December 13, 2002.12.13.02. - bad vibes [rune-decker-imogen/st] *fv[north jersey]
(james)
the cab ride was long and quiet
from the Barrens all the way up to the city
he just looked out the window
it's not to say he sees things in a new light, persay
but after this morning's conversation with Eliza
there is something different about him
about the way he watches the miles roll on byfrom the freeway to the city
from the stop and go traffic to the Rolling Meadow's entrygate
that's where he steps out
leaning back in to pay the ludicrious amount of money to the cabbie
he's glad that Rune gave him the cash
that woulda been one long walk
and a cold one, too
especially if he was down on his luck with the hitchesit's an easy stroll that weaves back towards the proper block
the newly mended trench all clean and flowing
no stains hardening the fabric
all his Stuff back in the pockets
along with his hands
wearing that easy half-grin on his faceboots are slow on the stairs
there's a half hesitation in his step
he had intended on being home nearly 24 hours ago
and, oddly, there's a part of him that worries about the reception
keys hit the lock anyway
quietly letting the Gnawer inside(rune)
The key hits the lock, and the door swings open: wall. of. sound. The Bangs' irrepressible girl-group punk ...taste so sugary but I want more..., with vocals oddly reminiscent of the Bangles. Somewhere beneath it (almost oppressively loud, thank god for the sound panels in the walls), the low hum of both televisions - the new Plasma TV mounted on the wall, the other one, shunted to the side by still front and center in the room, both on, practically muted. One's tuned to CNN, the other to MSNBC. Closed captioning crawls across the screens, obscuring the bottom rung of scrolling headlines and shadowing the low murmur of the presenters. And more: Diablo II on the desktop, some huge download open on the desktop, and four or five or six windows, besides.Rune's seated in front of the computer, headset half-on, half-off, tunneling the game's sound straight to her rather than allowing it to add to the headache inducing mix. One leg curled beneath her, the other sprawled out alongside the long, low desk. Toes flex pointing at the ceiling, then curl tight, then release, the only voluntary movement over than the dance of her fingers over the keyboard and mouse, the faint bob and weave of her shoulders toward the glowing screen. The band of the headphones pulls back her hair from her face, though more than a few fine strands have escaped this prison to fall across cheek and brow, to tickle the line of her jaw.
Overstimulation: that's the word for it.
Incense does little to cover up the scent of marijuana smoke, which still drifts in faint waves through the lower floor. Other than that, though, the place is clean enough: it must've been the cleaning lady's day today.
The door opens - and though there's no way she could've heard the key in the lock - she lifts a hand and waves briefly - not quite looking back, dark eyes still glued to the screen - before it falls back to continue the battle against an infinite number of diabolical cattle.
(james)
after the silence of the barrens
after the silence of the cab ride
after the silence, relative, of the stroll through the parking lot
he practically takes a step back from the literal assault of sound
(ho. lee. chit.)
his head shakes to thicken sheild of dreads over his earsdark eyes dance around the room
falling upon the television screens
nothing on CNN
nothing on MSNBC
nothing on the downloads
but Diablo II looks interestingshoulders shrug the trench off to hang neatly on the rack
(rather than simply tossed somewhere like the rest of the pack does)
grabbing the remote off the laquered table and turning the volume down
his teeth were vibrating, mananother few steps and long body stretches over hers
while at the same time dropping to crouch
not doing anything to disturb her slaughter of mad cows
plucking the forgotten joint from the ashtray
his dreads brushing the back of her shoulder
taking a looooooooong drag
and just watching her play(rune)
Her head jerks up and back, startled by the sudden cessation of sound, which is as disturbing in its own way to her as the sheer assault of noise was to James after the silence of the Barrens, the silence of the cab ride, the relative silence of the short stroll through the parking lot. Headphones dislodged by the movement slipslide, the speaker falling from her left ear, the band sliding down to settle around her neck like a black plastic collar. Her hair - still largely ensnared by the headphones - poofs up in the back as shelifts her head to glance up at him, focusing briefly before - "fuck!" - returning to the task at hand.There's another dead cow.
He can hear the sound effects translated through the headphones, which provide fine sound when settled over ones ears, but translated by distance, the sound becomes tinny and abstract, like some third-rate 1950s Sci-Fi spectacular: Attack of the Killer Eating Body Blobs from Planet X, or something similar.
