logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: BURY A FRIEND

EVENT LOG: BURY A FRIEND

characters: everyone.
location: around town.
date/time: october 9-17.
content: the hallucinations begin...
warnings: psychological horror. please cw tags appropriately.

it's probably something that shouldn't be said out loud

October 9 feels like a normal day at first, save for the red lighthouse beam cutting through the darkness overhead. You know by now—or you've heard—that the lighthouse is only active during ferry arrivals and events... And there's definitely no ferry docked at the, er. Beach. The town is quiet, the forest spirits behave business-as-usual, Rastus doesn't know what's up. Whatever's going on, you'll have to figure it out for yourself.

And you will, though the hallucinations are subtle at first: objects moving when they shouldn't, people's proportions looking just a bit off, voices in an empty room, and so on. Is it just your mind playing tricks in the darkness? Might be! Will did warn you all about the effects of living without a sun and a proper day/night cycle.

As the days go on, the hallucinations are harder to ignore, no matter how much you may wish to wave them off as flukes. What's wrong with everyone's faces? When did all the howling start? Who do you hold onto when the world drops out from under you? And those hands...

While you might know it can't be real, it certainly feels real. But at least it can't last forever!

...Right?

QUICKNAV
comms	\|	network • logs • memes • ooc
pages	\|	rules • faq • taken • mod contact • player contact • calendar • setting • exploration • item requests • full nav

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Considering the Soldier's only communication with her has been through text, it would be easier to feign. It still has a hard time imagining her not taking the chance to mete out punishment if given the chance, if she were that terrible, but maybe there's a longer game. "What purpose could she have to--"

It breaks off when Rosinante whirls away, pulls a knife just in case, but it doesn't see or hear anything. With no fear to play on, its own hallucinations are fewer and more spaced apart. (And it does note Rosinante's speed, on top of his massive size. Interesting. Fighting him would take very different strategies than a human, if that ever came up.)

"What is it?" the Soldier asks.

"Nothing," he responds after a quiet moment of watching and listening as the strange limbs slither away.

"Just the hands. Thought I'd heard something else." But satisfied that he had imagined it, he sets his makeshift weapon back down and reaches instead into a pocket to withdraw a cigarette, then holds it between his lips for a moment so he can open the top of his lantern and light it. He's going through these faster than usual. Rastus had tried to do him a favor and get plenty extra this month, but all had ended up completely waterlogged. He'll have to ration the remainder now with the ferry gone but if any moment calls for a smoke it's this one.

(I fucking want one of those. Okay, Sergeant, I know you do. You say that every damn time you see one.)

After a pause, watching Rosinante light up, the Soldier decides, it's not afraid, and Rosinante is tentative on the safe list anyway. It can make a request. The worst Rosinante is likely to do is say no, right? Probably not going to punish it. Like 60% sure there won't be punishment.

"Can I try that?"

He raises an eyebrow, though much of the movement is obscured by his thick bangs. "Never had a cigarette?"

Well, who is he to deny someone helpful - mostly, he hasn't forgotten the ferry - such a basic request? Even though his supplies should only last another month or two at most, a bit of nicotine would probably do a lot of people some good right now, he figures, so he takes a draw from the cigarette and then holds it out to take.

"Go ahead."

The Soldier watches Rosinante do it, maybe with a little more interest than mere curiosity would warrant. Partly because it's not sure why the Sergeant part of its brain is so focused on it and wants to know how it's done. Partly because the Sergeant part of its brain really wants it.

"Thanks." It accepts the cigarette and inhales a lung-full. Something inside relaxes. Something related to the Sergeant, whose voice is nothing but a drawn out sigh and the sense of a smile. The nicotine doesn't really do much of anything, not on the Soldier's metabolism, but the action, the sensation, is so familiar and peaceful that it can't help but relax.

" ... I think I have had this before," it says, looking at the cigarette in mild surprise. "Not quite like this. It. Tasted different. But close enough to be familiar." It has one more draw, then offers it back.

The hands surround the soldier, guide the cigarette to his lips. Others begin to pile up the scraps of wood from the ruins around them, dragging them across the ground to Soldat's feet, and as Rosinante watches, they reach out of the darkness and cup the little falling embers from the end of the cigarette and guide them to the tinder.

"No!" he demands sharply at the mass of hands trying to set their surroundings alight. They retract at the shout, and Rosinante remembers that not only are they possibly not real, but even if they are, the fire will never spread. He didn't burn then and he won't burn now.

"Uh - no, I mean, you keep it. I have more," he tells the other man, then clears his throat and stands. This crumbled, damaged building seems to be allowing his memories to come a little too strongly to life and the only solution he can think of is to move. If he's going to hallucinate, if the darkness has truly gotten to him so deeply, let him hallucinate anything else.

