Beau Goes For a Run

(none)

(none)

(none)

=====
[[include :scp-wiki:component:preview
|text="It had been months since Beau had left California, defeated, chased by nothing but the Santa Anas, heading towards nothing but the last resort."]]
=====
[[include :scp-wiki:info:start]]
**Title:** Beau Goes For a Run
**Author:** [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/panik-s-perfection-in-progress Mr Panik]
⚠️ **Content warning:** This article contains a content warning: implied child abuse.
[[include :scp-wiki:info:end]]
[[include :scp-wiki:theme:black-highlighter-theme]]
[[include :scp-wiki:theme:cleaning-services]]

= //"Mom...I couldn't go through with-- Mom, please, stop yelling..."//

= //"..."//

= //"I know... I'm sorry. I freaked ou-- Mom, please!"//

= //"..."//

= //"Yeah, yeah, I know you pulled strings to get me the interview. Mom, I'll still help out, I swear!"//

= //"..."//

= //"I'll move to Pierre."//

------

Beau's feet carried him through the cool air of Pierre's night. He'd taken to the street to burn off the anger of the argument he'd had with his mother, but it wasn't enough. It never was. He would run until he was exhausted like he did every time they fought and then he'd pass out on his bed only to wake up and repeat the same argument again the next day. When the frustration chaffed inside him so hard he wanted to tear his chest open, all he could think of doing was running.

So he ran.

As usual, his body gave way before his desperation did. After an aimless half-hour run followed by four circuits of the block the dog park was on, Beau collapsed on a bench, panting. He let himself slide sideways until he was lying down, then rolled over to stare at the sky. His chest heaved from the effort of the run, but that hadn't just been exercise. That'd been something else.

He closed his eyes, cutting the flitting shadows in the park from his view, and tried to dismiss his nerves to the back of his mind. The shadows chased one another back and forth across the road, liquid darkness that darted around his passing. He wasn't sure if he should have but he'd come to accept that they existed. What they were remained a mystery, though.

It had been months since Beau had left California, defeated, chased by nothing but the Santa Anas, heading towards nothing but the last resort. Most days, it still felt like he'd only just arrived. No matter how often he let himself get lost in work, no matter how often he reminded himself that he was safe in his own apartment with a roommate that wasn't insane, it didn't help. He struggled every month and every month his mother still managed to ask for more and more and more. He didn't want to blame her for her decisions, but he couldn't deny his feelings.

So he ran.

Money. It was always money that stuck its nose into his peace. Money in the shape of his mother's endless needs. She had a job in Pierre, like him, but after he moved out she'd suddenly needed his help way more than before. He didn't earn much working for SCP, but he helped her where he could. He'd have stayed living with her if he thought he'd survive it, but there was only so much his mind could take. So he left before the weight of his mother's collapse took him down too.

He sighed, firmly wiping sweat from his eyes. The wind began to cool him down and his breathing was beginning to steady.

"Hey there!"

Beau's eyes shot open to see who had spoken, but there was no one. "Hello?" He asked the night air, with the eerie emptiness standing silently witness. He shifted uncomfortably, sitting up to get a better view. This was Pierre; you never knew what could be watching you from out in the darkness.

"Down here."

Beau looked down, startled, and froze. His gaze came to rest on the scraggly opossum sitting calmly next to the bench. Beau said nothing. He wasn't sure if what was happening was weird enough for him to believe it, even in Pierre, but he was quite sure that opossum was speaking to him.

"Yup, you're looking at a talking opossum," the opossum said. "The name's [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/adoption-poster-lloyd Lloyd]."

"H- hey, Lloyd. I'm Beau." Beau looked at the animal before him, confused. Pierre was properly strange on a good day, and knowing what was real and what wasn't hadn't been easy for him since before he even moved there.

The animal-- Lloyd -- yawned, his rat-like snout gaping out at the world. When he was done, he clicked his teeth a bit, shook his head and looked back up at Beau. "Nice to know you, Beau! You doing alright?"

