David Callahan

[Deleted]

Original

Name:
David Callahan

Age: Sixteen.
Gender: Female.
Species: Human.
Planet of Origin: Earth.
Occupation: Unemployed/volunteer actress.

Physical Description: David is far from most people’s definition of beautiful. The pale blonde hair is often tangled and messy, surrounding her face as a not very elegant lion’s mane. Her eyes are blue-green and possibly her best feature. Her nose was broken when she was a child and it grew back with a bump. Every time she talks to someone she’s constantly paranoid they’re staring at her nose.

She isn’t tall at all. She’s only a few inches past five feet, and even that’s with her shoes on. She’s chubby for her age, mostly in her face and thighs. Although both her parents volunteer to take her shopping for fashionable clothes, David is rather low-key in that aspect. She’s fine with just her favorite (ratty, if you asked her mother) green jacket and a pair of washed-out jeans. She’s under the firm belief that people will like her for her personality, so to hell with her appearance.

Personality: The first thing that is very important to David’s character is her very over-inflated sense of compassion. She is a very sympathetic person. Although some people would consider this a character strength, David knows it’s far from it. Everyone needs a bit of compassion to function in life – in her opinion, anyway – but she’s got too much empathy. If someone tells her a sad story, she will automatically be on their side… until the opposing view gives her a sad story of their own. Due to her ever-present and over-active sympathy glands, David can appear rather wishy-washy in her loyalties.

Despite this, she’s far from gullible. She’s got a discerning and perceptive eye that can weed out most liars. This can be pinpointed to her fondness of theater and acting. She actively searches for nonverbal cues and she’s got a good nose for when someone’s upset. She isn’t the best person to come to for advice, but she’ll call a situation out like she sees it. She has a way of making people feel better without actually helping them. David’s perception isn’t foolproof. She is far from a human lie detector – she can be fooled and manipulated. And she has been before, and although she tries to deny it, it’s always because of her initial trust of strangers.

She loves people. She has a very gregarious personality. She’s lively and fun. In some aspects, she simultaneously adores being the center of attention and low-key. She makes friends with most everyone she meets. She has an infectious smile and she’s a genuinely warm person. She always does her best to make people happy. She doesn’t like to follow a routine or structure. She prefers to go with the flow of things, and she’s a gifted improviser. She lacks the grounding it takes to be a functional adult and treats life very lightly. Her parents hope that she’ll grow out of it.

David is a trouble-maker. She’s got a very mischievous nature. She likes tormenting her best friend and Marid, Twitch, especially. After learning his reaction to his Lamp being dunked in water (on accident, thank you very much – she hadn’t thought to take it off before she went swimming) she’ll wait until he’s in the middle of conversation with someone before dunking it in water and watching him fluster. She’s also quite gifted with setting up pranks. After all, life isn’t fun without a bit of trouble thrown in, is it? She especially pranks the people who agitate her.

She’s got a wicked temper. David has a sharp mouth and won’t hesitate for a moment to knock someone down to size. If someone insults her, she just shrugs it off and ignores them. But if someone is picking on someone younger or smaller than she is, she’ll backhand him or her in a second. Although not tall or particularly strong looking, there’s something fierce about the short girl with the hair like a lion’s mane that tends to make people back off. She’s extremely protective of her best friend, Twitch. If someone insults the Marid within her hearing distance, they’ll get an earful of her and, if they keep at it, she won’t hesitate throw herself into a full-on fight to protect his honor.

David is fiercely independent. She wants to be able to do things naturally instead of wishing for them. She wouldn’t let her parents help her plan her outfits when she was a child, and she refuses to take money from her parents. She’s also quite determined that she can handle everything by herself even if she quite clearly can’t. It’s for this reason that most of her secrets are problems that she’s having trouble dealing with. Although she trusts Twitch with her life, there are some things that she refuses to tell him, fearing his reaction.

History: David’s parents, Alex and Lucille Callahan, had been expecting a boy. When presented with the fact that they did not, indeed, give birth to a boy, they didn’t let this bring them down. They cheerfully bestowed the name David Charles Callahan upon the girl. She grew up in a room meant for a boy – blue wallpaper, boy’s clothes, sports, and her father taking her out to play football at the park. It wasn’t a terrible way to grow up, but unfortunately it made David a bit… confused.

Her parents had treated her like a boy while she was growing up. Her friends had treated her like a boy while she was growing up. When David went to school, however, her teachers had made it very clear that she was not, in fact, a boy. It was quite the conundrum for the small child. She certainly felt like a boy, and her parents didn’t give her any inkling that she wasn’t a boy, and even her friends didn’t seem to think she was a girl.

She asked her mother about whether she was a boy or a girl, and David’s mother shrugged and told her that she was whatever she wanted to be mentally. Physically, David was a girl. It didn’t matter much to David all this nonsense over whether she referred to herself in the masculine or feminine during French class, but to appease her teachers, she switched to the feminine. She was always a very flamboyant child – she would force herself into the drama club, into the sports club, and into everything she could get her hands on.

