InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "POTATO!"

dreamdrifter (dreamdrifter) wrote in cirque_rp,
@ 2017-10-26 09:48:00

Marlow tried many times to no avail--
Who: Marlow & Issac
When: 10/19, well past midnight.
Where: Issac's dreams~
What: Marlow enters Issac's nightmare and gets more than she bargained for.
Ratings: Mild - violence and dark imagery.
Status: Complete.

For the first time in hours now, Marlow glanced up from her painting and squinted at the clock on the wall, watched it tick along to one nineteen. The evening passed her swiftly by it turned out, left her with a fatigue in the form of heavy eyes and an achy spine. She rubbed the blur out of her eyes with paint-smeared fingers and blinked away the stars to study the piece she planned to sell on the Cirque's last night in Detroit. It just needed a few finishing details. Then she could sleep, she told herself, mustering up just enough energy to pick up the brush and sweep it across the canvas with a determined flourish. Marlow made it to bed sometime after two.

Falling into sleep was easy, like dipping into the still calm of the ocean and letting yourself sink. For her, anyway. Before she went in, she thought of Issac, who she knew waded through choppier waters, a raging sea full of voices. It seemed he and sleep had a tumultuous relationship, and he had his ways of working through it. She understood that. But then she'd think about him banging his head against the wall just to make the noise stop, and worry about him even more. At least in the waking world, Marlow realized there probably wasn't a safer remedy she could offer Issac that he hadn't tried already. All she had to give was her company if he wanted it, but there was one other, possible solution. If she could get to his dream door.

Issac's insomniac sleep cycle seldom aligned with hers, making the door to his subconscious difficult to summon. Marlow tried many times to no avail...until tonight. She wove through many dreams, wondrous realms of thoughts and visions, until she was back inside the vast room lined with doors of different makes, Issac's floating right there in the middle. The unexpectedness of her find flashed across her face as she stepped toward it, brightly colored and oddly shaped, like something out of a strange fairytale, and put her hand on the handle. Sudden jitters danced under her skin, she didn't know why; she was used to walking into the unknown. Marlow drew in a breath, a small smile unfurling from her lips before she twisted the knob and entered.

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sleepdeprived
2017-10-27 12:37 am UTC (link)

Marlow could not imagine the odd sort of dance he went through with between the chaos of his magic, the unending flood of thoughts that came in, especially when their stops were within cities. It took a square mile of no one for Issac to find silence or Elia's brief dark bubbles of shadowy nothingness they called the void. But Issac had twenty-seven years of hearing thoughts to get used to it. The charm bracelet around his wrist from Alex helped block the noise from getting too bad; without it, it did not take much to collapse to the floor with a migraine. Even with it, the build-up happened.

The crash from seventeen cups of coffee should have been enough to put someone to bed for at least a day, not Issac. The moment his eyes would close, a panic set in, and he would wake soon after. But the time in a dream did not follow a linear pattern of time, one moment becoming hours in a dream or hours becoming a single intense moment for one to wake up to.

Wonderous vines gathered thickly in the tunnel before Marlow, some bright green or purple or glowing with patterns, but as the tunnel continued the vines turned black. Thick red mucous flowed from cuts in the vines, puddling beneath the foot. Soft metallic plucks of the calliope from the circus filled the air, swirling around any who entered.

At the end of the tunnel, Issac sat in the middle of a stone circle; a ring of molten silver rippling at its edges. His arms curled around his head and his knees covering his face, Issac rocked in place a thousand voices blowing out at him in a burst of cacophony from the large bell of a Victrola jutting up from the floor beyond.

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dreamdrifter
2017-10-27 10:48 pm UTC (link)

Stepping into the subconscious of another person, especially an unfamiliar one, was like entering a new world. It took adapting; like a pair of lungs acclimating to a foreign atmosphere, there was nothing quite like that first second of exposure, the feeling that you might just collapse beneath the oppressive force of mental energy. Nightmares were more powerful in that way. A shiver jolted up Marlow's spine as she took it all in; like dreams, these were more than their visions, they were the senses, the thoughts, the emotions, all needled together to create a place that was very real to the people in it.