"Uh," Beau looked around, wondering where the ventriloquist was, but knowing he wasn't going to find one. "I'm doing alright, I guess."

"You must be guessing if you passed out on a park bench at 10PM."

"Wasn't passing out. Just taking a break. I'll get back to running again soon."

"Well," Lloyd said, shuffling closer to bench. "Why are you out running so late?"

Lloyd did a little hop and managed to grab the edge of the bench. His body dangled for a moment, wiggling as his feet tread empty air. Beau reached over and lifted Lloyd up on the bench where he shook his coat out, turned in place and parked himself looking up at Beau. Beau returned the gesture by blinking blankly at him.

"Cat got your tongue?" Lloyd asked.

"Uh, no!" said Beau. "I just didn't expect to see anyone tonight. I was just getting some fresh air."

"Fresh air always helps clear the mind, yeah," Lloyd said, nodding and looking out across the dog park. "Those little guys sure do know how to have fun!"

"What do you mean?" Beau turned to look, but the shadows that had been hounding his periphery every night since he'd arrived disappeared as soon as he focused on them. "Damn."

"Eh, humans will catch up soon enough."

"What do you mean?"

"Just things on the other side of the here. Don't worry about it," Lloyd assured him. "But, seriously, what brings you out here tonight? Looks like you're carrying the world."

Beau paused, considering what to say. He didn't like speaking badly of his mother. She wasn't a bad person under everything. She was just at the end of her rope. She just needed some help, and there was nothing anyone could do to make his mother more reasonable. There was no amount of talking about how crazy she was that was going to make him feel better. And again, this was an opossum; talking to him would be insane.

"I'm just clearing my head after a fight with my mom," Beau said, eventually. "It's just easier to burn off that frustration out here."

"By hurting yourself with bad form? I watched you running up and down for a while, y'know?"

"I-I... I'm not a runner. Not really."

"Hmmmm," Lloyd nodded, thoughtfully. "Must have been a pretty rough argument."

"Is arguing about money ever calm?" Beau asked, sardonic to the bone.

"Not in my experience. People take money pretty seriously. Had a guy apologize to me once because I borrowed him some money," Lloyd scratched at his ear. "Maybe I'm just an opossum and I don't get it, but money seems to get in the way of a lot of good things in life."

"Yeah. It does."

Beau blinked hard, pushing away the thoughts of a life he could have had if he'd been anyone else, or just the one that didn't fumble when it mattered the most.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Lloyd asked, flicking his tail back and forth.

"It's just hard to think of my relationship with my mother as good." Beau murmured into the dark.

"Ah. That is a tough one." Lloyd looked as pensive as an opossum could for a bit then turned to Beau and said, "From what I've seen visiting with my neighbors over the years, family can be pretty complicated."

"You don't have a family of your own?"

"Not in the traditional sense, no," Lloyd said padding the air with a paw as if to swat away a concern. "But it's really no worries. I've got some good friends back home. But you sound like you've got no one."

"Yeah."

"Would it be too much to ask what happened with your mom?"

"I didn't get a job that she was really counting on." Beau was surprised he could say it as easily as he did. He'd never said it out loud. Not that plainly, at least. "I guess I would have been perfect for it, but I screwed up the interview."

"Money trouble's a theme for you, huh?"

"Yeah."

"Hmmmm," said Lloyd, looking out across the park again. The stillness of the night was impenetrable around them and for a moment they were they only living beings in the world. The crisp air swirled around them while ever clearer shadows played across the lawns in front of them. "You can't blame yourself forever. People screw up interviews all the time."

"Not everybody ends up hyperventilating in a bathroom because the world suddenly didn't look real."

Beau waited for some kind of confused or condescending quip. It never came. Lloyd just looked up at him and smiled. "This is real, Beau. I can tell you that much."

"Some days it's an effort to figure out what is and isn't, but thanks. That helps," said Beau. "I think."

Lloyd snickered for a second. "I think it's called derealization, by the way."

