January 3rd, 2011 was the day everything would change. The family was going to visit Aunt Catherine again. This time, Julian and Patrick were going along and Martin was joining them there. The whole family would be together for the first time in several years. The flight was on a private jet. Donnie was in good spirits. He even let his youngest boy have a drink of whiskey. This was a big deal for Patrick, and he struggled through the burn of it like a trooper. A little drunk, the trip started to feel less like the boring disaster he was sure it would be.
Apparently however, a family visit wasn’t the only cause for the trip. A day after getting settled at Catherine’s, Donnie and Julian had to head out to take care of something for the night. Patrick was to stay at his Aunt’s with his mother and siblings and just hang out. This lasted for a good hour before the boy was so bored he wanted to scream. He said he was going to go grab a bite to eat at a pizza joint down the block. It was too late for Amy to go with him, despite her protests at being left behind.
Patrick wasn’t interested in pizza. He wanted to see what his brother and father were up to. He knew they had a front that was a little uptown, in an office building. He called a taxi and headed on over. It began to rain. Stepping out of the car, young Patrick looked at the side of the building up to see a light on in an office on the floor his family’s business was on. It was about three seconds after the Taxi was gone that the window of the lit office exploded outwards and a body went flying out into the night with a scream that sounded like… it couldn’t be… Patrick ran over to where the body landed.
There he found his brother’s mangled body, twisted by the fall with the bone of his left leg below the knee snapped out right through the skin and fabric of his quality, well tailored pants. This was impossible. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t real. Patrick wasn’t looking at his brother’s dead body. In shock, the boy looked up back at the window where some kind of fight was going on. Patrick wasn’t thinking as ran into the building and into an elevator, heading up to join the fray.
As the elevator slowly made its climb, Patrick started to feel more nervous, angry, afraid. He paced as the rage and fear built within him. When the elevator door opened, it was no longer Patrick, but a monster wearing him. Football training came into good use as he charged out and through the office doors, shattering them off their hinges like a battering ram. The body came into a brutal brawl between his Father’s men, and a group of Asians that he didn’t recognize who were seeming to be winning the fight. He saw his father, covered in bruises and blood fighting as he was being dragged across the floor towards the shattered window.
“NO!!!” Patrick roared and charged. When the first baseball bat hit his face as he ran, the boy just chaotically swiped outwards at its wielder who instead flew back with the force of being hit by a car, out through the open window past his father and the two men wrestling him away. Patrick leapt on the man to his father’s right, and crushed him with the impact, the man’s legs breaking inwards like toothpicks. A single punch to the Asian’s screaming face left nothing but a now silent crater of bone, blood, and brain.
Patrick felt nothing except building rage. The other man who was grappling the boy’s father ran to attack what looked like nothing more than a feral child. Patrick whipped his head around to face the attacker and reached out to grab the man’s swinging arm. It crushed down to a bloody paste inside Patrick’s grip. The other men all were staring and gasping in horror as the Asian fell to the floor, screaming at his arm that was severed just above the wrist by the horrific crushing force of this child. Among those was his father, Donnie. Patrick looked at his father’s eyes, wide and full of horror and suddenly realized what he had just done. One of the Asians Patrick could see pulled a knife from inside his jacket and threw it at the boy who simply battered it aside with a swipe of his hand… from a distance. The knife wasn’t even close.
Patrick’s rush was dying down. He felt confused and scared and he looked back to his father’s eyes that looked at Patrick and saw a monster. At least though, his father was alive. The boy ran from the room, and was pursued by two men. A third man from the street below with a gun coming up the stairs to join them.
Patrick slammed into the door that led to the roof of the attached parking garage and it didn’t budge. Patrick hit the steel door so hard it hurt. Patty became aware of how tired he was, how much pain he was in, and how hopeless it seemed with those men coming close behind. He focused a moment and stepping back, he kicked at the door which flew back off the hinges almost seemingly before his foot made contact with it. He ran out just as a bullet flew through the place he was standing just a half a second before.
Out on the roof now, soaked to the bone, Patrick was exhausted as the three Asians came through the door and spread out to try and surround him. He threatened them, they laughed and demanded to know where some money is that the kid knew nothing about. He looks off towards the distant edge of the building and his mind viciously reminds him of his brother’s dead body laying below on the cold wet concrete. Three men are coming closer, looking to kill him too. The rage returns all at once, a corvette going from 0-60 in 0.01 seconds. Patrick Fitzgerald snaps.
When he comes to, Patrick is still on the rooftop. The heavy rain has stopped and the sun threatens to come up over the horizon. The kid’s clothing is mostly shredded… somehow or another. He is covered in blood that doesn’t appear to be his own. But that isn’t the worst part.
Something catches Patrick’s eye and he looks to the side. There is what looks like a human body turned inside out. Ribs bent out and away from the spine like cracking open a lobster tail. Pulverized bone and organs lay all around, spread out to a distance. Another body is simply torn in half, the two pieces of a whole leaving a gory mess between them. The third is nowhere to be seen… perhaps it went over the edge in the distance to the ground below.
Patrick started to sob in terror at himself. He couldn’t comprehend what he had done, yet he knew somehow that he was a mutant, or something like that. It didn’t seem possible. But then again, Little Patty’s brother shouldn’t be dead either. The thought of that reminded him of the truth of the situation. He started to feel sick, and more he felt the need to run before someone caught him. Instead of running through the building, he went down and around through the parking garage… all the way to the street before starting to run off.
He didn’t know what to do. All that was in his mind were the repeating images of his dead brother, the horrible things he did to those men, and the look of fear in his own father’s eyes. This last part haunted him the most. Patrick couldn’t go home, if there was even a home to go back to. It wasn’t safe; for him or them. He wanted to see his mother and little sister more than anything. But he couldn’t return to them right now. All Patrick could do was run.
Patrick hides now, trying to keep himself under control. Soon enough though, the building fear and other emotions within him will explode again and he’ll not be able to hold back what he has become; a murderer with a dead brother and a father who looked at his as some sort of dangerous freak. He questions the truth of that. Is that what Patrick has become? A murderous freak? The fear of that just adds to his internal struggle and brings him closer to the brink of another murder, accidental or not. His emotional state can be easily referred to as ‘disturbed’ at the moment. It might be tricky to “bring him in” for whoever first gets their hands on him.
