BURNS, robert hugo

[robert hugo burns]

VALKYRIECALIFORNIA

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- face change -

ROBERT HUGO BURNS
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INTO THE NIGHT
DESPERATE AND BROKEN
THE BASIC INFORMATION[/center][/font]

SO, TELL ME. WHAT'S YOUR FULL NAME?

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"Don't worry, I listed it above but please, just call me Hugo or Hugh. I don't particularly care for my first name. I also don't like all the poet references. I mean I get that my parents didn't want me but they sort of tagged me the target of jokes too. Not cool."

AND HOW OLD ARE YOU?

"Just turned 30"

WHAT DO YOU DO FOR A LIVING?

"I am a fireman, have been for the past seven years, eight if you count training."

YOU SEEING ANYONE, OR ARE YOU SINGLE?

"I am a widow and no, I would not like to talk about it."

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THE SOUND OF A FIGHT
FATHER HAS SPOKEN
THE PERSONALITY

IF YOU COULD DESCRIBE YOURSELF IN SEVEN WORDS WHAT WOULD THEY BE?

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"Heh... umm... alright. Well, I am definitely resourceful. I know my way around the streets and the wilderness. I sort of had to be. Laidback , I am not a man that likes a lot of high end drama but my life seems to be filled with it anyways. A Father. Ace might have only showed up in my life five years ago but he is as much my son than I had raised him from birth.... hmm... what else. Not that I'm proud of this but Angry. I am not the type of guy that goes out to bars and gets into random fights, no. I am more that sad kind of angry. The angry that comes from everything in your life going wrong. I am angry that my parents abandoned me. I am angry the group home was neglectful and any foster parents I met were abusive. I am angry I had to live on the streets and pick pocket to survive. I am angry that woman, Ace's mother, never told me about the pregnancy. I am angry about the Bismark. I am angry Isla died. I am angry Ace is so sick. I'm just angry. And I know this contradicts, but I am also Thankful. Thankful that Ace was smart enough to find me, thankful I met Isla, thankful I survived the Bismark. I am Determined to not lose anyone else in my life. Other than that, I guess I would have to say haunted. When people discuss what happened on the Bismark they make it seem like it was some grand event that I saved those fifteen people but I really don't like to think about it. I still have violent nightmares about what happened. It is a rare night I don't wake up at least once in a cold sweat. All I can see are the faces of those hundreds of people who died... So yeah, there you go. Resourceful, laidback, father, angry, thankful, determined and haunted. that's seven."

WHAT KIND OF THINGS DO YOU LIKE?

"Oh um… good things. I am a footballl fan, some of the only times I can still lay back and chill. I love my son, Ace. Grapes. Ice cream, beer, hockey although I don't follow the way I would like too. Baseball. Girl's who can kick my ass without being evil. Stupid, pun jokes. blue berries. pumpkin pie. turkey, all of thanksgiving really. ACDC. History channel, like the only tv me and Ace can agree on. Remembering Dancing with Isla. She taught me a lot of basic ballroom but I haven't danced with a woman since, I don't think I ever will. But I do like her memories. I might not like talking about her much but thinking about her? What she gave me? I will never turn away from those thoughts."

WHAT KIND OF THINGS DON'T YOU LIKE?

"Well, I just mentioned I don't like talking about Isla really. At least not with practical strangers. I don't like that Asa pickpockets when bored. Bullies, fires, hence why I'm a firefighter HEY-O!!! no? not funny, okay... sorry. squash. eggplant, media attention, when people keep bringing up the Bismark accident. opening up. people who don't see how amazing my kid is, that he had to take care of me after Isla's death."

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY WERE YOUR STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES?

"Is it normal for this question to make many people uncomfortable because I not sure I'm feeling it... Okay okay, fine. Weaknesses first, then you walk away remembering my strengths. Weaknesses. I have a hard time controlling my anger when I get going. Not so much that I am yelling and screaming, but controlling as in holding a grudge too long, being mean, not moving on and accepting what life hands you. I also have a tendency to grow very sad, I get caught up in my head and remembering Isla.

Now for strengths? I am a good father. I might not be able to keep up with my own thirteen year old who's in college but I know how to keep him safe and I will. I am also determined. I won't give up when I feel I know what's right. ."

DO YOU HAVE ANY SECRETS?

"I used to be a pick pocket. I hate listening to people talk about the Bismark. I miss Isla with all my heart, not that that is a secret. I get called a hero but don't think it applies. I still have nightmares of the deaths I witness on the Bismark."

WHAT ARE YOU MOST SCARED OF?

