Thomas Schwarzschild

Weary traveler, calloused and sore
Let's start with the basics, as far as Thomas knows them to be. Thomas was born at the end of the 1970s to a chemical engineer and his marketing associate wife in Napa, California. When Thomas was about four, his mother 'fell ill', went to a convalescent hospital, and he never saw Antonia Schwarzschild again.

Daniel Schwarzschild had no interest in his son, no concern for how living in a household without his mother would affect development. As long as the boy didn't ruin the house, upset the neighbors or kill people's pets? Daniel could not have cared less. Concerned letters from his teachers and caregivers saying that Thomas was developing into an overly-anxious, too-quiet child were dismissed as social hysterics. Was the boy learning the material? Then that was enough.

Time and gravity followed you here
When he was seven, the first of the thinnies showed up. Thomas was so freaked out that his babysitter couldn't calm him down and ended up calling an ambulance. The pediatric psychiatrist on staff suggested to Daniel that his son was having a poor emotional response to the lack of support in his home life. Daniel's response was to send his 'clearly unbalanced' child to a facility in Marin county for a year.

After that, Thomas attempted to make his father happy by being the silent, invisible child. Only problem? That didn't translate too well with the rest of the world. His father passed the line of being merely neglectful before Thomas began high school, and his attempts at making friends, being popular, all fell flat. Thomas was saludictorian of his graduating class; needless to say, his father didn't see the point in attending. "High school is not a good indicator of what life will bring, you could still turn into a coke junkie on the street by the end of summer. Besides, it's only second best."

I've never seen the ocean, not like this one
Thomas graduated from Santa Barbara years ago and started work as an accountant for a local arm of Sombra Corporation, doing payroll. He knows very little about the company and it's own shady background - a paycheck is a paycheck and Sombra is a reputable company. Summer vacations and time off were spent with his best (and only) friend from college, Samuel, and Samuel's family in northern New York State. Which is where he headed around day ten, once it became clear that whatever was going on was not likely to get better.

By day fourteen Samuel was dead, along his wife and twin toddlers, and Thomas made a bonfire of their bodies in their backyard.

He drove to Maine on his own.

Rest, my brother, and tell me
"Sometimes Thomas acts like he learned how to be himself by watching too much TV." Not as accurate as it was when he was in high school, but still. Thomas never knows quite what to say or how to react without completely outing himself as what he considers a personality-less weirdo, so there tends to be this pause in reacting to circumstances (or people) - which, unsurprisingly, is what gives him away. As a child he wasn't encouraged to do anything other that be silent or just not be seen at all, and it didn't occur to him to rebel until it was too late to do that efficiently. In high school he tried acting like every main character on every sitcom, just to realize in college that he'd really rather slit the throats of most main characters in sitcoms. Besides, sitcoms? Not a very accurate measure of reality. So now he's more settled on, 'quiet, inquiring weirdo who may or may not think you're an idiot' by all appearances but 'definitely thinks you're an idiot' on the inside.

All about the ocean
Poor Thomas is a magnet for thinnies. Has been all his life. Either he stumbles into the things or they just open up around him; either way, the only time he tried explaining it to anyone his father shipped him off to a shrink and in-patient at the age of seven and that's when Thomas learned that honesty is not the best policy. There is no real BENEFIT to this ability (not that he knows it's an ability as opposed to inherited schizotypal crazy from the maternal side) as he has little to no warning of when it's going to happen. If there have been several opened around him in one day he's jumpy enough to notice when it might spring up on him, but otherwise? Happens about as quickly as one would turn a corner, activate a camera flash, or open a cupboard. For an idea of how abrupt and short these jaunts into other worlds that seem to want to eat and mock him in horror simultaneously, view [this ], assuming the Greco-Roman style is the real world and the dark, dirty places full of screaming are what Thomas gets to wander into every so often. Totally without warning. Sometimes on his way to Starbucks.

His subconscious is also a mess, with his dreams painting him to be the most violent and crude person he could ever encounter. It freaks him out more than a little, but he's pretty sure it's just because he spends all of his time not reacting to thinks. So he vents in his dreams. A little too much, maybe.