Well, if it's called Void. Makes sense it would be hard to see in a dark room. Down the hatch. Don't spill a drop and drink as fast as possible. Even if the money was wasted, can always always get more. Annoying waste of time yes. But not a major setback.
You balance quickness and care as best as you are able, letting the contents of the canister pour into your mouth. And pour they do indeed, filling up your mouth easily. It feels like you're drinking cooking oil, except completely flavorless. It goes down with some difficulty, but you manage it all - there's only about half a liter or so, nothing too bad. None of it seems to adhere to the canister, or stay in your mouth for that matter - in fact, the whole thing feels like a single piece even after swallowed, snaking through your esophagus with great rapidity. A moment passes before it reaches your stomach, and another before it comes to a rest. You feel uncannily aware of your digestive system for a moment, the contractions of your gut as it prepares to digest whatever it was that you just drank.
Then it twitches, this thing in your stomach, expanding and contracting rhythmically, growing larger with each pulse, up until its edges press on your stomach lining, stretching it quite a bit, making you feel incredibly full. You feel like you're about to rupture, and your hands clutch the armrests of your office chair as a sick feeling goes through you. You don't recall if there was any instruction about not throwing up.
After a good moment of tension, you feel something pop inside you unnervingly, and a sharp pain somehow encompassing your entire body reaches your brain moments afterwards. Your limbs twist in odd angles and your skeletal muscles all cramp at once, propelling you out of your chair, and you fall out of your chair abruptly. As your form makes contact with the ground, you feel something break deep inside you, and another round of cramps wracks your body, causing you to flop over, the break in your very being tearing further. You settle on your back after a moment, groaning loudly, and then the final, most painful wave comes, causing you to arch your back like a tetanus victim and lose all control of your body for... you're not sure how long, actually.
At the end, though, there you are, lying flat on your back, everything in your body hurting like hell, your limbs barely responding to your attempts to move them. You feel weak, detached... nothing unusual there, granted, except the relative intensity of these. But you also feel vaguely... different somehow.
Kyle is very fucking nervous. Not something new for him, his income comes from running drugs, of course he has experience in being nervous. He dodsn't let it show... much. His palms are sweaty, knees weak... a lesser man would have vomited most likely. He takes a breath and pushes his hair back.
"Look man, I don't know, I just take drugs from point A to point B. Let's just put the guns away, and we can all leave like this never happened."
"Don't play coy with us, beardie," Stevie spits out. "I ain't got time for that shit. And my boys, they got less."
"We're busy men. Got no time for games," Lawry, the largest of the Churchboys as well as probably the smartest, forces his knee into your father's back to make him kneel, pumping his old-fashioned shotgun and wasting a slug for the purpose of punctuating his statement.
"The ponce doesn't think we'll do it," Stevie nods his head toward you with a slight grin, clearly hoping that you'll call his bluff. "How about it, you cheeky fuck? Gonna sing, or do we gotta make your dad sing for you?"
Lawry expectantly starts to trace his shotgun up your father's back. Your mother looks deathly afraid even as Otis, a little rat bastard in pretty much every way, makes sure his revolver's loaded right behind her. Crazy Joe tenses up and begins to shiver, glancing rapidly between you and your sister, resting his bayonet on one of her shoulders, then the other. Off in the corner to the side of both you and the others Tubby stirs, cradling his treasured machine pistol as he looks at the door of this dinghy little warehouse again, perhaps expecting something to storm in, then at you, wondering quietly if you're about to give him an excuse to empty a clip.
Rachel groans quietly, moving around as best she can in the bed. For the first time in what she's sure is years, she's alone. "D-dad?" She dissolved into a fit of coughing, a burst of pain accompanying each breath. After a few minutes of labored breathing, Rachel tried again. "Dad?" More pain, but no coughing this time. She had learned to appreciate the little things in life.
There is no response. You can barely even hear yourself speak. The respirator is as stifling as you remember. Your world is slowly becoming pure pain, and you instinctively try to move, but the straps - straps all over your body, in fact, head to foot, keeping every part of you as immobile as possible - hold you fast. You move your eyes to the left and right, and your eyes are drawn to the... IV.
Is than an IV, though? It seemed like it at first, but it's got a bit more metal on it, you think. And more machinery. And it's connected to you on one arm, on the other, and as you stir a little, you think you feel another needle in your jugular. It looks more like a dialysis machine from what you can see of it, though the thing you confused with an IV bag is still there. You don't think you've seen anything like this machine before. Is this some strange new treatment? You can barely even think right now, and your eyes are glazing over. The pain is drowning out your heartbeat.