(More for me, then.)

That was pretty clearly not a refusal of the cigarette, but the Soldier does keep it anyway. Not like it's going to get another one any time soon. It rises from its crouch when Rosinante does. "If you told me what you're seeing, I could tell you it's not real," it suggests. "None of us are sharing hallucinations. And I'm not afraid of mine, so they're distractions at worst."

Even the sight of the Chair flickering into appearance behind Rosinante earns more than a glance behind him. (Nice try, spirit vision thing. You ain't stronger than a demon's magic.) Though neither of them really wants to watch Rosinante shoved back into said Chair, fear or not. (He's not even gonna... fit. Is he? It's made for somebody us-sized.)

"I keep seeing different things. It keeps changing. Just now, it was the hands again, trying to pile up kindling and set us on fire," he admits slowly. "I know the hands usually aren't real. Haven't been real yet."

Hopefully will stay not real, because the things they do run the gamut of irritating to deeply disturbing. Dragging people around, fine. Acting the part of a village mob wanting to torture children, not fine. He could do without ever thinking about that again.

Curious, he does spare a glance over his shoulder when Soldat seems to look past him, but unsurprisingly, he sees nothing there. "Like that, whatever that was for you. Not really there."

"The Chair again," the Soldier says grimly, after another hit from the cigarette. Fuck, it'd missed that over the last feels-like-centuries. Going to miss it even more when you've finished the damn thing off.

Still, the hands are coming up again, and it'd be nice not to see them try to stuff the guy into the chair. "I'd appreciate it if you stepped forward away from it, Rosinante. I might not be afraid of these right now, but it still wouldn't be fun watching you shoved into it and brain-fried." It even obligingly takes a steps back, half-turns, inviting Rosinante to walk with it. Maybe a different surrounding would help Rosinante's hallucinations, anyway.

He had been about to ask, but then the soldier clarifies what sort of chair - sort of. A chair that fries brains doesn't make much sense to him, but Soldat is right that it doesn't sound pleasant either, so with a shrug, he finally pushes himself up to his feet and takes his lantern in hand, and takes a few long strides to follow along with Soldat.

"I'm sorry," he says, quiet. However it is that the man had to experience such a thing, whether personally or having to witness others in it, it's a horrifying thought, even if he's picturing it wrong.

Picturing it doesn't last long anyway because his gaze is soon directed to those hands again. How they operate both their legs, and lurk at the corners of his vision with their crude weapons. They're whispering amongst themselves, too. Questioning which one is the monster. Wondering if perhaps they both are, in their own ways.

Soldat is in the lead, and Rosinante trails a half-step behind, but the world changes abruptly so that he's seeing the world from the height of a child, barely to the other man's knees. He's injured and cold and starving and so very small, and the sheer vertigo of the transition causes him to stumble and drop to the ground again with a gasp.

The Soldier hitches its shoulders in a shrug, has more of the cigarette. "It is what it is. And it's not really here, so at least nobody's brains are in any actual danger. Even hallucinating being in it didn't--"

The sound of someone Rosinante's size falling down makes it break off and turn. Ah, hell. (Poor guy. Yeah. I wish I could drag everyone in this dumb town to Crowley for a fix.) Cigarette in its fingers, it drops slowly to a crouch and asks carefully: "What happened. What do you see."

"Nothing new, I just fell. It's normal. I'm clumsy like that."

It's much easier to talk about than what he didn't quite see but certainly did experience for a moment there. Everything feels the right size now that he's been jarred back into reality, so he shakes his head and stands again to continue walking.

(Yeah, like we believe that, pal. It doesn't matter. He knows whatever it was, wasn't real. He doesn't have to tell us.)

The Soldier doesn't offer him a hand up, but does keep to whatever pace Rosinante sets. "You should stay near other people," it suggests. "Talk to them whenever you see something. Even if it doesn't make things stop, it can at least be a distraction, right? We can go back to the Invincible."

"Right. Let's do that."

Being around other people is the last thing he wants right now, but he's not bothered by heading in that direction. He can just step out for a smoke and wander off once they're there. Say that he got distracted, or something. The hands seem worse around people, and he can't tune them out as easily as he did the first few days this was happening. Not just the hands, but the strings, winding and spiraling their way around, helping those hands to control everyone's movements. And the screaming, the shouting, the accusations of things a child would never do. Will those words be drowned out by conversation?

Maybe he'll try, just a little. He'll give it a few minutes. He continues toward the tavern, still occasionally stumbling over nothing in particular - but that's always the case, hallucinations or not.

Ironically, being around other people is the thing the Soldier likes the most, even now. Maybe not necessarily interacting, but watching. It's soothing. Even if they're all twitchy and nervous and occasionally try to sit down on hallucinatory brain-wiping chairs.

