Mordecai Torin

[Deleted]

Original

Name:
Mordecai Z. Torin

Age: Looks to be about eighteen.
Gender: Male.
Species: Human, but just call him a Dreamer.
Planet of Origin: Earth.
Occupation: Dreamer.

Physical Description:

    “Can you… see me?”

More than likely, the answer is ‘no’. Mordecai is dead, though not the standard ‘ghost’. His DNA was mixed with that of an alien, only activating upon his death as is standard with that particular species of alien. To most people, he’s invisible. He can sometimes interact with the others in very minor ways – cold wind against them, malfunctioning electronic equipment, and whispering noises when he’s trying to catch their attention. If they are telepathic, he can sometimes enter their mind and project himself to them to communicate. He’s only done this once or twice, but for the most part he doesn’t bother. That isn’t what he does. It’s his job to Dream.

    “You… see me?”

But there are those who can see him. They’re the Dreaming – mostly people who are sensitive to other types of energy, though it’s not a given that they can see him even if they can detect normal human spirits. The Dreamers are on different wavelengths than humans. Most children can see the Dreamers – though they aren’t called the Dreamers to those children, but rather Imaginary Friends. Some children see them as humanoids, but the ones with the wild imaginations sometimes change their perceptions of the Dreamers.

    “… see me?”

To those that can see him, Mordecai looks like a rather ordinary teenager. He’s maybe a little pale, and the bags under his eyes a little exaggerated at times, but for the most part he looks normal. He is tall – three or four inches over six feet – and he is incredibly lanky. Mordecai has piercings in his nose and left ear. He has dark brown eyes and a friendly smile, the bit of dark brown stubble on his jaw giving him a younger look.

His hair varies in color – mostly light brown, though occasionally it darkens, and in one memorable occasion, the top was lavender while the bottom was dark brown. His appearance can vary if there is a very strong Dreaming influence on him. He mostly wears some sort of hat over his hair, for admittedly aesthetic purposes and because even he can get cold in chilly weather (though in his case, it’s psychosomatic because he doesn’t actually have nerve endings, but he still feels cold).

With that in mind, Mordecai dresses as well as he can, often mimicking the current fashion he sees around him while watching the humans. Still – even the best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry. Around a Dreaming, they could put him in a clown suit if that’s what their mood called for. Their perceptions of him can change his reality, particularly if they have a strong influence.

Personality:

    “I hated myself,”

Mordecai’s personality changed dramatically as a result of his death, but it’s important to understand what he was like before his death. He was a very quiet and solemn young man, a smile never quite reaching his lips, not a genuine one. He had low self-esteem as a result of his upraising, and he had severe depression issues that were never resolved. He didn’t think he was worth the time and effort to save, so he suffered in silence for years. In a few words, he was an intensely lonely and sad person. At the end of his life, his problems only multiplied and grew until his level of pain greatly outweighed the methods of coping.

    “but now I’ll save you.”

The job of a Dreamer is to give dreams – to give hope, to give inspiration, and ensure that no one else suffers the same fate if the Dreamer could help it. Mordecai is therefore drawn to the people who resembled him before he died – those who believed they were worthless, not special, the people who couldn’t see the value in their existence, and he had an intense desire to save those people, just like he’d had an intense desire to be saved, though he had buried that far down inside of him. So that’s what Mordecai does – he begins the slow and long process of healing as many wounds as he could.

    “I’ll save you with humor,”

An easy way to describe Mordecai is with his bright sense of humor. He laughs at everything, and he’s got a thousand jokes locked into storage. Not all of them are funny, and most of them can be found on the wooden stick of popsicles or on the back of milk cartons. He can find the humor in everything, and he often points it out to people. The hilarity of society in general, watching as people went about their lives, ignoring the funny little things around them that made life life. He makes fun of himself and gently pokes fun of other people, though it’s all in good fun and he’s careful never to pull any triggers.

    “save you with fun,”

He’s a fun person to be around, for being dead. He’s adventurous and he’ll insist on taking missions downtown. He’ll turn a simple grocery trip into a life or death scenario where the ground is lava and the only way out is to pas de chat. Alternatively, he’s also the person who insists on lazy days with popcorn and cheesy science fiction movies made in the eighties. Impromptu board games at four in the morning when no one can sleep, a good game of ‘Clue’ that covers the entirety of the city, and DIY projects that never really get done.

    “and with gentleness.”

