The Classics Never Die

Participants:

delia_icon.gif luka_icon.gif

Scene Title The Classics Never Die
Synopsis Generally, it's not the way a girl wants to receive a male visitor into her bed.
Date April 29, 2011

Eltingville Blocks — The Brick House


What is the matter with me, Mr. Johnson?

Everybody isn't required to like Africa, you know.

I try to put on a show because I know he loves it so. But all of it - the hunting, the killing - terrifies me.

See here, this thing that he was talking about - the excitement - call it courage. The way he feels, it is a man's feeling, natural in a man, grows in a man, and makes him a man. Not particularly to his credit if he has it but something lacking if he hasn't. A woman shows her courage in other ways, - many ways.

The only light in the room is flickering from a small television set in the corner. The Snows of Kilimanjaro lulling the redhead, curled into a pile of pillows and blankets, to sleep. She wanted to watch it, finish it at the very least, but the amount of walking that she's done that day has worn her completely. Her attention is split between the black and white classic movie and a book resting on her lap, not the traditional bodice ripper that she's been known to read but a book on herbology.

It's still quite early, curfew's just passed, but already her head is bobbing. The far off sound of a klaxon not bothering her slumber in the slightest.

But, perhaps, something else might.

It's with a spark, a clatter, and a sudden, enormous BANG that a man appears in her room. Not by teleportation, no; by the sparks arcing from the man's coat and from her still-continuing TV screen, he must have… come from the TV?

Either way, the man is on hands and knees, shaking hard and bleeding copiously from his nose, and incredibly, incredibly pale. Panting, his hands flex on the ground as if trying to hold himself there. Has he noticed the other occupant? Not likely.

The flash of light from her television set and the subsequent bang is what wakes Delia her bleary eyes blinking as she tries to focus on the screen. The male form crouched on her floor receiving a long gasp and then a rather loud scream. He might find a book hurled in his direction, one that misses by a mile and lands with a clatter against the slats of her closet doors.

"Oh god! Oh god!!" After the initial panic of seeing him on her floor, the young nurse does see the puddle of blood forming underneath him. Vaulting from her bed, she kicks a towel up from a heap on the floor and catches it with one hand. In a split second, she's skidding to her knees beside him and pressing it against his nose. "Hang on to this, just… tilt your head back and — What are you doing here?!"

Who knows what her room mates would think. Still, at 21, she's more afraid of what her father would think.

Dizzy and pale, the man is somewhat slow in noticing the hurled book, but he does notice it, eventually. His head turns to look at the book, then he look back at Delia. He looks confused, and terrified. And when she is shoving a towel in his face, he tries to back away, but he's not getting very far before his arms give up and he buckles into the towel. Shaky hands take it and he presses it to his face, murmuring a soft 'spaseeba'.

The poor man looks a good deal older than she is — probably mid-thirtie — and is wearing a singed, crumpled white shirt over plain grey pants. His dark hair is mussed, blue eyes full of pain and confusion, and now that things are starting to settle, there's the smell of burning flesh in the air too. Lovely!

Staring at the unknown redhead, he stammers out something in Russian, but even for Russian it doesn't sound all that cohesive. He's slurring and stuttering, and frankly, he's this close to passing out.

"Aaahhh, I don't know Spanish.." she whimpers in response to the muffled words against the towel. "Uhm.. uhm.. donday esta uhm.. el banyo? Oo ay la bang? Uhm.. private g'day twalette?" She only knows the three so far, Delia's been a little lax in her studies. At least the last one should be somewhat familiar to the Russian man, even with the butchered dialect. Too bad he doesn't know where the bathroom is.

"Sshhh… ssshhhh…" That much is universal and a worried glance is cast toward her door. Too drowsy to even hear if Mister Logan, Sasha, or Tania are even home, she chews on her lip before turning back to the bleeding man. "Okay.. uhm…" Her words come out in a hurried whisper, "j-just lay— lay back.. keep your head back, okay? Uhm.. el head-oh back-oh?"

The litany of butchered language just makes the man look even more dreadfully confused. His brows knit, and he starts speaking in more slurred, garbled tongue. Now, though, there's a little tinge of panic to his voice, and he does the exact opposite of Delia's urging: he starts to struggle up to standing. Which doesn't go so well for him. He staggers and topples into the nearest piece of furniture, towel still clutched at his face, and he seems to be casting about wildly. "Gdye ya?" he demands. Gabble gabble gabble. What is he saying? Seesh!

The nurse can start to see the paleness of his cheeks starting to redden in that particularly splotchy way that comes with fevers; and she can also see the ring on his finger is white hot still and burning into his flesh. And he's probably going into shock. He's certainly not able to stay standing on his own, at the least, so he's probably not in very good shape. You know, on top of everything else.

The television smashes to the floor and Delia lets off another little scream of panic. Clapping her hands over her mouth, she sends a wide eyed look toward the door and jumps to a stand. If there was anyone home, they probably would have come into the bedroom by now or they're just not concerned with the level of noise. She does have a television after all. She is also fond of action movies.

"W-wait… Wait!! Just wait…" Hands help up in a surrender motion, she inches toward the sickly looking man and extends one arm. "It's okay… It's okay~…" When she sing songs, it really doesn't sound much better than a goat giving birth but the redhead is trying to be somewhat soothing. "Don't bleed all over everything~"

Reaching out, she places a hand on his arm and tries to guide him toward the bed. He's grabbed by the wrist and she pivots and turns to support him by tucking her willowy form under one of his arms. It's this way that she practically carries him toward the bed and drops him down at a diagonal slant. Both hands are held out, palms down, and she slowly waves them even further down. "Staaaayyyy… staaayyy…"

Delia's mystery man's attention zeroes in on the TV as his breathing picks up towards a panic, but at her shriek, he looks back at her, stammering words at her. He seems…concerned, but still afraid. The sing-songing does seem to get him to stop moving, and her urging touch seems to get the message across. In a daze, he moves with her, stumbling weakly towards the bed, and still talking to her. Slurring. In a language she does not know.

When they reach the bed, he fairly collapses onto it, shivering, and he stares distantly at her. "La…Lana?" he murmurs, seeming to be a little more soothed, and a little more delirious, now that he's resting.

Shaking her head, she pats her chest near her throat, "Delia.. Dee-lee-ah." Planting one knee on the bed, the mattress dips a little and she inches onto it to kneel somewhere beside him. "Uhm… l-like like this…" She utters in a low voice, pinching her nose in the middle and tipping her head back, demonstrating. "Do it like this… It'll stop."

Holding up a finger to him, the global signal to wait a minute, she gets up off the bed again and hurries toward the door. The bathroom (el banyo, la bang, or twalette) is just down the hall and the stranger might be able to hear the sound of running water for a moment before it stops. She's back almost instantly after it's been turned off, a small pile of sopping face cloths in hand.

Crawling onto the bed again, she folds one of them with a single hand and attempts to lay it across his forehead. "Here— Here you look like you're boiling alive," her soft speaking voice is much better and more soothing than her singing one, that's for certain. "Keep that one on your forehead… I have more to clean you up." A swift flick of her eyes toward the molten ring has her wincing but she's not trained enough to deal with that.

"Dee-lee-ah?" he repeats in his thick accent. He looks a little confused. But that can wait. It takes some doing, but the man focuses on Delia, and after a few repetitions of the movement, he reaches up to touch his nose and look at his hand. Oh! Look. Blood. He then does as she demonstrates, pinching the bridge of his nose and tipping his head back. And of course when she hurries out, he waits. He's not going anywhere, after all. (Thank god.)

Still, by the time she's back, he seems to have just passed out entirely. Too much, too fast, too soon. And poor sweet Delia has abandoned her bed and her attempt at sleep for a strange, ailing Russian stranger. At least she can never claim her life is boring?

Shoes are peeled off and dropped to the end of the bed, though his clothing is left on. Eventually, the bleeding from his nose stops and the redhead is able to wash off the stranger's face. "Are you Spanish from like Spain or from like South America.." she breathes, knowing that he can't answer because he's quite unconscious.

As she wipes away the blood from his limp hand, she furrows her brow and touches the wedding band. The delicate crisps of burnt skin around the melted piece of jewelry are carefully washed and once again Delia is off to the bathroom to find some sort of burn ointment, or at least something to soothe it. She gave it all to Brian.

