Hope
Junior Member
Posts: 96
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Post by Hope on Oct 18, 2018 22:11:50 GMT
04-01
____________________________________________________________________________________
An Agent of the Lion:
Pittman.
A voice in his cells. A tone carved from bone. The next words like a lashing.
Wake up now.
Wade Pittman opened his eyes. The white hospital room greeted him, stark and sterile. An empty chair. A folded newspaper. His restraints: three wide black lines across his body. The slow drip, drip, drip, of the IV feeding him liquid sleep to keep him sedated, but it might as well have been inert. Alterations had been made. New glands in his body were producing neutralizers. Maybe they would kill him like cancer—living beings weren’t suited for such spontaneous change—but that wasn’t his concern. His mind had been torn to shreds by his encounter with the monster in the woods and stitched together again for one purpose.
Kill the monster.
The restraints turned into ash and tumbled down into folds of the blanket as he sat up. He swung his legs off the bed and stood, no matter the missing toes lost to frostbite, no matter the days without moving, no matter the damage sustained when Mitch had hit him with the car. He hid to one side of the doorframe and waited a few minutes for his warden to return. Henry stepped through the door holding a protein bar and sipping from a cup of coffee. He had time to register that the bed was empty before Pittman’s bandaged fist struck out. The man went out like a snuffed flame, and Pittman had a few broken bones for it. The pain was great, but meaningless. He had been cradled in the paw of the world; he had taken communion through its tongue. What was pain next to such greatness? The food and drink fell to the floor and the coffee spilled everywhere but Pittman caught the deputy, closed the door with his foot, and dragged the man to the bed. Ten minutes later, he emerged wearing the man’s uniform, dusted with ash and peppered with nose blood, and closed the door behind him.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Tyler:
In the cafeteria, Tyler sat with Sam and Kayla for lunch. They had a table to themselves far back in the corner, where they could talk out of earshot, the clamor of the room going to further conceal their meeting. Not that anyone was really interested in what they talked about. The hype of Tyler’s encounter with Clifford had basically keeled over following the arrest of his father. Now more people were inclined to believe he’d made it up. They left him alone. No one felt much like picking at his scabs, though they festered either way. He attended classes as if in a trace, listening to what the teachers said without hearing much, and his grades suffered for it. At school, he retreated into a shell. Only his friends could coax him out of it, and only when they talked about Clifford.
He couldn’t decide whether they were helping search for the big dumb dog because they believed it could be found or because they worried enough about him to humor him. Still, they were his scouts, his only allies. Chewing on a spoonful of tasteless food, he asked, “Anything?”
Some days, Sam had roamed the woods with Tyler. When that wasn’t possible, she had gone by herself. “I’ve found fuck all,” she said.
“Same,” Kayla mumbled. Being blind, she had turned to making inquiries via the phone. Calls to the Wisconsin Fish and Wildlife Service. To local hunters. To state parks. Which had yielded nothing, as of yet.
“How does a fucking monster get within city limits and get seen by only one person?” Sam said.
“The woods are big,” Kayla said. “For every acre of developed land, there’s ten at least full of nothing but plants and animals.”
“Still. How?”
No one pays attention, was Tyler’s immediate reply, but the connotations were ugly—he didn’t want them to think he resented them for not seeing his father for what he was, didn’t want to even think that was true—so he only shrugged. He picked apart his food and mumbled, “I can’t take it anymore.”
“We’ll find Clifford,” Sam said. An empty promise, but clearly she was sincere.
“How are you holding up at the Sheriff’s?” Kayla asked.
“I’m antsy,” he said. “I wanna do stuff, occupy myself, but I gotta keep quiet so the Sheriff doesn’t start wondering.”
“You have anything to read?” Kayla was curious about anyone’s book, even though she couldn’t read any of them. She said they told you a lot about a person.
“Westerns. Nothing published after the 1970. Cringy, dated stuff. And cookbooks. Jesus Christ, so many goddamn cookbooks.”
“You’ve got your phone,” Sam said.
“Limited data. And the Sheriff doesn’t have wifi.”
“Look, I can lend you mine.”
“No. I can’t stare at my phone all night. I can’t fill that time with videos games or reading or homework. Not night after night. Not for another month and not for another year and not for the rest of my life. That’s fucking crazy. That’s fucking madness.”
Sam had looked away when he’d begun his short rant. Kayla had turned her face down as well. Oh, he felt like an idiot. All the stress was making him short with people. His friends wanted to help him. They cared about him. He rested his head in his hands and massaged his scalp. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Kayla said.
Sam only nodded to that. She was, he knew, a little miffed he didn’t take up her father’s offer to stay with them. But he’d asked if to stay with Mitch in the hopes the more secluded setting would put him closer to Clifford. The good that had done him.
“If you’re pissed off at me,” he said to Sam, “I don’t blame you.”
“You’re not there yet. Yet.” She gave him a smile, but it betrayed how tired she felt—of all this, not just his bitching. “Let’s head to the diner after school. We’ve haven’t been that way in a while. Might be that something’s changed.”
“It’s worth a shot.” At this point, what wasn’t?
____________________________________________________________________________________
Melissa:
Melissa drove, and Clive did his thing.
Melissa didn’t pretend to comprehend her husband’s visions—he described them as a wide bubble of another reality, or a possibly reality, imposed over the real world, whatever that looked like—and neither, Clive admitted, did he understand them. His visions were like the contractions of a pregnant women without all the pain. Since the night of the party, where he had glimpsed the little girl he’d named Rachel, the time between visions had shortened. Now, when he was awake, they came every hour and lasted about five minutes. Melissa spent that time driving, and Clive spent it on watch for Rachel. If she showed up, Melissa would follow her with Clive’s directions and hope she led them to the next step.
She had called in a substitute teacher to cover for her the next week, and pertinent as their search was, she dreaded someone would call it into question. Frankly, it would be hard to defend herself or her husband. She’d been turning excuses over in her mind the last few days. Say, someone asked, What are you doing? She didn’t have anything better than well, we’ve lived in Hawley a long time, but we’ve never really explored it. And someone she knew from work asked why this was worth calling in a substitute? Clive’s heart has been worrying the two of us. It felt important that we do this while we can. What if time runs out?
What if time runs out.
Her excuses were closer to the truth than she was comfortable with. At the very least, she hoped that would lend them believability.
They waited in a fast food joint’s parking lot in Clive’s red truck. They were coming up to the hour since Clive’s last vision—fifty-one minutes, to be exact—when Clive pressed himself into his seat and began to squirm a little. “It’s back,” he said.
Melissa nodded. She started the truck and got them on the highway. Her eyes kept flicking over to him as she watched the the road. His eyes were wild, somewhat mad, as they darted over a place she couldn’t see. He frequently turned to look out the side windows, out the back. Melissa tried to focus on driving. She turned right on the highway, heading east to Marla.
“Would she be riding her bike on the highway?” Melissa said. She half expected Clive to not hear her.
“Take to the streets,” he mumbled. His expression had become more desperate with each minute that passed.
She took to them. Residential houses streamed by on either side with winter-wilted grass and naked trees and cars parked in the streets. From her peripheral, she saw a mailbox with the silhouettes of a family painted on and it tugged something in her, or it tugged nothing—it made some abscess within tremble with loss.
Suddenly, Clive untensed and he settled into his seat and she knew, without having to be told, that the vision had left him. “What now?” she asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “This isn’t working. Hawley isn’t big, but it’s big enough.”
Melissa tapped her fingers on the steering wheel one at a time, in rhythm, then stopped. They drifted forward along the street. “I got it. Rachel’s a little girl. At least the version of her you’re seeing, right? So what do you little girls do?”
“Play dolls?”
“They go to school. And they come home from school.”
“Oh. You’re saying we…”
“Go to the middle school. Hope your vision comes when the students are let out. If we see her, we follow her.” And whenever she goes, maybe it’s the answer to bringing her home to us. The daughter I never gave birth to. The daughter I never got the chance to love. This thought, it seemed almost too apt, as if contained meaning beyond herself. Her mouth had gone dry. What happened to her? she wondered. What happened to me?
Something happened to me. What?
She grasped at the thought, but its surface was water, and it was like she was in it, unable to hold the truth in her hands, as it kept running out between her fingers, and still unable to hold on despite being submerged.
Then her thinking collapsed, as if she’d been sleepily wondering about something and had lost the trail of thought and was unable to pick it back up again. She left out a sigh and got the truck back to the highway. This time, at the intersection, she went north, toward the school.
As she drove, she took Clive’s hand and squeezed it, thinking, I won’t let go, I won’t ever let go, thinking about him, but also about Rachel. Where had this desperation come from? From those thoughts that she’d lost? It was like she was clinging to a slick clifface, just to stay out of the dark waters below. Her hold was so precarious. She could just… slip.
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Hope
Junior Member
Posts: 96
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Post by Hope on Oct 18, 2018 22:16:17 GMT
04-02
____________________________________________________________________________________
An Agent of the Lion
Pittman had forgotten to take the deputy’s keys, but it was of no consequence. The moment he touched the door handle, the lock turned into ash and trickled out onto the pavement. He climbed inside, and the cruiser started for him. He got it rolling, the bones of his broken hand grinding as he worked the steering wheel and the shift. He had been blessed. Objects fell into place for him, or else fell apart when they opposed him. A tiny, damaged part of his mind flickered with a question: how he would fare against bullets? His old self would have felt excitement at this prospect, certainly. It had been a fantasy. To be invulnerable to bullets. He would’ve raged war on the banks, maybe the state, maybe the whole goddamn country. The naked, migrant, bulletproof god, walking America’s highways, taking what he wanted, no one to stop him, probably erect and ready to fuck, too. It would have been sweet. He would have gone at it until the America was a wasteland.
You are a bastard, aren’t you?
That voice. The lion. His king. It wasn’t a condemnation, exactly, but all the same, it expressed a smug sort of disgust. It was like when a ruler watched gladiators destroy one another. It was fun to watch, not only because of the violence, but also because the ruler could take the moral high ground, for the gladiators were the worst of the worst. Rapists and pedophiles and murderers. A couple of bastards, cutting each other down. That was what Pittman was to the king. Disposable. A dog for the fight. To be thrown at the enemy. The lion would not mourn him when he died. If enough of his old self had remained, if he’d had his old rat-like intelligence, Pittman might have rebelled against this mission. As it stood, however, his mission was his only imperative. It took precedence over bodily harm, his instinct for self-preservation having been extinguished. His mind was too damaged from the monster’s attack, and the lion had seen no benefit in repairing it all. It had only repaired the necessary parts, the parts Pittman needed. He would complete his mission, he’d kill the monster, he’d shake up the game board, as the lion had ordered, or he’d die trying.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Theodore
Theodore went outside and shielded his eyes against the afternoon light even though it was cloudy and he stood very still on the porch, feeling the chill of the air, hoping it would slow down his heart. It didn’t. This was how it would be from now on, his body: like walking on the edge of a great abyss, pushed by circumstance ever closer to the void, ever closer to tumbling into that pit.
Get a grip. The lion wasn’t the devil. Hades would’ve been an improvement, but it wasn’t that ever.
No. No assurances there. It could be the devil, for all he knew. Could be the whole fucking pantheon.
The ranch lay around him, any comfort it could bring undermined by the task bouncing around in his brain. The driveway was gravel, and in it sat two cars. One was a shitty volkswagen that had taken them to church on Sundays, his aunt into town for groceries, and his cousin and him to school. The other was a truck with a hitch that was always tugging along a trailer, which he used to haul feed and to transports cows when they needed transporting. He ran a dairy. It had been his aunt and uncle’s, but his uncle had died of cancer and his aunt couldn’t run herself, didn’t really want to, wanted to get her daughter out of Silicon County, so his aunt had given it to him when he got out of the asylum. Self-employed, now. The owner of his own, mediocre dairy. Considering what he’d done, it wasn’t half-bad place.
He’d drifted for so long in the UK, from house to house, family to family. His mother’s murder and his stay with the abusive Pattersons had destroyed his image of humanity before it’d had time to grow. He knew of man’s dark side, and little else. The kindness of the social workers was tempered by that knowledge. So he was caution when his mother’s brother finally tracked him down and took him to America to live with his aunt. The barriers he’d put in place didn’t fall so much as slowly unfurl, like the petals of a flower. He began to talk a little more, when before he’d been almost mute. He came to love them. It was just the three of them for a few years, then his cousin was born, and he loved her, too. His aunt and uncle had found him too late (age six) for him to think of them as his parents, but his cousin might as well have been his sister. He’d had happiness.
That was before his cousin was raped. Before he’d put on a mask and killed and partially ate her rapist. After that, their love for him had fled. He’d still loved them, but after the violence he’d committed, they couldn’t reciperate that love. Which had been worse. He’d been alone, lost. He’d been placed in a mental hospital at twenty-one following his trial.
He was twenty-seven now. He’d been free for the last year. In those seven years, he’d seen his aunt three times: once at the trial, twice in the hospital; she’d had a lawyer met with him to pass the dairy to him. His cousin, he’d not seen once.
Happiness. He wasn’t happy. Nor was he content. He was hungry for something besides food, and sometimes he was hungry even when his stomach was full.
He had never gotten the taste of human flesh out of his mouth. It had lodged somewhere in his head, in his taste buds.
Sometimes, he got cravings.
Volkswagen or truck. He kept them both up to shape. Mostly, he drove the volkswagen around town. The truck still had the trailer hitched. Today he chose the truck just so he could have something to do with his hands while he took off the trailer. It distracted him, but five minutes later, when he was done, his task still lay before him. He got in.