Mordecai is far from overbearing with his insisting on happy things. He’s quite calm when he needs to be, and he knows when he needs to be. He’s trustworthy and his shoulder is wet with the tears of his friends. He is gentle and is intuitive, and he almost always know what someone needs, though he sometimes might not be able to provide it. Mordecai isn’t perfect by a long shot, and he was never a trained psychologist, but he knows what pain feels like and he knows how to be gentle, and he knows that sometimes a few soft-spoken words can go for miles.

    “But mostly, I’ll save you with my friendship.”

Mordecai is a fierce friend, laced with the determined loyalty that is common amongst the Dreamers. His goal is to keep people from repeating his mistakes, and he knows that his friendship can save them. For that reason he takes every action into consideration, always making sure that what he does and says betters himself and people around him without risking being boring and having the very people he’s trying to save turn on him – it’s happened before, but that was long ago and Mordecai has grown into his new personality now.


History:

    “The path to paradise begins in Hell.” – Dante Alighieri, ‘Paradise’.

Hell.

That was one way to describe Mordecai’s beginnings. It was a flurry of abuse – a drunken dad and a mother with a wicked temper. At times it was so bad that Mordecai snuck out from the window and ran off to the library as a child, often hiding as the librarians came around to check if everyone was out for the night and spending the night there. This got him into more trouble than it was worth when his parents would realize that he had snuck out.

Although Mordecai’s father was cruel with his fists, it was his mother’s abuse that triggered his confidence issues, as she was cruel with her words. He knew he didn’t deserve the beatings, but his mother had convinced the six year old that it was his fault that they were so miserable, and she really should have listened to her friend and gotten an abortion. Eventually his teachers at primary school caught on to the abuse, and Mordecai was put into a home.

The next home he was in was rather decent – the parents were friendly, though the children all gave Mordecai hell. Their parents had died – and that was better than having parents who were alive but hated them. Mordecai thought that they had rather valid points, and he slipped further into his depression, his foster parents brushing it off as the withdrawn child’s way of coping. He began to bounce around from home to home due to financial difficulties – not Mordecai’s fault, though with each rejection, his mother’s words and the children’s words would come back to his mind and tug at him until he was curled up and shaking from silent tears.

It was during one of his many runaway attempts that a strange purple flickering man crouched in front of his, his teeth too big to close his mouth properly. His teeth sunk into Mordecai’s arm, and though there was a deep wound with blood, Mordecai felt nothing.

One of his teachers told him that Hell was the way to Paradise – all hard things eventually had a reward. Mordecai knew that if this was the only way to get to Heaven, then it wasn’t worth it.

    “Remember tonight… for it is the beginning of always.” – Dante Alighieri, ‘Inferno’.

The beginning.

For Mordecai, the beginning happened at the end. He was just on the cusp of his eighteenth birthday when he lost hope. He wasn’t sure what had been the breaking point – perhaps it had been someone dropping eye contact too soon, telling him that he couldn’t do something, or even an innocent gesture such as smiling at someone else a little more genuine. Mordecai can’t remember what it is, but he remembers a cry of despair as he realized the futility of life.

He can’t remember how he did it, and Mordecai is content with not knowing. It doesn’t have an impact on his life – it doesn’t change who he is or his new personality, and he doesn’t like owning up to that fact that he had given up so easily, but he knew that it was the best for him. He didn’t have the ability to cope with the amount of pain that he had been in. It was the easier option and perhaps not the best one, but it was morally neutral.

Except during the end, as Mordecai was waiting to be casted into the fiery depths of Hell, he felt his entire body begin to burn intensely.

    “I did not die, and yet I lost life’s breath.” – Dante Alighieri, ‘Inferno’.

Oh, there was no doubt that Mordecai was dead. His first memory as a Dreamer is seeing his dead body on a slab and screaming like a little girl. It wasn’t until several hours later that another Dreamer saw him and explained everything – his sudden change in attitude, his purpose in life, and why none of the adults seemed to be able to see him but their children could. Mordecai never had second thoughts about death – it was the best thing that could have happened to him.

The purple static creature had been a sort of alien, injecting him with a sort of reverse oleic acid – he was dead, but he still had his body and memories. He had died so that he could become the guardian angel of lost souls everywhere, or… well, perhaps not everywhere, but he figured that if he could live forever – and there was a Dreamer that had died in the fifteenth century – he could help people. He had died, but he could help people. No one else had to suffer like he did, prisoners of their own mind.

    “A great flame follows a little spark.” – Dante Alighieri, ‘Paradise’.

To the majority of the world, his death was meaningless. Just another kid who’d not had the best of lives to begin with, and had… well, copped out. But his death sparked something in the Dreamer, and he was able to blow the spark into a fire. He could save people, and it was with that manic determination that Mordecai leapt into his work with zeal.

[Ace McShane]

Accepted!

Now what?