"Have fun last night?" another glance over her lowering shoulder, interrupted again when she catches site of the screen in her peripheral vision and turns sharply back to her game. The suggestion of a smile on her painted mouth, now glimpsed as little more than a fuller curve to her cheek, or - perhaps - a faint, ghostly reflection over the carnage on the screen.
(james)
he looks positively contrite at her sudden distraction
ack.... he hadn't meant to
but at the curve that swells her cheek
that silly little grin returnsexhaling a plume of smoke
then holding the joint where his hand isn't in the way
but she can take a drag"Loads.... passed out drunk just like you predicted."
he settles now
lowering to the floor
sitting comfortably behind her to watch the game
as she sits with one leg curled and the other stretched
he's able to stretch both legs out
his chest following the curve of her back
but it's only the weight of dreads that touch her"Got cooked breakfast, then had a long chat with Eliza this morning."
the words drift off
he doesn't say much about her kids
he caught on Rune doesn't particularly like them
even if he knows she knows that's the reason he stayed(rune)
"Cooked breakfast, hmmm?" Spoken in a thin, strained voice after a long moment of holding smoke in her lungs, the words are accompanied by a fine stream of smoke that continues (shoulders falling, diaphram relaxing with the exhalation) for several mostly silent (beneath the noise of the CD, pumped throughout the bottom floor) moments. "Real biscuits, I bet, not those fucking canned ones. Hate those fucking canned ones."Usually she eats Froot Loops, anyway. Froot Loops covered in chocolate soymilk, washed down with beer, or coffee if she's feeling domestic.
"Good to know hospitality's not a lost art."
The game may be interesting enough (in a mindless. fucking. way.) for Rune to play: certainly she spends hours at it over the course of any given week, but it's hardly as interesting to watch, particularly when all she's doing is killing these damned. cows. Soon enough - several incomprehensible clicks - and she's retreating to the town hall. The game effectively paused (at least she didn't die), Rune's hands at last leave the keyboard. She holds out one for the joint, and casts him a glance over her shoulder. "Good talk?"
(james)
"Yeeaaa..... Mae made real biscuits, sausage, eggs, the works. I can do eggs, but never had the wherewithall to learn the biscuits."theres soft laughter
exhaled on his latest drag
yea, he just offered to cook for her
as best he can, anyway
the half-joint passed back over"No it's not, pretty rare though."
and while it may be boring for most to watch
these video game things are still pretty new to him
he has the old school nickel arcades under his belt
all of this is the new fangled stuff
he can figure out the PS2
he hasn't even begun to attempt any on her computer"Somewhat...." in a slight sigh "She's lonely as I was."
(rune)
"I don't cook eggs," she murmurs back, wreathingly amused, lashes lowering to shadow dark eyes, a smudge of inky color against pale skin. Rune half-shifts forward, then ducks her head and slides the headphones from around her neck, allowing them to fall almost soundlessly into her lap. "...but I can do a great breakfast scramble. Sausage, hashbrowns, peppers and onions and cheese. It's my one fucking dish. It's my speciality."The half-smoked joint, snared between forefinger and thumb, brought to her lips, inhaled, passed back, is graced with a tracery of her lipstick on the twisted paper. (Reminds folks I've been there.) As she passes the joint back, her hand drifts in a faint, almost frustrated gesture, an impatience that plays across her face. "...but she's got all those kids? And all those people?"
Rune just doesn't get it. She just doesn't - quite - get it: the kinfolk's loneliness, the kids, the confessions and absolutions asked and offered, perhaps. She herself is a closed book, and she prefers it that way.