"Ace is sick. He has an inflamed heart. I am struggling with his treatments and he isn't responding. I am scared that I am going to lose my son because I can't afford to get him on a transplant list."

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WE WERE THE KINGS AND QUEENS OF PROMISE
WE WERE THE VICTIMS OF OURSELVES
THE HISTORY

TELL ME A LITTLE OF WHAT YOUR FAMILY IS LIKE?

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"Well, until Isla and Ace came into my life I would not have been able to answer that question. But when it was us three? The three musketeers? Now, that. That was something. We were good. We were happy."

WHO ARE YOUR PARENTS?

"I dont really know. I never will. My father's name seemed to real on my birth certificate but he was dead, a soldier actually. My mom's name was completely falsified."

DO YOU HAVE ANY SIBLINGS?

"Maybe. It's possible I guess."

ANY OTHER RELATIVES CLOSE TO YOU?

"No. I've never had much a family, especially now that Isla's gone. There is my son of course, but he is a given. And there WAS my wife."

TELL ME THE STORY OF YOUR PAST?

"First thing's first, I don't know who my parents are. Sorry I can't give you a family history. From my last name I can assume I am Scottish in heritage. You see, I was left at a hospital. My mother gave birth and then snuck out after I was taken away to get my check up. My father's name on the birth certificate was real, but the man had died a few months before hand. My mother's named turned out to be a fake, she didn't even want me to know my name, hmm... some maternal instinct huh? Anyways, I don't want to get all self-pity on you. But anyways, I was put into a group home afterwards. I don't know if you have ever actually been to a group home but them changing the name from Orphanage to "group home" did not do a thing to the quality. Sure, I had a place to sleep growing up for awhile but everyday, our caretaker got visits from various drug dealers, there was hardly ever any food. The older kids liked to beat on the younger ones and there were shoot outs almost nightly... it wasn't a really good neighborhood. The group home was in Hunts Point. Third worst crime rate in the whole of New York. By six, I was spending most of my time running around Midtown with some of the other kids. We were getting good at pick pocketing.

Now while Hunts was a bad neighborhood, the worst crime rate in the city was actually Midtown. All of the tourism made it prime location for the theft, muggings, car jacking, rape, even murder. Midtown was our playground. When I was seven, I just... I just didn't go back. I left Midtown and ran to Central park. Found a secluded place there and spent the night, decided to never go back. I hated it at that group home. If I was going to be on my own anyways, I figured I should actually be on my own. I swear, if you had changed the setting to 20th century London, my life would have been a Charles Dickens' book. I stayed like that for a long time. Just me and a few other homeless kids. Learning to pick pocket like a pro, doing a few errands for local Bloods, some Sirens and Crypts too. Anyone really. Anything to get by. I was so angry all the time, I felt like life was hopeless so acting any other way was useless. But I learned how to take care of myself. I knew how to get by on my own, even if it meant ever once and a while eating from the garbage can and snatching hot dogs from the street venders and running like hell. I got into a lot of bad situations and almost died more times than I could count. Once, me and this group of kids were hiding out in some old abandoned warehouse. What we didn't know was that the place was rigged to be demolished. We heard the security check and tried to hide. I was one of the only ones that hid by getting out of the place.

You see, when they do those checks, the people just call out to see if anyones in the building. If you don't respond or get out, they assume it's clear. About three kids died in that demolition and it wasn't until days later when they cleaning up the rubble that they found out. The media surrounding the company in charge of the demolition tried to play it off as some big tragedy but believe me, we all knew no one really cared. That was just so people sitting in their living rooms watching the news could say "oh what a shame" while they ate their steaks and continued on with their evening to make them think they still had an ounce of humanity in them. It was pathetic. The newscaster covering the story even said "luckily, the kids didn't seem to have any families out searching for them." I get it, their were no mourning parents suing the company, well you know what? good for them. But it wasn't lucky for kids who died. They lived alone, on the street, the closest thing they had to family were the kids sleeping next to them in the dirt, after having not eaten in days. They lived and died alone. If that's lucky to the average American, than this country is fucking screwed.

Anyways, sorry, my mouth gets away with me sometimes. I was in and out of detention centers and foster care if I ever got pinched. Yet, somehow, I always managed to disappear on the state again. I hated them trying to control me. By that point, even if I was only twelve, I saw myself as an adult. I didn't love life on the street. I didn't like it. I hated it, but not as much as people who pretended to give a damn. Looking back now, I wonder if a couple of those people I ran away from were good people and I was just too angry with the world to notice. Maybe if I had my life would have been different. But, it's not use wondering. If I hadn't lived my life the way I did, would never have had Ace. It was worth it for that kid. You see, when I was 16, I was bunking with a few others, most were over 18 and were able to rent an apartment. I stayed with, pick pocketing and every so often doing an odd but honest job to help pay for things. I had a legal roof over my head though, so that was good. But I met this girl.

