#robotic rage

Todays prompt Word: Scream

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Havve could not scream, not in the biological sense. Whatever speaking functions he once had died with most of his physical form long before Sung found him in the Mesozoic period.

    The vocal functions he possessed now relied on his internal technology, a speaker in his throat that crackled and popped if he got too loud. So in the most bare sense, he could not scream.

    But he longed to. Almost more than anything. He longed to feel the strain of doing so through his mortal form, to feel his lungs burn with the exertion and ache at the raw emotion scraping its way out of his throat and into the air around him. 

    When everything became too much, when the thirst for blood merged with his morals and emotions, and he could feel each one and zero pass painfully through his head like a sensory overload that he had no way to escape from- when his hands itched to play music to escape, but each time he picked up his drumsticks they splintered and broke in his shaking and furious grip, leaving his hands raw and red, prickling with fake blood and a pain that felt unfamiliar and familiar in equal measure.

    He wanted to scream. Scream with all the fury that smoked and bubbled eternally inside his chest, threatening to catch aflame with ease and burn him up from the inside out. Scream with unplaceable anguish that ran through him, memories of blood on his hands that he couldn’t remember the color of, and screams he couldn’t put a face to.

    But he couldn’t. 

    Despite the ability to make noise, use the speaker embedded in his neck to voice thoughts and feelings and opinions, Havve couldn’t scream. Not the way he wanted.

    Because when Havve was truly drowning inside himself, trying hard to grasp onto any coherent thought, to hang onto any last thread of his sanity despite how much it felt like sand slipping endlessly through his fingers- when that happened, Havve couldn’t make any sound at all.

    To speak through his speaker wasn’t as easy as taking a breath, unlike other biological beings. He couldn’t just breathe in, then let all the air out with enough force to scrape his throat raw and hurt his own ears, no. Starting his speaker took focus. Just enough focus that he couldn’t start it up, plan ahead what was going to come out, not while so much else was going through his head. Not when it mattered.

    So he was silent. He didn’t scream.