(james)
"Eggs were easy to get a hold of, Sledge had a skillet, so we learned how to cook 'em all sorts of ways."he won't go into what else they would opt to throw in
for him anything goes with eggs
he's sure her pallete is probably more refinedhow strange it is now, though
when he couldn't speak of his pack for two years
not a -single- word in two years
yet he refers to them in passing around her
then his head shakes
keeping up the rotation"Even when you're surrounded by others you can be lonlier than you could ever imagine. It wasn't only her sight that was taken, seems like her memory that went along with it is gone, too."
he isn't sure how to explain it
and it shows
but somehow he got it
he understood, fully, what she felt
reaching past her shoulder and grabbing to discarded cards from the desk
fashioning a roach clip
and offering the joint back(decker)
(*grr* *left out a line*) "Don't want tender lovin' care," a lift of a smirk, onesided. "Make me soft 'n shit--"She rarely touches him, but she does now. She rarely kisses him, but she does now. There's cold at his back and warmth at hers; there's the warmth of her body before him, and the heat of his, a degree or three above the human norm, before hers. He closes his eyes and doesn't finish the sentence for some time, and his arms stay at his sides beneath her cold fingers until he moves: fingers first, brushing the denim over her thighs; then the hands, closing over her hips, and then the arms, the body, arching forward over and about her to smooth down over her flank and - bloody effortlessly, almost, only the flex of arms and chest beneath her touch evidencing that her weight had any bearing at all on him - lifts her upon and above him, and compensates for the difference in heights. Effortless, because on the best of days he could crush bones if he wanted to - and on the worst of days, even if he didn't.
A moment, two later, he's outside and hopping the gap between the balconies under a crescent moon.
Days later, that same moon is swollen and gibbous. James and Rune have precisely four seconds to stow away talk of James' old pack, because that's how much time they have between the banging of Decker's bedroom door (open - a click, a thud) and the appearance of the Modi at the mouth of the hallway. Somewhere over his shoulder is the rasta-man Theurge. Decker flicks a glance over the pair, all snuggled up, and chooses not to say anything. This time.
"Gonna go check out that house with Livin'ston. Y'all comin'?"
(rune)
"Well, now that I know about your expertise, I'll put it to the test sometime." The smile that curves her cheek, the smile that spills across her mouth, no longer quite reaches her eyes. He sees her only in profile, though - the lifted cheek, the slant of lashes, framed by the arrogant line of her nose - and thus the nuance of the expression is likely lost to him.Even when you're surrounded by others... Familiar, that.
"Yeah, okay," is what she says, when at last she rouses herself to speak. Her voice is non-committal and distant, stripped of expression, as if she were speaking to him over a telephone concocted out of tin cans and wire: sound translated to vibrations, back to sound, sound one must strain to hear, naked and flat as an unworked sheet of metal. Her eyes falls closed, and she accepts the passed joint by feel, the faint and certain physical instinct does not betray her: one and a half-hits sucked in hard and fast, held tightly as she passes the joint back, blindly. "...that makes sense."
Decker appears then, and Rune pushes the heels of her palms against her eyes - clearing her mind - then completes the gesture by opening her hands and sliding long fingers through fine strands of night-black hair. She should add the crimson wash to it again, sometime soon. She liked that look.
"Yeah, okay." That was her response to James, and now that's her response to Decker. "Gimme five minutes to change."
(james)
how much of that was experience talking
how much of that was from the conversation this morning
whatever the answer is
it's lost as he takes the roach blindly handed backby-passing himself
as Rune rises
his torso twists
offering the make-shift roach clipped vestiges to Decker
or Livingston"Yeh."
hell, he hasn't even gotten more comfortable coming home
(home...)
than taking off his (washed!) coat and sitting down
what's getting up and going back out again(decker)
A nudge of the chin up as the Modi sinks down on the couch, sets his feet up on the glass-faced coffee table. All fixed now, ain't that nice?As Rune disappears upstairs to change, the Modi reaches forward to snag the joint. Takes a hit, but just one - wanted to stay sharp tonight. Passes it on. Eyes the coat. "Lookin' clean, James."
(rune)
Soon enough Rune comes back downstairs again: freshened up, so to speak. Refreshed. Or, at least, changed: her dedicated clothing: leather pants, white cotton tee, well-worn hiking boots of all things. She grabs her second best coat from whereever she tossed it last, and grabs her keys from the living room."You drive, Decker?"
The three of them might fit in the truck.
