Participants:
Scene Title | If You're Looking For Someone To Pull You Out Of That Ditch |
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Synopsis | You're out of luck, you're out of luck. |
Date | December 12, 2009 |
Eve Mas's Mind
There is a full moon shining light down on the playground. Wind blows gently through the place and her dress rustles in the wind as she sits on the swing, her legs swaying back and forth as she moves, dark hair in a loose ponytail. Eve's light grey eyes travel over towards where there is a group of five girls holding hands and singing Ring Around the Rosie, over and over in an eerie and strange tone. If someone were to loose closer they would notice that the girls have no eyes, black soulless holes stare at each other and their skin is dark grey and cracked.
Hanging from some of the play structure are dead cats.. squirrels.. and a few rats, their blood littering the ground around Eve. "Ashes.. ashes.. we all fall down.." she sings softly along with the girls, one of them cackles loudly and turns her head to stare back at Eve with a dark look, her forehead furrows. "Come play with us." She says in a deep, throaty voice.
On the very edge of tangible perception, there is something here that doesn't belong. It stands and watches at a slope-shouldered remove the ring of girls singing and singing and singing, interested without anything so gentle as curiosity to mitigate the falcon focus of irises ringed in spectral blue. Their hearts are still behind latticed ribs and their faces are ruined — the animals suspended from the jungle gym crushed beyond easy recognition in the swing of slack paws and looped intestine that defines each of them.
At first glance, he's more intact than most everything else around here. And it's definitely a He now rather than an It — detail refines itself through the sleek cut of his suit, moonlight catching silver at grizzled hair and the grey bristled into patches on either side of his chin when he steps to wind its way through the gravel playground for her. It glances clean off the alligator scales ridged into his boots and threads through the pinstriping that divides shirt from suit coat; exposes him as a man approximately 6'2", familiar in all of the lean lines and harsh angles hewn into his long face. He's healthier here, and warmer — he even smiles as he approaches, one hand drawn out of its pocket as if to shake.
"I wouldn't like to play right now." She says gently to the little girl. "Maybe later." That's when the stranger is noticed.. the man. Someone who oddly looks familiar. The seer's eyes leave the little girl's face, who frown and hisses at Eve. Her yellow teeth showing as she growls at Eve before turning around. With a soft sigh, "Impatient brat." She says before offering her hand to him as well.
A black cat runs between the two of them, yowling as it does, the five girls are chasing after it. Moving abnormally fast, giggling and singing the whole way, they don't go far, the flowers sway in the grass but they aren't full of color.. they are quite dead and lifeless, hanging barely onto the stems they are attached too. "You never brought your cat to play." She says simply to the man, eyebrows lifting. Ms. Mas brushes a few strands of hair out of her face.
"Cute kid," says Deckard, rehearsed sincerity worn so deeply into instinct that dishonesty is near impossible to discern in the lift that hoists his brows into a tilt when he reaches to wind Eve's hand into his own. He's warm — warmer than anything here, certainly — and imbued with a youthful bass vigor that far outstrips anything she's seen in him outside of her mind's eye. The flex of his fingers is strong without being oppressively so, and for all that his hair is characteristically unkempt, his stubble collection is shorn down into a neat level and there isn't a crease to be found in the dark cut of his suit.
The unnatural blue of his eyes is the only off thing about his person, undead light glowing cold from some invisible source shored up deep in the sockets behind them.
"Not because I didn't want to," seems like the truth, meanwhile. His jaw tips up and aside, impossible eyes taking her in with a languid lack of hurry from nose to toes while a sheen of electric light pulses slow through his shoulder and down one side, briefly painting clavicle and ribs in stark relief.
"Then we have to do it soon." She says softly and then looks after the kids briefly before staring back at Deckard. "You're warm." While Eve is cold.. very cold indeed. Eve's dress glows faintly, the white material soft on her skin, the silver pieces of the dress shine as well. It's the only source of light here besides the moon above them. "How.. are you here?" she asks, with a tilt of her head.
"So many things are changing.. even for me.. in the world I know so well." The word dreams appears above her head, in the form of smoky dark letters, before the wind blows it away. "Have you felt it, the presence of the dark? The real dark?" Eve shivers and looks up towards the moon. Her feet still sway back and forth, her eyes flick to the dead corpse of a cat and her lip trembles. "What do you do when your slumber isn't peaceful?" Though Eve's sleep was rarely ever peaceful. Now it's just she's even more worried to sleep now.
