World's Fucked

Participants:

eve3_icon.gif zachery_icon.gif

Scene Title World's Fucked
Synopsis Friendship involves almost getting run over with a flaming truck.
Date November 8, 2019

All over the fucking place

It's all over the fucking place.


There are days that feel like they're three times as long as they need to be.

The first thing Zachery Miller found himself doing today was waking up before the sun came up. This in itself was not out of the ordinary, but now he cannot for the life of him shake the feeling that the sun should have set and risen again twice by now. Maybe that's just what happens when you spend a lot of time in a windowless basement.

Walking up the stairs in said basement, Zachery scrubs his face and opens the door to his Providence home hallway. It's dark. The place still feels barren, save for the office in which he's been able to receive and treat a handful of residents so far. Acting his job as a physician.

That's not really on his mind right now, though. As the door swings shut behind him, he half turns and blindly slides a latch into place at shoulder-height, then reaches for a key in his pocket - only to find a phone in the key's way. Its screen is cracked, and he finds himself staring at it while finishing the job of locking the door properly.

Immediately after slipping the key back in his pocket, forehead thunked against the door as he leans forward, he unlocks his phone, scrolls down a contact list to F and and types, dreadfully slowly…

Knock, knock.

A buzz resounds and vibrates on the surface of the roof of Cat's Cradle, the sun barely risen. An orangeish gold glow washing over what was known as the Safe Zone. The pale witchy owner of the venue below sits cross legged on the ledge, bloodred eyes staring upwards.

She was usually up early but especially on this day.

To reflect, meditate… apologize.

For her failures, for all of their failures each year.

Idly her hand goes over to snatch at her phone, the electronic device already blinking on and off and shuttering with the energy that emits from the former seer. The woman's eyes widen and she grins, taking a pull from the joint she holds between her pale, long spiderlike fingers.

It's the Boogeyman!

A snort and cackle as she taps on the screen and then hastily replies again:

Ahem. Whose there?

A wry grin makes its way on Zachery's face, as the frozen form of him stays leaned against the door where the wood grain might leave itself temporarily stamped into his forehead.

Annie.

ANNIE WHO

Eve's reply is speedy and she snickers into her hand and joint smoke wafts around her. The phone, a disposable. Fizzes and pops off. "Ahh drat." Eve swears as she tosses the phone over the edge of the roof where it lands and shatters into pieces right in front of Cat's Cradle door.

Reaching over to her messenger bag, the wild haired woman rummages around with her tongue sticking out, eyes wild in the light of her violent glow.

Pulling out another non descript black disposable phone she quickly sends a text.

Phone burped! Heheh

A noise distracts Zachery - like something small hitting a window sill in another room. Not moving from his spot, he glances down the hallway… but ends up muttering something about falling leaves and turns his attention back to the phone, sluggishly typing a response.

Annie chance I could trade you a couple of cans of gasoline for a spare bucket of coke I can upend over my head?
Also phone what now? Is this a new thing I need to be worrying about now? Technology that burps?

Eve burst out laughing, madly cackling rather as the punchline chimes in.

HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA
HAHAHAHA UR SO FUNNY

She MEANS it.

The mad woman types out another reply as sparks sizzle and fizzle up her shoulder and along her neck.

No silly, I BURP. My body goes all, ka-boom. You know.

Because CLEARLY he knows. But then she seems to remember that he had gasoline.

ARE YOU ON FIRE??!?!

A response does not come immediately. Because somewhere in the house, the sound happens again. Zachery moves away from the door, and into an excuse for a living room. Books line two different walls but cardboard boxes keep the rest of the room from performing its function.

When he finds nothing out of place, he looks at his phone again. Taps a button labeled Baby Monitr PRO, and squints at the video feed that pops up. It's a view of the basement he just came from, with one Adrienne Allen sitting on a chair in the corner of the room, pensively staring at the vegetables she's eating from a plastic plate, with plastic utensils. Nothing out of order.

