Session 4: Maids? They look like maids to you?Featuring:Cat, invisible when she wants to be, played by KJ
Miyako Koguchi, knows no fear and feels no pain, played by Piratejoe
Eania Theremis, moonlights as the grim reaper when medicine doesn't do the trick, played by TheBiggerFish
Vanessa, can't get no satisfaction, played by Sentient Bowtie
Atop a quiet, foreboding hill deliberately distant from any form of human habitation looms Breckenridge Sanitarium, constructed long ago to house an entire county's afflicted and dying so that they would stand no chance of spreading their illness to the rest of the world. A village in itself, the sanitarium is massive, potentially able to host several hundred patients at once, at its height during the time when tuberculosis ran rampant in the land and the dead piled up in its halls, sent to their rest through elaborate death-chutes so that the scope of the fatalities would remain unseen by those still alive. It has fallen far even from this in its latter days, broken windows and crumbling facades assaulting the eye of the rare passing onlooker.
Standing outside the lobby during a break in their work are four of the facility's nurses, most of them using the time for either smoking or quiet commiseration as they watch the sun slowly set. Another day has come and gone.
Up the hill a beaten and bruised woman, Rose, compels herself to press on, stumbling on the road to the sanitarium as she uses a derelict plank to steady herself. A rare arrival. She's come to the right place, it seems from her walk and look. Of the nurses, Cat is the first to come to the woman, Vanessa following behind. Rose does not make it all the way up, her legs giving way as she falls to her knees on the paved path. She is in a bad way, confused, raving as Cat comes to get her, asking for someone named Walt, someone she came to meet or find here. Cat tells her it'll be all right, yes, she's come to the right place... Rose seems relieved as she passes out in the nurse's arms.
They take Rose in, hoping to put her in a room so that she may rest and hopefully weather her state of near-delirium. The lobby is empty of human life, and has been for a long time, only mold and cockroaches flourishing in the dark and damp, an abandoned wheelchair the only thing to greet their entrance. They do not linger, and head for the patient rooms, finding no shortage of choice in dilapidated, empty little chambers, claustrophobic and filled with misaligned cabinets filled with rusty, moldering artifacts from a bygone age of care. Rose is laid to rest in the abandoned bed, Eania and Vanessa getting down to clearing out the rusty used syringes and broken bottles of rubbing alcohol from the cupboards (and then the cupboards themselves, since nothing of value is in them and the room is far too small as it is) while Cat and Miyako go about finding some food to bring to their new patient.
The cafeteria, much like the rest of the sanitarium, is lively insofar as the variety of rot is astounding and the dust bunnies are especially animate. The remnants of the nurses' lunch, a cooling plate of boiled dog, skinless and half-eaten, still linger on a relatively palatable (which is to say merely mostly filthy) table. Since there is no other food, Cat decides to reuse the leftovers and mask any unpalatable elements by using the meat for soup, retrieving a filthy bowl from one of the counters and shaving a few cuts from the meat into it. Since there are no working stoves or, indeed, much of anything in operating condition beside that, she takes some of the deep brown water accumulated in the backed-up sink for broth, and resignedly starts to bring it back.
Miyako, meanwhile, has discovered a vending machine by one of the cracked walls, its display still lit up, a soft hum from its refrigeration audible as one gets closer. Cold Drinks, read the letters above it in a banal cursive. It promises nourishment and relief for the price of a dollar, free of the decay of its surroundings, its only marring being slight age. Unfortunately, there is no money to be found... perhaps some of the other patients may have some, it thinks. Miyako considers the notion for a moment before Cat comes walking by, and the two walk back to Rose's room, "soup" in hand.
At this point as night falls Vanessa and Eania have sorted out the room, leaving only Rose, her bed and basically nothing else within the room. Eania, wishing to help the poor unconscious woman a little further, searches within her uniform for some medicine, finding a small red bottle in one of the western pockets that she squirreled away a long time ago. Its ingredients are unclear, and it is hard to say what it is exactly. Antibiotics? A sedative? A nutritional supplement, disinfectant? It's taken orally, and its effects are overall beneficial to the drinker, and so for lack of a clearer label these have been dubbed "health drinks", back when any were available in the derelict halls of the hospital.
