ocean. The waves were not high that day - it was still very early in the afternoon. The dog had since leapt into the water, paddling for all his life against each roll of the surf. The frisbee only proved to make the dog work harder to keep his prize, and there were several times when the poor creature was rolled under by the loll of the waves.

 

“Fuck. Now what?” By then Jen had also ceased all forward movements, and was standing by her friend. She bent over, bracing her hands against her upper thighs as she took several ragged breaths. Her next words came unevenly as she tried to regain her composure. “Damn dog. If you hadn't thrown the frisbee over my head this wouldn't of happened. He caught it before I did. Where is this little shit's owner?” Jen glanced questioningly over at Claire, but then gasped, “What are you doing!?”

 

Claire was undressing. Not completely, of course - she merely shirked off her tank top and was shimmying out of her makeshift shorts. “Going to get our frisbee,” she responded, as if it were a stupid question. When the shorts hit the sand she stood up again, wearing nothing but her red bikini. She flashed a smarmy smile at Jen. “It's not coming back by itself, is it?”

 

“You're nuts. You're absolutely friggin' nuts.” Jen said, whipping an accusing finger at the rocky earth to their left. “There are rocks under that water. All it will take is a little bit of undertow and you're done.”

 

Claire waved Jen off with a dismissive gesture of her right hand. She pointed out to the dog, which was becoming a more distant dot where the ocean met the sky. “He's still alive and kickin'.”

 

Jen placed a hand on her forehead, creating a visor against the sun as she squinted out at the dog. “Uh… Claire... I think he's having trouble.”

 

“He is?” Claire imitated Jen's gesture, and both stared out as they watched the canine paddle furiously against the ocean. He was past the waves breaking against the shore, and he was now barking whenever it was possible to get his head completely above water. The frisbee was no longer in his mouth, but by then it was no longer a concern to either the animal or the humans.

 

“Ohmygod,” Jen gushed, her voice holding an edge of distress, “I think he's going to drown.”

 

Before she even thought about her actions, Claire was racing into the surf. Jen made a last minute dodge to grab the girl by her elbow, but it was to no avail. Jen missed, faltered, and lost her balance before falling to the wet sand. “CLAIRE!” she screamed, “NO!”

 

Barely registering Jen's cries, Claire hit the ocean like an offensive lineman. The waves drove into her chest, nearly knocking the air from her, but she struggled past them. She wasn't thinking about the consequences; indeed she never really did. The only thing she could see was the dog ahead of her, his white-and-black head bobbing up and down on the ocean like a frantic bobber. She was perhaps twenty feet from him, but the distance seemed much greater. A wave rose over her head, dipping her under, and she came up a second later coughing and sputtering. The bottom was indeed littered with rocky protrusions, and it pained her enough that she angled her body to swim rather then stand.

 

She was already fatigued from the run down the beach, which caused her to falter while swimming. The blood pounded in her ears as she started taking long strokes, and dimly she heard Jen screaming for her back on the beach. Grimly, she smiled inwardly. A stalwart friend, Jennifer Kingston still held her own survival paramount to anything else. Claire knew she would not follow.

 

The dog was by then yelping and paddling in circles, struggling to simply keep himself surfaced. He was completely soaked through, and his floppy ears seemed weighed down even further by the water. She closed the distance between them, her sights kept on her goal. “Hangon...!” she gurgled as a rush of water hit her forehead and drowned out the rest of her sentence. More seconds passed, and she could no longer here Jen calling for her on land. Water bubbled in her eardrums, but she kept her front crawl moving at a determined pace.

 

She reached the dog, and in doing so she was nearly submerged. The dog was a medium-sized animal with short fur. He had no distinct breeding, which led Claire to believe he was really what Jen had called him - a mutt. There was a faded fabric collar around his neck, indicating he belonged to someone. Her first mistake was grabbing this upon reaching him - in one quick second fueled by his instinct to stay alive, the dog attempted to clamber upon her shoulders. This effectively submerged her while the dog's claws cut up her shoulders as he tried in vain to find footing from above. Forcing herself to surface sideways of the dog, she began to sputter up what felt like a gallon of water from her lungs.

 

Oh, god, she could barely breathe!

