C
Let's be a badass "everything-for-any-situation" guy. I vote to upgrade Hidden Knife (Which apparently hides more things than knives).
plusone
The house will always be there. Parents need solace. Make that a second vote for both. Though my next upgrade would be for senses or Nudge Will/Push (please tell me someone gets that reference).
Tentative +1
Your powers grow! You've gained Unseen Presence. You can now spend 1 blood to reach into nearby minds and tell them you aren't there. Effectively, a form of invisibility. No maintenance cost.
Your powers grow! The Hidden Knife has become free.
After getting back to the Ives, you take your boots off by the door and go back into the washroom. Staring into the mirror, you think about your parents. They're probably worried absolutely sick, and need to hear from you. Vague images swim in your head – you sort of remember their faces?
Drat. That's a little unsettling, not remembering important things like that. It's like your memories have been unseated somehow, cut out...
“Yep.” Hyde says.
“Someone cut bits of your memory out on purpose, I'm afraid. Snickety-snack.”“Oh no.”
“Oh yes! Partially to keep them safe, but mostly to prevent us from finding them. Not that that's gonna stop us, right?”“But I don't remember...Do you remember where they are, or, or who they are?”
“Not really, no. But it can't be hard – we're a missing person. All we have to do is look ourselves up in the Fawcett phone book. We know our name, we know what we're looking for...it'll work.”“Huh. I guess you're kinda right.”
“Are you sure you want to find them?”“Why wouldn't I?”
“Me. You. Sunlight allergy. New diet, new look, new problems. To name a few things that are all really the same thing.”
“Look.” you tell your reflection. “That doesn't really matter. My parents are probably losing their minds with worry, if they haven't already decided I'm dead. I have to tell them I'm okay.”
“Tom, you ain't okay. You're a far fucking sight from okay.”Wincing at his bad language, you turn from the mirror and rub your forehead in consternation. “It'll be hard to explain. But I owe them peace of mind. Ephesians six two, remember? It's the right thing to do.”
Your reflection looks at you with a much more serious expression.
“You're right.”With that conversation out of the way, you leave the washroom and go back into the living room. The TV is quiet and the house feels totally still. It's a new kind of silence – not even the sound of your heartbeat or the odd, slight ringing noise you get in your ears. It's nice.
Flicking the lamp on, you settle down in Mr. Ives armchair and grab a discarded newspaper to read. Nothing interesting really leaps out at you. There's some stuff about construction budgets as the headline, which tells you that there's no news to speak of.
So you throw the paper to the side, grab the remote and flick the TV on. There's an item about a natural gas explosion in another town in the state – doesn't seem relevant. It looks like the police officer that was killed back at the hospital isn't in the local news. Oh well.
You yawn. It's getting late. Or early. Yeah. It's almost sunrise, now that you think about it. Your time sense has gotten a lot sharper. That's strange – maybe it's some sort of built in vampire survival mechanism. But you're also getting really sleepy. Very quickly, too.
Climbing back up the stairs with your head drooping back to the room you were sleeping in, you see that the curtains are thick in here: it looks like they're double-layered in dust sheeting – which is lucky, since it's the only thing preventing you from presumably burning up in the sunlight. Then it occurs to you that the last thing you need would be Mrs. Ives bustling in in the morning with a breakfast tray and thrusting aside the curtains.
Yawning heavily, you grab the pillow and carry it under your arm while you look for somewhere better to sleep. After a brief look around, a spare room on the ground floor presents itself as a viable choice, having no windows or obvious sunlight access. It looks like they keep cardboard boxes full of old books here. Throwing down the pillow, you settle into a corner behind a few boxes and rapidly fall asleep in a ball.
- - -
Sleep is deep and troubled. You dream you're lying on a couch staring at the ceiling; the ceiling is superimposed with a kaleidoscope of broken glass and pink ribbons. Sitting up, a woman reaches out her forearm to you: it's an unhealthy pale, ever so slightly blue. You try and bite into it, but instead of blood, thousands of black moths swarm out, flying in circles around the room. The woman disappears behind a curtain of moths and flying glass fragments, ribbons streaming past and piling onto the floor.