Hands tight on the steering wheel, white they were so tight. And his breathing, it hitched whenever he tried to exhale. He was really going to do this. Really going to. What would happen after, exactly, he wasn’t completely sure, and that made it worse, so much worse. He had little bits of information that didn’t add up to much, yet the half-picture they seemed to form was terrifying.
The girl’s name was Charity Collingswood. The lion had told him the name. He’d found her easily enough in the phone book. A few weeks ago, he had followed her. He’d watched from the volkswagen as she’d broken into an abandoned house and he had lingered after she’d left. Within a minute smoke had begun to pour through a broken window pane and then he’d gotten the hell out of there.
She was an arsonist. The arsonist. Theodore had read about her exploits in the paper before the lion had even been given his mission. Before the house, it had been tires, found burning up in the junkyard and stinking up the air with fumes. A mailbox, then. A brush in a park. Most provoking had been the the contents of a trashcan, set aflame outside the city offices. That one the sheriff’s office had taken personally, like it was a threat. She was giving the sheriff’s office and the fire department headaches. They suspected a single teenager, some poor disturbed smuck. Boy, would they have been be shocked to know they were looking for an eleven-year-old girl. And disturbed or not, the lion had a use for her skills. And skilled she was. Her brush was the match. Her paints, the tongues of fire. Her canvas...
The county was going to go up in flames.
He felt weakened, physically drained, by that thought. Hundreds, possibly thousands could die. No saint, was he, but he didn’t savor the idea of that. But oh, that wasn’t the half of it. If only it was that simple: if only the lion had found something offensive about the land, the people, which had therefore called for its destruction. That couldn’t have been it. That wasn’t it, he was sure. While it was true that the lion did not seem endeared to Silicon County, the lion was not the county’s enemy. Neither was the crane. They were rivals in whatever war was ongoing, the lion and the crane. Silicon County was just the battlefield. Perhaps it could have been anywhere. Theodore knew nothing that would contradict the assumption that the presence of the entities was random.
That meant they were just unlucky to be in the crossfire. He didn’t like this. The county’s lack of luck—if it was truly a matter of poor luck—seemed to diminish it. A country populated by insignificant people. Unfortunates. Pawns.
That it should happen here, of all places, was unimportant. It simply was—was happening here, was happening to those who lived there. And they would have to deal with it.
He got the truck moving. Oh, they were gonna get fucked, and he was doing the fucking, part of it. Fucking himself, too. His mouth twisted into smile, like a fissure cracking open in ice under glacial pressure. He was breaking up and he felt like crying.
He’d slept through breakfast. He’d skipped lunch. He felt an old hunger dig claws into his gut, and tried to ignore it as he drove to town.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Lana
Lana climbed out of Russell’s car—which they had borrowed for this little trip—and got her first unobscured look at the lake house. It stood bleak and plain near the gravel shore, a sort of gray weathered color, like a piece of driftwood on stilts. She looked over to her left, where Thomas was leaning on the opened driver’s side door, watching her instead of the house, watching her reaction.
“It’s pretty,” she said.
A slow nod, was his only reply.
She hoped that he would talk about it. He’d woken up breathless and had sob into her shoulder for ten minutes, inconsolable, then had gotten in the shower. Cleaning the nightmare off him, scrubbing off its residue. He had emerged a hour later, the bathroom foggy with steam, a distance in his demeanor.
His eyes moved past her, and she followed his gaze to a little island out on the lake. “My dog’s buried out there.”
“Was it a good dog?”
“The best. You ever had a dog?”
“No.” She remembered a dead dog, half-decomposed roadkill that had migrated down to the creek and had come to a stop behind her father’s house, that she’d taken apart in fascination before sending the pieces downstream. Another, much later, when she’d lived in Ohio: a mutt she’d lured in off the street with pepperoni into her apartment. She felt bad, remembering it. Not sick, just bad, evil. “Never wanted one.”
“Not everyone’s a dog person. Cat’s are okay, in my book—”
“Let’s go inside,” she said, to drop the subject and get them moving.
They climbed up a dozen unpainted grey stairs. Solid; no creaks. Thomas slid a key into the lock and the door moaned open. It was dusty inside, and dark. A pair of formless children’s shoes set in the entryway. Work boots. A plethora of multicolored, sun-faded flip flops. A raincoat, laying on the floor like a discarded condom.
“This was home to you,” Lana said.
“Emphasis on was.”
“Do you want to leave?”
“Yes. Can’t, though.”
“Legal stuff?”
“I can get that done some other time. I just need to reach…”
“Peace?”
“Yeah.”
What compelled her to say what she next, Lana did not know; perhaps it was her own closeness to death. “It’ll probably always be out of reach.” The next instant, she felt regret for her harsh words.
Thomas was quiet, then, “That’s a new take.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Don’t be.” He rubbed his eyes. They were still puffy from that morning. “Everyone’s told me to find solace in God. Praying for me, they’ve said. I’m in their thoughts. No one has—” he choked “—called grief what it is. Insurmountable. Infinite. And this… this situation—” how else to sum it up? father kills mother and then himself, and Thomas, their son, the only one left to pick up the pieces ”—it’s confused. It’s fucked.”
He was crying again. Not sobbing, not breathless and terrified. Just crying. Lana chose to reach out, and hold him, there, in the entry hall of the husk of a past life. Anchoring him to her. Letting his tears pepper her shoulder. For how long, no telling.
Then, Thomas’s whisper, unsteady, in her ear: “I’m been dreaming a lot, lately.”
Just as softly: “‘Bout what?”
“Stuff you wouldn’t believe.”
“You’ve been holding in a lot.”
“Too much, too long.”
“I’d listen.”
“Promise not to think I’m crazy?”
“That won’t happen.” So steadfast was she in her assertion, that Thomas had no trouble getting the first words out, and the rest were like water in a reservoir: once the leak had sprung, there was no stopping the flow.
The picture Thomas painted was convoluted. Dreams within dreams. The vein of an alien dreamworld, tapped at night. An adversary of whom little was known. Suspicious allies. Other, unwitting players: an old writer, the teen who had been in the news, and more. And a mounting feeling: some kind of dread.
What kind of dread?—Lana’s only interruption.
Thomas took a long time in answering. It was hard, he said, to put to words. The feeling was, that if they lost this fight, they would lose everything.
Lana believed everything, but of everything she heard, she believed this the most truly. She felt the same dread.
It seemed to be in the air.
Like a faint incense.
Like smoke.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Tyler
“You little bitch,” Sam said. “Don’t storm off before I explain.”
Tempting, to pedal off. Tyler had come to the diner after school, as planned, only to find Sam and Kayla keeping the company of strangers. That alone was not what upset him. The fact that there were paranormal investigators was.
There were two of them, precisely. A man and a woman. The man, he was white and short and kinda slim and wearing a bulky jacket over a dress shirt and tie, the jacket perhaps to make him look bigger. His hair was sandy blonde, and too well combed, with too much gel, to look handsome. Early thirties, probably. He had stood from the booth first, had practically jumped up from it, to shake Tyler’s hand. And that hand was still extended, wobbling a little, perhaps tired from waning enthusiasm and staying outstretched so long.
Tyler was still contemplating walking out when the man spoke. The British accent was a surprise.
“We aren’t here to televise you, Tyler,” the man said. The hand still waited, hopeful. “It’s only right that you know we came to film a segment based around your encounter. But that’s off the table. What with… everything… by which I mean… uh, matters of… family.” He swallowed nervously on the last word. He suddenly turned his back on Tyler and paced away, perhaps embrassessed.
The woman sighed and filled the man’s absence. “I’m Morina,” she said. Another accent: Italian? Her complexion was bronze. Maybe. She looked to be in her forties. “That’s Mark. As he so eloquently put it, we’re not here to exploit you. We’re here because—”
“They believe you,” Sam put in.
Morina smiled. “Exactly. And Sam, she told us you really want to find your monster again. Like, desperately.”
Tyler shuffled his feet, glanced at Sam. He said, under his breath, “Guess you could say that.”
“We want to help.”
“Why?” That was the ultimate question. If it wasn't for their show, and if it wasn’t for money, why would they offer their personal time and service?
Morina gestured to the booth. Sam sat down quickly, and Morina slid in across from her. Mark sat next to Morina and that made Tyler the only one standing. Sam’s mom, Marsha, was taking orders at the other end of the room but she saw him standing there by himself and raised an eyebrow. He smiled at her to let her know everything was fine and took his seat.
“When I was twelve,” Mark said across the table from him, “I was on the deck of my family’s yacht—”
“A family yacht?” Tyler said. “Mister deep pockets over here. Old money. Welcome to Silicon County, home of the downtrodden and poor, land of the—”
While Mark merely frowned at him, Sam kicked his leg hard enough for him to wince; don’t be a shithead, that said. It hurt enough to shut him up. “Anyway...” Mark went on, awkwardly drawing out the word. “My parents, they’re below deck. I’m the only up there. And there’s nothing for miles around. Dark and cloudy, no stars. Nothing but the lights of the yacht. And I walk up and look over the side of the ship just to, to take it all in. The darkness and the desolation, all that water. And what do I see? Flickering on and off under the slow waves? A light. It flickers for a while, and I’m just fucking—” he searches for the word, phantamining with a hand “—mesmerized. I’ve never seen anything like it before in my life. My twelve-year-old mind is blown. Well, more lights flicker on and off, and there’s about six of them, all arranged in this circular pattern. And what should happen? They rise. Up, out of the water. It’s so dark, I can’t see if there’s a body that the lights are connected to. But it, it goes away. Into the sky. Past the clouds.” And on this, this last word, he sounded like a ruin: “Gone.”
“So,” Tyler said cautiously, as he had just realized that he might be in the company of crazies. Drug users. Cultists. Something. Shit. Thanks a lot, Sam. “So you saw a UFO.”
“Yeah,” Mark said, settling back into the booth. “I saw a UFO. Hell, maybe not an alien, I don’t know, but… an unidentified flying object. I saw that. And no one, no one at all, believed me. They said I had made it up.”
“You didn’t make it up.”
“No more than you did.”
“You see, though,” Tyler said, “I have proof. What do you have?”
Mark’s brow knitted in frustration and his face turned red. Before he could speak, before their little meeting could dissolve, Morina spoke up. “You have something close to proof,” she corrected. “But the cast of the print, the bloody shirt with the teeth holes? Those can be faked. Maybe it’s deer’s blood. Or a stray’s.”
“The Sheriffs have sent it to be analyze,” Tyler said, as if it might add more credibility where credibility seemed to be rapidly waning.
“And you’ll know, soon enough, what whose blood it is.” Morina smiled at Marsha as she approached. They each put in an order.
“I see you’ve made new friends, Sam,” Marsha said to her daughter. “A little odd, if I’m being honest. They’re… how old?”
“Mom,” Sam said, groaning, “they’re gonna help us find Tyler’s monster.”
“Oh, how nice of them! Well, your orders are on the house. They’ll be out shortly.” And she went to the next table, smiling to the people sitting there but with the faintest wilt of disquiet at the corners that perhaps only Sam and Tyler, who were looking over their shoulders at Marsha, noticed.
“What I’m saying is,” Morina continued, bringing them back to the conversation, “there’s plenty of doubt to your encounter. And where there’s doubt, people are less inclined to take you seriously. Nothing can confirm beyond reasonable doubt what happened to you. But me, and Mark, and Kate and Dave—you’ll want to meet them, I’m sure; in fact, I’m positive—the four of us will always take your word seriously. We’ve been called liars and cons too many times not to.”
Tyler, surprising even himself, wasn’t done being a shithead. “No one has called me a liar or a con. That makes me think that, hey, maybe there’s some truth to what they say about you.”
“You know why they don’t tell you their doubts,” Mark said.
The jab was painful, but Tyler guessed that he deserved it. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I fucking know.”
Dead little brother. Suppressed memories. Big deal, right? Well, it was a low blow for an adult to make. Evidently, Morina thought so, too, because she kind of jerked in her seat and suddenly Mark choked on air and clutched his side. “Dick,” she hissed. “Say you’re sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” Mark said, tears prickling from his eyes. “Genuinely.”
“You better fucking be,” Sam said defensively.
“It’s fine,” Tyler said. Whether it was genuine or not, Tyler didn’t care much. That kind of surprised him. “You got a story to tell?” Tyler asked Morina. “Lights in the sky? Sly shapes moving between the trees? Don’t tell me: giant footprints in the snow on the Himalayas.”
She shook her head, smiling after her exasperation over Mark. “None of the above.”
“Do tell, then. What, besides Mister UFO-man over here, are you bringing to the table? To get me to agree to your”
“Mark here’s an expert on UFOs, yeah. Kate’s our leader, sort of the jack-of-all-trades, but particular expertise is folklore. Dave’s our Cryptozoologist. You know what that means?”
“Bigfoot and friends.”
“Basically,” Morina agreed.
“And what are you?”
Marsha interrupted them then with food and drinks and they smiled and thanked her but when she’d left the sombrity of Morina’s hesitation to answer came over them again.
“What are you?” Tyler repeated.
“A psychic.” She cleared her throat as if to relieve the ridiculousness of that answer. “I’m a medium, if want get into the specifics.”
“You talk… to the dead.”
“To something, yes. Most likely the deceased. You can’t know for sure what, though.”
This sentence unsettled Tyler. “That’s—” He stopped. He had to laugh to hide the pallor of dread that had crept over him. “Frankly, that’s crazy. I’m sorry. You’ve been nice—” and he eyed Mark to imply that, no, that doesn’t include you “—but that’s a little much, even for me.”