Drowning out hallucinations is what it's trying to do, though, so it attempts to keep up the conversation here, too. Only problem is, the Soldier is Not Good at making conversation. What do you even talk about? "Is that where you're staying?" it asks, a little uncertainly. Is that regular conversation? "Or do you have a place in the village?"

"Yeah, uh," he replies quickly as he tries to gather his thoughts back into the present. The hallucinations have done great work dragging up a lot of things he'd managed to try and move past in his adult years. He's stronger than that, he just has to remind himself of it more persistently right now.

"The Invincible. Top floor on the end, room three-ten. Staying there with Mary, the little blonde girl who's always drawing. Have you met her?"

"Mary. Yeah. I killed a dragon-bush for her," the Soldier says with something that's actually mostly a smile. "She wanted to be a princess and said I could be her knight. Apparently knights kill dragons." And she also told it she wasn't a person, either, and got really creepy. (The memory still twinges, a little.) "Is she all right? I saw her earlier, and. She didn't seem like she was taking all this. Well."

"Sounds noble," he sighs. Dragon-killing probably usually is. But then he shrugs. "I haven't seen her much this week. Might have to go track her down."

Because man, it's not great to hear she's not doing well. But he's been intentionally avoiding her, especially after the first few days once he realized the consistent patterns in the hallucinations, because he doesn't want to frighten her.

"I'd be surprised if anyone at all is taking this sort of thing well. That would require a pretty strong lack of awareness."

Or a demon's blessing. Not that the Soldier would say it's doing well, exactly, right now... but a hell of a lot better than most people. Even for its own usual baseline, this isn't bad.

It considers for a moment, with another puff on the cigarette and then practiced tap to rid it of some ash, then says, "Maybe you should find her. She was unhappy, said people kept leaving her. Also kind of creepy. Did you know she doesn't think she's a person?" Because, really. That's an important thing for a roommate to know, it figures.

"Yeah, I know. She's had a rough shot at life. She's probably better off here than where she was."

At least here she can be cared for and treated like an actual child, rather than someone's discarded project. He keeps having these stray, wayward children cross his path and while he can't save them all, he does try his best to give them a better future. Hard to say now if he's ever really succeeded in doing that, though.

He certainly hopes so for at least one of them.

"I'll find her. Where did you see her last?"

"The benches by the bonfire," the Soldier answers. "That was a few days ago, though. She's probably moved somewhere else." I mean... of course she's moved by now. That was a very dumb thing to say.

The Soldier hesitates, then asks, "Do you know why she thinks that?" It will understand if Rosinante doesn't want to share, as Mary's story might have been said in confidence or be too personal for Mary to want discussed, but there doesn't seem to be any harm in asking. Less than 30% risk of punishment from Rosinante.

Days ago, yeah. Who knows where she is now, then. Well, as long as she hasn't wandered into the forest, or somehow been dragged there by all these intangible hands with their seeking, string-spinning fingers, he'll find her. The place isn't that big.

"I do," he replies. "But it's not my place to share it." He'd had to bargain for that information. Had to promise to her that no matter what he learned, he wouldn't hate or fear her, and wouldn't abandon her like others had done.

"She's lucky here. A lot of people care about her, I've noticed."

"There are. Good people here," the Soldier says slowly. "People who don't want a little girl sad, no matter what she is." Honestly, it always assumed that death would be better than life, but more along the line of "an end to suffering" than "finding people who actually care". Maybe she's lucky the same way the Soldier is, in that way.

Of course, they still have to deal with the fucking nightmares and hallucinations. That isn't great. But right now, the Soldier might even consider that worth it.

"Who she is, not what," he corrects gently. Soldat may not think of himself as a person, and so frequently refers to himself as a thing, and that's his choice - but it would be a shame to misspeak around Mary even if he didn't mean to offend. She is a person, no matter her origins, and it's best for her if they all help to reinforce that.

"And you don't have to consider yourself property either, you know. You're your own person here. In control of your own life."

Well, most of the time, since it literally looks like he's being controlled by an invisible puppeteer and too many hands right now, but he's glad that at least in this moment, he's certain those things aren't real.

The Soldier might not be afraid of anything, as such, right now-- but it sure can still be startled, as that produces a twitch so unexpected it almost drops the nearly-gone cigarette. It looks over at Rosinante with an aggrieved expression. You almost cost it the last two hits, pal, not nice.

"Not a person," it says, though it's more automatic than painful at this point. Aside from Mary's statement the other day, anyway. "My own, or otherwise. Not exactly property, either, though. Just a weapon that needs a hand to point it in the right direction." It shrugs, finishes off the cigarette finally, and drops it into the dirt to rub the last spark out under its boot. "But Mary deserves better than that."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject