Whipped - Drake Merwin x OC

Audentes fortuna iuvat

"Help! Help!" he cried, and again there was no answer.

Before him were two equally dark choices: The dark tunnel extending to his left. The dark tunnel extending to his right.

He felt a slight, almost imperceptible whisper of breeze on his face. It seemed to come from his left. Toward air. Not away.

Carefully, Duck made his way down the tunnel, hands outstretched like a blind person, down the tunnel.

It was so dark, he could not see his hand in front of his face. No light. None.

He soon found that it was easier if he kept one hand on the wall. It was rock, pitted and rough, but with bumps and protrusions that felt worn down. The ground below him was uneven but not wildly so.

"Cave has to lead somewhere," Duck told himself.

He found the sound of his own voice reassuring. It was real. It was familiar.

"I wish it was a tunnel. People don't build a tunnel for no reason."

Then, after a while, "At least a tunnel has to go somewhere."

He tried to make sense of the direction. Was he going north, south, east, west? Well, hopefully not too far west, because that would lead him to the ocean.

He walked and occasionally started crying and walked some more. It was impossible to guess how long he'd been down there. He had no idea what time of day it might be. But he soon realized that the place where he'd fallen in was seeming more and more homey by comparison.

There wasn't much light back there, but at least there had been some.

And here there was none.

"I don't want to die down here," he said.

He was instantly sorry that he had voiced that thought. Saying it made it real.

At that moment he banged his head on something that shouldn't have been there, banged it hard.

Duck cursed angrily and put his hand to his forehead, feeling for blood, and realized his feet were sinking into the ground.

"No!" he yelped.

The sinking stopped. He'd gone up to his knees. But then he had stopped. He had stopped sinking.

Carefully, cautiously, he pulled his legs up out of the hard-packed dirt.

"What is happening to me?" he demanded. "Why . . ."

But then he knew the answer. He knew it and couldn't believe it hadn't occurred to him earlier.

"Oh, my God: I'm a freak."

"I'm a moof!"

"I'm a moof with a really sucky power."

What exactly the mutant ability was, he wasn't sure. It seemed to be the power to sink right down through the earth. Which was crazy. And, besides, he hadn't intended to do any such thing.

He sure hadn't said, "Sink!"

He started walking again, careful of his head, trying to work through what had happened. Both times he had sunk he'd been angry, that was the first thing. He'd heard the stories of how Sam had discovered his abilities only when he was really scared or really mad.

But Duck had been scared now for quite a while. He'd been scared since the FAYZ. It was only when he got angry that the thing happened.

The thing. Whatever it was.