(james)
oh, there's a bit of a smirk to that one"Yeh, Mae washed it and what's left of my gloves while I was passed out.... if I didn't wake up when I did I"m sure she woulda trimmed the dreads, too.... got breakfast out of it so I'm not complaining."
by then, he's up off the floor
long body stretching as he walks
grabbing the coat off the hook and shrugging it back on
already having a feeling he's gonna be shoved into the back
thank Gaia they got the king cab(decker)
A snort; then a mute nod. He gets up and stops by the breakfast bar to fish keys out of the swanky stylized glass bowl in which they sat. Down the stairs they go, out to the Tacoma - muddy again, and with two Goodyears on the front wheels, two Michelins on the back.There's a reason for that.
The truck starts up with a roar. Presumably Rune gets shotgun, so James is wedged into the "roomy" back seat which, for a 6' muscular Ahroun, isn't all that roomy. At least the seats are soft, though, and the suspension decent: firmer than a sedan's, to be sure, but nothing like that rattling deathtrap Decker's old truck used to be.
He drives them out the way they went the first time, from their upper middle class bland suburb into the commercial districts, then the industrial, then the low-income housing, and finally the slums. They pass the charred hole in the ground that used to be a house without slowing, park seven blocks away (...and walk to the fight), and head into the shadow of a rundown business to step over.
(rune)
And step over they do. Garou always carry something with them for such moments, even the less-than-spiritual Ahrouns of the Nation. Fortunately, for Rune the mirror is functional as well. She checks the shade and coverage of her lipstick briefly, before she grabs Decker's shoulder to guide him through. Dark eyes darken in concentration and she reaches and pushes at once.The barrier is thick here, but that's something she's used to dealing with, at least. On the other side, Rune waits for James to appear, and then the pack turns its attention to their surroundings.
(imogen)
The house is mostly charred foundation and broken timber and wood, burned black and softened from the half assed attempts of the firefighters to stop the blaze. The houses on either side have their corners blacked and their roofs obviously repaired. The fire had gone on for quite some time unabated before the firetrucks had deigned to arrive. There is not much time to review the area as the truck passes it, heading several blocks away.They find an abandoned grocery store, it's windows boarded up, but it's no trial for Decker and his elite lock skills (also known as: Kick. Real hard.) to get them in, the door swinging rotten on rusty hinges. Pushing through the gauntlet is like diving into the atlantic in the middle of winter buck naked. The wind rushes from their lungs with the enormous pressure of weaver, and it feels almost like every single hair on their body is being pulled out from the roots. Welcome to the city, Wolves. The technology that Rune loves so much creates the ephereal barrier into something more tangible and more dangerous. It may occur to them that they are lucky to get through such a thing alive. There are stories of Garou stuck in the space between realms for centuries. Unable to move, unable to cry out. Unable to die.
But they are all here, the three of them, with all their fingers and toes, and thus there isn't all that much to worry about. Stories are stories, unless they happen to you. Onward, then, toward the husk of the house, following the path of the web with unskilled feet, walking for what seems to James as an eternity and to Rune as only a few minutes. Time shifts like sand, here.
The umbra often reflects some of the more stable and stagnant things from the other world, buildings that may have been there for years stand in ghostly relief among the pattern, and traffic lights with little green, yellow, and red creatures that yell "go", "caution!" and "STOP!!!" respectively dot silvery roads and highways.
The house that is a husk in the real world still stands here in the umbra, with it's foundation a inky crawling black, and it's supports a dismal grey, leaking discomfort from the very wood and insulation.
(james)
it's not that squished
and throughout the ride he stretches out sideways
muuuuuuuch nicer than that rattling deathtrapon the walk to the shadows
gray bandana comes out, ties back the dreads
rebar clinks in the sling over his shoulder
he doesn't look at the charred hole in the ground
he doesn't want to remember that homecoming
nor what they brought homebut once in the shadows of the building
it's hard to not think about it
so he thinks about the side-step instead
body thins and streeeetches
city boy in city gauntlet
two, ten, eleven
all here
and looking around? already he's uncomfortable(imogen)
The house is mostly made up the foundation and frame, the actual walls more shadows of brick and insulation, ghostly gauze that half obscures their view inside. There are so many things to see.(decker)
"...real pretty."Somewhere along the way, somewhere along the miles between Alabama (and Texas and Oregon and Montana and Oklahoma and DC and Georgia) and Jersey, he must've swapped those letters back around: purty to pretty. Some all fuckin' edumacated now.
Looking at the house, he folds into a crouch, reaching out to pick up a handful of Umbral dirt. Let it run through his fingers, let it fall and catch on the wind: he stands again, wiggling his fingers to clear the dirt between them.
He ain't no Umbral expert, but houses don't usually show up this-side at all. And certainly not with this sort of spiritual burden. A tilt of his head toward the hunched and looming house. "C'mon then."
(imogen)
Living room. The bedroom for Olivia. The room that belonged to Lloyd (and with a knowledge that comes from secondary spirit sight, this they know) and to the other child. All stand out in near technicolour. Beneath the bright almost garish re-enactments, shadows play, and there is a sense of overwhelming darkness beneath the bright swells of light. The kitchen, the basement and the parent's bedroom, have all be swallowed by the underpromise of black, leaving nothing more than intense shadows.What must be most frustrating is how the images that they see, that they know are there, keep slip-sliding from their consciousness. They must look directly at one, and ignore all others, or nothing seems to make sense, it's all little more than a jumble of images, impressions of something happening. A movie in a drive in movie theatre too far away to see.
(rune)
Rune reacts bodily to the vision of the ghostly house, hackles rising, pace slowly to a crawl and then a stop. She cants her head to the side - dark hair swinging freely until she pushes an impatient hand through the falling strands. Narrowing her eyes, she lifts a hand to shade her vision, as if there were a sun in this twilight, nightridden half-world, as by doing s, she could focus her gaze more, see farther.The windows are half-obscured, blind cataracts that do more to conceal that reveal.
Stage two then.
"Circle around. See what there is to see all the way around before we head in." Rune remarks, mutely wishing for a Theurge, who might offer better guidance.
(james)
he just follows
he's seen some seriously wicked shit in his crossovers before
(rare as they've been)
but this ranks right on up there among the creepiest
he's almost sullenly silent
(he knows what happened here)
shoulders roll beneath the trenchround the the merry go round we go
(decker)
Without the need for subtlety here - whatever little subtlety Decker possessed - he trails his Beta in his warform. One of his warforms, at least. The larger one, brawnier, bipedal and balanced on a digitigrade stance, towering feet upon feet over his packmates' heads.Around back they go, circling a wary few feet from the house, though the Modi cranes his neck out for a cursory sniff of the blackened wood. Didn't look painted. Paint didn't seep in that deep.
A blast of air out. No steam here. In the wild the Umbral seasons roughly matched those of the Realm; here, locked in this weaver's web, everything's static, normalized, balanced...
...eroded, also, here.
Rotten. It's easier to think than it is to speak in this form, and the sightscentthought that flickers is that of rot: rotten fruit, rotten wood, rotten flesh. While he scents at the wood, James is pressing palms to earth, and Rune is peering in through the windows: touch scent sight. Strife is (momentarily) set aside out here: they are three of a pack, and three senses of a greater body.
Go in?
(james)
once they're at the backside, right where he was told they ran out
just before the place became a complete inferno
the Gnawer slowly strips off what he calls gloves
tails of the trench swept back as he crouches
hands lain palm flat against the ground"We lookin' for anything particular?"
half murmured, real damn soft
his eyes half close
blocking everything else out
whatcha feelin' there, Jamey-boy?something that definitely makes him snatch his hands away
mental voice a practical hiss, before he even really realizes it
maggots crawling in rotted flesh
it's a very decisive frown, now, distaste expression rampant
hands rubbed against the BDUs to wipe the feeling of his palms crawling away
go in? yay....(rune)
Rune casts a glance back toward Decker - back and up and up and up and up - and then, not so far up after all, though still plenty angled in that direction as she shifts from human to near-man, body bulking, dedicated clothing stretching and morphing to conform to the new silhouette of her taller, heartier form.Not exactly my area of expertise, Rune replies, after a moment spent supressing the shudder that racks through her form as James' mental voice comes through, a hiss. I figure, whatever we're looking for, we'll find in there.
Half-a-nod toward the back door, and then she starts walking. The door - the knob - flung open here goes - and she pauses to flicker a glance around inside, then enters.