“Hey, it’s fine!” Morina was chipper for someone who’d been told they weren’t believed. “I’m used to it. In fact, I’m used to worse. So that’s, uh, what’s on the table. We’ve all had encounters of our own with the unexplainable. We want to help you, Tyler, because maybe we can validate ourselves with your story. That goes far, far beyond money, or fame—”
“But you still want recognition. A kind of fame.”
“Perceptive. And wise.” Tyler felt awkward to be acknowledged like that. Morina continued, a slow speaking voice lending the words gravity: “But fundamentally, at our cores, we just want to be believed. Will you let us help you? We have idea to help that you weren’t have thought of. Modes of search you wouldn’t have dream of. Bear in mind, even if I’m lying about abilities, we have resources that you don’t have. Well?”
“They’re your best shot,” Sam told Tyler. She’d been oddly quiet as she’d tried to let the investigators convince him themselves. “C’mon. It’s up to you.” She sighed. “I'll respect your choice, dumb as it might be.”
It would, truly, be stupid to turn them down completely. He couldn’t do that. He had few choices, few hopes. But that didn’t mean that he had to spill every secret. Like the markings on his back. The sleeplessness they’d caused. It was personal, scary stuff, hard to part with. But he’d managed with Sam, and though telling hadn’t helped the problem, it had made him feel better. And now that he thought, it might be nice to let adults worry about it. It was a lot for a couple of teenagers to handle.
[Accept their help, but withhold information.]
[Accept their help and hold back nothing.]
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Post by Tales93 on Oct 19, 2018 18:21:47 GMT
[Accept their help and hold back nothing.]
I think holding back information from them, will only hurt him in the long run. They can't fully help him out if he doesn't tell them everything. Perhaps, they will be able to look into more info if they know about the effect Clifford had on him regarding his inability to sleep. By the way, I'm excited that they have finally come on the scene!
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Hope
Junior Member
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Post by Hope on Oct 26, 2018 16:48:02 GMT
Voting is closed!
(!) Tyler will accept the help of the paranormal investigators and hold back no information
I just want to say I'm not bothered by the low voter turnout of this choice (unless we're talking about the current US election, in which case my position is VOTE, VOTE, VOTE!). So don't feel bad if you missed it! Once, long ago, I might have kept the voting open for a long enough time for a few more votes to trickle in, but recently I've been writing more (9 freaking short stories alone this mouth—ranging from 6,500 and 1,000 words—most of which I'm proud of, others I'm wonderfully ashamed of) and I want to keep the ball rolling. The next part is already written, and, I might add, more substantial than the last, in so far as it moves things along. It will see the return of everyone's least favorite agent of the lion, and Melissa, and the continuation of Amber Page's article, and Theodore. Though it's still a while off, we're barreling toward this chapter's conclusion. It will be the finale I've hyped up in the past. And after it, the story is going to get more fantastic as the (surviving) characters explore the Divine Dream and we learn more about those silly supernatural entities.
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Hope
Junior Member
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Post by Hope on Oct 26, 2018 16:55:35 GMT
04-03 An Agent of the Lion
A small town, Hawley; Dayton and Marla, smaller still. Taken altogether the county sported almost two thousand people. Besides topographical information, and a few vague personal areas of interest that had resisted the blot of insanity, this was the extent of Pittman’s knowledge. He might have recognized the face of the woman who spawned him (were she alive), but not understand its significance. The existence of a high school, and his job as gym teacher for years, were flimsy in his memory. His exploits therein, his predations: a parade of sickness incomprehensible to his mind’s eye. He was his same old perverted self, but changed. No; he was the same, at his core, but faded. A wind-up man with a history he didn’t remember well. No doubt he wouldn’t know victims, if he saw them. And if they saw him? In the Sheriff’s cruiser? Rolling from the hospital parking lot, onto the highway? They may not have known him either. Perhaps none would found anything amiss. It was a small world, this county, but not small enough for everyone to know the face of every Sheriff. He fit the general description of a Silicon County Sheriff: male, hairy. Up close? Maybe they would find him out to be the wolf in sheep’s clothing that he was. He didn’t fit the height, but in the driver’s seat, Pittman’s shortness was not noticeable. The uniform would have furthered confounded anyone who thought he was out of place. For now, there was little risk of discovery. There would be sirens, soon. More cruisers, SUVs, the works. An officer was down; they’d be in panic mode. So Pittman took residential streets after he got off the highway, and he pulled into a vacant lot before he would reach the town square. Waited there. Three minutes, then the sirens began: a compounded noise, many vehicles responding. Henry was awake, or else someone had found him unconscious. The City Office, at the center of the town square, wherein he would find such departments as: Parks and Recreation, Finance, Health, Sanitation, Transportation; and the Sheriff’s Office, near empty, unguarded but for perhaps a secretary. And there, the gun safes. Melissa
Melissa parked across the street from the school, so that they could see the entrance. “What if she’s here during your vision, but she takes the bus?” Melissa asked, not trying to poke holes in their hopes, just trying to make sure Clive was still thinking with a tactical mind He looked so exhausted in his seat. “You’ve been taking your medication, right?” she asked next. He glanced at her as if she’d said You’ve been milking elephants on the reg, right? He said nothing. Nodded, eyes on the school entrance. His hand settled atop hers, which was tensed with their mission and stiff with the cold. He rubbed some warmth into it and caused it to relax. His hand remained. “It’s so odd,” he said at last. “Being here.” Oh, he went more than he said, and Melissa knew at once what that was. There were other people. Parents. Guardians. Here for their children and wards. “Yeah,” Melissa said. “It’s as if we’re here to pick up our daughter from school.” ”Well, that’s exactly what we’re doing.” “I hope.” Silence. Melissa sighed. She couldn’t forget why it had come to this, but she wouldn’t remind her husband. His hand covered still hers, and it was welcomed, but… they were prudes, and they had an aversion to sex, and they were practically asexual. Somehow this had erased their daughter, they were sure of it. Not sure how it was possible. But they could still hold hands. The concept of skin, touching, wasn’t repellant in and of itself. “Cliff,” she said. “What?” “I love you.” He squeezed her hand. “And I love you, Missy.” Didn’t one invite disaster with such obvious proclamations? Well, it didn’t matter. Love could exist on the inside, and be readily known by actions and displays of affection without a single word needing to be added, and love could well up and spill out in voice and song, no lesser for its verbal existence. They waited, and school let out, and then they waited nervously for Clive’s vision to come on. They had to time it if they hoped to get it right, but they couldn’t; the visions came and went on their own clock. As the children filed into buses and generally dispersed, their nervousness grew. They had parked in front of the only bike rack, hoping that would lend them the best chances. Suddenly Clive’s hand tightened on hers, painfully tight, and he raised a shaking finger. His breaths were stuttered, so much was his shock. “There,” he said. “It’s her. It’s Rachel. She’s unlocking her padlock and removing her chain and stuffing it into her backpack. She’s pulling out her bike.” All Melissa saw were a bunch of other children doing exactly this, but none that made her breath catch in her throat that Clive’s glimpses of Rachel did. “She’s getting on her bike. Shit! She’s setting off! Pull out! Out of the parking space!” Melissa did so, afraid she would made a mistake, back out the wrong way, delay them long enough to lose the girl. But they didn’t. With every glance she threw at Clive she saw that his eyes were glued to something, someone she didn’t see. It meant she was going the right way, and Clive supplied her with directions to keep her on the girl’s trail. “Left here! Left!” Clive shouted. As Melissa turned left she cut off another car going straight. They nearly clipped it, but the driver had slammed on the brakes and prevented the collusion. The angry, distressed notes of a car horn receded behind them. They were going smoothly now. The road only went straight. They were out of the town. The drive had been so haphazardly and jagged that Melissa didn’t immediately know where they were or remember what roads they had taken to get there. “Stop!” Clive screamed. Melissa slammed on the brakes. Their truck skidded a moment, then jerked to a stop. Melissa was stupidly, mind-numbingly scared that she had somehow hit the girl, the vision. But a blast of chilling air dispelled every confused notion spinning around her head. One couldn’t hit what wasn’t a physical presence. She looked around, found Clive’s seat empty, the door wide. And through it, she saw Clive running, stumbling, toward the entrance of the cemetery. The Silicon County cemetery. They were out of town, alright. “Clive! Jesus Christ, you’re gonna hurt yourself!” she shouted. He kept running. Maybe he was too far to hear, or the vision somehow obscured his hearing of her. It didn’t matter, did it? She unbuckled and clambered out of truck after him, leaving the keys in the ignition and the truck on and the doors open as she tried with all her effort to close the distance between them. He disappeared among the crypt and gravestones. She reached the spot she’d last seen him and did a sweep of the paths her husband might have taken. Fuck, she couldn’t begin to guess! What if she went the wrong, the opposite way, and twenty minutes later, after finally finding the right path, found Clive’s motionless body? That was what she envisioned: his body on the cold hard ground, head at an impossible angle, a chipped and bloody gravestone standing above him where he’d struck it when he tripped. That was what she feared she would find. That feeling of dread, of slipping from a cliff face, returned. And oh, the waters, those dark and unknowingly deep waters below her perch, they were churning with all manner of horrible possibilities: Clive, back against a gravestone, clutching his heart and mumbling incoherencies about the little girl they’d never had as his body failed him; Clive with a broken neck; and almost the worst of all her premonitions—no Clive at all, her husband gone the way their little girl had and leaving Melissa alone on this earth, so fucking alone. There were two probable directions of travel, which looked to be the main thoroughfares of the cemetery. If one approached the intersection from the entrance, they went right and left. So it was right or left. Left or right. Some fucking choice, she had nothing to go on, the ground was too frozen, the grass too short, to provide any clues. Fuck you, ground. Fuck you, grass. Fuck you, stupidly tall crypts. Fuck you, gardner, who planted all these goddamn stupid trees. And oh, fuck you in particular, Clive, I love you. Theodore
After arriving at the school, Theodore could feel the cogs turning, the world spinning, dwindling. It was happening. Actually fucking happening. He was carrying out that unknown deity’s orders because he had no choice. It would destroy him if he didn’t do what it wanted. He hoped, looked, for an out, but he couldn’t be sure one would come along. How far could he go down this path before he lost all chances to retreat? Could he retreat now? No. He would have to keep going, hoping for an exit down the line. Chances were it wouldn’t be marked for his convenience. These thoughts mixed so strangely with his surroundings. The school, the naked trees, so unaware, so peaceful. He was slinky stretched so far it would lose its shape. Little normal things made jumped: the last leaves of the season falling at the corner of eye; cars pulling into the parking lot; the sirens, off in the distance, seemed to be coming to him, but they drew away rather than closer. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. He glanced around with such frequency that he must have looked like your grade-a creeper. But no one confronted him. In fact, no one seemed to notice him. The children finally flooded from the building. They dispersed over the sidewalks, the ground, climbed onto bikes and filed into buses and cars. A red pickup truck suddenly backed up, the tires screeching as it pulled away. Whatever reasons compelled the driver to go so hastily were remotely removed from Theo, though, if nothing else, he could sympathize with the urgency. His eyes scanned the children. There. Charity Collingswood. Thankfully, she stuck out. She was an albino. A pale white girl in pale white clothes. The red of her eyes cut across the distance as she walked through the crowds and right in front of Theo’s trunk. Not just the irises were red, but the whole of the eye: pink pupil, sclera. Not only that, but the “whites” of her eyes were webbed with red veins. Her eye sockets looked bruised, restless, tired. Troubled. A lot like Theo’s. Those eyes meet his. Lingered. But she kept walking. He’d been noticed, that was sure. Maybe she even detected a hint of his purpose: protect her, enable her. Their connection to one another was immutable on a cosmic level, but it was possible that she didn’t know, in clear-cut knowledge, who he was. But it was obvious from her glances back at him that he had made impression. She was curious. In any case, she had kept walking. As the other children broke away, the reason she hadn’t stopped become clear. She had friends. Two teenagers a year or two older than her. She hadn’t had friends the last time he had followed her. As he followed and watched them—keeping a distance, driving on the other side of houses and catching glimpses of the trio through fences—he ratified that: not friends. The older two talked to each other, were warm to each other, but made no attempt to engage Charity. These were “friends” by circumstance. Not siblings, escorting a younger siblings. No; one, a girl, was Asian; the other, a boy, looked fit the stereotype of a Scandinavian so well that he had to be. Theo racked his brain and recalled a piece in The Pyramid foreign exchange students coming to Silicon County. The priest, who had taken had in the orphan Charity, had put them up. So, no, not friends; house mates. In other words, complications. They entered a house. Large. Lavish. It had to be mostly empty. He tried to remember everything he could about the priest. Father O’Malley was the name Theo knew. Didn’t even know the priest’s first name. Theo had never gone to his church, and wasn’t sure he would have been welcome. Did the priest have family? No. But certainly a housekeeper, probably working full-time. How else could a ninety-or-so-year-old take care of himself, a house that big, and three wards to boot? Now if only he could know if the housekeeper was there or not. There was only one car in the drive. Maybe it was the housekeeper’s, but christ, what if they let the fucking oldie drive? Theo had to consider all of this. Had to calculate it. He needed a cover story. He dug through the glove compartment and found a clipboard that he had been using to do business with the diary. He found a page that lacked enough context so that it to been anything and put that at the top. He found an empty cardboard box, tore off the sticker with his address, and filled it with various items he had at hand. He calmed himself, and then left the truck and walked across the street. If he was lucky, if Charity answered the door, this would all be useless. He rung the