He frowns, then minimises the app again.

Oh. Yes, the ka-boom.
I am not currently on fire.
Anyway.
Cocaine?

Puff puff on the joint as Zachery's reply chimes in. Eve looks thoughtful and down into her bag, there is a significant amount of cocaine there, somewhere.

Being not on fire is BORING!! HONK HONK
I have more than two grams.
Left a rave early the other night! GOT SOME GOODIES!
I can't fly with it cuz of kaboom.

There she is thinking again. On the how of all of this, well.. There was a simple solution…

Meet me in the middle you scally wag! EN GARDE!

Cackling to herself the former seer leaps to her feet and dances around on the rooftop of Cat's. Dancing on and around chalk lines, some spidering out to connecting… drawings. It's a mural of some kind. One Eve never looked at, not really. She had done it long ago and it all seemed like a funny drawing while she was stoned.

There was a sun in the top left corner, or a eclipse.

ENGARDE!!

Compared to the display of creativity and open air Eve finds herself within, Zachery's living room might as well be a literal shoebox. The groan he aims at his ceiling echoes in the hollow quiet of the decidedly less-than-homely home.

I live in Providence now. And I can't really leave for long.

He types more, but pauses to throw a glance out to the door with the locks again. 'I've got company' is typed out, then taken away again. 'I've got homework to do', same story, gone. Letting himself fall back onto his dark leather couch, he finally types and sends with something that could very nearly be described as actual pouting—

I'm babysitting.
Party for me, will you.

Where in Prov?

Metaphorically pulling her boots on, Eve shimmies down the fire escape to the alley below, a sizzling red form and lands in a crouch with her bag hanging on her shoulder. Right in front of a pick up truck she uses more so now that she might erupt out of nowhere.

She couldn't get her baby Roxanne damaged, well anymore that it already is. Sighing in delight as she fishes out a gram bag of cocaine and does a bump off her key before she cackles like a maniac and sticks the key into the ignition.

Just did a bump, coming at you fast.
Do you like mezcal?
Poppers?
The kids LOVE them.

Still on the couch, Zachery sits up and glances down that hallway again.

I am 44 years old and haven't really lived for about 43.5 of those.
I don't know what I like.

This could be an exceedingly bad idea. Months of doing so well, laying low, making progress - progress that could so easily be undone with a single extra variable.

A landmark would be better. One within sight of home, if out of earshot.

Meet me by the big tree out east with the hole in it.

You're old enough to be my grandpa!
Just kidding! My OLDER BROTHER!
Where were you this whole time, in a coffin?

She's serious but Eve still cackles and throws the cellphone onto the passenger side. "Big Tree, Big hole…" Got it. The engine kicks to life with a roar, the former seer had done some work on it when she was negated. It almost purrs like Roxanne but the exhaust kicks up still a thick cloud of smog.

Whistling, she presses a tape into the stereo and reverses out of the alley with a holler and cheer.

Wouldn't it be nice if we were older

Then we wouldn't have to wait so long?

And wouldn't it be nice to live together

In the kind of world where we belong?

Screaming the lyrics at the top of her lungs the dark haired woman zooms down the bumpy unfinished roads of the Safe Zone.

"OH WOULDN'T IT BE NICEEEE!"

As the truck hurdles down its path, one singular message arrives as a last reply from elsewhere.

And spending the whole time pretending I wasn't.


The big tree with the hole in it

Pine Barrens


True to the description, on the eastern edge of Providence, there is a big blackjack oak tree that reaches its branches high up in the cooling air of the year's approaching end. It looks like it was struck by lightning at some point in the past, ripped in twain, and the two halves survived long enough to send branches upward from each side, where they've since naturally grafted back together. It stands gnarled and stronger for the experience, a short distance from the road and with only one dark wood house in sight amidst the trees.