"... Rachel," goes your father's voice at one point. You miss parts of what he's saying, and he rambles inaudibly at points, "... off the painkillers, have to flush the system... I hope this works... no, it has to work!..."
He goes on for a bit, only half-coherent, sobbing at times, but you catch one of the last things he says all too clearly.
"... you're going to be okay, Rachel, but... this may hurt. This may hurt more than you can imagine..."
The rest is apologies as far as you can tell. By this point the pain renders you incapable of complex thought mostly, and you thrash uselessly in the restraints, having little else you can do. You scream until your voice gives out. Your heart is habitually skipping beats and racing at the same time. You hear a distant banging sound. Your body is failing in every possible way, separated from the machinery keeping it alive. You stop breathing. You don't think you could breathe even if you wanted to at this point. Now all that's left is to let it end.
There is a sudden hiss as the machine comes alive, and your fading consciousness barely registers an influx of freezing cold into your veins. Your heart stops beating of its own volition, and you see... you think you see something in the ceiling, an emerging pattern of some kind. It looks familiar, shapes and ideas coalescing together. You think you see your mother as you lose feeling in your body, and when you close your eyes, you still feel her gaze, cold and unfeeling in death, one shadow among all too many in the land of the dead. Does she still remember you? Her eyes gaze at you uncomprehendingly in the void of nonexistence, then she extends a very long hand, her eyes traveling along the arm and settling on the palm to see you better. They blink once, twice with great deliberation, then return to her head slowly as she turns around, slinking back into the vast, silent crowd. You couldn't pick her out from any other person in there after a few moments.
She does not remember you. You were very little when she died. You barely remember her, your memories mostly composed of static, lifeless pictures your father showed you. In death, just as before your birth, you are complete strangers. And when your father joins you... probably not long from now, you realize... will you know him, knowing what death does to one's shape? And if you can still speak, what will you say to him?
You open your eyes. You are in the room you died in. Your heart still does not beat, nor do you breathe. Your eyes see clearly. You are still restrained, but much more loosely than you recall, and you don't feel the IVs anymore. And it takes you a moment to realize one last thing... you feel no pain at all.
It was difficult to think through the pain, every attempt at thinking of even the tiniest way she could escape from this mess was interrupted by another jab of searing agony. Lacie began to try and crawl her way forwards, it was difficult, slow and her wounds almost made her cry out. Even through the haze she knew she would never make it in time, she kept onwards though still praying for some kind of miracle.
You dislodge yourself from the table, a bloody mess barely capable of movement at this point, crawling on as the rapid footsteps get closer. You're not getting anywhere. You'll be lucky if you get into the next room before someone finds you. You take a deep breath and give yourself one final push, propelling yourself for half a meter before you strike the stone floor again, your bloodstained clothes squelching a little, a few glass shards from the table embedding themselves into your flesh that much deeper, drawing yet more blood.
You shut your eyes tightly and curl up as the doors open, unable to move any further, fully aware that it's all over. Your mind runs through the multitudinous possibilities of this - death, torture, getting arrested if you're lucky, followed by jail time, during which you may get stabbed, beaten, abused, turned into one of them, you come out, and then you're 40 years old. Your life is behind you, and you can only go back where you've already been, which is only failure. Failure and death is your future. All paths lead to death. All of yours will be painful.
Steps draw closer, and something in you cracks, light seeping in through the openings. Eventualities become unclear, and possibilities widen, growing in size and scope. Your fate is not yet sealed for a few moments yet. There is still an escape. A miracle. A strand of incredible improbability, a flaw in your assumptions. It glows with a hope unlike any you've ever seen, and you hold onto it for dear life, allowing it to lift you up, far above the obstacle in your path, and then...
... and then you go down, straight into the floor your body losing its shape as you meld into the thin layer of stone tiling, disappearing from sight entirely, leaving no sign of your passage - merely a trail of blood and glass that you left behind after your fall. The pain quickly subsides. Perhaps because there's nothing that could hurt anymore? You look around, and see a few doors, concrete further below... along the sides, thresholds into the other rooms. Doors. Walls. It is an odd form of awareness that this rectangle of floor seems to offer.
Alex would smile heavily. He knew it would all be worth it if it worked. He would be out of money, but it'd be the best thing ever. He would have the power to be unstoppable. If he played his cards right, he could be the greatest around. He thought all this before drinking.
Positive thinking proves very useful in consuming the concoction in the canister, as it's very much... unusual. Tasteless, but definitely not shapeless. Feels like swallowing a newborn snake, only more dangerous. No burning sensation, no aftertaste, just a bit of oily texture and an effortless passage into your stomach, where you feel one poke, then another, seemingly as the contents of the canister orient themselves down there. You move around a little to make it more comfortable, which seems to work. And then you feel an odd inflation of sorts, your stomach filling up with the thing.