doorbell. Pulled his tired face into smile. Footsteps, down a long hall, approaching. A lock turned. The door opened and an old woman—young next to the priest, surely—peeked through. The housekeeper. Shit. If it had been the priest, he might have fooled such an old man, and if it had been the exchange students, he might have been able to leverage his adulthood into getting them to believe him and send for Charity. Instead, he was being greeted by an older woman most likely in control of her mental faculties. “Oh, hello,” said the old woman. “How may I help you?” “Hi,” Theo said, managing to resist grinding his teeth in frustration and the urge to simply turn around and leave. “I have a package for Charity Collingswood. She lives here, right?” Puzzled, squirting at him as if he was slightly transparent, the old woman opened the door further. “Oh, yes. But I wasn’t aware of any packages. You aren’t the mailman.” “No, ma’am. I’m with Child Services.” “Shouldn’t you have a uniform? A name tag?” “I’m out of uniform, I’m afraid. Didn’t expect to go out this evening until I noticed there was something to drop off, and by then I was changed. You see, these right here are personal items Miss Collingswood accidentally left in an orphanage. They can’t throw them away—it’s policy—so they just gathered dust for a while until someone finally sent them to us.” “This... seems unusual,” the old woman said. “It’s actually quite normal,” Theo said, not knowing if this was true, but bullshiting the lie pretty well, at least so he thought. “Since Miss Collingswood is only thirteen, I’ll need the signature of her legal guardian. Would that be you?” “No. My name is Claire. You’re looking for Father O’Malley.” “Is he in the house?” “Yes, but…” Claire trailed off. She continued to squint at Theo, as if she would be able to finish the sentence if she realized something. “He’s in bed,” she went on. Theo supposed, whatever she was struggling to realize, she had realized. “Asleep?” he asked. “No. Just unwell. He’s quite old, mind you.” “I see. I’m afraid I can’t come back for a while. It would be convenient to get this over with today. Do you think I could come and see him? Just for a single signature.” “Okay,” Claire said, sounding doubtful. She opened the door for him and let him in. She led him through the house toward the back. Theo noticed a staircase as they walked. It must have been where the teenagers had gone. Claire held a door for him, and he entered an expensive-looking bedroom, with a bed that had a beautifully stained frame and redbroad, on which a hairless rat lay. Well, it was a man, but it looked rat. Pale, skinny, like a victim of starvation. Long, lank, white hair. Father O’Malley, in the flesh. “Who’s this?” he asked, loud and belligerent despite any illness he might have been fighting. “A social worker,” Claire explained, and did Theo the service of recounting what he had told her. His lies were somewhat distorted, some of what he needed representation, but coming her mouth, he hoped they sounded more genuine. “A signature?” Father O’Malley repeated after Claire had finished. “Yes,” Theo agreed, proffering the clipboard and a pen. Father O’Malley put on his glasses before he took the two items from Theo. “If you’ll just sign here,” Theo said, hoping he could get the old man to ignore the rest of the document. “Hold your horses, sonny,” the old man said. “I don’t intend to sign something I haven’t read.” While it wasn’t said rudely, it made Theo want to scream. He kept his smile on, his voice even, somehow. “By all means.” The old man read, and after a moment, he frowned. He flipped through the other pages. “What’s this baloney? It’s nonsense. Something about staff schedules on a—” he double checked “—on a diary.” “What did you say your name was?” Claire asked. She seemed to be on the edge of her own revelation. “Oh,” Theo said. “Oh,” he repeated, trying to think of something. “I guess I didn’t. Didn’t introduce myself, I mean. How rude of me.” He extended his hand to Claire. “I’m Tom.” She didn’t take it. He offered it to Father O’Malley. He didn’t, either. Silence, as O’Malley studied the document, as Claire studied Theo. “Oh, Lord,” Claire said, all of a sudden, face twisting in shock. “It’s the cannibal.” Fuck. “I’m sorry?” Theo said, not ready to abandon the act, even though it was certainly lost. But Claire wasn’t speaking to him. She was addressing O’Malley. “Do you remember? His picture was in the paper. That article, the one that tried to get you to warm you up to this… this monster… it said he was British. It’s him. Do you see it?” O’Malley didn’t even stop to think. “Get out,” he told him. “Listen—” Theo began, but the old woman cut him off. “Get out,” she said. “Look, I—” “GET OUT OF THIS HOUSE, CANNIBAL.” The veil of politeness had shattered before their anger and disgust. Theo shut his eyes. He could feel a headache coming on, the woman’s loud shrike like toothpicks stabbing into his ears. Both of them were yelling at him now. Calling him cannibal (well, yeah) and sinner (also, yeah) and faggot (the use of which he objected to, nevermind that he was straight) and monster (debatable). First a godly prick of a lion gave him an impossible task. Now these religious wah whos were screaming in his ears. And his stomach, his fucking stomach, was empty and that groaning hollowness wouldn’t leave his mind, sending messages into his brain: fill, fill, fill. Never stopping, just: fill, fill, fill. Angered, tired, hungry, he said, he fucking shouted, “SHUT UP.” Oh, they shut the fuck up. For the moment. He must have looked crazy, hand raising to his temple, stumbling a step away from these loud pricks. A voice, then. Like, like— Fuck. As if the world split in two and the sound of it splitting spoke in his head. You have my leave to do what’s necessary, it said. Don’t fret over consequences.
He’d heard this voice before. Oh, he’d heard it. It had presided over his torture until he had agreed to carry out his task. The lion’s voice. The king’s. It was good to know he had friends in high places. Friends in the fucking heavens above. Fucking prick. Go on, the lion said. A sneering voice. Follow this prick’s orders.
Shhhhhhhhiiiiiitttt. With one snide comment, the lion had showed its hand. Flashed Theo its cards—royal flush, I win, I have your free will, haha. It could read his thoughts. It could read his fucking thoughts. It knew his intentions. It knew he wasn’t loyal. It fucking knew he was looking for a ways out and fully intending to turncoat as soon as he came into contact with the Crane or whoever else could help him break free from the lion’s command. So, the lion knew everything. And what else did the lion have control of? How far did his control go? Besides coercion, could the lion really force him to do things he didn’t want to do? You’re a pawn; consider it a feature. Let me deal with this, Theo thought back at it. Ah, let’s see, it said. Do what’s necessary, or I’ll prove to you what I’m capable of.
That didn’t bode well. But— He had stopped paying attention to the room, and its two other occupants. As he came back to his senses, he found that Claire was backed against the wall and muttering a prayer and holding a crucifix necklace that was draped around her neck out at him as if he was a vampire, a goddamn demon to be exorcised. Back, the power of Christ compel you! Be gone, foul thing! And the old man, Father O’Malley, he was sitting up and leaning over to the nightstand. He had his hand in the drawer, routing around. He found what he was looking for and came up with a pistol. An antique pistol. Like something from World War 2. Something as old as the priest was. This was it. Here was the choice. Do what was necessary: disarm the old man, anything, whatever it took; leave and leave with Charity in toll. Or he could do anything but, do what his instinct, his humanity, told him to do, which was to put his hands up and surrender and back out of this madness. But doing that would make the lion flex its will, and that wouldn’t be good for him at all. If anything, it was a choice between compiling and furtively resisting. Hell, he still had a choice. [Do what’s necessary of your own accord—in your own way, to minimize the violence.]
[Do what your humanity compels you to do—deescalate the situation—even if the choice might be superseded by the lion.]
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Hope
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Post by Hope on Oct 27, 2018 18:51:43 GMT
Note: there's a choice at the end of Melissa's PoV that wasn't showing up. I put periods at the ends of each word between the brackets, and that seems to have fixed it.
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Post by Tales93 on Oct 27, 2018 20:35:06 GMT
[Do what’s necessary of your own accord—in your own way, to minimize the violence.]
This might be the only thing he can do, in his messed up situation.
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Post by LiquidChicagoTed on Oct 29, 2018 3:38:36 GMT
[Left.][Do what your humanity compels you to do—deescalate the situation—even if the choice might be superseded by the lion.]First of all, I apologize for missing the last voting. Things are hectic for me and I had no time to properly vote on it, so I hoped to do it later on. That did not work out. Since it is super late for me, I also don't have the time to share my thoughts on this part right now, but I wanted to vote first, to assure you that I have read it. I will write my thoughts on this part and the last in another comment tomorrow, this is just to get my vote in and to assure you that I fully intend to share my thoughts as soon as possible
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Post by Tales93 on Nov 3, 2018 4:51:39 GMT
[Left.][Do what your humanity compels you to do—deescalate the situation—even if the choice might be superseded by the lion.]First of all, I apologize for missing the last voting. Things are hectic for me and I had no time to properly vote on it, so I hoped to do it later on. That did not work out. Since it is super late for me, I also don't have the time to share my thoughts on this part right now, but I wanted to vote first, to assure you that I have read it. I will write my thoughts on this part and the last in another comment tomorrow, this is just to get my vote in and to assure you that I fully intend to share my thoughts as soon as possible So, what did you think of the previous couple parts? I'm curious on what you would have voted, on the part that you missed.
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Hope
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Post by Hope on Nov 10, 2018 17:44:13 GMT
So, on impulse, I decided to do NaNoWriMo (for those who don't know, November is National Novel Writing Month), and while we're one-third into in November, I'm also one-third of the way into a new novel! It's going pretty well. I've been adding to it every day. However, I don't want to put it down to work on Silicon or Monument because I'm afraid that will trip me up and spell, like, a motivation deathblow. The forum stories will both resume next month, and since my seasonal job will be over for the winter, I'll able to devote my full attention to them! I probably won't be that active until then. I'll see you all soon, though!
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Post by AgentZ46 on Nov 13, 2018 14:06:52 GMT
[Right.]
[Do what’s necessary of your own accord—in your own way, to minimize the violence.] I want him to retain his humanity, though it's clear that his mental state isn't great and may do something terrible without the Lion's intervention which does worry me, especially since he seems to have a certain amount of disdain for these people. But for now he intends to minimize the violence as much as possible and we don't want to test the Lion's threat and what he can do to Theo. Not yet anyway. He needs a better opportunity.
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Post by Tales93 on Nov 13, 2018 21:06:14 GMT
I forgot about this choice before, but here is what I'll pick.
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Post by Tales93 on Nov 13, 2018 21:09:31 GMT
I don't know why it isn't letting me say my choice on my post. I edited it a few times, but nothing showed up I picked right for the direction choice.
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Hope
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Post by Hope on Dec 1, 2018 14:52:56 GMT
Voting is closed!
(!) Melissa will go right
(!) Theodore will do what his humanity compels you to
NaNoWriMo's over. I wrote almost 50,000 words for the novel. Almost. Missed the target by 366 words lol. It's still unfinished (there's maybe thirteen scenes left to write), so I'm gonna to try to wrap it up quickly and get back to Silicon and Monument while I work on that. I'm going to work on it while I'm on a camping trip for the next four days, and when I get back, it's forum story time!
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Hope
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Post by Hope on Dec 12, 2018 21:29:51 GMT
04-04
Tyler
Okay. Okay fine. He would tell them. “So,” Tyler said, and stopped. He was surprised that it was still hard to get out, even after telling Sam and Kayla. This was different, though. He had never imagined that he would be telling these things to an adult, let alone two almost strangers in an increasingly crowded diner. “Let’s go somewhere more private,” he suggested. “There’s a picnic table around the back.”
“Whatever works for you,” Morina said. “Mark?”
Mark was trying to scoot out of the booth and finish his coffee at once. “Hmm,” he muttered, still drinking, standing.
“Let’s go,” Sam said.
The four of them headed toward the door, Mark catching up.
“Where are you off to?” The suddenness of Marsha’s question took them all by surprised. Sam’s mother was standing behind the counter, rag in a hand, hands on her hips, watching them bright eyes that did not betray the suspicion with which she regarded the two adults. Tyler detected it, but just barely.
“We’re gonna show them the dead of the path,” Sam answered, ushering Morina and Tyler and Mark outside.
Marsha frowned at her daughter, almost imperceptibly, but Tyler saw it through the glass. Sam didn’t have to specify what path. Anyway, Marsha smiled and said something that Tyler couldn’t hear and Sam nodded, not smiling, a smile would have been hella suspect, instead glowering with the inconvenience of it all.
The glass door closed on the diner and Sam took her position at the head of the group. “This way,” she said, leading them around back. There was the table, where they had had dinner so many days ago after the soccer game. Tyler, Kayla, Sam, Sam’s older brother Burnie. Eating, laughing, being dumb little shits. It felt like a lifetime had passed. In fact, that whole day—hell, his whole life—felt like a preamble to his encounter that very same evening. A noise disturbed Tyler from his reverie.
Sirens. Not far.
They all paused to regard them.
“Looks like Mom called the cops on you creeps,” Sam said.
Mark laughed forcefully. Morina continued to listen, her ears, her will, seemingly her entirety, tuned to that synthetic scream.
Tyler wondered more about Morina’s perception of the sirens than the sirens themselves, nor what had called for them.
Sam brought them all back to focus. “Mister Ty. Miss psychic. Mister alien humper. Cough cough. We haven’t got much time until my mom comes to check on us.”
“Yeah?” Tyler said, coming back to himself.
“Let’s get started,” Morina said.
“Alien humper?” Mark repeated to himself.
They took seats at the table, copying their positions from the booth—Sam and Tyler across from Mark and Morina—and then Tyler stood and started pacing. So much space in the outdoors. Why fucking waste it? Chew the scenery a little. Grind it underfoot. So that was what he did as he launched into his story: the encounter, waking up later, the blood, the discovery stained onto his back. The cast his father had obtained of the paw print. Giant dog, let’s call ‘em Clifford. No more developments since then. Just a bunch of mucking about in the woods and a fat ton of nothing. By the end of it he was as breathless for his pacing as he was for his unabeting recount of the last few weeks. He sat down after he was done. Stood again and found the track he had stomped into the dead frozen grass and began to follow it in circles again.