The wind sweeps calmly across pale, untamed grasses and pulls gently at what leaves haven't yet fallen, bringing with it a soundtrack of white noise that never completely dies down.

Zachery is only just now walking through the desaturated scene, anticipating Eve's arrival. He's traveled the roads between here and there more times than he'd like, and he wasn't about to wait out here.

He's a fair bit scruffier than the last time he met Eve, and even with most of him being hidden in a black peacoat, he's still visibly unkempt. Long days, bad sleep and no shortage of concerns. He aims his eye at the dirt road up ahead, and waits for the wind to bring him any signs of something better.

The truck has made it!

The truck also burps along, no real road out here but she's got it.

Smoke flies out from the windows of the vehicle. Good God, is it?
The cab is on fire.

There's a hollering coming from the wild woman in the seat, jerking the wheel about but she's not hollering in pain, she's hooting with laughter. "Oh oh oh! OW! HAHAHAHAHA!" Hair flying in the wind, she squints as the headlights catch the tall, skinny form of her friend. Sticking one arm out to wave, the distorted sounds of some wild ass rock song blares through the half burned speakers.

With a sharp sound, the truck swerves before hitting Zachery. Eve leans forward on the wheel, bag in her lap blowing down on it frantically as she takes a foot and kicks the door open. Sending the bag which has a couple baby flames running alongside it flying into Zachery's arms if he so wishes to catch it.

Eve screams and cackles as she goes soaring towards the Big Damn Tree, eyes alight with excitement she twists her body and flexes her hands. A ripple goes through the woman and she sighs in ecstasy as her whole body explodes right before impact with the tree. She hovers there, fine red mist wafting around the tree, some parts of it beginning to smolder from the heat that emits from within her.

Fzzzttt! Pop!

The cloud of red pulls away from the tree and bobs towards Zachery.

For all of the madness that comes careening into view, Zachery stays frightfully still, one eyebrow coming up in piqued interest. For a moment it looks like his survival instincts may fail him one final time - his lungs emptying with an uncertain "Whh-". A proverbial deer in the literal headlights.

When the truck swerves, he seems - still somewhat convinced it hasn't, standing frozen, eye twitching, only for a bag to hit him square in the stomach. This, finally, sends him falling onto his ass, blinking blearily toward whatever the fuck is going on with Eve.

He just sits in the grass, utterly confused, turning his head sideways to watch whatever the fuck Eve is doing. What Eve IS. At least, until smoke starts rising from the bag in his lap and into his monocular vision. "Fuck-shitfuck!"

PatpatpatPATPATPAT! "Eve!" The name leaves him the same way the curse words did, alarmed and frantic. "What a fucking entrance!"

Eve is use to that reaction to her newly acquired gift by now.

"Did somebody order a hot time!" She finally speaks as the woman pulls her molecules together to form the pale woman with messy dark hair before Zach. Eve shorts and does a twirl, patting a flame down on the sleeve of her dress. The piece of clothing has so many scorch holes in it already it's a wonder it hasn't started completely coming off of her.

"Ooh ow pow!" Eve does a dance move of some kind and her whole body rolls, because she rolls on the ground. Rolling all the way to where Zachery sits leaving scorch marks and smoke in her wake. "Let's seeee."

Her hand darts into the smoking bag and she pulls out a rather big baggie of a white substance. Rapidly she empties a little on other hand and shoves it under her nose and takes a deep rip. Eve's whole body glows as she ingests the drug she might even explode, again.

But there's no time for that, there's more cocaine emptied on her hand and she shoves the little pile under Zachery's nose without further ado, "Embrace Eternity!"

Eve does nothing to explain her condition.

There are no words that leave Zachery, even if his mouth remains open. He is watching a show, and it would be rude to interrupt.

But then suddenly, there's audience participation! With knitted brow and shock still clearly on his face, he - leans forward and embraces eternity. Or, at the very least, cocaine.