Cat and Miyako return, with Miyako having fished some of the least unappealing chunks out of the water in return for handing Cat a cigarette and fixed a small plate that she could pretend is the main course, and they arrive to greet Rose with some dinner in bed just as she begins to come to. Neither the smell nor the overall visual impression of the soup, which looks plainly inedible at best and incredibly toxic at worst, seem to meet with Rose's approval as Eania offers her the slight pick-me-up of the dubious 'health drink', which miraculously does reinvigorate the woman just in time to make her look of horror at the dog vichyssoise all the more heartbreaking, to the point where even Miyako reconsiders offering the next course. Eania, pondering the possibility of finding more of these drinks (if only to fix the poor woman's rising nausea), looks around a little more and, much to her surprise, finds yet another health drink on the doorstep of the room. She is fairly sure that was not there a minute or two ago. As Eania hands this second find to Rose as well, she pockets it rather happily, keen on having more to sustain herself in the place. Cat leaves dejected with her attempt at food, going to pour it out by the entrance. As night has fallen, the chanters around the hill, the people of the outside, seem to have gotten especially loud.
As Rose becomes more talkative, she speaks more on what she is looking for. Walt. A friend of hers, who promised he would be here - six foot four, a scar under his right eye, a tattoo of a dragon on his shoulder. Vanessa, eager to help, sets off on a search immediately as the other nurses consider the situation and confer with Rose, waiting for Cat to return, which she does after taking perhaps a little too much time for it to be a mere accident. Three of the nurses reunited, Eania explains Rule #1, which is to never be alone. Ever.
Vanessa's decision of going into the dark corridors of the sanitarium alone takes almost no time at all to backfire as she follows a likely corridor into the perilous domain of one Dr. Aaronson, the only attending physician still occasionally seen in the sanitarium's halls, and the only one she'd never had any luck hitting on. He flits between rooms on his inexplicable rounds, and Vanessa tries to move along without disturbing the man, only for him to suddenly pause in the middle of going from one room to another and turn to her, his attire much like that of a historical plague doctor, beaked mask and all. He looks at her through his goggles, his arm unfolding with a metallic noise into extending chains, each with the wicked head of a flanged mace as the limb loses cohesion and becomes not so much an arm as an assemblage of weaponry. Vanessa decides, most likely wisely, that now would be the time to start backing away, and Dr. Aaronson makes sure the point is taken by starting to very deliberately walk toward her, increasing his pace as he whips his flails into the nearby wall, tearing into it and the rusty railing by its side with a terrible groan of concrete and underlying metal giving way to the swing. At this point Vanessa simply turns tail and runs as quickly as she is able, the doctor breaking into a run as the sanitarium rings out with his jangling steps, the flails swinging and destroying all manner of debris on the path.
Vanessa runs and runs, almost straight into the hands of Miyako, who must have drawn the short straw in going to look for her - as Vanessa continues running, Miyako follows along, mostly confused as to why somebody would be frightened of the likes of Dr. Aaronson, but going along with it anyway since there doesn't seem to be any talking sense into the poor girl. Vanessa sprints off, and Miyako follows, presumably to make sure she doesn't encounter any more trouble along the way.
The sounds of Dr. Aaronson's destructive approach, meanwhile, convince Eania to take Rose out of this room - not Cat, though. In one of her stranger turns, she stays behind, stepping behind a door, taking up position. Waiting. Eania doesn't question it, running off with Rose into the lobby and heads right out the door, into the dark outside.
