Susan Murray POV (Cal's human sister)
Calvin is different... as the middle child he was always trying to get attention. He did this by taking absolutely nothing seriously.
To give an example, at a funeral for our grandfather he somehow managed to attach a string to the wrist of the corpse and when our younger brother came close he had the hand reach out...
Steven wouldn't talk to him for a week after that.
He has a few unusual quirks, such as a crippling fear of deep water. I haven't seen him swim anywhere outside of a pool. Only in the shallow end, too.
He also never had a girlfriend.
I don't mean because he is gay or couldn't get a date, quite the contrary on the last one. He had women hanging off him everywhere. Somehow they seemed to get caught up in the mood he exudes... but he never responds to them. In fact he often turns them down point blank. I don't get it, but he says he only has eyes for one person and that he will know her when he sees her.
It was quite ridiculous at one point, in his work setting up back-drops for stage performances he encounters a lot of very attractive, show business talent. He managed to have the prima ballerina for a highly acclaimed production of the 'Black Swan' beg him for a date. While receiving three phone numbers from other members of the cast, a text from a famous singer from his prior production of 'The Phantom of the Opera' and to top it all off an underwear model kept sending him obscene photos... he doesn't remember where he met her or how she even got his number. All of this in the space of five hours.
He works fast too... I don't even bring friends home any more. A few words and some goofy jokes and they are eating out of his hand. Then I have to explain why he won't accept their calls, won't date them and not seem like I have some incestuous jealousy/affair going on. I used to just say he was gay... but then I found five of my friends getting changed with him in the room. Needless to say, I was shocked.
I found out later... He didn't even notice them.
At that point I gave up. His fixation on this woman borders on psychotic. This fantastical woman that cannot possibly exist in this world. He described her and all I could see was a demon.
That would have been the end of it, but to help him with his smoking problem we had him visit a hypnotherapist. I sat in on the session as an observer.
He certainly gave up smoking, however he also gave us a bunch of names. It seems he had some bad reaction to being hypnotized and started screaming and crying... names, weird stuff about calamari, monsters and gods.
One name really struck a chord. Charybdis. I had to google it. An obscure monster... He had spoken the name with such emotion... then more intimately he called to a 'Charie'.
When I asked him about the monster he gave me a blank look, like it was new to him. So I forced him to read the information. I also asked him if the name Charie meant something to him. He tried to laugh it off at first but a few days later he confided that he did know that name, he heard it in his dreams. The same dreams that featured his inhuman girl.
He confided something else, stranger than I would have expected... he told me that sometimes his arms and legs moved slightly strangely. As if they were on auto-pilot. Further more, he told me that all his life, he had suffered from phantom limb syndrome. The weird thing: he had more than six limbs missing...
Ever since that day he has been eating a lot of sea-food. Every restaurant meal is surf without the turf. He eats a lot of tinned fish too, but for some reason hates eating tuna.
A few times he has mentioned he wants to be a geologist and has been studying carefully everything he can on it including chemistry... the weird thing... he also reads a heck of a lot on marine ecosystems. As a 'hobby'.
I think something is very strange about him. He says strange things when asked about certain subjects.
Once I asked if he thought he had been abducted by aliens...
He replied: “Aliens? They're push overs.” without thinking.
The weirdest thing was this time we went to an aquarium.
We were going through all the exhibits and he spots an octopus.
Now the family was looking at it as an interesting creature... he starts waving his fingers at it. What was really interesting was that the octopus replied. They went on like this for almost an hour. When he finally finished I asked him why he was doing it, so seriously for so long.
He explained that this octopus, which he named Gerald was quite an interesting conversationalist. He explained that Gerald was enjoying his life in the aquarium because he could sneak out and steal food or other exhibits whenever he wanted.
Trying to talk some sense into Calvin I approached one of the staff and asked what the name of the octopus was... it really was Gerald. I asked if the octopus was stealing from the other tanks and he gave me a funny look, only to realize that yes he probably was the culprit but they hadn't actually worked out he was the food thief until I pointed it out... they also had an escape-artist seal clouding the issue.
Now you recall how I mentioned he had no interest for women but they were crawling all over him?
