Participants:
| Scene Title | Let It Snow |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | The Cambria household receives a haunting. |
| Date | September 2, 2009 |
Brooklyn — Cambria Townhouse
"The weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful…"
It's the first few days of fall, and suitably humid and hazy. Cloud cover stretches over the sky, closes like a lid over a boiling pot and makes the air sticky with moisture. She has her hands out of her pockets, fingers stretched, so as not to let it gather in her palms and hinder her. A brisk breeze pulls at her fine blonde hair, out of the small tie that had formerly gathered it into a short, slow ponytail at the nape of her neck. Her face is free of make up, and despite the season, she sings softly.
"And since we've got no place to go…"
She steps up the stone steps leading towards the front door of the townhouse, so many similar ones like it, it would be easy to get confused. Maeve is pretty certain, though. She's been more careful lately. Tubbing her hands together, she ignores the way fine, white powder trickles out from between the two, smears her woolen jacket, the front of her skirt.
"Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow."
She knocks sharply, three times over.
Okay, Raquelle just got off work. Picked up his girls. Picked up a treat (pizza) for dinner. Got the girls at the table with their pink plastic plates and sparkly pink glasses filled with juice to work on their dinner from the table where they can see the TV and some Japanese show about fashion is on, in Japanese and they are watching and eating and giggling.
Raquelle is or was sprawled out in a seat, freshly showered with his hair wet and combed out of his face. He has no shirt on so tattoos and piercings are exposed, dark jeans worn and feet bare as he nibbles on his pizza. The knocking however at the door causes him to utter a sharp command to the girls to keep eating and tell him with Asuka Hikitori ends up wearing or something.
Door swings open and he leans against it to just stare at the woman outside. "Hey…I'm sorry, it's a bit late, we aren't really lookin' to find Jesus tonight…" He trails off and stares for a few moments, something tugging at his mind as he studies her clothing.
Her shins are bare to the elements, her feet clad in boots, a woolen coat concealing a worn sweater, her throat bare of scarf or jewelry. Her two hands are clasped up towards her chest, cupped together as if she needed to keep them warm, and her slow blinking gaze fixed on his face— she's almost as tall as he is, too— is distant and removed, the Mona Lisa smile on her thin lips having nothing to do with her words.
Pale eyebrows arch up in silent incomprehension, before she is turning her palms up to the sky, where chalky residue of something has come to coat them, up her fingers and down her wrist, staining her sleeves. Raquelle only gets half a second to glance at it before she deftly blows a stream of air into her hands. The powder is quick to respond, billowing up into a cloud, guided by that stream of air and into the young man's face.
Raquelle's eyes widen, the baby blues registering the white powder a split second before it hits him and he's stumbling and swaying. On one side he was just about to try to close the front door but he can only give it a weak shove. His lashes flutter and he inhales sharply. Well then, the children pipe up from the table about Asuka, but in Japanese then more pizza is eaten as Raquelle grips the door.
Maeve's hand lashes out, her palm smacking the front door and giving it a rough push against Raquelle's weaker shove. It leaves a perfect, white hand print behind, smearing when she moves with all the efficiency of someone who has done this before. It veers to grip like a vice up near his bared throat, fingers digging and a brightness in her eyes as she pushes, pushes her way inside, the other dusty hand coming up to clasp over his face, covering his gasping mouth, his nose.
The powder tastes like salt, iron, and alcohol. It trickles readily down wind pipes, makes a tingle start to form in the tips of his fingers, removes his own mind from his body in a sharp disconnect.
Her heel hits the door, slamming it shut behind her.
It is a very strange thing as Raquelle's brain flashes to a past memory…vision and he just weakly tries to shake his head slowly.
No…this can't be happening. No.
Those baby blues rest on Maeve before glazing over as he inhales and exhales and inhales and exhales, breathing in an almost wheezy/shaky way as the powder trickles down his throats and his fingers tingle. This is uber creepy but thankfully…he doesn't have to think about it anymore. It isn't like he can move.
The kids at the table pause in eating pizza as they hear a /thud/ when all 6plus feet of gay gothic hairdresser collapses. BJ sets down her pizza and Diana…well she's standing up on her table to try to see the door, which she can't because it is just down a tiny hall around a corner. "Daaaaaaaaaadddddddddyyyyyyyyyy? Pizza get cold now!"
As Raquelle's body makes a dull thud against the ground when it hits, Maeve allowing him to slip through her fingers as she turns her back, locks the door. A hum buzzes through the hallway, a gentle continuation of her song from before, as she takes off her shoes, politely, at the door. Peels off her jacket and tosses it aside, her sweater is quick to follow to allow for a wife-beater beneath, hanging from her slender shoulders, her arms long and pale.