Night has fallen hard on the surroundings, no stars or moon or even visible clouds in the sky, only encroaching dark, as if the hospital itself were emitting some leftover luminosity that simply did not reach further than a few steps from the entrance, the only other light as far can be seen found in occasional glimmering eyeshine as the invisible chanting figures surrounding the hospital continue their great work, digging, sharpening, praying. Eania and Rose share few words, and even those come far too close to provoking the chanters' attention, one hundred sharp simultaneous steps making a spectacular din as the cold darkness turns toward the two women. They step away cautiously, and move back in, the doctor seemingly having moved on from his chase and having avoided ranging into the areas of the lobby. Not about to push their luck, Eania chooses to return Rose to her room for now and consider their next move very carefully...
Vanessa has led Miyako on a chase that has spanned a good portion of the sanitarium and a few flights of stairs, and by the time she is fairly sure that nobody is following them, the two nurses have wound up in the depths of the pediatric ward. And as they argue over whether it's not better to face your fears (particularly the fear of a particular doctor, which strikes Miyako as particularly unreasonable), they find themselves approached by a small child that they recognize as Casey Park, an inpatient at the sanitarium, though the specifics elude them...
Casey seems not very pleased to see them. Mostly curious, as she greets them and asks why they're smiling like that. Smiling at her. Like this, she says and spreads her face in an unnerving grin. Vanessa, fairly sure that she isn't smiling at the moment, tries to convince the girl that this is the case, but the notion still seems very much planted in her head. Miyako, more practical-minded, asks if there's anything little Casey needs. Casey replies that it itches, and as Vanessa's smiling mouth continues to bother her she hides behind Miyako, asking for the nurse to make her stop. Miyako considers if perhaps smiling works differently here. She wouldn't really know, not having done it before. Her hand wanders as she experimentally gives Casey a small tickle, which gives her both a small start and makes her laugh. She's got funny fingers, Casey says. Long, sharp. Could Miyako give her a scratch?
Not one to refuse a little girl, Miyako decides to help, and Casey guides her hand over to her hair, which turns out to be a wig as she lifts it off her scalp, pointing her to a large, ragged ridge in her head closed by stitching, ragged after picked at for a time by clumsy fingers. Vanessa looks away as the girl guides Miyako's head to the large wound, scratching at first over it, but at the girl's request slipping her fingers into it along shaved scalp and skull, her fingers finding soft, warm and pliable matter... a small metal object of some kind, Casey urging the nurse to keep scratching. She goes deeper in, trying to get a feel for it, and works her fingers around it... the shape reminds her most of a coin. Very carefully she pulls at the coin, dragging it out of the girl's head as delicately as she is able, holding it up as it comes loose, her bloodstained fingers wiping off the minute amount of loose matter still clinging to it.
It's a penny, Miyako notices after a moment. Funny. Casey looks at Miyako's discovery, her itch gone for good. Thanks, she says with a grateful look as her eyes roll into the back of her head and she falls backward onto the floor, a little blood spurting from her head wound as she impacts and lays there motionless, not drawing breath or moving, her expression frozen as she looks to the ceiling in what could be mistaken for wonder. The nurses run in to check on her, Vanessa cradling the girl in her arms, but by then it is far too late.
Some distance away, Eania feels a terrible chill assault her, the sound of a troubled soul passing. She had already set off to search for Rose's friend, the hospital room they were holed up in feeling increasingly unsafe. As Rose reasoned that she probably feels just as much in danger within as anywhere else, Eania decided it is time to go further in... perhaps if they find this Walt, things may become clearer yet. But this fell by the sidelines as the urgency of her task drives Eania to the first place she can think of when protracted deaths come to mind - the cancer ward, and its ornery old lung cancer patient, Ms. Withers... she's not quite right in the head, hasn't been for some time, and as Eania approaches, she notes with surprise that the woman is quite alive and in the hallway, smoking away to her heart's content in violation of hospital guidelines with no one to stop her, the other staff and patients long gone by now.