"Wh-What do you mean?"

"Derealization. It's a thing that happens to some people where the world looks a hundred miles away, or like it's not real. Some people say it's like interacting with the world through a pane of glass or like people look like cardboard cutouts," Lloyd looked up at him, but his smile seemed sad. "It happens to people who are under a lot of stress."

Beau couldn't speak. It was word-for-word what had happened to him. Nobody had believed him. He'd been sitting in his head alone with this for months, as alone as he'd been in the bathroom cubicle he passed out in. Moving to Pierre had scared him so much. He'd stayed inside for as long as he could before his mother had forced him out into the world to find work. In those early days when he wasn't sure what was real and what wasn't, bussing tables and running deliveries had been the most terrified he'd ever been.

It had only been when he'd eventually lost his second job in Pierre that he'd given SCP a call and he'd held onto that number since he found it in L.A. It was only there that he started learning what was in his head and what wasn't. It had brought him some kind of peace-of-mind knowing that he wasn't losing touch with reality completely.

"You're not crazy, Beau," Lloyd chimed. "You're just a guy with a lot on his plate."

"I guess."

"You really need to cut yourself some slack."

"People say that, but I'm just not where I wanted to be." The words tumbled out of his mouth, but it seemed that Lloyd had managed to break through the wall that usually held this all back. "I live in the middle of nowhere. I'm scared to talk to anyone that I'm not paid to. The only reason my roommate and I get along is because we both spend more time in our rooms than we should. I clean up after people for a living. I know I'm not supposed to look down on that, but it's just not where I wanted to be."

"Well, where do you want to be?"

"Not cleaning out Bagel Bob's cesspool walk-in."

"Bagel Bob's has great food, though!"

"I thought so too!" Beau's eyes widened. "Dee and I were cleaning it out and just don't eat there ever again. Trust me. Or do, I dunno. Who knows what's real anymore? //Denise Does Dogs// is still in business and I'm still not sure what she's doing with the dogs."

"Does it bother you that she's doing things with dogs?"

"It's just weird. Everything here is weird. Mr A. Lien's has had a 'Coming Soon' sign up there for months," Beau exclaimed. "Or a week. I don't know. Every time I look at it I just get stuck in time. Stuck //here.//"

"And you don't want to be here," said Lloyd. Silence followed for a while as the two of them gazed out at the park across the road. He noticed the shadows at the edge of his vision start to take some clearer shape, slowly stretching into his full field of vision. Nothing became too much more defined, but he was surer now that there was something out there.

"Yeah," Beau nodded. "I could probably be doing better now if I'd just made things work in L.A."

"But why blame yourself for things not working out? What race are you running?" Lloyd asked, throwing his paws up. "L.A.'s been there for a while and it's probably not going anywhere soon. You're allowed to go back and try again when you're back on your feet. Who said you aren't?"

"Yeah, but because I freaked out, because I... derealized..." Beau tested the word in his mouth, confused by how correct it felt. "I'm a step back from where I needed to be. It's going to take me ages to save up again."

"Why did you sit down on this bench tonight, Beau?" Lloyd asked, casually looking away again. "Were you done running?"

"I needed a rest," said Beau.

"And are you mad at yourself for needing a rest?"

"W-Where are you going with this?"

"Your body was tired and needed a rest, so you rested," said Lloyd pointedly. "Why would you be mad at yourself for //you// needing a rest after things went badly for you? Because you shouldn't be. You didn't ask to break down. It just happened. Now you're recovering, but you're blaming yourself for needing to. That doesn't seem fair on you."

"Yeah, but if I'd gotten that job, there would have been more money to go around," said Beau. "My mom wouldn't be living in a tiny apartment. I'd be driving to work not cycling."

"You can't blame yourself for any of that and your mother isn't your yoke to bear." Lloyd managed to sound both gentle and stern as he spoke. "I know you love her and you seem like the type that really wants to help out, but what if that help is hurting someone?"

"How can that even happen?"