I'm not gonna lie, by 16, almost 17, I was no where near being a virgin. Groups of scared teenagers trying to survive after being alone most of their lives and living together in completely unsupervised environments, all desperate to feel loved? Yeah... sex entered the picture about when kids start thinking about sex. For me, I was thirteen. Nothing bad had happened but when I was 16 I met this girl. She was something else. Beautiful, foreign, smart, classy, did I mention beautiful? I had never met a girl like her before. She was incredible. I was like puddy in that girl's hand. So we had sex, in her fancy townhouse. I left in the morning and never saw her again. What I didn't know was that that girl got pregnant. But that's a story that starts a bit further on. So back on track.

A couple years later, a buddy of mine got a job on an ocean liner as a waiter. It was a cruise ship that was going out into the Atlantic. It was going to England believe it or not. Didn't even know they still did that sort of thing. He offered to sneak me on. By then, eighteen years of never leaving New York city... I was ready to get out. So I took him up on the offer and made my way to England. Now, if you watched the news in the year 2000 much, then you might remember this. It is down in history as the "Bismark Tragedy". The Bismark was the name of the ocean liner. When we were about half way there, the ship floated right into a really dangerous storm. There was a stray wave... It flipped the boat upside down... Oh yeah you remember it? You see... it's hard for me to talk about. I really never liked to. It was not the worst moment in my life, but it was the most frightening. The flip itself killed or injured a lot of the people aboard the ship. The captain told us all to stay in the main ballroom but I couldn't. I knew enough about life to know that staying there wasn't a good idea. There was an emergency call straight away but when I ran into a injured and drunk engineer, the man who designed the ship, he was looking at the now upside down map. He sort of laughed in that panicked and defeated way and told me, it would never hold up long enough for help to get to us. He told me the boat would sink long before they got to them.

I don't know what really happened in my head, but I just refused to accept it. I wanted to live and I didn't even know why. I got the engineer to help me convince a few people, 28 total including me and the engineer to agree to try to get the hell out of there by making our way out the bottom of the ship, which was now the top. I looked at the map, and from years of sneaking in and out dangerous places I was never supposed to be, I thought I found a way out. They followed me. The rest thought it best to wait.... I'm sorry... of the twenty three following me, only fifteen survived. I watched as eight of the people who had trusted me to get them out died from fires breaking out, suffocation from the flooding, falling or loosing grip while climbing, electrocution when broken circuits hit water... over and over again. The engineer was the first to go. Too drunk, he slipped. I tried to grab his hand but they were wet, he slipped from my hands. There was a point we had to hold our breath and swim for a bit, a woman couldn't hold her breath long enough. I tried CPR, I kept trying but... she was gone. Another man had fallen, he had survived the fall but his leg was broken so badly... he couldn't walk, even with our help. He made me promise to get his son out. I promised. Walking away from that man was... anyways, his son was just so furious. But I was determined to keep him safe, and I failed. He died, I tried to stop the boy from opening the doors to a room but he pulled them open before I could get to him, there was an explosion.... The boy was thirteen years old...

I could go through every death of those 13 people who trusted me but, I will spare you details. When the last fifteen of us got out, we got into the emergency blow up boat had carried with us in my bag. We floated next to it, and sent up a flare. The boat was still afloat, upside down. It stayed like that a good ten minutes, for a moment I thought that maybe we should have all just stayed in that ballroom but then it began to sink. There were hundreds of people on that ship. And I was one of fifteen that lived.

Back on land, the media credited me for those survivors. They turned me into a "hero" but i never really saw myself as such. Hundreds of people dead, and almost half of the ones that followed me. I couldn't even save the boy and I had promised... I just wanted people to leave me alone. I was a failure. I watched people die and couldn't... didn't do anything about it... But hey, people love a tragedy if they think there's a hero story in it. I was a sensation for a long tortuous few months. All I wanted was to... ignore it. But no, ceremony after memorial after ceremony. The only good thing to come from it was I received an honorary high school diploma. Despite my reservations about the media, a newspaper hired me as a photographer. I liked the photography but I didn't like the job. After about a year, people had moved on to the next tragedy, moths to a light right? I mean this country... it's ridiculous. What kind of world do we live in that shows like 1000 Ways to Die exists? Literally gaining a prophet from people who like to watch the fucked up ways real people have died? What does that say about our society? To all those people, again, watching the news while eating their tv dinners who say "oh that's too bad, that's sad, how unfortunate...." before continuing on. It's empty. Life means something.