As Ms. Withers notices the nurse approach, the mere persistent irritation turns to fear. She takes the cigarette out of her mouth with a start. Watch out, she shouts at Rose in panic, moving suddenly. Eania, knowing to disregard such warnings, advises Rose, who looks around reflexively, to ignore the ravings of the mad and dying woman and to proceed on, but Ms. Withers does not relent - she runs straight at Rose as her warning goes unheeded and tries to pull her away from some unseen and terrible danger. Eania has none of that as she charges straight at the old bat with a well-placed shoulder tackle, driving her into a wall and clear of her companion. Ms. Withers sinks to the floor, coughing what seems like dust and leftover smoke as her already short breath is taken away by being slammed into concrete roughly.
Rose is clearly very shocked as she runs up to Eania and Ms. Withers just as Eania, satisfied that her work here is done after assaulting a violent cancer patient, prepares to leave. Checking her pulse, Rose does not find one, and Eania grudgingly gets over to check for herself, a quick examination assuaging her companion's concerns - Ms. Withers is still alive, even if her skin has the feel of paper, her spit seems to have turned to dust and her wig seems to have nearly fallen off... and there's a strange flesh-colored hair on her face, it seems, like the whisker of a catfish. And as Ms. Withers starts to resist again, having regained the ability to breathe, Eania decides that being an orderly is decidedly not her job, and starts to withdraw.
At this point Cat makes her presence known at last, having been very much busy in the last half hour or more, managing to trail Dr. Aaronson for a good while and observe him making his mysterious rounds, going through doors, examining some body bags left on abandoned gurneys haphazardly where the hospital turns increasingly deep and unfriendly, occasionally moving some things, or reaching into his smock and producing a health drink to lay meticulously into a non-obvious location. Laying a trail, it seems, but to where and for what purpose, she does not rightly know. Having followed Eania as well when she finally made her move, Cat steps in, moving to examine Ms. Withers for anything unusual, her firm grip and intense stare managing to pacify the woman, leaving her sitting there, asking fearfully what the nurses want from her, and where is her doctor, all with that... strange hair, or perhaps more of a sharp wart... just jutting out of her face, defying rational explanation.
Cat feels compelled to pull at the hair in a moment of curiosity, and so she does. And like a strange thread the hair pulls along, skin peeling away as it runs across Ms. Withers' face, then branches in two once, then again, then several times more as the tissue, sinewy in nature, elastic and tough, comes loose from the rest of Ms. Withers, turning slowly into a membranous cobweb as Cat starts to pull with both hands, moving on and on, dragging it free. Multiple times do the threads wind along the woman's skin like the wrappings of an ancient mummy, skin coming loose in flakes, Ms. Withers watching in puzzlement until one particular thread of tumorous sinew transitions into malformed nerve, and the sudden burst of agony drives her to shriek, and for Cat to inadvisably yank hard, a horrid tearing sound cutting into the woman's voice as she starts to suddenly come apart, the flesh beneath the wrapping web merely an assemblage of so many undifferentiated chunks tumbling every which way, coming apart as they hit the floor, even these turned partially to dust by age and neglect, until all that is left of Ms. Withers is her hospital gown and a pile of quasi-organic, rapidly dissolving refuse.
From the gown has tumbled out a single coin, a mere dusty quarter to Ms. Withers' name after all this time. As the worn-down spirit of the woman within the cancerous mass hits her like a bullet to the chest, Eania looks right at Cat, still holding a mess of sinew, and weeps openly, standing stock still in the hall as if unable to move.
Many a moment has passed when Miyako has Vanessa finally convinced that it is best to leave Casey where she fell rather than attempt to bury her in a way only Miyako could - the body, she reasons, may distract Dr. Aaronson at a crucial moment. Vanessa, swallowing her common decency, meekly accepts the thought, and the two of them move along out of the pediatric ward, looking for a less troubling place to be in.
It stands to reason, then, that they would find themselves in no place other than the psych ward, and no sooner do they venture through it that Miyako notices a crude tripwire linked to a tank of propane gas and certain other things, all fashioned into a potentially lethal, combustible combination. The workmanship leaves something to be desired, Miyako thinks as she steps over the tripwire, but the handiwork is unmistakable - Mac, the resident nutjob of the psych ward. These have extended far indeed. He must have been at this for quite a while. Intrigued, Miyako heads deeper in - Mac's traps are nothing if not predictable. The old brick to the face, the bucket of crushed glass and paint, more fire traps linked to discreet tripwires - a
lot more. She navigates these and more, Vanessa trailing behind and helping where she can.