You start to feel a bit sick after a moment. Then it starts to hurt, and then you start to taste blood and acid at the back of your throat, which makes you wonder if something's not gone terribly wrong. The formation inside you scratches, twists, digs painfully into you, at which point you groan and hold on to yourself. It's... probably supposed to work this way, right? It continues on and on, the snakelike formation climbing back up your esophagus, making you retch repeatedly, feeling like you're in the middle of an endoscopy. It pokes into your intestines, seeking something desperately. And then, just at the back of your throat, it seems to sniff out its quarry. The end of the thing spears upward, and you black out.
When you come to, you feel really weird. Terribly unusual. You smell the air, and it feels very fragrant. You sit up without any form of effort, feeling no trace of that thing you drank within you. Seems to have done something, you think. You feel very hungry. And thirsty. And you could use a drink, too. Maybe you should go to the store and buy something. You've still got money left. A lot of money. Well, credit anyway. More than you could usually spend. Is it unlimited? You think it's unlimited. Theoretically. Maybe you could look up some videos you forgot to watch before. You get up and jump. You're not sure why, but it
feels very right. You jump again, then jog from one end of the room to another. Yeah, you really ought to go outside! The memory of the cold nightly air fills you with intense longing. You must go outside now. Absolutely.
You run outside, leaving the door open, then look at the stars. There's not that many. You've heard that you can see them better in the woods. But wait, the Wall's in the way. Maybe you could get a car and get there through Southside. But wait, it's not safe out in the woods. You should get someone to come with you. You think you could call someone. Do you have any friends? Maybe if you wake Dad up and ask him to take you there. He'd do it, you're sure. You'll go and wake him up right now. Or should you? Would hate to bother him. You've got powers now. Maybe you could jump over the wall?
"Yes, Steven will suffice for today." he replies, silently kicking himself for letting his real name slip, he really needed to come up with a proper alias or cape codename for situations like this..
"Tell you about myself?
Not really much I can share im afraid, id prefer to keep my real identity seperate from any... agreements... we come to...
I'm sure you understand." he finished, idly running his fingers along the simple leather mask covering his eyes and cheekbones that he had purchased from a souvenir stand prior to meeting with Kim.
he was painfully aware of its reminiscence to an old 80's superhero mask, but it gave him some small sense of security, the irony that he was wearing a "superhero" mask to a job interview with a probably para-human mobster also kept him quite amused and helped offset his nervousness.
"Still, I suppose there are some things I can share without giving myself away." he smirked, leaning back into the lounge and marvelling at its comfort.
I dont smoke and im not much of a drinker, I dont follow any sports or listen to any music... I'm thinking of taking up sky diving as a hobby... my caped escapades tend to be rather noisy, but I prefer to remain out of the public eye for now...
To be honest, I dont really know what to say.
What about me, aside from who resides within this impenetrable disguise, are you most interested in knowing?
Kim listens attentively, sipping her decaf now and then, reflexively adjusting her glasses as you finish up with a question.
"Well," she draws out, taking a moment to think. "I don't really know. I suppose I'd just like to get to know you a little better. We tend to run fairly close in, heh," she laughs at the thought in advance, "in
the gang, you know. It's important to know each other well. Who you actually are is bound to come out at some point, too. We're not in the business of keeping many secrets from one another."
She grabs a donut, examining it for a moment. "But I suppose you have a point. You don't exactly have the job yet. It's the big man himself who decides," she says, then takes a bite. "Mm. Theshe are good," she mentions with her mouth full.
You hear the faintest rustling sound from not too far off, and a trace of a girlish giggle, which causes Kim to pause, swallow the bite and put the donut down for a moment, taking a moment to examine herself for errant crumbs, of which there are none.
"Ah. Sounds like someone's up already. We're very lucky. Let's go and pay him a visit," she says, getting up and motioning for you to follow.
Yvonne screamed. She started to look around for anything to shield herself, to save herself. She frantically searched, anywhere, anywhere.
You scream until you are out of breath and the tiles cease to stare at you, at which point you are prepared to take stock of the surroundings once more. The walls taste of bright white, and the ringing they produce is of optimal cleanliness. You run your fingers along it to appreciate the coloring, and feel out its unevenness with your eyes, staring every protrusion you can perceive back in as fast as you can manage. You must keep this under control. When the ceiling weeps, you silence the discord. Your mind scans the room, but you know that nothing is here aside from a small, rather abrasive brush. Not for use on humans, but on what then? It refuses to tell you. Is it working against you?