I was in a really bad place. Post traumatic stress, depression, drinking too much. I was THAT hero of the Bismark tragedy people had loved and forgotten, because no one apart from the survivors and the families of those who were on board, actually cared. So... that was that. Until I was 22 and I met Isla. Isla was this redheaded, spitfire. She was passionate and loving. I had never met someone like her. And her family, they were amazing from the way she told it. Her parents had died a long time ago but she still kept in close contact with her siblings and her cousins. They all accepted me. We were making a family. Most girls I had been with since the Bismark would run out after the first few nights. I was too depressed, I was too angry, I was too emotionally stunted... yeah that one was my favorite. Although the fact that I woke up sweating and yelling every night from dreams of what happened, I guess that didn't help. Now Isla? She laughed and said, "What were those bitches complaining about? I think you have a right to be a bit POed at what happened? Talk about being self centered. I would eat them but they would probably taste like condescension." And when I woke up screaming, she would sit up, rub my shoulders, kiss me on the cheek and give me tea that I would never actually drink it. But she was taught that when someone was upset, you gave them a hot beverage. She made tea a lot. More tea than any of us ever drank. She encouraged me to find my passion and quit my job at the paper. She even helped me figure out what it was I was supposed to do, and I began my training to be a fireman.

I knew what I had with her, so one night, I married that girl. She changed my life. I went from being the alone, forgotten hero of the Bismark shipwreck, to being a man with his whole life ahead of him. To this day, I owe her my life. When I was 25, something big and wonderful happened again. Although I didn't know how incredible it was at the time. When I was 25, I heard a knock on the door of the apartment Isla and I shared. And when I opened the door, there was a boy of about eight years old, standing at the door, Dark brown hair, ridiculously blue eyes, bone structure similar to my own, with a confident, mature almost cocky smirk on his face as he looked up at me. He walked right into the apartment, passing under my arm. He was wearing some old worn looking clothes with a small backpack on his shoulders. When I asked him who he was and what he was doing here he said the words that changed my life, "I'm your son, that means you have to feed me... got any grapes?" He said them so casually, I didn't believe him at first. But he was. He was the boy born of the girl I met the month of my 17th birthday.

It was eery how similar the start of our lives were. His mother, lied about her name on the birth certificate, but gave my name. The boy's name was Dennis. I swear people, if you're going to abandon your child at least give them a good name. But the kid said people called him Ace. Ace had lived on the street since, get this, he was four. I had never even heard of that. He apparently sucked up to some older street kids. Thing was, Ace was bright. My lord he was so smart and so young. It was like he knew more than I did and he was eight. I was mature and self reliant at eight but I was also this wholely damaged sad, angry kid. Ace was cocky and hit on Isla when she came out of the bedroom, even tried to high five me when she gave me a kiss and went back to the bedroom to give us time. Ace explained that he had been living on the streets when he decided he should find his parents. The kid hacked his way into his own birth records. Mom's name false, dad's name all over the news from about seven years earlier. He said through mouthfuls of food, apparently the kid hadn't eaten a real meal in a few days, "I figured if you saved all those people you'd love to have me, I'm mean, I'm awesome and your kid, they were just strangers." He was certainly a character and again, incredibly well spoken. But I was no where near ready to be a dad.

I tried to contact child services when they told me that this Ace kid was on their wanted list. Pick pocket, like me, thief, trespasser, hustler. The officer told me that Ace had gotten the nickname for hustling money from people in cards. Kid had magic fingers. Ace laughed it off, told me one of the guys he had helped, which I knew was code for a dealer he ran an errand for, had taught him some fun magic tricks and he used those tricks for his benefit. I was a fucked up little kid but my son? He was a different level. where I was sad, he was cocky. when I thought I was unwanted, he thought he was too good for anyone, when I thought I had no choice, he thought the petty crime was fun. And while I've always been behind education wise because I never went to school, he seemed to know more than most adults. I still didn't think I could take care of him, especially knowing all his problems but then Isla, in her everlasting wisdom, talked to me about maybe I should give it a chance and how Ace was headed down a bad path, no matter how tough the kids exterior, he was still just a child and I could help him . She also told me that she didn't care that I had a kid and how the boy looks so much like me and that she liked the kid having met him. It was because of her that I decided to take Ace in and try to be a Dad to him. Best decision I have ever made.

