logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: TURN THE LIGHTS OFF

EVENT LOG: TURN THE LIGHTS OFF

characters: everyone.
location: around town.
date/time: january 20-29.
content: the lanterns begin to malfunction.
warnings: body horror and psychological horror. please cw tags appropriately.

you'll become one

January 20th arrives the same as all the days before it. There's no great pulse of warning that throbs through the air, no ominous wind that causes the bonfire to shudder. The spirits are neither agitated nor do they hide. You could almost miss the change, if the lanterns weren't always by your side. There's no explanation that comes with the way that it's changed, but it's impossible not to worry when it's happened so suddenly.

Maybe it takes a few days, or maybe it only takes a few hours, but suddenly it isn't just the lanterns that have changed. You, yourself, have become somehow different. It's possible that you won't even have the right state of mind to wonder how long it will last. At the very least, it appears you aren't alone. All across Beacon, lanterns are changing, and changing the people with them.

Out in the distance, the lighthouse's beam has turned green.

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Day 1

Ashford’s lamp is round, simple, and appears to have been soldered together out of scrap metals. On an average day it looks like any of the caged lights above the doors in the Behemoth. But today it glows a pale pink. To start, it’s only mildly irritating in the way that he can’t make sense of it. And while Ashford tends to be simultaneously thrilled and annoyed by things he can’t make sense of, there’s not much that’s thrilling about a light simply changing color. It’s no ring gate with the potential promise of alien life. It’s more like a battery being drained suspiciously sooner than it should have and being led to wonder if that trader on Ceres shorthanded you.

Throughout the day he can be seen sitting on a rusted chair in front of his house trying to tinker with it. At some points slapping his palm against the base as though to knock a non-existent bulb back into place.

Or you might spot him in town, openly eyeing other people’s lanterns as he passes.

Time Goes By

As the days go on, however, the pink darkens to an angry red. The skin of his burn scars on the right side of his face and down the whole of his right arm and shoulder start to grow more rigid and pull tight, making him feel suffocated in his own skin. He can be spotted hunched down against a wall as he tries to claw angrily at it, eventually shredding much of the fabric of his sleeve and leaving his scarred arm bare for the world to see.

With more time the tightness turns to ridges in the skin. First like large welts but eventually bigger like bony growths jutting through his flesh.

Eventually his right arm is barely short of useless, the growths making it near impossible for him to bend his elbow or even clench a fist. His head can hardly turn due to the largest of the spikes located at his neck and shoulder. Sitting not far from the bonfire, Ashford struggles in pain and with little success to try and tear his shirt so he can get a full breath.

Last Days

In the last days of the event, Ashford’s right side is almost unrecognizable from his left. He ventures to the waterside and tries to seek relief in pouring water over the almost-rock-like jagged flesh. He tries more than once to find a tool in the shops to try and cut the growths from himself but only cries out in agony when he does, finding that despite their inhuman appearance they still have all the sensitivity as his normal flesh.

Eventually he makes a strange peace with what may be his fate, sitting in silence in front of the bonfire and reflecting on the fates of those back home who had been claimed by the protomolecule. Whose bodies agonizingly distorted until they could no longer hold onto life.

Wildcard
Throw something my way!

Edited 2020-01-20 21:55 (UTC)

There's a thing lurching within the shadows. Rosinante almost passes it by, assuming it's some sort of spirit, but it's almost too humanoid, isn't it? He stops and raises his lantern, a vivid green, to get a better look.

"Well," he murmurs, seeing ridged, keratinized skin, twisted where it ought to be smooth. The face is hard to recognize, but he knows he hasn't met everyone here just yet, for winter has kept him in more often than summer had. But is this thing really one of them? Perhaps he's died too many times, or perhaps he was always like this. Born wrong and twisted and hideous.

"You're a rather disgusting thing, aren't you," he continues, talking to it like one might speak to an animal that can't actually understand anything more than the tone of voice used, if that. "Where did you come from?"

Klaes' eyes, or at least the one not almost crusted over with growths, screws shut at the light being raised in his face. He takes a rigid step back, right arm swinging somewhat like pendulum, dead weight. His left hand raises to break the glow.

"Put tha' down."

His words, already difficult to decipher most times due to his accent, are even harder to understand now that a part of his lip is stiffened with the damaged half his face.

"If you cannot help then fuck off."

It's hissed, pained, and tired.

The mumblings of a deranged beast, clearly. One attempting to mimic speech rather like a pet crow, only this creature is far less elegant.

Rather than putting the lantern down, he circles, keeping it raised so he can get a better look. Were he in another place, another time, this might be a fine source of amusement. Blood sport, perhaps - keep it in a pen without food for a while until it's desperate, and then send in slaves to see which can defeat it without being killed.

Here, there's no such opportunity. "Help with what? You did say help, right?" he asks, deciding to humor it. Maybe it's smart enough to respond.

"Yah I said help."

Ashford tries to spin in place to follow Rosinante's movements. But in frustration he swings out his remaining functional arm to grab for the man's lantern.

"Help to get this shit offa'me."

He pulls away just in time to have that grasping hand brush against his coat instead as it flaps in the breeze caused by their movements. His lip curls slightly in disgust. This thing, monstrous and covered in who knows what - disease-ridden growths, probably - tried to touch him.

In another world, another life, this might have been interpreted as an attack. He could have this entire town demolished for the impudence of it if he wanted to. Let them all gasp in horror as Marine cannons hail down explosives for daring to strike at a Celestial Dragon. Is it even in its right mind? Does it have a right mind?

"What, that mess of... what is all that? Stone? A fungus? Disgusting. I'm sure there's a veterinarian somewhere here you could see for it." That's the sort of doctor these things go to, right? It barely even looks like a person.

It should be obvious to anyone with even a modicum of sense that there are no veterinarians in the Belt. There are no pets. No cattle. But Ashford is worldly enough and immersed enough in the history of mankind on Earth to know what the role of a veterinarian is. To treat animals....or to put them down.

And the insult, whether intended or not, strikes at an open wound of history with Earthers and Martians leading Belters to their slaughter like animals. And valuing them as such. Beasts of burden. Canon fodder. Vermin.

While he could care less if Rosinante finds him physically repulsive or not, THAT comment cannot and will not be allowed to simply pass.

So even in his current state, Ashford cocks his head, sucks in his cheeks as best he can, and sprays as much spit into Rosinante's face as he can physically manage.

It's well-angled spit, that, for it takes some effort to direct it into the face of someone who stands at nearly ten feet in height. Rosinante, meanwhile, freezes in utter horror. The filthy thing has contaminated him.

At home, execution would be swift and brutal but he understands well that as much as he wants to put a bullet through the creature's brain, it has a lantern and that means it probably belongs here, and while he could silence the shot and drag it out into the woods and claim the spirits had killed it, Dr. Solis will know better when she retrieves the body. It's a rather good thing he knows, now, that she's around.

So while in a state of complete morbid horror at what just happened, all he can really do for now is mop his face off with a sleeve - oh, smearing his makeup, damn, he'll have to fix that - and then draw his pistol as a threat, which he points at the strange warped monster. "Listen to me, foul beast; march your disease-ridden self out that way, to the woods. I'll even give you a running start, eh. Get going, before I dispose of you."

Ashford returns in kind, using his good arm to draw his own gun from his tool belt. If he's going to be put down, at least he's going to take this ignorant clown with him.

"You first."

He buts the gun forward so the muzzle touches the skin of Rosinante's stomach.

"Teach you to treat humans as animals. Rather we both go than take orders from the likes of you."

Well, this is rather awkward now. Who knew a thing like this could wield a weapon? Briefly, he wonders if it's even loaded but he decides it just isn't worth the risk of finding out.

"Aren't you stubborn. It seems I've underestimated you," he says, lifting an eyebrow as he looks down at the hideous thing. "And I expect we'd both prefer not to die. So how about this: on the count of three, I will lower my weapon, you will do the same, and I'll leave."

A generous, kind offer, truly. One he even intends to uphold, rather than make the situation worse. Whatever this wretched thing is, it's some sort of person and while morally that changes nothing at all for him, he knows it means something to the humans here. He'll have to find a subtler way of paying it back for its disgusting spittle.

If his mouth weren't too dry to go a second round, Ashford might have tried for another spray of spit at the suggestion. While he has no actual desire to fight, and little chance he could actually win in his current state, he also has a lifetime's worth of experience telling him to distrust anyone who ever makes the suggestion of dropping weapons at the same time. That's how young men get killed: over-idealism.

Few men ever get to his age in the Belt and he didn't get there by trusting easily.

He takes only a moment to consider before his arm cranks back and thrusts forward in a single forceful action.....straight into Rosinante's crotch. It's not elegant, exactly, but it just needs to be effective.

He just needs that extra bit of assurance that he won't be shot in the back the moment he turns to go. Or that if Rosinante still decides to take a shot, his aim will be significantly crippled.

The movement makes him react, for sure, but it's too abrupt and as he squeezes the trigger, the warped thing twists away and the shot fires into the ground precisely at the same time as he's punched in the balls.

Ears ringing, he gasps in surprise and drops as if his legs have been kicked out from under him. "I'll get you back for this!" he growls as the disfigured beast takes its leave, though the threat comes out a little more weakly than he'd like as he lands on his knees and folds over them, bending nearly double. Ow.

Hey you uh… anything I can help with?

[ She has absolutely no idea who this is, the light from the bonfire partially blinding her being absolutely no help. He’s been sitting there for quite a while though, and doesn’t seem dangerous? At least not in comparison to some of the others. She could have sworn she saw a dragon in the distance, and man was she not eager to chase that down… actually she was pretty eager. Unfortunately, it was already gone by the time she arrived, making her think it was a hallucination or a weirdly shaped patch of trees. It’s not like her eyesight’s particularly good in the first place.

Either way, she’s ready to book it, her shadow squirming slightly in reflection of her anxiety, made starker by the bright flames of the bonfire. ]

[His head jerks somewhat, having been lost in thought and not expecting to be spoken to. At this point it is almost impossible to turn his head at all but he recognizes the voice.

For a moment he doesn't respond, then he speaks softly]

Would you let me ask you something?

Uh, yeah? Of course!

[ Answering questions? She can most likely do that. Wait. Is he going to ask her to like, perform surgery on him? Or answer some weird philosophical shit that she definitely doesn’t know?

Insert an internal scream here. ]

I mean… I’ll try my best?

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EVENT LOG: TURN THE LIGHTS OFF

Klaes Ashford | CW: Body Horror

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Last Days

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