A graceless scrub of knuckles under his nose later and he can breathe again, starting with an inhale that looks like it might just crack his ribs open if he filled his lungs any further. Whoof. Okay. Never once looking away from Eve, he clears his throat and sits up a little straighter, a little more alert. "We have got to keep meeting like this." Then, without pause, smoke rising around them as a grin finds itself creeping back onto his face, "Eve, what the fuck."

Eve cackles wildly in response to Zachery and does another pump, rolling her eyes to the sky above her and grinning wildly as the wind ruffles the back of her hair. Crimson sparks leap from her face cascading down her shoulders and arms and ending in a buzzing outline around her wrist before fading off within her.

"I can keep that up!" She's already thinking of how best to ambush him next!

But she still hasn't explained her condition and well the drugs are pumping through her system and she just loves to talk. "I can tell you my story. But," Leaping to her feet and smiling down at her friend before she bursts into that cloud of red mist and surges up to the tree, depositing a corporeal Eve on the dying branch with a reverse vacuum sound effect. "You have to listen. Mmmmm?"

Unsettling grin.

Maybe it's the fact that he's never seen it in full force, or maybe it's the fact that both his heart and brain are going a little faster right now, but Zachery twitches back at the sparks.

Maybe that's a normal response, though, to a person emitting sparks. Probably less normal is that he leans in closer immediately afterwards, only to have her zoom away again. This time, rather than shock, his own grin just widens in helpless acceptance, one side slightly more than the other. Alright.

After a quick look downward as if to ensure none of him is presently on fire, he, too, gets to his feet with a start, blinking some of the previously dull day out of his eye(s). THAT'S BETTER.

His arms go out by his sides, and as he steps closer to the tree and Even within it, his look toward Eve is one of keen fascination. "Let's hear it! Your humble subject awaits!" His tone implies facetiousness, a laugh audibly waiting to catch the next breath it can, but all the same - it sure is enthusiastic.

"There was once," drawing the moment out, very dramatic. "A seer, she was a pale thing. Slender, kooky. Wild hair, about yay tall," Indicating well, herself. "She couldn't help but be mischievous, people called her an imp but there was much more going on beneath the surface of her tricks and games. Cuz you see, the shit that stirred in her brain pan just was not for mortals to see." Eve's eyes are wide and she stands on tiptoes, swaying "And see she did, the bad, the terrible, the utterly terrifying and some good too. For years she went, acting on the dreams that became visions that became reality. Dipping her head beneath the River of Time, drinking her fill of it. It drove her insane."

She hasn't stopped grinning yet.

"With the price paid, lives were saved. Apocalypses averted, maybe for other apocalypses. Heh." Snort, sometimes you had to choose. "And after the displacing of an immortal spirit and the war with lots of pow but way more boom, she settled. Settled though there was a mystery she had yet to solve. One she had been taking a crack at alongside her many other adventures. The mystery of her death. You see my coffin friend, She died. Right before the war in a tragic accident. Her First of Three deaths. Upon awakening in the triage, she discovered that an old friend had helped her. And left her. Someone she helped release from the bowels of the Company years before, an immortal. His name," Eve's eyes narrow and she ruffles the back of her hair with a roll of her eyes, "Is Adam Monroe."

The former seer takes a moment, wrapping her arms around herself and spinning to face the opposite direction. "At one point though she knew him to be complicated, corrupt even. Too much time living will do that to you." Eve adds as an afterthought, "They were lovers, maybe friends. Never too close, both wandering spirits. Not chained to any one location. It was ironic, given their names but they had never found an Eden." Adam wasn't someone that Eve was in love with, never. But deeply connected too? She had always felt.

"And so it was confusing and she followed him afterwards. Before she settled in a bar that hosted bands. She traveled the world. All the while searching for this Adam, searching for the Answer." Her face falls a bit, "It led her along a path, some light mostly dark. Very dark. She tripped into the line of sight of an all powerful force, a goddess or god. A deity that was born from an idea. Though I think it spreads it's own myths to enhance its appeal." While Eve might be slowly descending into even more confusing territory she does try to keep it understandable. Kinda.