When she makes it back to her room, the television is picked up and set back on the dresser. The cracked screen and broken corner are enough warning to the young woman not to bother trying to turn it on again. Instead, she pulls one of the blankets and a pillow away from the man in the bed and folds herself into a small huddle in the corner. The pillow is propped against the wall and she nestles her head against it, punching the stuffing a couple of times to get more comfortable before she too drifts off to sleep.

As the redhead drifts towards the stranger's sleeping mind, she finds his dreams are chaotic and spotty at best. The sound of a storm roaring around him as he surges through electricity as a thousand pieces of himself; chaos, confusion, heartache. A phone call in distorted, broken Russian — the feeling of his heart dropping through his ribcage. Utter loss, followed by a terrifying bang and utter panic and fear and disorientation. Her own distorted visage, blurry and confused as she comes towards him with a towel.

There's one distinguishable feeling throughout the dream, one thing she can readily translate: What has happened? It seems to relate to the phone call, his powers, to everything really. He's completely and totally disoriented. The images keep flashing around him, loud sounds and chaos lacing through it all.

Threads of crimson bleed through the walls, the black and white of the room that's only visible with the flash of emotion, like lightning. It's quiet, except for the sound of feedback every time his eyes flick in another direction. It's as though his mind is forcing him to focus on one thing, a spot of light at the far end. A multitude of tiny black and white faces, plainly a movie in black and white. Curls of smoke snake through the beam of the projector, filling his nostrils with the heavy scent of cigar smoke. Cherries, there's a distinct scent of cherries in the smoke.

But he is alone in the room with the bleeding walls, sitting on a metal folding chair though he can't exactly remember how he got there. He did somehow and the film is interesting, even though it's silent and there's not much happening. There isn't even any words, though the heroine's lips are moving. The long curls of her hair are swept back into a small snood at the nape of her neck, though a few wisps are left to frame her face. Her manner of dress is as risque as the long cigarette holder balanced between her fingers. Her teeth clamp down on the end but she doesn't inhale, instead the smoke seeps out from the screen and into the air.

As the man tries to gain his bearings through the chaos, he finds himself being corralled towards the light. His confused mind focuses there and seems to find calm, as the scene comes in around him, and he's sitting on his chair and watching a film. Brows knit, he rubs his jaw and leans back in his chair to watch, the relative chaos of his dreams starting to level out into a dull background roar. Even though the bleeding walls stand out in his peripheral vision, he's content enough with his mind's directive to watch the screen that he's not going to look away. He's a simple man, this one.

You shouldn't kiss a girl when you're wearing that gun… leaves a bruise.

The woman with the cigarette seems to be speaking to the man in the chair but in a moment someone else walks onto the screen. A younger man than the one sitting in the projector room, the lack of color within the images doesn't seem to hide the fact that the voyeur knows somehow that his hair is black and his eyes are a light shade of blue.

I'll try to remember that.

His accent is British, London's East End to be more specific. As the cigarette between his lips is held firm, he cups his hands and ignites a spark from a wooden match between his fingers. More smoke curls from the screen, like there's a machine of some kind behind it, one that knows when the actors are exhaling.

Well that's…interesting. The mystery man leans in, intrigued, before curiosity gets the better of him. He stands and approaches the movie screen, running his hands along the material thoughtfully and peeking behind it as he looks for where the smoke came from. He turns around, to look for the projector, starting to take more stock of the room, now that he's not quite so focused on the film.

The giant shadow that looms over the screen causes the woman to huff a long sigh and pull the long cigarette from between her lips. Smoke spews in mint fragrant puffs as she turns from her costar to the one touching her face. "Do you mind? You're in my light." Her face presses out from the fabric and into his hand before her free hand slides out and slaps him away. For some reason, he can understand everything she's saying absolutely perfectly.

Stepping out from the projection, the black and white woman shakes herself off and moves her hand to release the volumes of hair held back by the little net. She's familiar, even if it's only a blurry face before unconsciousness. She didn't seem to smoke when he met her though and the scent is off. She didn't smell like cherry smoke mixed with mint.

Your sense of timing, dear, gets worse and worse.

The man on the screen, though annoyed, isn't one to break character and simply stares at the interloper and the woman he is consorting with. The one he used to be consorting with.