In the eye of the storm, a small room in the deep recesses of the ward, Mac lies fearing, dreading underneath his desk, feeling the approach of the nurses as much as hearing it, each trap disabled as they move through, and finally removing one final spring-loaded can of razor blades and broken needles as they step into his sight at last. The man curls up in his safe place, the improvised paint bucket helmet on his head doing little to make him secure. He cries out as he is addressed, asking what are these voices, these voices, these intruding, insistent voices? How did they get past the traps? He tries to make them leave, for he has a secret thing - the voices must leave, or everything burns!
Miyako approaches the desk, giving Mac a steady look as she asks him if he really wants to do that in her best voice of authority, and Vanessa tries to convince the man that they're not voices, they're real, they're
people - she reaches into herself with her words, trying to find some measure of sincerity, but finds only a strange hollowness there. Mac sees her hesitation and reacts to the words instinctively, commanding them to keep away, but hesitates with the thing he's holding as Miyako stares him down - keep
her away, he says at Vanessa, and with a slightly careless movement the look of the object starts to ring a bell in both the nurses' minds - much like one of his fire traps, but more... explosive. Handheld, with a crude yet effective detonator.
Miyako, slightly more eager to comply now that the stakes are made clear, lays a hand on Vanessa's shoulder to move her a little further as Mac looks on, staring wildly. At this moment Vanessa, realization still fresh in her mind, ceases to try. Her lovely mouth curls into the charming hint of a smile, and she tries to work that little sparkle in her eye, bringing her arms together, inhaling to bring out the chest. Mac stares into those eyes of hers for a long moment, the feeling of deprivation, loneliness and the sheer death in the air welling up inside him as his will is tested, and he almost avoids Vanessa's own realization from a moment ago - behind those eyes lies nothing at all, a yawning person-shaped hole in God's green earth under the thin veneer of seduction. A place a man could get lost in. Many have, many better than he. Some of them... forever.
Step the fuck back, he says, lifting the incendiary with renewed resolve. Miyako gently asks him if he needs anything, and the question pierces deeper than expected. He needs to get out, straight the hell out of this place... he's served his time, can't he get out, he pleads to Miyako, and the maid stares him down one last time. Sure. He can go. He's recovered quite well. And it is at this point that Mac loses hope. She doesn't believe it. Not even he believes it, as much as he'd like to. He can't win this. He can only make everyone lose, and hopefully keep his soul, if the place will let him...
Fuck you, Mac declares, and fuck everyone, and then he goes for the detonator. Vanessa in a desperate move grabs a nearby piece of rusted garbage and chucks it at him. Miyako, though, Miyako just runs. The room is small, and the incendiary isn't great either, she can take her chances.
And so Mac goes up in flames as a piece of junk impacts his desk, thrown without much ability, the room filling with a burst of flame that barely wings Miyako as she goes leaping out of the room and nearly engulfs Vanessa, who is standing before the desk, the nurse falling backward as her uniform catches fire. Mac still finds it in him to scream for a few seconds more, the flames too weak to bring him an instantaneous end, the metal desk he had crawled underneath shielding the room from the worst of the explosion.
The others hear it too, the explosion coming from the psych ward, the rush of air and heat in a place with little of either. Eania pauses as she regards the corpse of Casey Park, left contemptuously in a hallway with its head wide open, her spirit less broken than Ms. Withers' in a good few ways. And Cat, too, pauses in her continued tailing of Dr. Aaronson and signals to Rose, who, profoundly disturbed by Eania's strange mental breakdown, had latched onto Cat's relatively cool demeanor and followed her into rather a bit more than she would have liked.