"The Dragon began to haunt her dreams and then her reality and while the seer knew this was dangerous she also knew that nobody was prepared. So, armed with the knowledge she foolishly spread its message following every set up breadcrumb until it led her to a portal between dimensions that acted as a Gateway for It to gain Passage to our world." Eve blurts the last bit out in a flustered huff and smacks the side of her head.

"She thought It was the First of us. The Mother and Father and perhaps that is true but parents are not always the most benevolent. The woman knew this from her own," Flashes of Valerie and Eric, though she couldn't let herself get distracted here. "Her sight was taken and she pressed on, her foresight taken? And she pressed on, she felt she was doing the right thing. Allowing It in this world would be the only way to find a way to rid themselves of it altogether. Being on the same plane. And her gamble worked, some of her family came through the Gateway, It slithered inside too. But it slithered inside her and then she lost the last piece of herself. Her body. Blown to bits, into a million pieces but those pieces don't stay apart. Though they yearn too," Rubbing at her arms and coming to kneel in front of Zachery with misty eyes. "But for what she lost… she gained so much more."

Lifting her hand and allowing it to disperse with a soft sigh in relief. There a bloodred cloudlike version of her hand, lighting wreaths the wrist and bounced along her transparent limb. "And so she traveled home. Watching and still learning, hoping to find a solution. But little did Eve know, that Adam was still going to be, a much bigger problem." Bowing her head before popping it back up with a demented grin.

"And that's the story of how I got here! I was in Japan also and my whole family is now being held by the Immortal Blonde on the West Coast!"

Yea, that tracks.

Eve's eyes find a willing enough listener, Zachery having stood still the entire time she was talking, save for the occasional restless twitch of fingers against fabric.

There are a lot of things he could say. A lot of things he's storing away for later, to be processed as either fact or fiction. What he eventually settles on is something that's literally at hand. Her hand. He reaches for it, slowly, palm upturned as if in offer to help her up. "You could see vision, before? And now you do… this? Is this why you hurt all the time?" Fascination and something that sounds suspiciously like concern thread through his words.

"The future, yes. Echoes reaching back and hooking me in." Eve sounds like she misses it and there's a large piece of her that does. The former seer does in fact take the offered hand and pops up to her feet. "Yep!"

Eve as metaphorical and teller of fable as she is a simple deliverer of messages. Paradoxes. Honk honk. "By way of sniping my genes apart and remolding in a new image, to my person, but the organic way. Not that Gemini shit. I- I haven't been checked out. Doctors DON'T do it for me. White coats, stethoscopes, rummaging in your brain and your parts!" Grumbling more like it as she finds her footing and twists away from Zachery. She doesn't wanna hurt him.

The almost being run over by a flaming truck was a metaphor.

"I only hurt like this!" Pointing down at herself as she is now, "But I'm free as a cloud. Wide open spaces, lots of room to stretch have you noticed?" Eve notes the concern and she does more cocaine to top off that feeling. "I'm fine! All bananas in a neat, diagonal row. Choo choo."

Maybe it's the fact that she likes Zachery and his one eye. Maybe it was just her mind. Maybe it was the drugs.

It was definitely the drugs.

And her mind.

"I have failed my family. Didn't keep them safe. Adam keeps them in a castle. A Red Keep of Blood." Sucking her teeth in with a wrinkle of her nose, Eve is frustrated. There's a bottle of tequila for that, the wild woman digs in the bag that's finally stopped smoking and pulls the mostly full bottle out, taking a large swig.

Burp.

"Probably experimenting, looking at parts! If he harms a hair on their chinny chin chins. I swear to the goddess above that protects and guides me!" Raising her left hand in an erratic salute to the heavens.

Burp.