As the woman addresses him in a language he can, somehow, understand, the mystery man's eyes widen and his mouth opens but no sound comes out. And when she slaps his hand away from her face, he stares at his hand like he's grown another. Then he stumbles back to allow her room to walk.

He starts speaking Russian at her, though somehow, it's not translating too well to her. Still, he seems to be asking her questions. Lots of questions.

Translating well might be an understatement, considering all that comes out of his mouth is a jumble of vowels and consonants that makes no sense whatsoever. The closest thing resembling a language it might get is Twinspeak.

"Don't bother," she says softly, "I can't understand you… you're in my mind, not yours. There was too much pain." Presumably too much pain in his body but she doesn't stretch her explanation that far. The vermilion color of the wall spills to the floor and seeps into her foot, spreading through her body and tinting it with color. Her dress remains a stark white. The color of her skin, though pale, takes on a healthy glow. The majority of the crimson shade streaks through her hair, tinting it from root to tip.

The garbled speech dies off at her explanation and he touches his mouth in confusion. Then he tilts his head, curious, thoughtful, watching her gain color. It's taking him a while, but he finally digs out a wallet from his back pocket, to open it up and point to some kind of identification for himself (all garbled, of course). Then he points at her, questioningly.

"I'm Delia," the introduction is short as she cranes her head to look at his identification. There's nothing for her to build on, even the colors of the card don't give her much of a clue. The face in the picture warps and shifts to look like the mystery man but ends in a fuzzy featureless mess. "We have time, you can tell me later."

She doesn't mean in here.

"Can you paint me a picture of where you're from? I've never met anyone from Spain before, I don't think Nick can even speak Spanish." The man in the screen flits a sullen glance to the two outside before turning his back on the both of them. He might be pouting.

"Dee-lee-ah," he repeats thoughtfully. He rubs his face a little, though as she goes on, he looks confused, and then deeply apologetic. He spreads his hands as if to say he can't draw, but after a moment, he sighs and looks around for something to draw with. A hand scrubs into his hair, brows knitting, and he shrugs at her. How?

Turning back toward the screen, she lets loose a little sigh and walks toward the back of the room to turn off the projector. "I know you're not real but… I'll see you again soon," her apology comes as the light flickers off, stealing the man in the frame from her. Her longing expression smooths with another deep breath inward, she gives the stranger a weak smile. "I'll dream of that guy again later." That sly statement is a promise, either to herself or (disconcertingly enough) the mystery man.

The redhead waves him over and flips the projector on again. This time the film that plays is old home movie quality. Grainy, filled with dust, wavey sound, two little girl running under a sprinkler screaming their little heads off. "This is me and my sister when we were little, her name is Lucille."

Her mystery man returns her weak smile with a confused one of his own. He might be mildly disconcerted. But as she flips on the projector, his attention turns to the grainy footage. His gaze softens a little, slight smile on his lips for a few moments. But only a few, before his demeanor drops into a rather profound sadness.

After a little bit of silent dwelling, he stands and moves to the projector, to try to figure out how to work it and make it project what he wants. Still, he's taken on a heaviness to his movements. Something drags his shoulders down towards the ground with an enormous gravity.

As he touches the projector, the image changes from Delia and Lucille to just a blonde woman’s face, smiling. The pattern of sunlight flickering across water plays on her face, as though she were underwater, but she’s not at all: instead, a glass wall arches around behind and above her with an aquatic scene drifting peacefully beyond it. Nothing but that, just a blonde woman smiling lovingly at the camera, and he’s staring right back, longingly.

It’s seamless, the transition that carries the mystery man from the mind of his host to his own. The movie plays only he is drawn into it molecule by molecule, in the same way as he traveled away from his home in the first place.

The time it takes is almost instantaneous and when he’s gone, Delia is plunged into complete darkness.

Her head jolts up and she lifts one hand to rub at her eyes, lick her dry lips and blink a few times. When she awakens enough to give a confused glance around the room, the redhead spies the broken television, illuminated from the ambient light of a streetlamp outside. Her gaze drifts down to the lump at her side, the strange man that exploded into her bedroom and left it a bloody mess.

“Oh crap…”

It really happened.


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