“May I see the markings?” Morina asked.
He stopped, frozen dead himself. He was still young; that had to be beared in mind. Seventeen. And a older woman had basically just asked him to take off his shirt. He mumbled something like a yes. There were no windows around this side of the dinner, just the white painted cinder block face of the building. He checked his surroundings anyway as he pulled the back of his shirt up. It wouldn’t merely feed into Marsha’s suspicions if she caught them now, it would mean the end of this whole venture, possibly Morina and Mark’s lives.
He kept on facing the building. Morina and Mark were looking at his back now. Or at least, that was what he figured they were doing. They would be staring in wonder at his shoulder blades, at the blood-red markings: twin eyes, a candle-like flame rising from the top of each.
“May I?” Morina.
TOUCH MY BACK? Tyler’s mind screamed. “Okay,” he managed.
It was awkward. Just pure awkward. He felt the urge to hold his breath so she wouldn’t notice his anxiousness, and did so, probably only making more of a thing out of it than it really was. Thereby making it more awkward. Her touch was light and brief, in any case. No lingering. No carassing. There, upon one of his shoulder blades, then gone. Thank god.
He stood there, shirt still raised, feeling kind of like a dummy. “Well?”
“Ty.” Sam’s voice. Softer, more stressed, than he had ever known it to be.
Turning and pulling his shirt down simultaneously, Tyler assessed the situation in a flash. Sam and Mark stood on either side of Morina, the two of them looking low-key terrified. Morina, meanwhile, stared, not at Tyler, but through him. Tyler checked: there was nothing behind him but the boring white facade of the building and the door, which was still closed. Morina just stood there, staring as if her eyes were affixed to something so wonderful, so terrifying, that she couldn’t look away or speak.
“Morina,” Mark said. He made to touch her shoulder, but refrained from doing so at the last moment.
“What the fuck’s happening?” Sam asked.
Mark merely shook his head. “How the hell should I know?”
“You’re her coworker, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he said. “And I’ve seen her… you know… use her ability. But she’s never froze before.”
“At least try to explain!”
“She seems to have… gotten a reading. Sensed something. She would be able to explain it better.”
Tyler felt responsible, and guilty. He had been warming up to Morina, too. “Please,” he begged the man. “Do something. Make her snap out of it.”
“Listen,” Mark said. “I’m the UFO guy, okay? Most nights, I can’t keep myself from falling asleep at my computer. I once gave myself a black eye looking through my own telescope. This is fucking beyond me, beyond my expertise. Fuck.” He dug through his pocket, brought out his phone, and took broke the triangle that they had formed around Morina. “I’m calling Kate.”
Sam followed and dogged him, leaving Tyler the only one with eyes on Morina. “Will Kate know what to do?”
“Fuck me, I don’t know!”
“What about the other one? The bigfoot guy?”
“Dave looks at scat all day,” Mark hissed. “He looks at shit, and weighs it, and dissects it to see what all was digested—”
Morina hadn’t moved yet. She hadn’t so much as blinked. Now, slowly, like the gangplank up to a spaceship, her mouth fell open. Tyler couldn’t help but see inside her mouth. Her tongue, twitching. Her uvula like the lure of an angler fish, baiting Tyler down the ribbed expanse of her throat.
“Um,” was all Tyler could say.
She inhaled suddenly, sharply—had she breathed at all since touching the marking?—then her whole body shuddered.
Vomit gushed up and out of her throat. Tyler saw its progress as if in slow motion: bubbling and roiling up, crashing in a flood over her tongue and teeth and spewing out. It splattered onto Tyler’s jacket and ran down his stomach. It soaked into his pants and underwear and fell into fat chucky dollops onto his shoes and the ground.
Tyler moaned in disgust, helpless. He lifted his arms, only his arms, lifted them and his shoulder in a gorilla-like hunch. His arm were spotted and speckled in vomit.
“Oh, fuck,” Sam said.
“I’m gonna be sick,” Mark whispered.
Tyler could only stare at Morina. At the vomit and drool dripping from her lip. At her eyes. There was a saying, wasn’t there? Empty-eyed. Well, Morina’s eyes weren’t empty at all. No; they were occupied one hundred percent. One hundred and ten. Tyler thought that he understood. She was trying to take in something that couldn’t be taken in. Not in a five minutes; not in five lifetimes.
“Stop looking,” he said. He must have sounded crazy to the others, if they heard him at all, but he wasn’t. He was right. He understood. He grabbed her shoulders and tried shaking her. He was crying, now. Whatever it was that he had shown her, he was so fucking sorry. “Stop looking at it!”
“Tyler!” It was Sam. Practically screaming into his ear. Trying to pry him off the woman, nevermind the vomit. “You’re gonna hurt her!”
That made him let go, but the idea that he could make this any worse was almost laughable.
Morina swayed. Blinked.
“Morina?” Mark said, getting a closer, still refraining from touching the woman.
Morina coughed up some vomit and mucus, which made Mark jump back. Morina shook her head, paused, shook it again, like she was trying to shake something out of her ears, or to stop the reverberations of an awful noise from ringing. She said something.
Tyler wormed out of Sam’s grasp and moved closer. “What?” he asked.
Whether she heard him and repeated on account of his asking, or she just repeated it anyway, or it was a new word from the last, Morina mumbled again.
Tyler thought he heard it. “Teeth,” he repeated.
“What?” That was Mark. He had his cell phone to his ear, but the question was clearly directed at Tyler.
“She said teeth.”
“So she saw teeth? What, big teeth? Little teeth? Lots of teeth?”
“I don’t fucking know the specifics,” Tyler said back. “I don’t know that she saw teeth. She said—”
“Teeth,” Morina said, still in her stupor.
Tyler stared at her. Waited for more. Then let out his breath. “Yeah. Okay. Fuck.” He paced away. Looked down. Noticed something that had somehow escaped him in the last few minutes. “I’m fucking covered in vomit,” he observed, his voice shaking, close to breaking. “Toe to tip,” he said without meaning to. It was one of his father’s phrases. Only now did he turn, bend over, and with his hands on his knees, throw up. He stared at the puddle. It steamed in the cold air. “Fuck.”
“C’mon,” Sam said. “Mom’s gonna shit herself.”
She helped Tyler straighten up. He looked around. Morina was gone. Mark was gone. “Where the fuck did they go?”
“Mark’s taking Morina to the hospital.”
“The fucker up and left?”
“Yeah, while you were vomiting. Look, I’m angry, too. But it’s hard to blame him. Morina’s in a bad way.”
Tyler had to laugh. It was a single, deflated thing. “I’m in a bad way.”
“I didn’t notice.”
“Screw you.”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s get you inside, stinky.”
Two Tables down…
Tyranno came back from bathroom with a giant smile plastered on his face. He was giving Jay and Hector the details before he had even returned to his seat. “So,” he said, “I was leaving the bathroom and I held the door for this boy, absolutely drenched in vomit, and this girl helping him along.”
“Wow,” Hector said. He wasn’t impressed.
“I’m talking drenched in vomit. He stunk so bad I thought that I was gonna start hissing at him.”
“You didn’t, though, did you?” Hector said. “Start spitting and hissing? Hair standing on end?”
“Ha. Ha. No.” He settled into his seat. “It was, you know, the boy and girl from two tables down. The ones talking with the investigators, the psychic and the UFO guy.”
“Which only you overheard,” Hector said.
“Good ears,” Tyranno said with another big smile.
“Supernaturally good hearing,” Hector said.
“Quiet,” Jay commented, not looking up from her sketch pad.. “You’ll expose him.”
“Sorry. Forgot.” Hector sent a mock-angry glare Tyranno’s way. “You know, I probably forgot because he refuses to show us his abilities.”
“I told you,” Tyranno said. “I would, but... you’d see me naked. So I won’t.”
“And there is absolutely no way to get around that.”
“Exactly!” Tyranno exclaimed, misinterpreting Hector’s sarcasm, or pretending to.
Their argument was background noise to Jay. Hector was saying if he and Jay were out for a walk and a mountain lion came up, sniffed their hands, and left without maiming either of them, then they would know that it was Tyranno and that Tyranno was telling the truth. Tyranno countered this by saying he would be naked as a mountain lion, too, and that wouldn’t fly either, no sir. They argued on. Jay focused on her sketch pad, trying to get the lines just right, the horizon, the desolation, the—
“Let me see,” Tyranno said. He had a big hand extended.
Looking up from her sketch pad, Jay smirked. “Did you wash your hands?”
He took his hand back slowly.
She turned the pad around so that he and Hector could see. “What is it?” Hector asked.
“Something I dreamed,” Jay answered.
“So…?”
“It’s another world. An alien world.”
“Where are the aliens?” Tyranno wanted to know.
She turned to the sketch pad back to her and looked hard at the overlapping lines that she had gouged onto the paper, and the emptiness, as if with a great effort of concentration she could find life where there was none. But that was useless. It saddened her to think of that white expanse, to imagine herself walking it, alone. She took up her pencil, drew in your stereotypical gray: big head, big eyes, big fingertips. And a smile. And an igloo. “There,” she said, turning it back to them. “He digs holes in the ice and eats fish.”
“Ice?” Hector repeated. “That’s ice?”
She sighed. “It’s an ice world.”
“Not a nice world, by the looks of it,” Tyranno said.
“Yeah,” she agreed. She tapped the grey’s overly large head with her pencil. “This guy gets lonely out there, all by himself. And cold.” She turned the page and tried to think of something, anything, to draw, other than her dreams of late. She failed. She began to draw the vertical lines of the ruins that she’d seen, the towers, the icicles hanging from their ledges. “Very cold.”
And Worlds Away…
In one facet of the crystal: a woman drawing a picture, among odd and interesting friends, but so lonely, so depressed. The ring on her finger was heavy, inadequate, a reminder of love and pain. It was on the same hand that she used to hold the pencil.
In another: the dreamless Dreamer, who had washed his mouth out in the sink and was sitting half-nude on the toilet seat, cleaning himself with paper towels. He was thinking about teeth. Specifically, Clifford’s teeth, which he hadn’t seen. He’d only seen its eyes. But the sheriff's office had his jacket, which had teeth holes and had been soaked with god knew whose blood. Clifford had picked him up by his jacket, and last he remembered, the teeth holes had been stretched larger under his own weight. But it had teeth. Clifford had teeth.
Another: the woman of… hmmm, two halves… looking out of the window of a car, the view offering a drab vantage on the landscape, which was bleeding from fall into winter, evening to night, and already quite dark. The woman was pretty sure that she was in love, and she could hardly believe her luck, nor rely in it continuing, but… shit, she was pretty sure that she was in love.
Another: the sleepwalker, the prince’s poor vessel, driving the car and trying to keep himself from looking at his passenger, the same woman seen in the previous facet. He was having trouble. He also had a lovey-dovey high.
Another: the anomaly wandering the city streets, scared, alone, screaming to be heard over the dead.
Another: the man with the unexpected gift of visions, who stumbled toward a pyramid-shaped tomb, which surely held revelations for him, Her, and all others watching, unless the facet faltered.
Another: unclear. Literally. Its surface was milky white, and flashed with bright, chaotic colors. Someplace beyond viewing, if not knowing.
Another: like the previous, but darker, more remote, the only color flashing purple and those flashes brief against the inky stormy depths. Faded? Even further past knowing? A state of being—or unbeing—so far removed that it was beyond even Her conception? Hard to say, but She hoped to find out.
Another, the connection distorted by enemy interference and Her own counter interference: one of the enemy’s, the arsonist, the girl, venturing with her housemates to see what all the commotion was about.
There were other, smaller facets squeezed between the more prominent ones. They showed a mixture of images. The father, jailed, but up, attentive, having heard the secretary scream and fall silent less than five minutes ago and then someone or something routing around the office that he couldn’t see before the intruder had left. The sheriff, rushing to the hospital. The friend, hurrying home to get clothes to replace the soiled ones. And others from the town: connections hewn from connections; more minor players; acquaintances; the brushed-past and shoulder-bumped of the everyday.
There was one other facet that was worthy of enlargement and Her attention: that of the so-called prince, who hung over the writer’s wife, exerting a bit of his power to set her on the correct path when she had gone the wrong way. A very humanitarian waste. What was the fool cur thinking?
Something was about to happen. It was easier for Her to see with each passing moment.
“Shit,” She said to Herself. No one else was the chamber; Her servants knew not to disturb Her during Her viewings.
It seemed that something unprecedented was occurring. More of Her Dreamers than ever were converging. One sitting at a table. One in the bathroom. Two having just pulled up. That was four. Fucking four of them. Jay, Tyler, Lana, and Thomas, if She had the names right. Right there together, unbeknownst to each other, or at least to most of them. What was worse was, the prince wasn’t even there to watch; he was too justifiably busy trying to unravel the mystery of the missing Dreamers. The convergence had to mean something. Whether it was destiny pulling them closer, or chance shuffling its cards and dealing Her a poor hand, or the lion making a move, or all of the above, one thing was clear: something new was happening, something un-fucking-predictable, something mostly like very bad in mortal and immortal terms alike.
Unable to change whatever was happening or affect it, Ahlukin—the Crane Wife, to some—sat at the edge of Her seat, held Her breath, and watched the events unfold from a plethora of perspectives.
Lana
“It’s cold,” Lana said, after she had climbed out of the car.
“Could be colder.” Thomas had circled the car and drawn close to her side. She liked to think it was because she was shivering.
“How so?”
“Snow’s late, this time of year.”
“Is it?” Lana asked. She couldn’t say she really cared—it was cold, in any case—but she liked hearing him speak. What she liked more was, the normalness of the exchange. After all he had told him, she was afraid all normalcy would be lost.
“Yeah. Let’s go inside.”
It was warm inside, the heat pressing upon them like a stifling hug. They took seats in the far back, ordered some coffee, began to sip at it.
“There’s something I should tell you,” Lana said at last. And she waited, not for Thomas’s reaction, but the other’s—the thing that was in her, the thing that was of her. It didn’t stir. Didn’t try to silence her, as she thought it would. Maybe it still would, once she got talking. But, maybe not.
Thomas was here. Thomas was watching. And the thing was scared of him. Sensing her hesitation, Thomas took her hand and said, “You can tell me.”
So she tried. It wasn’t easy. “Some of the stuff you told me, I’ve been through, too.” At a loss for words. She stirred her coffee, as if it might cause the silk of her mind to rise, and she would find what to say floating. She did, more or less. “The dreams,” she said. “You dream of a chapel. I dream of…” Failing to say it. Fuck. “You dream of your father. I dream of…”
“Hey,” Thomas said when it was a clear that she wouldn’t find the next word. “You don’t have to force it out.”
“I don’t?”
“You can wait until it comes up on its own, whatever you need to tell me.”
She wanted to say Thank you, but instead said, “I’m sorry.” And Thomas frowned at that.
She had no hand in what happened seconds later, no idea it would happen, but that frown would stay with her. The next moment would be etched in Lana’s mind. Not in perfect clarity. No; it would be half-remembered, messy, recalled in stutters and pauses. Thomas’s puzzled frown as she apologized for the monstrosity that she was. A lyric trapped in her head, a snip of music that must have been playing in the diner: When all tomorrows are gone/There will be teeth in the grass.
Apt, since there would be teeth, after:
The glass next to them exploded.
The cold rushed in all at once, like an entity.
The scream erupted from Lana’s throat.
The blood sprayed from Thomas’s chest and painted her, and he fell from the booth.
The second bullet zipped by her head, like a lethal bee, missing her by inches as she went down after him.
To be continued
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Post by Tales93 on Dec 13, 2018 8:06:37 GMT
Woah, that was definitely an unexpected ending. I hope Lana and Thomas can make it out of there safe, and hopefully she can quickly get Thomas some medical attention. Where Lana and Thomas at the same diner that Sam and Tyler were just at? If so, Tyler is still, in danger since he hadn't left yet. I am confused about one thing, did Tyler or Morina vomit? Tyler said Morina vomited, but Sam said it was him. Whatever, Morina saw definitely shook her. We know she saw Clifford's teeth, but that was quite an extreme reaction for just teeth. I wonder if she saw more than that. Also, we seem to be introduced to one of the final dreamers. This Jay seems to be quite the intriguing character. She seems to have some interesting friends. I'm sure Mark would want to talk to her, since she apparently knows about aliens. This was quite the interesting part, I'm very intrigued to see what happens next.
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Hope
Junior Member
Posts: 96
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Post by Hope on Dec 13, 2018 14:02:02 GMT
Woah, that was definitely an unexpected ending. I hope Lana and Thomas can make it out of there safe, and hopefully she can quickly get Thomas some medical attention. Where Lana and Thomas at the same diner that Sam and Tyler were just at? If so, Tyler is still, in danger since he hadn't left yet. I am confused about one thing, did Tyler or Morina vomit? Tyler said Morina vomited, but Sam said it was him. Whatever, Morina saw definitely shook her. We know she saw Clifford's teeth, but that was quite an extreme reaction for just teeth. I wonder if she saw more than that. Also, we seem to be introduced to one of the final dreamers. This Jay seems to be quite the intriguing character. She seems to have some interesting friends. I'm sure Mark would want to talk to her, since she apparently knows about aliens. This was quite the interesting part, I'm very intrigued to see what happens next. It's the same diner, yeah. In the And Worlds Away part, it's mentioned that Tyler, Jay, Thomas, and Lana were converging, though the location wasn't specified. They both threw up. Morina threw up on Tyler, and Tyler threw up on the ground not long after. We'll be getting intimate with some teeth soon. Also, Morina's going to be a minor PoV next chapter! I should warn about the alien thing, Jay was making stuff up to liven the desolation of what she'd drawn. No aliens confirmed (yet?). Of course, Mark and his whole team would want to talk to Jay, or any of the dreamers, which is why it's good for them that they made ties with Tyler (though that has gone distinctly bad so far lol).
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Post by AgentZ46 on Dec 13, 2018 17:01:34 GMT
Wow. Just wow. All these dreamers incredibly close to each other, practically in the same place (Which isn't common according to... The Crane Wife is it?) and then a shootout just happens out of nowhere. BOY! What is going on right now!? XD Thomas didn't just get murdered right!? So I really enjoyed this part and I'm fascinated by all this talk of dreamers, even if I don't know what it means yet. The others don't seem to be as suffering as much as Tyler, though I expect that's more to do with Clifford than being a dreamer. Anyway, great part! And Morina is surprisingly growing on me, excited to read more of her.
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Post by Tales93 on Dec 14, 2018 5:08:33 GMT
I'm excited to see how Morina's pov next chapter goes. Considering her abilities and the situation they are all in, I'm sure it is going to be interesting.
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Post by LiquidChicagoTed on Dec 15, 2018 3:20:27 GMT
Whoa! Holy shit, whoa, that is amazing! There are so many revelations here and I don't even know where to start. First of all, Thomas. I must admit, when I read that part, I was shocked that one of the main characters was killed that easily, that early. However, I had some time to think and I believe this is where we will get some clarity into something that has merely been hinted at in the past. I remember Thomas' accident in the first chapter, where he technically should have died. He did not and the implication was that he is able to survive such lethal injuries. As such, I am actually not as concerned as I might should be. Unless this has its limits. Or maybe the Prince of Wolves had a hand in his earlier survival. He is not there at the moment, so oh man, maybe I should be concerned. Also, I am really worried for what is going on with Tyler. Whatever Morina saw must have been horrifying and it is directly affecting him. She pretty much shut down right there, so I am really excited for her PoV, as it might give more pieces of the puzzle that is Clifford. One big thing we don't know yet is, whom is Clifford affiliated with. Is he, after all, independent? Or maybe he is working for the King of Lions, or the Prince of Wolves, or maybe even the Crane Wife. And Tyler seems to have taken some injuries from that meeting, as evidenced by his jacket and all the talk about teeth. Then why, I have to ask, is he seemingly physically fine? There are the markings, yes, but there is blood on his jacket. Maybe the markings are actually scars, the remnant of rapidly healed wounds he took when Clifford bit him. Oh man, so far there are a lot of unanswered questions, but I am pretty certain Morina can bring more light into this once we read about her account. I am a bit concerned for her though, this has definitely shaken her like nothing before. Now, onwards, minor major revelation of the part, the god-things have names! So, it is not just the Crane Wife, but Ahlukin and the implication behind her PoV is actually massive. First of all, I guess since she has a name, the Prince of Wolves and King of Lions are not just Prince and King, but those are just titles. Second, whatever they are, they are not, as I speculated for some time, gods. Because Ahlukin, mysterious and powerful as she undoubtedly is, well, she didn't strike me as divine here, at least not in the unfathomably eldritch way we believe gods to be. At most, those are gods in the style of Greek or Roman gods, who are super powerful, but all things considered not entirely different from mortals. This hints at them and their motivations maybe not being all too inconceivable by our standards and I like it. I mean, that all results from Ahlukin doing something very mundane here. Of course, it is not quite like that, but her activity in this part can be narrowed down to being at home and watching television, only that she is sitting in a chamber in some strange place that is not quite of this world and she is watching at things she (likely) directly influenced into happening. She is not quite all-dignified though, as that rather hilarious, but strangely relatable profanity proves and all in all, she did not give me the impression that her reasons and motivations cannot be understood. However, I got a strangely sinister vibe from her here, which is a contrast to the knight's earlier account, which painted her in the most positive light. Now, my opinion on the three beings we have met so far has shifted. The King of Lions, he is still undeniably the bad guy and previously, I thought that the Crane Wife is the one with the most compassion towards mortals, while the Prince of Wolves struck me as more shady. This has definitely changed a bit. Ahlukin, she seemed, well, not exactly sinister, but cold in this part. It is clear she doesn't have much concern for the individual people, as her comment about Melissa showed. That being said, she might not be bad per se, maybe she is more concerned about the larger picture, where the fates of individuals matter little. However, we got confirmation that the Prince of Wolves is actively taking effort to put Melissa onto the right path and he actively tries to restore Rachel and Alex, which means one of two things. Either he follows an ultimately malicious plan, but it has beneficial consequences to some individuals, or he is actually the being with the most compassion. He is still shady though, but delightfully grey and the same goes for Ahlukin. Oh man, these beings, they continue to be my favourite aspect of the story, because whenever they appear, every glimpse of them, their personalities and motivations, that is definitely a highlight. Also, Ahlukin's part definitely revealed more snippets. First of all, what Clive sees is not just some echo of Rachel, but the Crane Wife implies that she is actually aware that something is not right with her. At least that is what I take from the sentence "The anomaly wandering the city streets, scared, alone, screaming to be heard over the dead", which I presume hints at Rachel. The writer is Clive, the sleepwalker is Thomas, the woman of two halves is Lana, the dreamless dreamer is Tyler, that much is obvious, so I very much presume that the anomaly is Rachel. After all, her current state is definitely an anomaly, she is not supposed to be nonexistant and Ahlukin and the Prince of Wolves are well-aware of this. Oh man, I just hope that Clive will indeed get some insight in how to restore things to normal soon. Also, Ahlukin herself does not know what happened, but it seems that Clive is getting close to some revelation, something even she does not yet know. Ah, all in all this was an amazing part! I am glad you are back, I am super excited for more and I can just feel it, we are close to some revelations This is all still a puzzle with a lot of missing pieces, but I constantly feel like I am about to understand what is going on.
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Hope
Junior Member
Posts: 96
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Post by Hope on Dec 22, 2018 18:24:56 GMT
04-05
Theodore
The word “escalation” had never held much meaning in Theo’s life. He knew slow declines, downhill ambles. Despite the fact that most of the things that he had done had been impromptu and quickly carried out, they were premeditated, and he had prepared for each part that he had played. He had donned the wolf mask before going to play butcher, and he had walked calmly to the man’s house, almost leisurely. His sentencing, after, had been slow, drawn out, as the judge and jury decided what to do with him. His recovery, too. His readjustment as he had rejoined society, or what passed for society in these cold rural lands. Even his abuse by the Petersons, leading his eventual outburst of violence. All slow endeavors.
Now, though. Not so.
Faced with an impulse decision—the lion’s intervention or an action of his own pertience—he acted. This, almost certainly, was the next in a long line of mistakes. A lineage of fuck-ups, only half of them his own, leading to this moment. If he’d had sufficient luck—not too much; just a little, just enough—the old priest would have shot him dead before the lion had time to do anything. Instead, rushing forward, he caught the old priest’s shrunken hands, pistol and all, and forced the weaker, frailer man’s arms up and getting the bore away from him. A shot discharged into the ceiling. Another. Plaster and dust fell. Another shot, and Theo realized the old fuck was pulling the trigger.
“Stop!” Theo cried, thinking of the children upstairs. “Stop it! You’ll—”
Theodore lost his grip on the weapon. He lost the rest of his sentence. In fact, he lost his mind. He could only scream.
Few people ever stop to consider the intratiencies of the human shoulder. Place your hand on one of your shoulder blades: feel the ball of your joint roll, your tendons and muscles retract and stretch, things you can’t even name moving around under your skin. Now imagine something, an object, a knife, impaling that complicated structure. Agony, pure and simple.
Theodore stumbled backward from the bed, his screams of pain coming in short quiet bursts as he tried to turn to look at what it was that had stabbed. As he turned, he saw the old woman, Claire, stepping away from him, holding her hands in front of her like she was the guilty party and you bet your ass she was fucking guilt. Theodore glimpsed it, sticking out of his shoulder blade: the handle to a letter opener. He groped at it, screamed as he moved his back, missed the handle by mere inches. He kept turning in circles trying to get at it, like a dog who just can’t catch its tail. Finally, he got it, taking it roughly in hand and not being able to help but dig it around in his shoulder as he extracted it. A solid wail left his throat, and it was out, it was in his hand, it was a weapon.
A fucking letter opener against the cruelties of the old. Theodore gripped it tightly. It was slippy with his own blood.
Good luck, a voice said.
Father O’Malley had spent the whole time getting himself sat up and getting the pistol pointed in Theo’s general direction. Theodore stumbled away, arms covering his face, hunkering and turning sideways, trying to present a smaller target. The old man pulled the trigger and a bullet sailed past his target. The old man didn’t wait to aim before he pulled the trigger again, and again, and again, and the recoil sent the bullets careening on random trajectories. None hit Theodore. However, one of them, or several—Theodore found it hard to pay attention in the chaos, so he couldn’t be sure—one or more of the bullet hit Claire. She uttered a gasp, perhaps surprised that her ally had shot her. She stumbled back into the wall, bleeding, but Father O’Malley didn’t stop firing on her account. The old man was screaming like a old mangy bird of prey and he kept pulling the trigger even after the magazine was empty, then he stopped pulling the trigger, at which point Theodore took a peak to find that the old man was replacing the spent magazine with a full one.
There was no moment for hesitation. The old man had the pistol reloaded, and was about to resume firing, when Theodore rushed him again. Without thinking he used the only weapon at his disposal to its fullest capacity, stabbing the old man in the chest with the letter opener. The old man made a surprised noise, and Theodore let go out of the letter opener. The old man still pulled the trigger, and the shots fired past Theodore’s side, just barely missing him. Theodore grabbed the pistol and jerked it out of the old man’s hands and dropped it just as fast because his hand was suddenly shredded, the palm in tatters and bleeding and the bones peaking through like they were fossils encased in the red meat of his flesh.
He realized dimly that it was because of the slide on the pistol, which slid back lightning fast with each shot to eject the spent casing. It alone had fucked him up worse than either people.
But the threats, it seemed, had been eliminated. The old priest was staring at him, not dead but useless. As Theodore spun around, he found that Claire wasn’t moving.
Theodore left the room holding his injured hand to his chest. He emerged onto a hall. His ears were ringing and he didn’t couldn’t hear anything and he was at pains to remember what had happened that day. Why the hell was he here again?
Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten, that voice said again. It spoke into his head despite the ringing and the general lack of sound as he stumbled down the hall, which had the unpleasant effect of making his surroundings seem less real than the voice. It went on, The girl… trying to jog his memory.
Oh yeah.
There was sudden movement on the stairs to his right. He swung around, and saw that two young teens were fleeing upstairs at the sight and sound of him, leaving a third abandoned. The one that they had left behind was none other than Charity, the girl he had been sent to find.
Face to face with her, he was at a loss as to what he was supposed to do.
Hi, he tried to say. He couldn’t hear his own words. The lion sent me, he tried.
She nodded. He guessed that she knew about the lion.
Get some of your blood on her, the lion said, and I can break Crane’s connection.
I’m sorry, Theo said, reaching his injured hand out toward her. He says I have to—
But she nodded again, mouthed a word, as if to say she understood and was okay with it. Grimacing at the pain, Theo flicked his pointer finger against his thumb. Charity shut her eyes as a bit of blood peppered her face.
There, the lion said after a moment. I can speak to you both now. You two should go. You’re a mess, by the way, Theodore. Get out of this place and take care of yourself before I have to intervene just to keep you alive.
Theo almost wanted to laugh at the insanity of the whole ordeal, but he held it in, knowing that Charity was probably under enough stress without having her companion look any more like a lunatic.
Let’s go, he said, still deaf.
Charity nodded, and they left through the door. There were sirens some distance away. Thinking they were for him, Theo wasted no time getting his truck started. Charity diligently buckled her seatbelt. Theo would take care of himself elsewhere, perhaps at the farm, if there were no cops already waiting there. For now, he just wanted to leave that large nice house—with all its corpses and survivors—far, far behind him.
This concludes Theodore’s PoV for now. The chapter will continue… soon...
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Hope
Junior Member
Posts: 96
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Post by Hope on Dec 24, 2018 19:12:31 GMT
Update:
The final part of Chapter Four is fully drafted! It was a difficult thing to crack, as I had to rewrite a lot of stuff that I drafted down years ago during the height of these scenes' conceptions, and I had to integrate pieces to this narrative that weren't even on my radar at that time. Not to mention the fact that it's such an important note in the story. So much foreshadowing is going to pay off here, and one big secret is about to explode to the surface. The finale will be posted tomorrow, I think. Christmas Day. I know it's the holidays, so I imagine everyone is quite busy! It'll be here when you're free, whether that's in days or weeks, so no pressure! I hope everyone has a good time and I can't thank you all enough for sticking with me through the frequent starts and stops! Here's to the new year!
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Hope
Junior Member
Posts: 96
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Post by Hope on Dec 26, 2018 1:21:30 GMT
04-06
Thomas
He had been having a good time and now he was frowning at the way Lana had apologized, sensing that something was amiss and that Lana was hurtly deeply. He himself felt like shit in that moment for not being able to make it right, when something infinitely more tangible rammed into his chest with the force of a car wreck, an apocalypse, a kiss, and he went down and—
You never really feel yourself go unconscious when you blackout this fast. There’s no fade to black. You simply aren’t unconscious in one instant, and are the next. Or perhaps it’s better phrased the other way around: you are, you are a person, you are a living human being; then you aren’t.
The Prince of Wolves
Pain erupted within the Prince of Wolves’s body and it let loose a howl. In a panic, it probed its body with its talons, trying to find the wound, the implement that had inflicted this great hurt, but it stopped itself as reason broke through the pain, which did not diminish but was recognised for the phantom pain it was. Realization came in the next instant.
“Thomas,” it said to no one but itself. The woman that it had followed and steered down the correct path was the only one nearby, the man having vanished inside the pyramid-shaped tomb. The prince and the woman had not been able to proceed through the threshold after the man, and they had waited there together, corporeal creature and unseen spirit watching the same odd light pouring from opening in the pyramid. The woman, of course, could not hear it as it spoke, but she might have sensed the magnitude of its pain, the desperation of that one word, as a tremor in the air. Molecules excited, shaking.
The prince did not want to leave, did not want to miss what was happening, but there was no way that it could remain with Thomas in such obvious peril. He wasn’t dead. Not yet. But there was no time to spare.
The prince swiped its talons through the air and a doorway appeared from nothing. The prince passed through, leaving the scene in the cemetery behind and finding itself in the hexagonal crystal chamber that it had explained to Thomas was a Crossroad, neglecting to delve further. If it had, the prince might have broadly described a Crossroad as a place between places, such as worlds, castles, times. It could be a portal for physical matter; it could be a state of mind, a hatchway between depression and mania. This Crossroad, in particular, was a bridge between Thomas’s bodies, to be used by the prince. Yes, that was bodies, plural: the one in the diner, dying, and the one in the Divine Dream, not dying; in fact, that one appeared perfectly uninjured, perfectly vacant.
There were six sides to the chamber, but only two different images: Thomas’s body in the Dream, lying in the chapel backroom that he had locked himself in the last time he had been Dreaming; the other was of the diner, with Thomas lying on the floor again, but this time with people around him, that woman named Lana shielding him from the falling with her body.
Floating at the center of the Crossroad and balling its talons into a fist, the prince pulled.
Thomas—at least, what constituted Thomas’s consciousness—floated through one of the crystal facets at the prince’s behest. The man’s body remained in the diner however, still bleeding to death, and in the chapel, unharmed, seemingly asleep.
The prince reached into Thomas’s chest wound and grabbed a talonful of gore.
What the prince did next was its specialty.
Lana
Chaos: glass exploding in soprano-high percussions and falling all around like a opaque storm of hail and peppering her back like pebbles and people screaming and shouting together at each other to god to their mothers and the gun barking here and there mercilessly and and—
None of it mattered. To Lana, as she lay on top of Thomas’s limb body, it wasn’t chaos and it wasn’t good but it was as close to the end of the world you could get without slipping past the point of no return. Too many sounds to ever listen to. Too much to see to ever process. It was like being inside the eye of a hurricane, the storm walls towering and incomprehensible around them, but there was a something solid to hold onto, there was Thomas, good handsome stupid kind dying Thomas if she didn’t love him she didn’t care she loved him.
His head had struck hard against the checkered tile. That she remembered. And the smell of his blood like coins in her sinuses? In her mouth? The deep dark red that flowered on his chest and flowered on hers by proxy and was hot and sticky and so fucking red did she mention that? That she would never forget. That consumed her. That was her whole world, for this eternity.
But the next eternity
The next moment
This moment
(This moment, in which Clive took someone’s hand and planted his feet if he even had feet and pulled and—)
(This moment, in which the prince grabbed a talonful of gore)
(This moment, in which Ahlukin’s lips drew into a tight frowning line)
(This moment, in which Pittman paused to reload)
(This moment, in which the king enjoyed two small but worthwhile victories)
(This moment, in which Tyler dared to lift his head from the bathroom floor)
(This moment, in which Jay and Hector choked on fur)
(This moment, in which Morina woke from her nightmares and screamed and the nurses—)
(This moment, in which the one true god Lord Entropy laughed, LAUGHED)
In this moment, bridged by Crossroads and fantastic crystal televisions and textboxes and cellphone cameras and harmonized human terror, the body under Lana heaved. Its chest expanded with an inhale large and full and impossible and its back arched so that she was lifted inches higher. Then the body wasn’t a body it was Thomas and Thomas poured every measurable wisp of breath and refound life and sheer blind will into one singular task as if was the last thing he would ever fucking do.
He screamed.
He screamed with his entirety. With everything that was him.
Lana pushed herself off Thomas so that she could see him and do something, anything. Her eyes flashed to the gaping hole in Thomas’s chest an instant before it spewed blood like vomit and then Lana was blinded and coughing and drowning and Thomas seemed to be fighting her or convulsing. Like that, the eye of the hurricane had collapsed and it was all around them, the bullets were back and the splinters of wood and confetti blasts of insolation and wall tile but the screaming had never ended, there was just a new overpowering voice in the choir.
He screamed and screamed and screamed Lana’s name and screamed obscenities and screamed as if screaming was an exercise that would burn up every calorie in his body and would not stop there and would consume him until he eventually imploded upon himself and vanished with a final wail. But he didn’t vanish. Lana felt him solid as she clutched him and tried desperately to hold him still and to stem the unnatural torrent of blood that sprayed between her fingers. Like trying to block a garden hose on full blast. He bucked. He fought. Lana managed to wipe her eyes with her arm, and through a red film, she saw that his eyes were clenched and his face was twisted in agony and he was clawing at his skull and tearing out his own hair.
Lana gave up on the wound, which continued to spew like a small red geyser, and she tried to grab his hands. She got her fingers around both of his wrists and attempted to restrain him before he did any more damage to himself or scratch his own eyes out, but he was too strong, too wild, too much for her. Yet she tried, tried to contain him. Then suddenly it felt like needles were coming out of nowhere, out of him, piercing her palms and fingers. She let go. She saw
Quill-stiff hairs emerging from every pore of Thomas’s body
Blisters forming where there weren’t pores
Popping and bleeding and new silky hairs straightening and hardening
A veritable coat of fur growing from Thomas’s skin
Lana tried again to hold Thomas still and this time he threw her off him. Her head struck the counter and her eyes shut involuntarily. When she opened them, she realized that she was not alone in dealing with whatever the fuck this was. Two of the diner’s other patrons had somehow noticed them despite the chaos. Two burly men. They seized Thomas and tried to pin him down. They were having a good go at it when one of the men stumbled away from the scuffle, clutching at his neck. It was then that the other man let go and clutched his stomach and threw his mouth open and seemed to scream but his scream couldn’t even be heard of Thomas’s perpetual cries.
Lana saw it, the claws. The claws that sprouted not from Thomas’s fingernails but from the first knuckles.
A bullet exploded the nearby pastry display and fragmented plastic and pastries showered over Lana.
She couldn’t move, not to brush the debris from her hair, not for anything.
Thomas was no longer Thomas, he was a shaggy black carpeted totum that was screaming and cutting himself to ribbons. His clothes hung from his elongating limbs in tatters. He was hit in the shoulder by another bullet, and he fell to the tile in a writhing heap. Lana was moving, then, toward him, but Thomas was up and stumbling through the diner before she could reach him.
He went through the doors.
She followed, not thinking, leaving the safety of cover behind.
As Thomas loped through the parking lot, he left his shoes behind, his feet misshapen in his socks.
“Thomas—” Lana began.
Another bullet. It went through Thomas with a gush of blood and embedded itself in the building three feet from Lana’s head. Stone work and blood and flesh tissue rained over her and she fell back against the building. Amidst the storm, she saw a muzzle flash on top of the playground equipment in the distance. It was wrong, pure wrong, that the shooter would pick a place of fun and play for their perch, that it would be the place Thomas and Lana had shared a moment together weeks ago.
Thomas merely staggered from the shot, falling to his hands—what were once hands—and knees with a sick groan.
“...lan… a… His voice was shaking, no more than a whimper. His face, as it turned toward her, was unrecognizable beneath a mass of blood and hair and was in the process of contorting into an obscene, inhuman mask. “...elp…”
But she couldn’t help. Another bullet. Another shower of gore and powderized brick and mortar. He grunted her name again as a single syllable, again as he grew and grew, again as his remnants of his t-shirt and jacket split and tore, again as his jeans followed suit, her name again and again and again until his voice was an incomprehensible animal noise.
Then, it stopped. It appeared dead. The sniper stopped shooting, too.
What laid sprawled on its side in the parking lot was no longer human, no longer Thomas. The giant form was covered snout to flank in black fur stained darker by its own blood, illuminated only by floodlights.
Thomas
Thomas’s transformation lasted one minute and forty-eight seconds, but that word, ‘transformation,’ doesn’t sum up the experience, the acquisition of mass from god knew where, the sensation of having his body twisted into a shape that was not his own, the pain flaring throughout his altered form which would have been unimaginable to him moments before the first shot.
Growing pains. Hundreds of thousands of strands of hair pushed through pores too small, bones that grew and broke and healed differently, wrongly, flesh stretched taut, muscles formed and fired. Accompanying the pain was blood. Gallons of blood. Multitudes more in volume than the few liters his human body was supposed to contain. His eyes—also in a state of metamorphosis, of change, however mild by comparison—were covered by blood, and he couldn’t see.
More changes occurred, even as he lay in the parking lot, consciousness fading, death sure to greet him soon, the sights of things which were definitely not his hands—bearing claws that were still slowly, almost serenely, emerging in curving trajectories to scratch against the asphalt—before his bloodied vision as the mercy of unconsciousness finally came and took him...
...to a chamber made of crystal. Crystal floor below, crystal ceiling above. Not entirely unlike his last visit, three of the six panes of the chamber were devoted to a view of the chapel of his dreams, where in the back room lay a four-legged, black-furred, monstrous animal. The remaining three, he took in with a glance over his shoulder, were, unlike the last time, devoted to the diner’s parking lot and a monster of similar shape that was lying in a pool of its own blood.