Zachery watches Eve with mixture of curiosity and a certain something pleased that makes it into the curl of his lips. Though talk of doctors draws a chuckle out of him, a guilty pleasure grin receding only just below the waves of current priorities.

Whether or not he genuinely likes Eve, the drugs are certainly helping. As would that alcohol, the bottle glanced at with thinly veiled temptation glinting in his one remaining eye. He begins to close the distance between them in a casual saunter that belies the new energy coursing through him, some of the dry stalks still sending tiny tendrils of smoke upward. "You should get on that," he says, a little louder than necessary, with overly content smugness threaded through his words. "Finding Adam. You might not have much time."

"Excuse me SallyPants?"

Eve too closes the distance between the two, breathing heavily. Her world tilts and she reads his expression, his smugness. Slowly shaking her head Eve grins and then frowns, "No,"

Not her drug buddy. "What do you me-" Eve's hand darts out to throat punch the medical man.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN!" Screaming loudly into Zachery's ear, her other hand poofs from existence being replaced by a swirling mass of crimson mist and light. Eyes wide, Eve looks from side to side in paranoia. Was Adam here? She thought to herself.

The first answer Eve gets is a spluttering of coughs, the result of a punch Zachery only just barely managed to pull away from enough to spare a direct hit to his vocal cords. Still, the fact that it connects at all sends him tumbling right back down into the grass. By the time his back hits soil, it becomes abundantly clear that he is now, officially, longer enjoying himself.

"Wor-kk- ghhkk-" he starts to respond, but something about a direct hit to his esophagus has him wanting to just lie there for a bit while staring up at the sky with a glassy lack of focus, both hands reaching up to his neck in order to press cold palm fingers to his skin.

"World's-" he finally and hoarsely manages between raw breaths, eye trailing its way back to Eve's face again with his expression having fallen to a preoccupied panicked stare, "… gone tits up, Eve. Rockets exploding, everyone's only got so mu-" whatever the rest of his words are, they are swallowed down in a flurry of more coughing.

The flaming truck still sits, on fire. Rock music blaring from the speakers. The mood switches though as the Bee Gee's Stayin' Alive begins to play. Eve taps her toe giving Zachery an expectant look as he tries to deliver a answer. There's a moment of hesitation before Eve leans in closer still, breath on Zachery's nose. "The Immortal, has eyes and ears everywhere. So many people, so many pieces, endless spider silk spun together. Can never be too careful. I'll show you tits up!"

Eve's face turns away and she goes to stand closer to the tree, laying a hand on its trunk. "I can't trust anyone, only my family. You're not blood or chosen. Are you-" Nude lips flatten into a frown. "Sounding like you know my problems! Sounds like you've heard." Eve is desperate and has been since this whole thing started.

Unsure of what's right and what's not. Whose lying, whose on her side. It's all confusing. Here in this moment, Eve can feel herself teetering over an edge. A line she hadn't yet crossed. "Tricks and pain, only way to get the truth. Did you know that Sally?" A jolt of lightning streaks towards the ground leaving white smoke lifting in its wake.

But Zachery's not even looking. He rolls onto his side, digging a knee into the ground, lifting a hand unsteadily up toward Eve in a gesture of — he's not quite sure either. A request for her to cease. A pause. While he catches his breath.

"I haven't heard-" For a moment, it sounds like he's laughing. But it's not quite that. It's too desperate, too cold. It's gone when he looks up at Eve and speaks again, words leaving him still strained with pain. "I haven't heard anything about you, or your family, or Adam Monroe! Do you HONESTLY think I would-" he chokes down a cough, clears his throat, Bee Gees still blaring as he shoves a hand against his throat. "That I would ask you out here for DRUGS if I was just going to taunt you about your family? Without so much as arming myself first?"

The look he offers Eve shows the incredulousness that's still present in his voice. It's the sort of tone that usually goes along with 'You're crazy!', even if he might be assuming that - at this very moment - does not need to be said.

"Absolutely! Stranger things have happened Pearly!" Eve stands there, weighing her options. The light within her body slowly dimming, no closer to dispersing now. She should stay calm.

More drugs it is. She looks mildly suspicious but quickly does another bump before tossing the white powder at Zachery. "Hurry, the Drip will numb your throat. If it hasn't already." It's her version of an apology right now. Eyes wide, they look from left to right. Hurry.

"Doing battle with an immortal and being haunted by a timeless spirit! Don't mind my paranoia mm?" Eve laughs sharply and dips her head.

"What are ya doing out here anyway? Isn't it harder to see with one eye? I use to see through no eyes," It's a thoughtful statement at the end and Eve looks up, it's a wonder this is the same woman who assaulted the man just seconds ago. She looked so innocent there, full of curiosity but Zachery couldn't be fooled by that. Eve's emotions always wildly in flux just like her body was.

The question of whether or not Zachery's eyesight is impaired is not answered with words, but when the bag of powder is thrown at him, he reflexively lifts a hand to catch it… only to have the cocaine go flying past, and hit him square in the face.

"Dff-!" This is not a word, but it leaves him anyway, as he scrambles to get back to his feet and keeps that one eye trained on Eve. And her movements. And her trying to stay calm. Unblinkingly and as if he's not entirely sure how he's survived these last few minutes, he adds, "I'm… living here now, I guess?" He does not sound committed to this, nor pleased.

"Are you-…" He starts his sentence the same way someone might run down the length of a diving board hoping to make it to the end without really considering what jumping entails. But. He's got something that might fix that. He turns on a heel, abruptly, away from Eve to look downward and fidget with the bag. When he turns back to look at her again, he's miraculously regained some of his energy, head tilting upward. "Are you serious, then? About the whole story? Everything you said you've been through?"

There is concern in his voice. Whether just for himself or not.

Mmm Eve would need to send him cold chocolates, for his throat. Yes that was it.

Being asked if the words she uttered had any truth to them makes Eve smile even wider, if it's possible. "I can't say I don't ever lie Pearly, but with this? All truth, all as I say it happened!" The woman seems to be in heavy thought for a moment before she turns her head back up to the night sky. "It's so weird to me," Lightning fizzling between her legs and down to the ground.

"We live in a world where the impossible has been made…. possible. Healing, flight, some people can even turn to stone." Eve stretches her arms out and closes her eyes, "Why are my stories so hard to believe? Is it crazier than a woman who can heal herself from any injury? Than the mind reader who sits on the bus next to you?" Her tone is less argumentative or more contemplative."I'm not asking for anyone to believe in God," Though some would say The Dragon is one already.

"It isn't," offers Zachery immediately in turn, clearing his throat one more time as he takes a step forward and throws the powder back to Eve with a lazy underhand swing of his arm. "No- you're right. You are absolutely right — you're right!" When he finds his grin again, it's lopsided and sincere, a combination of adrenaline and drugs and whatever thoughts racing through his mind sending a still somewhat hoarse chuckle out of his throat.

The concern, for now, is gone. There is something else that creeps into his voice, though, something that makes his question sound almost more like it should be a compliment, somehow, when he asks, "Why do I feel like people don't tell you that enough?"

"What did you just say?"

Eve's face drops and then she backs up, "I'm right…." A thoughtful expression on her face, diving forward to dig through her bag she pulls out a metal cigarette case and pops it open revealing a set of already rolled joints. She mostly rolled a batch when she was on negation pills.

There's a lighter somewhere but she squints her eyes real hard and finds it, lighting the joint and blowing the smoke upward. "I'm right. Nooooo, not me. The Horse is A Metaphor. I'm right?" It's not that Gillian, Monica, Chess, Luther and a host of others haven't said something to the effect that she's right but when framed in the way that Zachery does it gives her pause.

"You're crazy!!"