One day he simply decides to quit his job and become a masseuse. Because that is a logical move, right? I figured it was a phase... but then... he became famous in six months as the man with the 'golden touch'. He is booked solid by female celebrities who pay him an obscene amount of money.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Yes, my brother the wealthy, alien punching, octopus reading, monster loving, inadvertent Casanova masseuse...
It gives me a headache trying to explain all of this to people who want interviews and background details on celebrities...
It gets harder when those same celebrities try to ply ME with gifts, trying to get an inside track with my brother...
Sigh...
At least he's good with his nephews, always spoiling them with some toy or game.
Well... the big family holiday is coming up, Borneo here we come!
He has all kinds of plans for us. He even set us all up with a special tour of a monkey rehabilitation clinic. It is a long travel into the mountains to get there and only for a few hours on just that one day... he said he talked to an actress who is spokeswoman for the place to get us the tour, in exchange for a date... which is very odd. Or very sweet. I'm not sure which.
He seems to have come down with a small fever... so he decides to stay home.
The weird thing is, when we leave he gets out of bed and heads to the beach... We only noticed because we forgot the sunscreen and went back to the cabin to get it.
I wonder what is going on with him.
When we get back I'm giving him a piece of my mind, lying to spend a little time away from us, playing on the beach...
...when has he ever liked the beach enough to actually go there?
Why would he, a delusional romantic who can't think of any female beside his fictional dream girl agree to go on a date?
I get a very bad feeling about it.
…
The monkeys are cute and sad at the same time...
I don't understand why he didn't want to come, it is amazing.
…
We are about to leave when the monkeys start going crazy.
Screaming and shaking the bars of the cages, hugging each other...
We have no idea, until we go back home to the resort and see from the outlook nothing but water.
…
A damn tsunami wiped the town away...
I was so shocked by all of it I didn't know what to think at the time, besides the fact my brother is down there somewhere... in the deep water he hates, so much...
It got stranger... when I returned home I found a letter, written by Calvin on my pillow...
It said that I shouldn't be upset, that he was going to meet the people that he loved and the missing piece of himself that he called wife...
It had a lot of crazy shit in it, but the main points where so specific it was scary.
He knew the tsunami was coming.
He knew because it came to take him.
He had been working on self-hypnosis, trying to fix the leak of memories his first trance had unleashed. He called it a the 'once and future king paradox'. If he wasn't oblivious going into the situation he might react differently from before. He even changed his own memories to make himself believe we were dead.
… I didn't quite get it. I saw a few lines where he wrote his own name... and below that...
Calvin Alexander Murray
Cal. A. Murray
Cal Amari
Mr. Squid.
The last one... was like a joke.
For some reason, I decided never to eat squid again...
It would have been the end of it, except a year later I received an email.
From a Mr Squid.
It told me not to worry, that he was happy. That he would come home once in a while.
I couldn't believe any of it...
Until I saw the link to a photo...
There he was, with a woman as beautiful as the Venus de Milo with eerie eyes that were not human... on all sides were children and women, ranging from pacific islanders to pale, ethereal beauties I had never seen before. He and she were giants. It must have been photo-shopped.
One was even dressed as a maid and another in a gothic lolita dress, all black...
I looked at the faces and saw happiness... why were all of them with him and why were so many kids with his features already that mature? He'd only been gone a year.
I enlarged the photo and noticed a few startling things...
One woman with black hair was top-less and get this... wearing a realistic mermaid costume!
One of the little girls had a dress on that made her look like she was half octopus.
Even the background of the photo was strange.
A volcano, with a giant, naked blue woman and a kaiju standing in front of it, waving....
What a horrible sense of taste, for a joke.
…
Except... the look he gave in the photo... it was one I had never seen before... I think it is joy...
Then a few months later he dropped by for a visit... with friends...
And that folks is that...
Also posted today: Re:Labyrinth prologue... http://www.royalroadl.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=11501
It is short but it should give you a taste of things to come...
The updates on it will be slower as I want to spend time on other work, but I will try to improve upon what I have learned writing Re:Ocean. Also as previously stated the new story isn't comedy so don't be disappointed.