There's a thunderclap. The moths part to reveal a tall stone door along one wall of the therapist's office. It grinds slowly open, and a preacher stands, watching you and holding a bible. He condemns you, but he doesn't understand what you are. And how can he condemn what he doesn't understand?
You get off the couch and push him aside. Beyond the now powerless man is an art gallery. Black and white tiles stretch from the floor, across the walls, even on the ceiling. The lights are harsh; it creates a chiaroscuro effect. The art, if you want to call it that, is sadomasochistic pornography on pedestals. Men wrapped in barbed wire. Too many limbs. Too many eyes. The gallery is poison, and venom flows from the pictures and pedestals and would drown anyone, even you. Maybe you should have left this door closed. The moths flock into the gallery, the fluttering hum of thousands of insect wings fills the room and covers it. It's hard to see. The preacher is stripped to the bone by the moths and his bones clatter to the floor – something you hear, but not something you can see.- - -
You wake up to hear something thumping inside the wall. You're right where you fell asleep, only the sun has just gone down. It's the night of the 12th, and it's Monday. Someone is rattling something inside the adjacent wall.
After stretching, you realize you're ever so slightly down on blood. Apparently day to day living takes a little maintenance. Still nothing to worry about at the moment, though. Pillow under one arm, you get out of the spare room. The Ives are having dinner, and a man comes out of the bathroom where you heard the clunking in the wall.
The man must be this Earl guy the Ives mentioned, and he stares at you with a freaked out expression. He sports a thin goatee, an unkempt haircut, and what looks like a sports jacket over a threadbare T-shirt. He has a sort of thin, wiry look to him, and his voice is very rural.
“Whu- uh, who're you?” he asks, clearly startled.
“Oh, this is Tom.” Mr. Ives explains. “He's staying with us.”
“Oh. You didn't...ugh, okay, whatever.” he shrugs. “You their grandson or whatever?”
“Uh. No, just, uh, passing through.” you explain, sort of weakly.
He gives you a suspicious look and sits down to dinner with the Ives, who don't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary.
Mrs. Ives introduces him. “This is Earl. He helps out around the place sometimes.”
“Yeah,” Mr. Ives says “We were hoping you could give Tom here a lift into town, if that wouldn't be inconvenient.”
“Sure.” Earl says, still giving you a suspicious look. “I guess I could do that, no problem.”
“Would you like some dinner?” Mrs. Ives asks you.
“Uh. No thanks. I'm fine.” you tell her.
“Are you sure?” she asks, while Earl continues to eye you suspiciously. “You can't go without food, you know.”
“Heh. I'm sure.”
Something about Earl really rubs you the wrong way. You know what it is, actually. He's evil. A sort of low grade evil, but definitely evil, no doubt about it. Taking a seat at the table across from him, you flash him a polite little smile.
“So, uh, how long you know Mr. and Mrs. Ives for?” you ask with a conversational tone.
“Oh. Couple years.” he answers. His expression changes. Now he knows something is up.
“Oh yeah? How'd you meet them?”
“I, uh, I have folks nearby, just came by the one time, thought I'd be neighborly and all.” he says “How'd you meet them?”
His tone is triumphant as he turns the tables on you.
“Oh, well.” you glance at the Ives. “I got lost, uh, camping. Yeah.”
They give you a sort of slightly curious look, but don't contradict you.
“Camping.” he says, flatly disbelieving you. Mrs. Ives starts taking plates away.
“Yeah.” you nod. “Camping. In tents. You know.”
“Well, that was great, dear.” Mr. Ives says. “Earl, Tom, you're going in to town, is that right?”
You ask Earl “If you don't mind giving me a lift...?”
“Yeah, sure, I don't mind.” Earl says, staring at you. “No problem at all. We'll leave in an hour or so, sound good?”
Everyone starts packing up from dinner, and Earl gets up and sits on the couch to watch TV. How do you want to handle Earl when it's just the two of you? And what else would you like to do before you are theoretically supposed to get going? >_
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Topic: (SG) Please Drink Responsibly. (Read 12325 times)