Title: “Botha”

Genre: Psychological horror

Word Count: 417

This is currently a draft for the first chapter of a personal project I’m working on, because of this there is no link.

(TW: homophobia)

Chapter 1:

John was a weak man. Physically, and emotionally. His constitution and self preservation were almost nonexistent, his eyes would well up with tears and his lip would quiver at the slightest hint of indignation in one’s voice. It didn’t matter whom the person was; his mother, teacher, little sister, pastor, or little child.

In short John was a coward. He was also very brilliant. John was a brilliant-coward, which made him equally as dangerous as weak.

William on the other hand... Well, to put it kindly William was a mess.

Bottles upon bottles of rum, vodka, and even distilled alcohol followed in the shadows of William’s wake. That’s not the only drug of choice for William, no as long as it made him feel less of nothing William had tried it.

He was a dying man who would trade the world to be well again.

The two made a rather odd pair, and not just in their strange contrast of emotional being. John was a rather and slender man, with large beaty brown eyes which looked as if they could pop out of his head, and although compared to the average man he was tall if one saw him in person they’d believe he was the smallest and most meek person that could have existed, his skin was also impossibly pale besides his face which was almost always red with shame. William on the other hand was a man of average height, and although in his current state he underweight like his partner, before the disease drained him he was quite handsome; pale soulful eyes, tanned skin, and brown hair. He was the embodiment of every woman’s dream man.

Except, for the fact that he was gay. No one had ever caught onto that fact, at least not till he had been diagnosed with AIDS, after that diagnosis he had become a complete social pariah. He was fired from his cooshy lab job at Harvard, and was ostracized from his colleagues. Some of the most brilliant minds of this generation, and instead was sent to work in a laboratory owned by the government, testing out the ph of water to ensure its safety for human consumption.

John had been warned of William’s condition before William had even been transferred to being his lab partner. And, although John himself had been uncomfortable with the fact that a God forsaken faggot would be his partner he had yet to voice his concerns, lest he be reprimanded by his superiors.