Eania arrives to find Miyako examining a strange coin, a half dollar, seemingly a former part of Mac's incendiary device. The heat seems to have been insufficient to melt it, or even damage it to a particular degree, leading her to believe either in this being a sturdy coin or the incendiary device being even more typically homemade than it looked. Vanessa sits a little further, shaken by the explosion still. Of the patients there remains but one more, but she cannot be found. Instead, she summons those who must come at their appointed time. And that time is now.
A howl resounds through the entirety of the sanitarium, growing shriller and low-pitched as it mutates from primal to mechanical over the span of seconds, turning into something that reminds one of something not unlike an air raid siren. The stale air of the hospital becomes thick and noxious as the siren drills into the heads of all within, and Cat sees the doctor suddenly turn from his path and take off at a sprint right as she inhales one more time and she as well as all her colleagues are overcome as one, and all goes completely dark.
The sanitarium they awaken in... has changed. The walls have passed decrepit and found a new nightmarish aspect of their own, millions of crosses scrawled upon them as they twist in claustrophobic, winding tunnels. What few windows are lined with thick metal bars and barbed wire, and one need take only a step to hear the horrible slosh and rising heavy stench of the ankle-high congealed mess of the floors. The sound of the chants outside is drowned out with the guttural, overpowering drone of distant prayer. "This isn't normal," Cat observes after getting a good look around - it seems that Rose agrees in her own way.
Having no other reference in the parting and rejoining tunnels, all the nurses head toward the prayer, one way or another. Few other options seem possible, all paths leading on like the warrens of a great worm, occasionally rising above great bottomless pits where filth gives way to chain link catwalks. From far beneath one such catwalk, Eania hears the sound of flesh violently ripping, but sees only darkness looking down, and as it subsides a newly-hatched sound like mindless burbling starts to inch closer in newborn curiosity. The prayer grows closer as they move along, and the names can be made out. They are not the names of any gods the nurses know.
Finally they reach the chapel, Eania, Miyako, Rose, Vanessa and Cat. In contrast to the otherworld, the chapel looks like it was newly built in its original style, then at its height defiled in every possible way with depravities both disturbingly easy to imagine and unnervingly difficult to place in any human frame of reference. The altar stands at the back, mutilated and profaned beyond redemption, and atop it stands the last of the patients, her body covered in fresh blood, a crown of twisted antlers decorating her head as she brings her summoning prayer to a close.
She bows low from atop her perch. She may have been a nurse once, too, and extends courtesy readily indeed to her guests. She seems uninterested in being killed, all too familiar with the nurses' notions of medical care. As she laments their terrible lack of perspective, Cat has a thought. An epiphany. The loons trapped here, or who used to be trapped here, they are not merely delusional, are they? There is something deeply wrong with this place, and even with the nurses themselves. Of course, Janey can only confirm. And as for the coins, as Eania asks moments afterward, those are for the thing they need once they realize the truth of the matter, or the depths they have sunk to. Even if, as Janey says, for Rose the realization comes after.
But theirs is not to understand - they are but vessels for desires, Janey says. But, Cat brings up, they do need to pay their penance, do they not? Perhaps, the former nurse says. She wouldn't know, having abandoned reason for good. So why are they here, Eania asks, still confused, and the answer is simple enough - they are here because they belong here, in this hell of infinite perspectives and layers, of which they have seen merely two, or perhaps three, and old Janey Lanning herself has seen, in her own words, far too many, to the point where she can hardly even contain them much longer. But alas, she is not anyone of significance. She has lived the nightmare long enough to be but a part of the wallpaper, dancing coated in blood before the younglings.
If this is a nightmare, Eania asks, who is its dreamer? Janey does not seem to know - possibly Rose, for she is not originally from here.
But there has been too much talk already. Janey supposes it is time to give out her precious token, the clue that they need, the final piece of the puzzle. And thus she digs her fingers into her eye, searching deep as blood and vitreous humor pours over her fingers, and at last drags out a coin, flicking it to Miyako with a mad grin. Macabre, she admits, but the language of the dream is what it is. Miyako knows what to do, Janey assumes, and it seems she does.
"Huh, all this for a soda?" Miyako asks as she examines the coin. It's made of solid gold, an even 24 cents in denomination. All this for a soda indeed. People have killed for stranger things, Janey observes. Vanessa stares in disbelief, her sword clattering to the ground. Eania tries to weakly refuse the revelation. Cat mostly just seems relieved. "Oh, I thought this was about how I killed Mick. Woops," she says. As the moment drags on, Eania wonders if it wouldn't have been simpler to just pull the soda out of the machine, but Janey just shakes her head. Oh no, the rules. The rules wouldn't permit it. she says with finality, they do have places to be. Before she leaves, however, she does ask the girls to tell Rose to be more careful where she regurgitates her dead boyfriends next time. Rose merely continues to gape at everything she's seeing, hardly even processing as she stares at Janey.
And with that, Janey Lanning crosses her arms on her chest and slowly melts into a torrent of blood, washing over the altar as she drains into the floor. She is not dead, Eania knows. Such a thing will not be permitted to her for centuries, or perhaps merely minutes - in this place the difference can often be minimal.
The nurses wonder for a while yet as Rose finally catches up. A soda? What? What even is this? The vending machine costs a dollar, Eania explains, and now they have a dollar.
She has a dollar, Miyako corrects. Mostly. Cat steps over to Rose, reassuring her. This can happen here, she says, offering a cigarette that Rose gladly takes, her head pounding as Cat beats Miyako to lighting up for her. So do they do this, Rose asks? Buy this soda or whatever the fuck they're supposed to do?
Vanessa, meanwhile, still can't believe this. This is stupid.
Beyond stupid. ADVANCED stupid. She wishes she'd have let the doctor kill her, she complains bitterly, at least then she'd have gotten some action today. Miyako offers sympathy, but it doesn't seem overly appreciated. Just a bit of action is what she needs. Action, you know? Lovin'. Anything. Miyako, still committed, bravely offers a round out of pity, the incredible embarrassment rushing to her far too late to stop her, and even gets solidly turned down for her trouble, at which point Cat, sensing a second-degree pity round in her vicinity, side-eyes Miyako meaningfully for a second or two before sidling up for a gentle proposition, the mood of the room shifting as the surreal nature of the situation sinks in.
It's time to give in, Vanessa supposes. Dr. Aaronson? Dr. Aaronson, she calls, are you available? She's not busy right now, Vanessa says to the darkness around. And the man is indeed not far - there is a stirring, a crash of many flails against gratings. The other nurses move all at once with Rose, knowing the sound's ominous nature. Vanessa, however, merely waits for the doctor, watching as the nurses make themselves scarce.
And sure enough, Dr. Aaronson arrives, moving deftly through filth and darkness into the chapel. And there is Vanessa before him, a charming hint of a smile on her lovely lips, that little bit of sparkle in her eye, her arms brought together and joined at the waist coyly, the nurse taking a deep breath to bring out her chest. And behind it all, nothing. A yawning person-shaped hole in God's green earth under the thin veneer of seduction. A place a man could get lost in - many have indeed, all of them better than Dr. Aaronson, some of them forever...
... a feeling wells up inside the doctor. He is about to speak - but no. He takes a short metallic breath, steadying his tone. Projecting authority. Very conscious of his movements in a way he was not before entering, he pulls in his flails. "You may prove a diversion yet, Vanessa," he lies with a lack of confidence all too easy to see through as Vanessa's eyes finally join in on the smile. "Follow me," he motions with his arm, and the two walk to the chapel wall, his touch bidding it to part with a wet, organic noise, wide enough for two to pass through side by side.
The doctor and the nurse walk through the portal. They are seen no more.
Cat leads the way, Miyako and Rose following behind, Eania running further behind, a profoundly disturbed expression on her face for a reason she will never get a chance to relate. Powering through bloodstained halls as the chant from outside is dominant in the nightly air once again, the nurses take a final left into the cafeteria, which is as fresh and new as the day it was built, clean until the ragged group runs in leaving footprints of the very stuff of nightmares.