One of the girls bounces up to Deckard and holds out something for him to take before she skips away, it's a crab.. a dark little thing which is clinging to a dead rose. "For you." She says in a equally deep and throaty voice as her sister.
"I am where I'm needed to be."
Flint says so when his ghastly glare passes briefly back out over the moonlit playground they're mired in, unholy blue never wavering. The darkness and the dead alike are familiar to him — the cat can't even earn a glance for himself before his eyes are on her, and so is one hand trailing gently up and around her side as a slow pair of steps take him around and out of easy sight behind her. Crawling heat radiates from his careful touch as more than simple human contact. There's something insidiously pleasant about it, simultaneously comfortable and stifling as whiskey warming up through the heart after the first shot of many.
Hard to tell if he's aware of it. He doesn't seem to be any more than he seems to be aware that touch that isn't asked for might not be appreciated. A breath fogs cloudy through his sinuses into the cold — just the one — and he tips his scruffy jawline down to regard the bare back of her neck.
"You're alone here, but you don't have to be. I can help you." There's no answer about the dark; no answer about restless slumber. His thumb traces light over the curve of her scapula, hardly there at all even as his free hand reaches to relieve one of the singing girls of her offered arthropod.
The warmth enfolds Eve and she gasps softly, her heart pumping as she turns her head. Nuzzling Deckard's chest, "Always warm.." she says softly and her body is relaxing, filling with the warmth that Deckard gives off. The surrounding area begins to be affected.. as if the wind is blowing away the night along with the moon. Her eyes blink as she keeps close to Deckard. "You want to help me?" She asks, though the answer is obvious. The grass and flowers around the them begin to come to life and the wind blows the corpses away like ashes.
Black flakes surround Deckard and Eve before they start to fade. The black cat runs pass them again and it's in the stages of becoming a healthy looking tabby cat. "Why?" she asks simply, of the man of incredible warmth. Her face lifts to stare up at his, her eyes unnatural light grey eyes bore into his eerie blue eyes. One more frosty breath Eve before the color returns to her face and she actually smiles softly, a genuine smile at that.
"Somebody has to help you too." Spoken softly, barely loud enough for Deckard to hear.
"Mmm," says Deckard, understated agreement voiced as his roving hand travels on, narrowly skirting the swell of her breast on its way to her hip and on to the small of her back. It trails up the base of her spine from there, a thrill of warmth accompanying the passage of callused fingers in place of the chill more commonly associated with the sensation. He's close against her — warm and strong — and presently there is a muffled, crisping crunch when his right hand closes firm around the crabling placed in it seconds ago.
It falls away to dust and ash through his fingers when he claws them open again, the wind catching at their lazy drift before the evidence is readily apparent at his side.
Especially given that the whisk of feather light debris occurs around the same time as his breath ghosts through the shell of her ear, frigid eyes open and owl blank in their raze over her shoulder and past her temple. "You can help me."
The children run past the two, their faces rosy and normal, hair and eyes normal. All a light grey though, they giggle at the pair and chase after the tabby cat, who meows and dashes up the slide. In the distance, as the moon dissolves in a wave, the sun rises slowly, the light of it surrounding the place. What once was dark, is now lit by the sun and all around the playground, are flowers. The meadow stretches for miles and miles. The scent of fresh flowers wafts towards Deckard and Eve.
Her arms encircle his waist and she presses into more, not afraid to be near him, to use his warmth. "Let me help you then." She breathes softly before she looks up at Deckard, face inches from his. Her eyes wide not with fear, but with feeling. A spark seems to have lit in her eyes and her skin looses it's overly pale color for a more healthy looking color and shine.
A few strands of her hair blow into her face, the singer makes no move to brush them aside. Too focused on the healer in front of her.
There's a quiet snkt at Deckard's side, right around where the crab vanished to nothing — an insignificant, scraping rasp of metal over metal that hardly registers at all amidst giggling children and the rustle of grass around vibrant flowers.
His quickened breath is warm on her neck, teeth grazing gently at the flush rising there before a softer kiss peels the flesh from the far side of his long face, exposed skull alight with an eery x-ray glow that ignores the sun's touch entirely. The rest of him is likewise sheathed in its own monochrome bands of shadow, pinstriping dull against matte coal black.