"Believe me, people respond weirdly to help. I've gotten some weird responses over the years for some of the help I've given people," said Lloyd. "Your mom needs to take action for herself so that she can start winning back her life. She's reliant on you. You're suffering. Everyone loses."

"And that's the difference between 'helping' and 'enabling,' isn't it?" Beau asked, but they both knew the answer and he was happy to sit in silence for a bit.

Beau considered Lloyd's words carefully. They may as well have been words whispered from another dimension considering how foreign they sounded. He'd always been there to carry the load when it was needed and he'd stayed in his mom's corner for every step of the way. Still, the needling in what Lloyd had said bloomed uncontrollably in Beau's mind as he realized the sad truth.

"I-- I don't owe her anything," said Beau and slowly felt a smile form on his face.
------

[[include component:image-block | name= BeauLloydFinal.png | caption="Yup!" | width=800px | align=center]]

------

"Yup!" Lloyd said. "And you need to start accepting that you don't have to rescue her. You don't have to rescue anyone. You just have to be there for people when they need you. That's all."

The two sat quietly for a bit longer. Beau's mind was awash with thoughts of what he'd been through and how it'd really affected him. He cast his upwards at the pink-purple sky undulating in the night. It felt miles above him, though low thick clouds stretched in every direction. Occasionally, what seemed like lightning would streak silently across the sky, splitting the hazy night apart like the oil in a lava lamp. He watched calmly as the sky reattached itself, skittering energy sealing reality back together, and then he smiled, wondering if anyone else could see it.

He still needed to learn a lot, but running didn't feel right anymore. He and his mother would need to have a very difficult conversation; he couldn't put it off anymore. He didn't deserve to drown. Mulling over the same argument he'd been having with her since he was twelve had just driven him crazy. Things had to change.

"Thank you, Lloyd," said Beau.

"Don't mention it," Lloyd said, smiling up at him. "But I think I need to get going, actually. I'm meeting my new neighbors in the morning and it's still a way to go for me."

"I, uh, I can get can my roommate to drive you," said Beau, reaching for his phone.

"Oh, no need!" Lloyd said, shimmying his way off the bench. Beau watched as the bundle of fur popped down onto the grass again, bemused. Lloyd gave a large stretch then looked over at Beau. "You take care of yourself, Beau. I'm gonna enjoy the rest of the night."

"I... Be safe!" said Beau, watching as Lloyd waved at him and then set off into the night.

He watched until Lloyd's fluffy rear disappeared around the nearby corner, a few shadows loping playfully after him. The chill of the evening drew in around Beau, but for the first time in a while there was some kind of warmth he felt, like he was comfortable to be there for the first time since arriving.

Standing up, he stretched a little to get his muscles loosened up again and decided to head back. It was pretty late, but he had a day off the next day, so he didn't need to rush. The warmth in Beau's chest grew as he began to jog until a smile appeared on his face. Usually, he ran because he was frustrated, but tonight things had ended surprisingly well.

One foot in front of the other, Beau carried himself homewards; breathy, detached barking finally telling him what had been darting around in the shadows.
------

= //"Uh, my name's Beau. I'm 20. I spent the last year in L.A. but then I decided I needed to focus more on family, so here I am."//

= //"And why did you choose Safe Cleanup Professionals?"//

= //"I, uh, I'm really passionate about being of service to people. Really like helping people this w-way."//

= //"I see. And how did you hear about us?"//

= //"Oh! Yeah! I saw your ad while I was scrolling on my phone at the porn studio I auditioned for."//

= //"And how did that audition work out?"//

[[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box]]
> **Filename:** BeauLloydFinal.png
> **Author:** [https://www.tumblr.com/ratscrap/ Ratscrapz]
> **License:** CC BY-SA 3.0
> **Source Link:** [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/beau-goes-for-a-run SCP Foundation Wiki]
[[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box-end]]

Beau Goes For a Run

Module Styles

Inline Styles

Includes

CSS Classes

Page Source