 

The dog took another lunge at her, yelping in panic. He was like any drowning creature that had lost their wits - he saw a small bit of salvation and tried to cling to it.

 

“Calm down, calm down!” Claire tried to grab him by his collar again, but once again he put his front paws on her shoulders. This time she was more prepared to receive him and stayed afloat. His back legs kicked and scraped welts into her bare stomach below the waterline, and she yelped herself in pain. By that time she had begun to notice just how close they both were to the needle-like rocks framing the sandy beach. “Shit,” she swore, attempting to manhandle the dog while directing them away from a gory end.

 

The dog was whimpering, still kicking furiously and attempting to climb onto her shoulders to keep himself further above the water. How the dog ever had the bravery to enter the water with the frisbee in the first place was beyond her, for all the cowardice he showed now. Both of their legs were working in overtime, and Claire's pulse was speeding throughout her body as her urge to survive overcame any other thought. An unexpected wave rolled them under, and she surfaced, gasping, with her bangs in her face. Briefly removing her hand from the dog's wet pelt, she whipped the hair out of her eyes and struggled to see through a line of blurry vision. Closer to the rocks, damn.

 

The next thing happened so swiftly it took her three seconds after the fact to register it actually had happened.

 

The dog chose then to take his hind leg and drive the claws on that paw deep into her stomach, which opened up a rather large welt above the smaller welts he had already inflicted upon her. Blood filled the space between them, and so did another wave - this one larger than the others. The burst of pain and water caused her to release the dog as she let out an anguished cry, and she barely heard the dog give out a sound somewhere between a groan and a high-pitched mewl.

 

Unsure about the dog's fate and no longer fixated to it, Claire doubled over in agony. The ocean rolled over her body, causing her to somersault underwater. She was tumbling towards the rocks, only feet away, when something caught her by a flailing leg and pressed down.

 

For one fleeting, foolish moment she thought of rescue.

 

She felt something crunch, twist, and then she was being shook violently underwater.

 

Her mouth opened in a soundless scream, and the salt laced bright lines of pain through her body.

 

Claire's left leg was on fire - she was certain of it. The conflagration spread up her limb and into her head, flooding her dark vision with red and bright motes of light. Vaguely, she realized she was losing consciousness underwater. The thing on her leg was dragging her deeper, down and further away from the rocks.

 

Then, just as soon as it had grabbed her, it let go.

 

The last thing she recalled was the sensation of floating upwards, towards a bright light. It filled her vision, pushing away the crimson clouds and pulsating stars, causing them instead to burst out into a pure whiteness. Sound was beginning to fill her ears, but it was like listening down a long, thin tube. Someone was calling her name.

 

“Claaaiiiiirrrrreee….”

 

She lost consciousness.

 

 

2007 - Boulder City, Nevada

 

 

MEEP.

 

MEEP.

 

MEEP.

 

“SHUT UP!” Claire rolled over and whacked the `snooze' button with the hand closest to the alarm. There was a resounding `thwack' that knocked the digital clock off the nightstand, before it hit the floor upside-down.

 

Sighing, the woman shifted and lifted herself upright. She settled herself on the edge of her bed, bending down long enough to pick up the alarm and set it upon the nightstand again, just a bit further back from the edge than it had been. It was always good to preempt tomorrow morning, after all. Noting the time read 6:00 a.m. in large digital numerals, she mused over the fact that she hadn't had to hit `snooze' four or five times in a row - she had woken up at the first alarm for once.

 

Yawning, the 26-year-old pushed some tousled blonde hair out her face and pushed herself upright for another day. It was Monday, the weekend was over, and it was time for work. She scanned her tidy bedroom, willing the last eddies of sleep from her mind before finding what she sought.

 

Finally, her eyes rested upon it - of course, it was in the place she had left it last night. Reaching over to the other side of the nightstand, Claire encircled one hand around the item and grasped it before picking it up.

 

That morning, and every morning since the shark attack of 1997, she had put on the prosthesis that attached itself just below the knee where her left leg would have otherwise been.

 

 

Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers. All recognizable characters are the property of HasTak. All original characters are mine.

 

A/N: That's chapter one! Please read and review! Want more? Let me know!