At the wall, lonely as always, stands the vending machine. It awaits.
The nurses approach with Rose. The time has come. Rose feels thoughts creeping in, memories. A sickness rises within her. The nurses argue, hesitate. Discuss plans. It is nearly over. Rose would lose her lunch, had she any in her.
There is a shadow in the doorway, a shadow of a man named Walt. He awaits.
Miyako gathers the dollar in change, and places the coins in the machine's slot. The almighty dollar. She selects the drink on the humming machine. One can of Dr. Salt. Rose feels a trickle of blood come out of her nostril.
The machine thanks them. Walt thanks them. The room flashes brightly, and the world melts away. It is over.
* * *
Rose is walking away from the fortified gate, the old sanitarium looming large on the hill. As if remembering something, she looks back, hefting the bag over her shoulder as she eyes the sign with disgust from the bottom of the hill. Breckenridge Correctional Complex. She sighs and resumes leaving, turning down the road at the bottom of the hill and walking. She has some money left in her bag. Not worth as much now anymore, sure. She gets a room, takes a shower, and looks at herself in the mirror. Needs work. But she's still got it, probably.
Rose is at the bar, warming herself up with a shot. There's a lady a little ways down. Short, petite, bleached hair, an Irishman's complexion without the freckles. About her age, maybe a little older. A little worried, maybe waiting. Probably stood up. Smiled when Rose raised a glass to her. She's got a good feeling. Combine that with her looking all right (6/10 at least) and that last shot, and here's a recipe for success. Gotta make the night count.
She sidles up close, and they have small talk. The lady seems chill. And yeah, she's waiting for someone. Doesn't seem like she'll show up, though. It's been like two hours. Rose pretends to think. Well, she says, two hours is an awful lot of time to wait in a place like this. Did the guys buy her any drinks at least, she indicates the rest of the room, and the lady says no. Then let her buy the lady a drink then, Rose says in a gentle fashion.
They buy drinks, wait, chat. They hit it off. It feels a bit weird to her, but not in a bad way. Always wanted to see how that move looked from the other side. They get a little drunk. Things... develop. Might be time to take it elsewhere. She's into the idea, sort of. Not as shy as she pretends to be.
She turns up. Tall, Asian, muscled, red leather jacket, bleached hair same as her friend (shorter, though), sly-eyed, more than a little exhausted, probably got a gun on her. There's a hardness about her, paranoia. A lot like the faces she's seen these past... shit, eight years? Rose wonders if she looks the same, or if it's a look you get after a couple weeks out when the relief wears off. It's almost comfortably familiar.
There's a voice in Rose's head that tells her to tread lightly. She decides to go for broke and buys her a drink. Her friend helps, says she's cool. They break the ice with shots. Rose always was way funnier while blasted, that's what... he always told her. But fuck him. That debt's been paid in full. She raises a glass while the little lady starts to nuzzle her, and is about to say something, but it slips her mind. The big gal raises her own glass with her head on the bar as she sighs contently. She looks up at Rose as no toast follows.
"Shit," Rose says. "I had something written for this." She fiddles around her pockets theatrically. "Aw. Must have left it in my room. Was a good one, too."
She pauses a moment, actually thinking about this one last time. Go for it? Fuck it, gonna go for it.
"Say, my motel's just up the road. You girls wanna come help me look?"
The Asian woman laughs into the bar, and the little lady laughs with her. They all share a look, and prepare to leave.
CAT: "Oh shit, this is some serious stuff. Hm, well, I think that this all stemmed from her killing her boyfriend after she broke up with him because she's actually not into guys and he got a violent towards her. So, she hid his corpse and ran off to the the town where she found the asylum. The asylum being a magnet for the damned she entered it for her judgement and learned along the way to come to terms with her homosexuality and that his death was sadly needed. And so she leaves, free of guilt and with a new found purpose to munch every carpet she can get."
*roll credits*
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Topic: Let's Play Maid RPG: Chaos, Destruction and Frilly Outfits (Signups And Reports) (Read 5238 times)