Enter The Sandman

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Scene Title Enter The Sandman
Synopsis Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. The Sandman makes her home somewhere new, and it doesn't all go according to plan.
Date August 8, 2009

A Home In Queens


For a while, Ted thought that maybe this is what death was like.

He hasn't been able to move for hours. The draw of breath, in and out, could well just be an illusion, some wishful thinking. And though corpses, he's pretty sure, don't have wishes and illusions, well, hell. Who knows what death is supposed to be like? Perhaps your soul, your essence, perhaps it never leaves your body as it begins to rot away. Perhaps you can still see, hear, sense and feeling everything around you, trapped like this forever until maybe you become ashes, and even then—

Even then he's not sure.

But whenever he thinks like that, he can feel his heart start to race in his chest, boombaboombaboomba, and he knows he's still alive. He's still alive.

He's been staring up at the ceiling for a long time. Enough to watch the light change. He blinks— still alive— and sometimes he'll note the orange tinge of sunset, the darker, bruise colours of dusk, and now— now it's dark. Ted's bedroom is empty, and it's always felt this way, ever since Krissie died. The bed is a distant thing, even as he lays upon it, fully clothed, stiff as a corpse board. His fingertips tingle with numbness, and he can only twist them to feel the bedsheets under his hands. Never mind moving anything else.

All at once, his stomach growls. The sound curls emptily around the space. Silence descends once more.

He hasn't eaten since morning and he's pretty sure she's not gonna feed him. Not even a sip of water, and his tongue feels like sticky sandpaper in his mouth. Maybe he'll choke on it. But he can't choke on it. His kids are still here. God, his kids. She's with his kids. He strains to listen to the sounds coming from the living room. It's the tune of some Play Station game, one of Henry's that he'd gotten for his 9th birthday last year. Ted hopes that means he's still alive. He wishes he knew where Lilah was.

When the lights switch on, Ted squeezes his eyes shut at the sudden glare, and then the mattress tips, and something squeezes his paralysed hips, a weight on his lower body. Disgust wells up in him, nausea. If he were to puke, he'd probably choke on that too.

"I know you're awake," a low, feminine voice drawls, her body wiggling coquettishly where she's straddled. "And it's time for your medicine. Open your eyes." The last time he'd resisted, she'd tried to pry his eyelids open with her fingertips, so this time, Ted obeys. She's a strange looking thing, willowy, her eyes big and bright in a pale face framed by pale blonde hair, as white as snow. Maybe younger than him, he's pretty sure, but not by much. He can't respond. He doesn't try. "Me and your little boy— he called himself Henry, I sure do hope he wasn't lying— we were playing the video games. I put him to bed, don't you worry. I put him to bed just like you."

Maeve is dressed in one of his shirts, smeared with streaks of that fine powder. Her legs are clad in her own trousers, lanky limbs folded on either side of his body, and he watches as she rolls back the sleeves of her stolen shirt. "Your girl, though, the big one. She's got a mouth on her, doesn't she? I like babies, you know, my little babies. My baby girl isn't gonna grow up like yours. My baby girl's gonna be raised properly, and she's not gonna get all big like yours did."

He's angry. He's angry enough to kill her, of that Ted is pretty sure. He's never even hurt a woman before. His eyes swim with angry tears and anger is what spikes through him, not fear, never fear, as Maeve lifts a hand and hovers it over his face.

Her fingers wiggle, and it starts to snow.

The powder is as fine as dust, glimmering white, begins to fall. He holds his breath for however long, but he can feel it, eventually, the particles sucking up through his nostrils in deliberate curls, into his parted mouth, breathed deep, always deep. It doesn't make him sleepy, but it does sap away the dregs of physical feeling. Closer to death, ever close. Does this stuff go so deep as to paralyse the rest of him? Heart, lungs, eyelids? Who knows. He's pretty sure the people in Brooklyn— the ones he read about— found out eventually.

"There ya go," Maeve says, with a snake-thin smile, her hands wandering up to the buttons of his shirt, twisting them free of fabric, a slow reveal. "Now that the kids are put away, maybe we should…"

Thump.

Ted might have frozen too, if he had a choice in doing otherwise, but Maeve goes as still as a statue as that sound, like a body falling to the ground, reverberates through the house. She licks her lips, and even her tongue is pale, and does up her shirt. "I think your girl is bein' bad again," Maeve says, at a hiss, and leans right down to plant a dry-feeling kiss on his forehead. "You just lie still now."

The mattress bounces as she levers herself off, her foot falls light on the ground as she makes for the door, and he doesn't move his eyes to see her disappear around the corner. He knows that should anything happen, should anything happen to his children, he won't be able to hear it.

For a while, Ted thinks that maybe this is what death could only wish it was like.


Attack in Queens, Speculated Serial Killer 'The Sandman'

NEW YORK — On the evening of the 8th, police were alerted to a home in Queens wherein they found three victims of an Evolved attack. Ted Stroughton, and children Lilah and Henry, were found paralysed in separate rooms and severely dehydrated, having been poisoned by an Evolved woman earlier that day. Lilah Stroughton had managed to get to her cellphone while under the effects of the poison and alert authorities before being discovered, which, Lilah would later report, encouraged the Evolved to flee the premises.

The Evolved woman has not been identified. Able to generate a powdered poison from her person, she reportedly used this poison to paralyse the Stroughtons, and maintained this throughout the day. It has been speculated that this Evolved is responsible for the murders in Brooklyn of another family of three, which links to other similar incidences in the states of New Jersey and Delaware, having been nicknamed by local papers as 'The Sandman'.

These murders are being investigated by the Department of Homeland Security, who have not yet released a statement confirming or denying that this incident is related to the serial killer.

The Stroughtons have been released from hospital and have declined to give a public statement.


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