Cackling while she spins around in a circle, smoking away. Eve closes her eyes, "I may be right but I've done a lot of wrong. Lots of blood on these long, pale fingers." Holding up a hand to the moonlight, "Lots of crazy, that's my specialty. Can't beat the crazy!" HONK HONK. Knocking on her own head with a roll of her eyes. "Maybe it gets old for some people," A moment of true reflection, drug induced but still. "But I feel more and more alive every day. Do ya feel that Pearly? Alive?" Puffing away, the weed smoke mixes with the red vapors that emit from her. "Have you done bad? Have you done good? Maybe we'll be judged the same and thrown in the same place when this is all over."

Despite the drugs in his system and the fact that he's looking at the person who just punched him in the damn throat, Zachery stands nearly motionless as his eye follows Eve's gesturing.

When he's called crazy, he laughs, looking down at his coat and plucking some grass away from it as if somehow that should be the bigger problem in his life than the threat of madness.

"I've done plenty of good. I used to do good for a living. Still sort of do, even if I'm of the firm belief that good or bad, it doesn't matter, does it?" His arms go wide, shoulders up in a shrug as he launches into both a ramble and a semi-circle saunter in singed grass. Too much extra energy and nowhere for it to go. "None of it matters in the end, selfish or selfless, good intentions or bad, thoughtlessness or acting under the authority of some conscience? Do you remember when we met?"

He levels a sharp look at Eve's face again, maintaining eye contact. "I was coming back from a shift at the hospital, Eve. I'm a doctor. I work here, too, as a doctor."

This is, possibly, more than he should be saying. But the grin on his face implies that he's either not aware of this fact, or simply doesn't care in this moment.

Skkurrrrrrrt

"Good and bad. Light and dark, mix it Gray. Do I remember? Of course I remember Pearly," but then Zachery is saying dreaded words and Eve rears back with wide eyes. "A White Coat." In shock, she would have never guessed. Eve steps back and then lays on the ground and rolls away and then closer. "Paging Doctor Pearly, paging Doctor Pearl- Wait. Every time I see you we're on drugs! I hope you aren't doing open heart surgery while on nose dust!"

That didn't seem wise.

Back to the that her new friend is a god damn doctor. They weren't to be trusted, they with science faeries. Always poking and prodding and running "tests".

"Ahh needles, gotta take the blood. You aren't trying to snag some of my DNA are you Doctor Pearly?" Eve doesn't think so but one could never be so sure. "I don't consent," That should do it! "Met a lotttt of Docco's in my hay day Pearly, always wanna stick me. Throw me in a cage and swallow down the key, trapped! Ha HA!"

"Nnh," Zachery hums, extra energy having him run his hands down the lengths of his arms in a restless gesture of having to do something with them. "I don't do a lot of surgery anymore. Or sticking people. These days it's more sore throats, sprains and reassurances."

Sometimes there's still sticking, but, you know, sparingly.

"I get the feeling that if I wanted your DNA, I'd be dead and buried in a shallow grave long before I tried to stick my hand in that cookie jar. I might be slightly mad, but-" he stops himself, before his grin grows and he muses abruptly: "Shit. I think I just like you too much?" He barks a laugh, puzzled at his own words. "Wait. Why do I like you?"

A mystery!

"Well good! You can't do brain surgery on nose candy!" What a ludicrous idea. Eve cackles and claps her hands together

Reaching over to pat Zachery on the shoulder Eve just brand as she sniffles and licks her lips. Sighing in content, she nabs the bag of drugs and holds it tight as she shakes it and looks back over to the one eyed man. "You know! I just don't know! But isn't it wonderful!" Humming softly the dark haired woman closes her eyes and lays her head on Zachery's shoulder. "I like you too Pearly, maybe my first real Doctor Friend." There's a thought now.

This strange evening only further cementing the two's status as: weird as fuck friends.

"Did you hear about that space ship exploding?!?"

Snifffffff

Fin


Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License