You are about to interrogate it with an instructive motion, but then you notice the gunpowder smell grow more intense, and you see the wavelike echoes of footsteps in the science lab. Recalled white flashes drown out thought. It is here! The beast is here! It seeks your soul! You can see its slavering fangs in the floor and the ceiling, about to close on you - there is no way out, for beneath the curtain lies its maw. Your doom is assured. Your bones will fall into the abyss, never to be found. The tiles of the room flash black now, then again, then twice more after a pause, punctuating your imminent demise.
You sense a hand on the nearby shower knob, and an absent cackle like that of a child squashing an insect. You have but a single moment. The moment of truth. The one where your fate is decided. The shaky feeling of destiny fills you as the room swims before your eyes.
"Ye-Yes Ma'am...."
Arnie fidgeted restlessly. Her eyes. Her eyes were serpents ready to strike. Any moment now, those snakes would wrap themselves around his neck and wring the life out of him. Such horrible eyes. What could she be thinking? Why was he here? Arnie just wanted to be left alone. He never bothered anyone. Why is everyone always after him?
Poor Arnie. There's no escape this time. He'll die here. Oh well, he had it coming. He's a bad man after all. Remember the bikers?
"Please, I...don't want to die! I'm not a bad guy, I swear! I never wanted to hurt them! I was only defending myself!"
That's wrong. Arnie's a good person. His friends from the sky trust him. They know.
"The aliens! Ask em! They'll vouch for me! I ain't dangerous!"
She was sent to kill him. Arnie knows too much. The government would want him dead.
"No! I don't know nothin' about the aliens! I've never seen them! You gotta believe me!"
Aww, that's sad. Arnie's been getting better though, right?
"Y-Yeah! I've got my problems under control! I've stopped the gamblin' and I've been tryin' to get a job! I swear! Please let me go! I'm..." Arnie's voice shifted to a whisper. "...so thirsty. I just want to go back to my street and...grab a drink. I don't want to hear their screams anymore. I never meant to hurt anyone. I'm sorry."
Plead for mercy. Reluctantly drink what the woman gives me.
"Shut the fuck up already!" the woman snaps at you. "God. Like anybody cares," she motions at the men standing by you. "Just let him have it already."
You open your mouth voluntarily, letting the men pour the thing down your throat - you've drunk worse things before. It doesn't burn, doesn't sting. But it does feel alive. Very alive. Like a serpent winding inside your gut. Like the serpent-eyes of the woman! Oh god! You understand everything!
The fear hits you in a massive wave, and the serpent instantly knows. It is inside you. You shouldn't have let it inside you. Stupid, stupid! It has you now! You try to retch on command as you practiced once, and it comes to you readily, impeding the serpent for a moment, in response to which it wiggles, then vibrates. And then in a sudden and completely arbitrary direction it lashes out, and you feel like you've been stabbed with a pike made of pure plasma, your flesh neglecting to yield before burning, your tissues catching fire, your entire body starting to boil, your mind flooding with alien knowledge that you try your very hardest to reject. The snakes will not get you! You cannot allow it! You may die, but you will die a free man!
You thrash wildly in the chair, and you hear sounds of the others rustling. They are pointing guns at you, you are sure! You are interfering in this terrible experiment! That means it's working, whatever it is your doing! You move and twist, trying to confuse the snake, resist its terrible influence, and you tear at your restraints with hidden reserves of power you have been saving for just this day. The chair nearly buckles as you resist, and just as gunfire rings out, you tear free! The chair disintegrates as you burst through the entire room, impacting every edge and enveloping every object. You lock your hands around the snake-woman's throat, wary of her treachery, and deliver swift kicks to the throats of her two lackeys at the same time. You scream from every corner of the room, and tear off a lamp from the ceiling, fully intending to beat any number of men to death with it while your other two hands lift the snake-woman off the ground by her neck, fully prepared to fight to the bitter end, another set going through the downed lackeys' pockets for any money - old instinct - or keys to whatever underground installation this is. Another hand searches through the bag and finds another snake-canister like the one you had put inside you.
The entire room inhales as you run out of breath for your scream of rage, the air thick with the victorious, pulsing essence of you, and for a moment the only sound are the choking noises of the lackeys and the snake-woman, the situation turned on them in the blink of an eye.
These turns take a shitload of time to write. But I'll be damned if I'm not enjoying myself while writing them.
((Can't believe I missed this. You still have room on the waitlist, HB?))
Yep. You can take the same guy as before, with the same powers as well. I'll need a sheet to induct you, however. U_P's sheet is similar to what I'd be looking for if you take the same guy, but you can also do a new one, maybe buy or better yet, get your powers in an experiment.
Author
Topic: Come On Down To Edwardstown: A Worm-Inspired RP (9/9) (Read 17176 times)