(decker)
In contrast to the discrete words of his two still-humanoid packmates, the Crinos communicates in flickerflashes. Images that speak volumes in split-instants: one two three, boy boy girl, three children. Three children falling, one two three, boy boy girl, infant toddler child, the first buried, the second blackened, beaten, boxed, the last rising again, rotten at the core.[The family had three children. The first boy, Lloyd, died a toddler. The second boy was born, then beaten to death a few years later and put in a trunk, wyrmtainted. The last rose a fomor. We're looking for anything you can find.]
Close on the heels of the Glabro Glass Walker, the Crinos Fenrir, who bends almost double to fit in through the door because he didn't what to pass through the quasisolid walls. Straightening within as much as he can (eight-foot ceilings, nine-foot beast), straightening until it's comfortable enough in the creature's somewhat hunched natural stance, he scents the air again, tail moving in a slow pendulum.
(imogen)
As she crosses the threshhold of the door, Rune is almost over powered by the cacophony that assults her senses. Colour. Sound. Smell.Bright red. Deep black. Whiskey yellow. Flesh tones. Pink nail polish. Blue jumpers.
Yelling (You son of a --- Fucking bitch. Cunt. Whore. --Never do anything right! Pass me the bottle.), cursing, panting, swearing. Screams, childlike and thin.
Smell the blood. The shit. The vomit. The whiskey, the beer. The crack. And then...Decker enters, and in his crinos, more animalistic form, this must seem almost unbearable, instincts driving to hit out, fight back, find the source. With nothing there. And then...
James too, when he enters, finds himself thus assaulted.
And then....
This too shall pass.
Cacophony fades, leaving only flickerflash of memory and the sights of bright colour, seen only out of the corner of the eye, only dismally, unless one looks at it directly. Look up, toward the ceiling and you can see the bedrooms. Parents bedroom, a near opaque black. Olivia's bedroom, carrying out some memory scene, showing some theme, acting out some history, not quite visible through the floor boards. The empty bedroom, not empty here, but home to something, somehow, somewhere, because some story is being unfolded again, and again. Something happened to imprint it into the umbra's memory. (or something's memory). Again, not quite visible through the floorboards.
The living room. Another story. Or the same one in this bleak and ghostly house, where three children have died. All one needs is to look at it directly, to make the images solidify. The question is, is it really important?
(james)
they're shifting up, in various war forms
barely fitting through the door or near doubling to fit through it
he? soon joins then
the feeling of skin crawling in his hands spreads throughout his body
it's rare they see him in this form, Gaia's ultimate warrior
it's rare he shifts at all, even rarer to Chrinos
the response coming as a deeply chuffed grunt from the shaggy creature
(seems those dreads never fully go away)yea, he remembers the last kid
yea, he remembers the one in the trunkthis way? he doesn't think about them the same way
there's a part of him that dampens beneath all the fur
rebar clinks as the sling adjusts on bulked out shoulder
seems this was what it was made for
the strap fitting like a glove so it doesn't hinder
there's a leather thong biting into the ruff of fur around his throat
ears pinning at the assault
looking left, right, up (shudder) and aroundhe shouldn't look at the living room
(three kids died here)
but he does(decker)
First reaction: kill something. Kill what? Don't matter. FIND SOMETHING. Look around: swing left, swing right, lips peeled back to reveal staggeringly long teeth, slightly blunted at the tips from wear. From all the other fights he's been in, all the other things he's killed. Drop to all fours under the assault of noise. Look around, eyes blazing, claws sunk deep into the black floor of the toobright toodark house (ain't no dog claws, boy. ain't dulled like city claws, from walkin on city fuckin sidewalks--)
KILL SOMETHING--- and it stops, and the Modi is clenched hard as rock on the floor, shoulders and chest incongruously wide, and neither deep enough for the fourlegged animal stance. The hackles on his neck are stiff as brush bristles.
The swimming images; the things that occur on the corners of his mind, only pulling into focus when he looked at them. Like the classic haunted house ghost that always lurked at the corners of your eyes, only reversed: only these phantoms became real if you looked.
Tchhhzzzhh. Static. Bedroom, bedroom, bedroom, living room. And our contestant picks...
One thing at a time.
James looks. Decker? Doesn't. Someone's gotta watch their backs. He'll get it secondhand through James' mind, a little misted out, the volume a little distorted. But he'll still get it.
[paused]
Posted by james at December 13, 2002 12:00 AM
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