Thomas himself was oddly motionless, but his mind was reeling from the memory of pain. He remembered it clearly, too clearly, and the faintest echo seemed to have followed him here. There were questions, perhaps answers in what had just occurred. Dots tried to align—his car crash, his survival, the Prince of Wolves’s declarations of friendship, Tyler Gavins’s monster from the paper, the plaster cast that could have definitely been made by the… paws, claws… that he had seen just before finding himself here—but connections failed to materialize, and new questions sprung forth. His mind was so preoccupied it took him a long time to realize the prince was hovering in front of him, its skull-mask just one foot away and leveled with his face.
Thomas looked down and saw that the prince’s taloned hand was submerged in his chest wound up to its thin, scaly wrist. “Why are you doing that?” he asked.
“It’s part of the process,” the prince answered.
Thomas looked it in the eyes, but it didn’t have eyes. The longer Thomas stared into the empty black sockets of its skull, the more he was certain of something awful. “You’re a demon,” he said.
“I’m your ally,” the prince said, not refuting Thomas’s statement. “I haven’t done this without reason, Thomas. It was to save you. I know, perhaps, you won’t trust me afer tonight, but believe me when I say that I didn’t want to trigger the transformation in this manner. The last time I did—”
“The last time,” he repeated hoarsely.
“—you had been drugged by Pittman, and mortally injured in a car accident. You were entirely out of it, unaware of the whole process. I protected your mind as best I could. You slept easy in the Crossroads, deeply, without dreams, as I took control and dealt with Pittman.”
“You possessed me.” His tone was flat.
“Yes,” the prince agreed. “But I did it to save you, and to drive Pittman stark mad. I should have killed him, then and there. I’m sorry that I didn’t. I didn’t want to kill, not without your consent to use your body for such a purpose. He came back, it seems. I suspect it’s the lion’s doing.”
“Pittman’s the shooter?”
“I believe so.” Its hollow stare betrayed no emotion, but its tone did. Regret, perhaps. “I’ll have to deal with him. Perhaps in a... final sort of way. So you must understand why I won’t ask for your permission.”
“Because I’d say no to the killing part.”
“Exactly, you idiot.” The levity felt a bit forced. The prince pretended to cough. “Anyway, do you understand your role in what’s to come?”
Thomas had to think about it, but it came back to him. “I’m supposed to gather the others in the dream.” He glanced at one of the chamber’s walls, at the beast lying deathly still in the parking lot. “Will I be myself there, in the Divine Dream? Will I be human?”
“No,” the prince said, clearly sorry for Thomas’s predicament. “But you’ll find the form useful in what’s to come, despite the unpleasantries of, well, having your shape so rudely altered. Speed like no creature. Strength like nothing of flesh. And lots of teeth. Your abilities will be instrumental in the fight against the lion. You’d do well to figure those abilities out—after you learn to walk again, of course.”
On that note, the Prince of Wolves pulled its talons out of Thomas’s chest wound. With one dripping talon and Thomas’s blood, it retraced the existing design on the skull that was its face. Drops of blood coursed down the skull like tears.
“Good luck, Thomas,” the prince said quietly. “We’ll need you in this war.”
He had so many questions, a pressing need for clarification that would not be fulfilled now, and perhaps never. But there was one thing he could ask. “Am I on the right side?”
The prince was silent for a time. “I don’t know,” it said at last. “I think that we are. I trust in Ahlukin’s vision—a pity I have no time to share it with you. We must part ways now. Watch over the Dreamers, Thomas, and I’ll protect those in your world.”
The Prince of Wolves passed through one end of the chamber and was gone before Thomas could ask it who Ahlukin was. Thomas turned, and lacking other options, he stepped through the facet, into the Divine Dream.
Lana
There was utter stillness outside the diner for precisely two minutes, a silence interrupted only by the panic still rising from the diner’s interior, the cautious investigations—was it over? was the shooter gone, done, dead? have I been shot? no, you’re fine, it’s just splinters; what the hell is that, in the parking lot? why’s that man naked? holy shit, Tyranno; shut up, Hector, don’t even start, Jay; you’re a fucking shapeshi—; hush, my dude; where’s the sheriff? has anyone called the sheriff? help me, help; oh fuck, he’s—
It was all background to Lana as she sat where she had fallen, her back to the building, blood and tissue and dust splattered all over her. There were excited whispers. Traumatized ravings. The press of silent voices. Moaning. What commanded Lana’s attention, what awaited comprehension like a folder too large and too full to ever read in its entirety, was the thing that had become of her boyfriend. The beast.
The giant wolfish thing.
Thomas, on some remote level. Thomas.
It stirred ever so slightly. A hind paw the size of Lana’s head twitched. Suddenly, like a switch somewhere had flipped, its sides inflated and rose in a large laborious breath, falling into an unsteady rhythm as the seconds ticked away. It lifted its heavy head. A shot rang out, and blood exploded from its head. In that instant one of its ears was obliterated. But it kept on rising, got its paws under it, and stood up shakily. Another bullet hit it dead-on, another and another, but it kept walking, kept moving forward, its body seeming to slowly warm up as its speed increased and it broke into ran and a roar like something prehistoric tore from its throat. It barreled toward the playground, its many wounds writhing and shifting as if inhabited by colonies of large muscular worms.
Lana clambered to feet, but by the time she had started running, it was already over.
It was an execution. There was no other word for it.
Rising up on its hind legs, the beast dove at the topmost level of the playground, where the shooter was positioned, and the whole structure buckled and groaned. Lana saw the shooter standing, reeling back, the long rifle useless at such close range, then her view was obscured by blood and sparks as the beast’s claws dug, dug, through metal as if it was so much aluminium foil. When the beast dropped back onto all fours, there was nothing moving up there among all that shredded crumbled steel, but something up there was bleeding, pissing copious amounts of blood into the mulch, as if every dam and membrane and vein in the shooter’s body had been breached and broken. Meanwhile, the deed done, the beast stalked away, toward the woods.
Its head angled back. It looked directly at Lana, where she stood petrified thirty feet away. And there was nothing, nothing, of Thomas in those glowing, green, slitted eyes.
But the shade of green, that was Thomas’s.
It turned, the green glow vanishing, the massive body lumbering quietly away into the woods. In seconds, it had disappeared. But it had remained long enough for Lana to realize that it was grinning.
And its teeth?
Sharp, bloody, large and small and overlapping.
Many, many.
End of Chapter Four
YEP. That happened. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them, as this finale was (by design) something of a clusterfuck. A large part of the next chapter will be spent dealing with the fallout and comprehending what happened at the diner and elsewhere. It will more or less pick up where this one left off, and we'll be brought up to speed on what was going on with the other characters, some of whom we only glimpsed during the finale (Clive's been busy lol—his PoV was purposefully obfuscated, and we'll find out why next time). Although I removed the act headings around the time of the move to Creator's Haven, the end of this chapter marks the beginning of a new stage in the narrative. Chapters 5-7 more or less represent act two. Almost half of Chapter Five: Realms Underfoot will take place in the Divine Dream. The Dream is an important thing, and hitherto largely unexplored. For a while now there haven't been many choices, as I sort of fell into a linear stride with Chapter Four. That's going to change big time, going forward. But before Chapter Five begins, we have an interlude, don't we? It was previously titled The Wolf's Confession, but it has had a new, secret name for a while, which I wasn't able to share due to spoilers. It's now called... Interlude to Fire: Memoirs of a Cosmic Werewolf. Yes, it's the Prince of Wolves's tell-all. It's all in first-person. You're going to learn more about the prince and Ahlukin than you ever did before. And let me tell you, it's got some HORRIFYING implications for the story at large. It's not finished yet, but I can't wait to share it with you all very soon, perhaps in early January. I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!
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Post by Tales93 on Dec 26, 2018 19:21:53 GMT
Wow! I definitely was not expecting that, but it is all starting to make sense now. Thomas is actually a werewolf type creature. Thomas was Clifford the whole time!!! That's how he survived the car crash, and why he was naked after the car crash. It might also explain Thomas's dreams regarding the wolf creature in the chapel. Perhaps that wasn't a depiction of his father, but another version of himself (his wolf self). Didn't Tyler's encounter with Clifford happen soon after Thomas's car crash? Was it the same night? This explains so many mysteries, but it also opens up so many more.
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Hope
Junior Member
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Post by Hope on Dec 26, 2018 22:03:33 GMT
Wow! I definitely was not expecting that, but it is all starting to make sense now. Thomas is actually a werewolf type creature. Thomas was Clifford the whole time!!! That's how he survived the car crash, and why he was naked after the car crash. It might also explain Thomas's dreams regarding the wolf creature in the chapel. Perhaps that wasn't a depiction of his father, but another version of himself (his wolf self). Didn't Tyler's encounter with Clifford happen soon after Thomas's car crash? Was it the same night? This explains so many mysteries, but it also opens up so many more. In so far as "authorial intent," the dream version of his father was meant just as a bonkers inside-turned-out depiction of his father's mental illness, with father-like-son symbolism. So you're pretty much right, it's more or less Thomas. And yes, Tyler's encounter with Clifford occurred in the night as Thomas's car crash. I'm glad it came as a shock! I honestly a little shook that nobody picked up on it, as I stole a scene from a well-known werewolf movie, An American Werewolf in London, in which the main character wakes up naked after his first transformation (which Thomas does). Not to mention to the fact that Thomas's father is described as looking kind of like the wolfman from the classic Universal movies 😂 Anyway, Thomas being Clifford also explains why Tyler hasn't been able to find the monster mutt—Thomas hasn't transformed since the first time, till now.
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Post by LiquidChicagoTed on Dec 27, 2018 22:30:42 GMT
Alright, if I had to guess what big revelations the chapter finale would have held, that would have been by far my last guess. Never, absolutely never would I have guessed that there is any meaningful connection between Thomas and Clifford. That is something I did not pick up on at all. Probably not the only thing, I would be surprised if that is the only hint I did not catch, but probably one of the larger ones. In retrospect, the fact that he is, for the lack of a better word, mentored by someone who calls himself the Prince of Wolves should have been a dead giveaway XD That being said, what really prevented me from seeing all the hints was Tyler's encounter with Clifford himself. In retrospect, I feel stupid, but I never ever thought of a werewolf while reading that scene. I know Tyler's narrative is not exactly the most reliable there, but I honestly thought Clifford would be bigger, more like an elephant-sized beast. That and the fact that the name is just so associated with a certain dog that a wolf never came to mind ^^ But honestly, this explains so much and hints at so much more. I think it is now a logical conclusion to assume that the Prince of Wolves is responsible for Tyler's current situation just as well. He once more strikes me as the most well-intentioned of the bunch. The Lion seemed slightly less unpleasant in his interaction with Theodore in the previous part, but I think it can be still reasonably presumed he is the worst of the three, whereas Ahlukin... I really don't know about her. She and the Prince of Wolves definitely seem to have different levels of care for the humans and the Prince seems to be the one with the most interest in them on an individual level, even if his actions might not necessarily be motivated out of compassion. But he at least seems to care for individual people in a very bizzare way, whereas I didn't really get that impression from Ahlukin. It is still too early to say that she is not well-intentioned in her own way, but I think it can at least be considered a certainty that the Prince of Wolves is more willing to personally interact and show some twisted concern for humans, even if I doubt Thomas will be particularly grateful. Anyways, the Prince of Wolves seems directly behind two of the three mysteries our main PoV's had to face, as Thomas' mentor and as the one likely behind Tyler's lack of sleep and while he is probably confirmed to not be behind the disappearance of Rachel and Alex, he actively tries to undo this, which means there is a strong connection there as well. While the King of Lions has Theodore and Pittman and Ahlukin has her knight in the dream, he definitely is the most active of the three. That being said, shocking as that all was, there is actually one sentence that caught me a bit off guard and it is about that one true god, Lord Entropy. Getting some Lovecraft vibes there, but if Entropy is the one true god, this implies there are false gods just as well and who could better fill that role but Lion, Wolf, Crane and possibly others. Speaking of, I am curious if there are others, which we might meet in the next act. And Entropy seems to be at least aware of what is going on and I am not sure if that is a good thing. But this holds big implications for the larger mysteries of the story. I definitely look forward to read things from his perspective and I am certain it will give me tons to think about
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Post by AgentZ46 on Jan 4, 2019 18:47:48 GMT
I actually had a moment where I was like "Wait... is Thomas Clifford?" My gosh what a turn of events! It's interesting to think about as Thomas later was the one who reported Tyler's father. He marks him, puts Tyler into a bit of a mess and then reports his murdering father to the police. These two seem way more connected than any of us thought. This is exciting! So anyway, great part, looking forward to the aftermath.
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Hope
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Post by Hope on Jan 4, 2019 21:53:00 GMT
I actually had a moment where I was like "Wait... is Thomas Clifford?" My gosh what a turn of events! It's interesting to think about as Thomas later was the one who reported Tyler's father. He marks him, puts Tyler into a bit of a mess and then reports his murdering father to the police. These two seem way more connected than any of us thought. This is exciting! So anyway, great part, looking forward to the aftermath. Just to put it into clear terms, it was the Prince of Wolves who marked Tyler while using Thomas's body (transformed into Clifford), put Tyler into a bit of a mess, then instructed Thomas to report Daniel. You're definitely right, in that they're really connected. And there are still more connections waiting to be made. I think you'll like where some of this is going. The Prince of Wolves and Thomas will have even more involvement in Tyler's life. Though not necessarily a good thing, it is sure to be interesting. I'll say no more.
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