She casts a twitch of a look over her shoulder, her humming halting at the wailing sound of a child. She steps around the sprawl of Raquelle's long legs, her feet delicate, and comes to crouch over him, rubbing her fingertips together to let powder fall onto his lips fast becoming dry, tickle his nose.
"You got a pretty pair of girls. I saw 'em a couple of days ago, playin' with their friends," she murmurs, quietly. "So I followed. I dunno their names or nothing, so I'ma go introduce myself. You can wait right here, mister. I'll be back for you soon." Raquelle gets a quick peck to his cheek, and then she's gone with all the flightiness of a fairy, though her foot falls are loud, intrusive. "Oh girls!" she calls out, as she lopes into the room. "Momma's home!"
It probably is a good thing Raquelle's power isn't telepathy. Because everything he's thinking is beyond the language they will allow on HBO. He blinks and wheezes his inhale/exhale breathing process and the 'girls'. That one word is like saying 'now I remove your spleen' . The f-word, the c-word, the a…okay he goes through the foul language alphabet in his head. He cannot squirm, he cannot yell, there is stuff on his lips that when he finds out it is there he'll freak out more than likely. But he's helpless…
BJ…with her caramel skin and her black and pink rocker chick scientist look just stares at the strange woman. She's a bit sister so she tucks her long hair behind her ears and tugs D off the table and kinda steps forward a little bit, eyes narrowing. "…um. Sorry m-ma'am but my mommy's black but-" Then D pipes up. "Maybe mommy turn white." BJ scoffs. "Mommy can't turn white!" D pipes back up. "Daddy say Mykick Jasson did!" BJ just glares and looks back to Maeve. "We're not supposed to talk to strangers unless they are on the A-List in hollywood and not George Michaels or anybody who's been in um, Refab? Rebab?"
Standing in the doorway, both hands braced on the frame, Maeve's head is canted as she listens, studying the two girls with the same removed interest, her tangled blonde hair forming a too innocent halo around her head, and eventually, it's BJ that falls under her calculating, blue eyed stare. "I weren't ever a black woman," she states, in her hoarse, drawling voice. "Wash your mouth out with soap, little lady. I'm in your home," and she takes a slow step forward, a casual sway in her long, lanky frame, "so I can't be a stranger, now can I?"
Her smile is snake-like in its thinness, her pinched features about as warm as eroded bones in the desert, smoothly shaped and pale. There's a tension in her body, like a coiled snake waiting to strike. "Now, why don't you come over here and we can get to know each other?"
Raquelle really can just lay there…
But BJ eyes Maeve now more suspiciously and she picks up a glass of juice very carefully and slowly. "You can't tell me what to do! And you don't eat soap!" Then she takes a step back, tugging Diana (who goes 'owwwwwwwwbb!') by her hair a few steps back as well. "Well you're stranger so you're a stranger!" Diana is so confused, so very very confused but she has a piece of pizza in her hand and she decides to eat it and shriek, "DADDYYYYYYYYYY BB BE RUDE TO MYKICK JASSON LADY!"
"There's always one," Maeve says, beneath Diana's howling, which doesn't seem to bother her. Her focus is cat-like, narrowed on BJ. "You ain't gonna get to play." And she's moving in the next moment, her legs long and manner aggressive, a clawing hand out to knock the glass from BJ's hand, the other moving at a slapping speed to cover the girl's face as she'd done to Raquelle. Powder glimmers in the air and swirls like dust, stings Diana's nostrils even as her sister is the target at hand.
The powder effects BJ who can't scream but she would if she could. Daddy will save her! Maybe! She's not sure. The glass hits the ground and the little girl succumbs to the powder and the power. Diana sees the powder and the swirling and her nose is stinging and she drops her pizza and screams now at the top of her lungs and turns to stumble and sway and try to run away. "DADDY! Daddy! IS A GHOST!"
Diana is left to run, and she'll only find Raquelle laid prone on the ground, as Maeve busies herself with forcing BJ to breathe in enough powder so that it has her slumping towards the ground. Unlike her father, she's caught in Maeve's long arms, picked up and moved towards the sofa, her head lolling back on her neck and limbs limp, like an oversized doll held together with string. "There you go," Maeve says, kneeling down so as to arrange BJ on the couch, leaning into the arm and hair smoothed back with Maeve's powdery fingers. "You're such a pretty thing when you're quiet."
She's left there, as Maeve stands back up, and moves towards the front hallway where Raquelle is, where Diana inevitably has run, her fingertips brushing along the hallway walls.
"It don't show sign of stopping, and I've brought some corn for popping, the lights are turned down low - let it snow, let it snow, let it snow… now where you'd get to, little one?"
This is all too much for little Diana to handle when she sees her daddy just laying there. Not moving. She drops to her knees to pat his cheeks and kiss his face and shake him. "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy? Daddy wake, Daddy wake up…" But Daddy can't wake up, Daddy can just want to hold his baby girls and keep them safe but he can't. This is where Diana starts sobbing and curling up against Raquelle, clinging and trembling. There's a ghost in her house. She tries to make herself as small as possible, half crawling under Raquelle in her hiding.
"You want him to wake up?" Maeve moves closer, coming to kneel on the other side of Raquelle, head tilting as Diana tries to burrow into his side, under his arm. Her moves a hand to cup Raquelle's cheek, her thumb smoothing over his cheekbone, as she keeps her eyes on the youngest in the household. "He's just asleep at the moment, baby doll. I got magic dust that makes 'im sleep. But I could wake him up again for you."
Diana whimpers and she peeks over Raquelle's shoulder when she squirms over there to the other side and twist around - she's a flexible little thing. Squirming too. She eyes Maeve with those wide eyes and pouts. "Daddy w-wake up? Then you go 'way. Bad ghostie, bad!" She's trembling like a leaf though.
Maeve gives Diana a smile that's almost pretty, makes crow-feet wrinkles at her eyes that could have been kind in another face. "I'll go," she says, with a nod. "And then everything'll be back to normal. But first, you gotta help wake up your daddy and your sister, and you gotta do a few things first. First— "
Her fingernails make anxious little crescent dents in Raquelle's face, gone again in the next moment. Maeve gives a breath of a dry sounding chuckle. "First, you gotta call me 'momma'."
Diana eyes Maeve and wraps her arms around Raquelle's neck, clinging and eyeing the woman as she nods slowly, sniffling. "Kay, you be Mom-momma." She sobs and has a bit of pizza sauce around her mouth but she's clinging to her daddy. She doesn't look too happy about the dents on daddy's face.
Maeve's smile promptly widens, overt pleasure genuine, shining. Her hands clap together twice, that stinging powder making a faint haze upon the impact, too fine to be of any damage. "That's a good girl. Much better'n your sister," she says. "Next thing you gotta do— I need your name. Helps make the magic stop, if I have your name. And then I want you to go wash your face while I help fix daddy."
Diana squints. "BJ is angel…" She's defensive, softly before squeaking and hiding again. "D-diana." She gives her name and carefully gets to her feel, shifting weight from foot to foot. "M' an angel p-princess Di…" She introduces herself before pausing and then fleeing down the hall to the bathroom, slamming and locking the door. She has to wash her face. And hide.
Tilting forward to watch Diana run off, Maeve redirects her smile down towards Raquelle's vacant stare. Lithely, she twists to swing a leg up and over Raquelle's hips, smoothly straddling. He can feel the rough wool of her skirt spilling against his stomach, her thighs clamped on either side as she leeeans down. Her breath is sweetly warm and curls against his jaw, where loose particles of powder drift away. "Now what's a handsome young man like you do tryin' to raise a coupla girls on his own? Where's their real momma, mm?"
Her hand smooths down Raquelle's bared chest. "Guess we don't gotta worry about that no more." Her cool forehead comes to rest against his collarbone, and she takes a long breath, seeming to breathe him in. "Mm. I like it here, yes I do. C'mon— let's get somewhere comfier."
And with that, she's back on her feet, gripping his lank wrists and starting to pull him further into the house, humming once more, murmuring the words. "And when we finally kiss good night, how I'll hate going out in the storm, but if you'll hold me tight, all the way home I'll be warm."
Raquelle's eyes blink as he stares at Maeve and his lips smack together a bit, expression blank and it is obvious he's trying to speak. It is slurred and thick though and he still can't really move but he talks around his tongue, which is so very thick. "…itch." That's what he has to say, most that he can.
The slurring insult gets a tinkle of laughter, as Maeve continues to pad on backwards, until they come to a stop in the living room, with BJ still resting like a doll on the couch. Raquelle can probably guess that she won't be around for long, the details of a vision fitting into place as his head unwillingly rolls away from his girl, towards where Maeve's bare feet are pacing around. "The fire is slowly dying, and my dear, we're still goodbying… but as long as you love me so…"
She crouches down, before curling up like a cat against the young man's side, her head resting on his chest as if to hear his heart beat, which steadily beats beneath his ribcage. She smiles up towards BJ, before sitting up straight once more, and letting powder fall in spirals down towards Raquelle in snowflake drifts.
"…let it snow, let it snow, let it snow."