And for all that what he's doing to her neck is distracting, it's nothing to the nip of his switchblade up into and through the etherial fabric bunched under the stiff set of her sternum.
Once it's in, he draws it carefully down, down through the midline of her belly like a pair of scissors skimming through wrapping paper, and it's abruptly, abundantly evident that he hasn't felt the dark because he is the dark.
Eve let's out another gasp, but this one is out of shock and worry. Her eyes snap open and she sees the disfigured face of Deckard and her hands tremble. She feels the cold return as with a rush the scene of tranquility and peacefulness returns to its earlier darkness and coldness.
The children wail and grab at their faces, tempted with the feeling of beauty before it is taken away from them. The cat yowls and a few droplets of blood falls onto Deckard's head. The wind grows even more bitterly cold and Eve stares up at Deckard in shock and horror.
She tries to move away from him but she seems to be frozen in place. The girls circle around Deckard and Eve, thought it looks as if they are unable to touch the pair. As they are just shouting and pointing at Deckard. "Liar! Cheater!" They scream, their soulless gaze on the man that fooled them.
The flat line of Deckard's mouth knifes itself into a sidelong smirk and his sunken cheek fills in over exposed molars like a fresh passage of shadow. He's still holding her against him when brow and eyeball follow in creeping kind, in no hurry to reinstate themselves where bone bares itself lurid blue through the tips of his fingers and down the length of one leg. Mostly whole but never quite, he twitches his brows into a knit of concentration while his wrist guides the knife down another inch, unholy eyes fixed on her face, now. Her reaction.
The girls don't phase him anymore than the change in lighting or weather seems to be a bother; blood pats and drips down the arch of one overlarge ear to glide for his neck without him noticing. He's watching her. Reading her. Carving into her.
"Change your mind?"
The wind kicks up around them and Eve pushes away from Deckard, her midsection seeping with blood and her mouth dropping open as the pain falls over her. The girls howl even more at Deckard but then rush over to pat Eve's hair and her arms. Is she ok? Will she turn out ok? The questions they ask her, but Eve does not answer. Her gaze only on Deckard as she lifts her hand and staggers to an upright position. Her mouth tightens into a hard line and she cocks an eyebrow. In her hand is a cold, hard steel pistol and she doesn't hesitate in cocking the gun and shooting two rounds at Deckard at point range. Her eyes narrow, though she is losing blood and she staggers a bit but then rights herself.
"Yep, a shame."
Dust blows out Deckard's back in an ashen furl of soot and debris, one two. Eyes ringed glacial blue don't even blink when he breathes in and looks down to take account of the damage — lambent bone rolled out in a nebulous ripple away from the disturbed equilibrium of both impact sites. His rib cage stands out in stark relief, spine stacked solid from ilium to cervical vertibrae over the stiff of his shoulders.
For a few fleeting seconds, he looks more like a biology diagram than a human being, but the svelte black of his suit wastes no time in fading itself back in sans the pair of holes she just put in the chest.
He looks resigned. Bored, even, when his thumb crooks to fold over the blood-rusted knife in his right hand.
Light grey eyes shift to a milk white color and she tilts her head as she holds the gun steadily at the man, the girls stand behind her. Cowering, afraid of this intruder. The strange black cat hisses at Deckard, a few crabs unearth from the ground and crawl towards him. The woman's eyes narrow and she shakes her head at him. "Leave." She says and in that statement comes the power of her dream and her mind. Pushing at the intruder that comes in the form of Deckard, "You aren't welcome." She says and with click. She fires a few more rounds into him. The moon glows brighter and brighter with each shot she gives.
The girls laugh nervously, they've never seen Eve this way before apparently. The woman doesn't appear to be playing games with him.
The folded knife turns over in Deckard's long fingers easy as a silver dollar on the flop, and with one last tug upwards at the corner of his mouth, he twists in on himself and vanishes in a whorl of ash and glowing skeleton exposed by the plunge and rip of the last shot she fires.
Twin rings of orange float across the backs of her lids where his eyes pierced her last, and in time those too will fade.
With a snap, Eve wakes up and she sits up in her bed. Breathing rather fast and not being able to stop her from shaking. She looks out at the moon outside her window and she notices the crescent moon. The girl's singing echoes in the back of her head and indeed the imprint of Deckard's disappearance is still imprinted on her vision.. to fade sometime soon..