After the first year of awkward adjustment, it was clear, despite him being a genius and me not, Ace and I were like peas in a pod. You remember the grapes he asked for? His favorite food. Mine too. We liked the same shows. Same taste in women, not that he was allowed near girls, he was nine at the time. Both loved football and baseball. Favorite colors were green. Both loved Isla and her family. We even dressed alike when Ace got to pick out his own clothes. I had put Ace into school but he kept getting in trouble. He was bored. He would steal things. I don't know how many times I came home and he was in the living room with twenty-some wallets checking the cash. He said he never used the cards, "Stealing cash is fine but you leave those credit scores be, dad. that's a line, an invisible one but still there." Disciplining this kid was like trying to find the holy grail. It just wasn't working. He was too smart for the kids his age. I was always worried about that. He made friends with the janitors and mocked the teachers, correcting them whenever he could. The kids his own age usually admired him but Ace was bored with them.

When Ace was nine years old, my wife, Isla, noticed a strange rash on Ace's body. It didn't go away so Isla took him to a doctor. That was when we got the worst news of our lives. Ace had been diagnosed with Myocarditis. Myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart muscles. It can be caused from viruses, infections, parasites, about a million different things a kid would be exposed to on the streets. Good news is that it is not a permanent disease. It can be treated and subsequently cured. The bad news, the treatments were repetitive, long and uncomfortable. The treatments seemed to make it so the condition was not expanding or getting worse but no real reversal was taking place, like it should. It was making us very nervous. It was also draining our money supply. I was a fireman married to a nurse, we didn't have a high income. But we made it by. Ace seemed to be okay from the day to day, he wasn't allowed to do sports though, not that he ever had a real desire too. Got to sit out in gym. Spent the time breaking into kid's lockers. Bored again. It became clear to Isla and I that maybe Ace should be tested for his grade level. It amazes me that this kid with no schooling could be so... intelligent and quick-witted. It was how Ace became a Junior in High School at the age of eleven. He actually tested into the college level but people advised us not to send an eleven year old to college. We agreed.

That was also the year I went from being a married man to a widowed man. She died of a brain aneurism no one knew was there. It destroyed me. I wouldn't leave my room for days and believe me, I regret this, I can't handle that I let this happen but for Ace's Junior and Senior year, he was the primary care giver. I still did my job, but when I had my days off all I would do was sleep or lay in bed staring at the side of the bed she used to sleep in. Ace forced me to eat and shower. Got me ready in the morning. A twelve year old was my parent. I should never have placed that pressure on him. Ever. And I knew that, even then, but it just made me feel worse and more pathetic. Ace applied to many colleges, got into each one, including Stanford, but he accepted the invite to Valkyrie University in California. He had been following the work of a Bio-chemist Professor there, Ace had wanted to work with him since he was ten... yeah that sounded strange. It was the day of Ace's high school graduation when I realized what I was about to miss. I had a ticket but Ace was not expecting me to get myself up to see him walk across the stage. But as I laid there, it finally hit me. I ran to that graduation. Sure I was in bad jeans and an old t-shirt while everyone else wore suits but I saw my boy walk across that stage and give the shooter fingers after moving that tassel on the hat from one side to the other.

So over the summer we had to get ready. I was determined to pick myself and live my life. I had spent two years in deep depression, being a burden on a son that's already had too much on his shoulders since birth. I was going to go to California with him. He was too young to be allowed to live in the dorms for obvious reasons. Plus, I wasn't ready for him to grow up and live out of the house yet. We've been in Valkyrie since the fall, I got a job as a fireman here. But the thing is, his treatments went from keeping his Myocarditis at bay to... having no effect whatsoever. The doctors have told me that he needs a transplant. My health insurance won't cover it and.... I am a fireman... I don't make enough... I won't let him die. I can't. He's all I have left. I'll find a way. Maybe go all John Q on their asses. I just, I won't bury my son."

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WELL, THANKS FOR TAKING THE TIME TO TALK TO ME. HOPE YOU HAVE A NICE REST OF YOUR DAY.

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WE STOLE OUR NEW LIVES
THROUGH BLOOD AND PAIN
THE ROLEPLAYER

NAME anna
AGE optional
RP EXPERIENCE how long?
FACE CLAIM henry cavill matt bomer
MEMBER GROUP citizen
RP SAMPLE

must be your average post. min of 500 words

credit format by lainey, lyrics by 30 seconds to mars

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[ANNA-face]