When she was six years old, she went to a pool for her best friend’s birthday party. Her parents hadn’t been able to get her in a girl’s swimming suit, so they had settled for buying a pair of swimming trunks and a white tank-top, although David was adamant she didn’t even need the tank top because none of the other boys had one. So she was at the pool and having a grand ole time, when she noticed that none of her friends could swim anywhere except for the shallow end. Being the smart child she was, she took off at a determined run and did an elegant swan dive into the deep end, not quite remembering that she couldn’t swim.

Needless to say, it wasn’t the smartest thing the child had ever done. She flailed and kicked under the water, unable to get back to the surface. She had just resigned herself to premature doom when she felt fingers grasp her shirt and pull her out of the water. Soon she was on dry land with a wicked headache and air still not coming into her lungs. She stared up at her savior, and promptly vomited water and bits of birthday cake all over his stomach and swimming trunks.

It wasn’t the suavest way to meet your best friend, but it worked out well enough for them. He gave her the pretty necklace around his neck and told her to squeeze it if she needed him. She told him that she’d be just fine, thank you very much, and that she meant to nearly drown.

They were still the best of friends two years later. David was still struggling with her gender confusion and she talked to her parents constantly her ‘imaginary’ friend, Twitch. The school suggested the psychiatrist Dr. William Ryce. He helped her through much of the confusion of her life, but she was still adamant that Twitch existed. Eventually she just stopped mentioning Twitch all together and agreeing that he was a figment of her imagination. Dr. Ryce had always been slightly intimidating to her – he was very kind in voice and actions, but there was something about the kindness that was calculating and purposeful. His touches would linger on her skin for a moment too long, his gaze drifting too slowly across her body.

It wasn’t until she was thirteen that Dr. Ryce made his move. He kissed her at the beginning of the session, his hand trailing up her shirt and pushing her small body against his. She’d pulled back and demanded to know what the hell he was doing, but he cried and told her that he couldn’t help it. He ended his touching of her there for the moment, continuing on into their session until they had only an hour to go. He bent over her and kissed her again. With an uneasy feeling in her stomach, she allowed it to continue, her sympathy going to him even as he removed her clothes.

Her virginity taken with harsh actions but smooth and kind words had the girl confused. She hadn’t enjoyed the sex at all – he had left slobbering kisses on her neck as he grunted on top of her. He had stuffed her shirt in her mouth to keep her from screaming from pain. Her legs were numb and there was a shooting pain in her groin. She called her mother and told her that she wanted to walk home. Twitch would be waiting for at home, and while she wanted to curl up in his arms and wish for her memories of today to be gone, she knew what he’d do.

So she walked home, limping slightly, thoughts blurring through her head rapidly. She couldn’t tell anyone. He had cried and apologized, and he hadn’t meant to do it. And he’d done so much for her in the past… she couldn’t. And who would believe her? Her parents would think it was a cry for attention, they always thought she was lying. When David got home, she was grateful to find her parents gone. She couldn’t stop herself from shaking and she dug her fingernails in her arms to keep from crying. Twitch kept trying to stop her because normally she was a very cheerful and happy person.

The shower was scalding hot, and once the grime was off, she sank down on her haunches and started the bath water. She sank down and let the burning water cover her body. Twitch always went to water when he was feeling down, didn’t he? Her hand went up to her neck, realizing she had left the Lamp on under water. She grasped it tightly, breathing out heavily. She felt hands on her shoulders and Twitch pulled her out of the water, drawing the water from her lungs as he had when she was younger. She stared at him, shell-shocked, having not realized she was drowning herself.

He slid inside the bathtub behind her, holding her tightly to him. Normally she would have pulled away with a snide remark about being just friends, but she clutched him tighter, hugging him back fiercely. It was the first time she realized how much she needed her best friend. She sobbed, feeling disgusting and dirty and ugly. Guilt. Despite his insistent pleas that she tell him what was wrong, she remained silent. She could handle herself. Her problems were her own, and she didn’t want the Marid to think she was a stupid little girl who couldn’t handle herself.

The ‘incidents’ continued until David was fourteen. When David was fourteen years old, her parents separated. It was a friendly enough divorce and David had insisted that they shouldn’t worry about her to be happy. Knowing their daughter’s conflicting sympathetic personality, they were careful not to make anybody out to be the bad guy. Her mother carefully explained that her father had fallen in love with someone else – Dr. Ryce. She was assigned a new psychiatrist.

She spent six months with her father and the psychiatrist, and the other six months with her mother and her new boyfriend. David found the arrangement very nice. She got twice the amount of presents on birthdays and Christmases! Sometimes her step-father, Dr. Ryce, would take her back to his office and continue his abuse there. It only happened once or twice a week during the six months that she and Twitch stayed with him.

[Ace McShane]

Accepted!