Peter's End: Page 4

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A project for Professor Maine's class. I promised him at least fifteen pages.
This is the cafe scene from a prose piece I did from James's point of view for the same class. This comic explores the same scene from Peter's view.

Done in ink, text in photoshop. Whole thing's due Nov. 8th.

3 Nov. 2011

Prose:
Peter was watching him intently, his fingers folded over each other like in a portrait of a fantastical villain. James found it both disturbing and hilarious, so when he laughed, it was like the pained squeal from an injured hound.
“What?” he tittered.
Peter was silent, his two forefingers resting on his lips. He raised his head, his eyelids lowering.
“How’s Millie?”
“Ah, she’s fine. Lots of dinner outings. Keeps her busy.”
The cup of hot foam clacked in front of him.
“There you are.”
“Thanks so much.” James reached for a sugar packet. He could feel Peter’s stare permeating the air like an exposed wire. “That was really fast!” James laughed.
The voice. “James.”
“Like, unrealistically fast. Look,” he looked, “she even put a little heart in it!” Must have made it beforehand for someone’s fickle tastes. Too much desire. Stick to something.
The voice. “Are you still on those pills?”
The packet burst between James’s fingers, sending his heart into a flurry.
“Ah! Clumsy…” escaped his lips. Most of the sugar clumped into the brown foam, clinging to each other, the little particles. Yes, Peter, yes, I’m still on those pills. Do you know that today I became what I’d always been? Only now I could see it, really see it, what had been there all along. If you struck me, would I crack?
(“These pills,” he told the doctor, “they don’t work. They don’t distract from reality, they enhance it.”)
James absent-mindedly brushed the sugar from the tabletop.
“It’s strange,” he said, “that the doctors still can’t figure out what’s wrong with you. What’s it been, a year now?”
It felt wrong saying it. He knew he was wrong, saying it. Peter shut his eyes and rubbed the space between his brows with his forefingers.
“Three,” he said.
“Three?” That was it. “That’s incredible!” His fingers were sticky. “And still no idea. What’s taking them so long?”