Marlow slowly ventured further with a hand drifting along the tunnel wall. She barely grazed the bleeding vines with her fingertips; but as she moved, gashes in the tendrils sealed themselves up and the pools of crimson evaporated, revealing clean earth. The music vibrating her bones quieted, but even its loudest seemed like it would pale in comparison to the violent discord of the Victrola. The voices stunned her; Marlow held on to the edge of the tunnel and turned away from the noise, grinding her teeth. Dreams, she knew how to dismantle. Telepathy was another thing entirely.

"Issac," she called, pushing herself forward, into the pulsating center, until she reached him. She knelt in front of him, reached for his arm and lingered there without touching him. "Issac," she said again, loud enough she hoped, for him to focus on.

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sleepdeprived
2017-10-28 12:55 am UTC (link)

The healing of the tunnel stayed lush and promising, but the power of the nightmare closer to the core would be harder to shift. The chaotic scene more than just a telepath with nightmares but a Neuromancer's chaotic magic seeping through to the center of their being.

Issac heard everything, that was the problem of the victrola bell blasting at him. He heard it all for a mile around and it never stopped. Some places were quieter than others, but in his dreams, they were not so kind as to level themselves with distance. "STOP!" Issac screamed back, covering himself further. Every voice talked at various levels of emotion but even if they were all soft-spoken tones the thousands at once would still be overwhelming.

The molten silver bubbled up, spreading towards them as spindled hands formed from the liquid metal and clawed their way closer. Their material made up of more than dream material, they could not be stopped by shifting the dream. One hand appeared from behind Issac, wrapping around his ankle and he cried out in such anguish that the room started to grow the black, bloody vines from the tunnel.

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dreamdrifter
2017-10-28 09:28 pm UTC (link)

This wasn't quite like any nightmare she'd ever seen before, the Dreamwalker quickly learned. Marlow winced, dropping her hand to the ground to hold herself steady, willing her heart to keep from bursting. Her eyes darted from Issac to the silvery appendages creeping nearer; she should have been able to stop them with a single thought. To control them and shape them into any benign thing her imagination could dream up. To destroy the silver entirely. She did try, but this, this magic, was a contender far greater than anything her abilities had ever gone up against. How do you take on something you have very little understanding of?

The best place to start was to stay calm. Marlow jumped forward and put her arms around Issac, casting green life into the winding black limbs climbing over themselves, veining up the walls like an illness. The ceiling crumbled open and let in rose-gold rays that touched warmly against their skin. "It's Marlow," she tried, holding on so tight, the silver would have to take them both. "I'm right here, Issac. Follow my voice and look at me." She bit back a whimper and pressed her head against his arms for a moment as a sharp pain cut through her mind. That bell. Marlow raised her head--she had to try to dismantle it.

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sleepdeprived
2017-10-29 10:00 pm UTC (link)

The bell started to crack and bend, but the voices did not stop. Their sound less directed it started to echo around the chamber. Issac blinked, looking up at Marlow. When he recognized her, panic started to set in. His green eyes bright to match the metallic silver surrounding them, he wrapped his arms around Marlow. "No, no... No one should be here. KittyCat already hates me because it haunts... You shouldn't be here. It hurts us."

A silver claw dripping with its molten liquid cut into Issac legs, sending silver up the veins of his legs. Another grabbed onto Marlow and yanked her away from Issac, throwing her against the wall she had been healing. Issac cried out again, his pants ripping as the silver moved through his veins. He tried to crawl away from the circle but the hands pulled him back to the center. "Stop!" The words vibrated the entire room, louder than the continued cacophony of others' voices.

Attempting to get to his feet, Issac's body was slammed down to its knees and his arms held out. The sound of a whip cracking proceeded gashes appearing across his bare back- his shirt having disappeared.

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dreamdrifter
2017-11-02 08:14 pm UTC (link)

Haunt...hurt? The living metal was quicker than Marlow's distressed mental reflexes; she hit the wall and dropped to the ground violently, her bones rattling from the impact. The air knocked out of her was replaced with voices, thousands of little pin needles pushing into her lungs. Issac's cry rang shrilly in her ears. Marlow struggled to push herself up against the weight of the magic, barely making it up to her elbows. It was difficult enough to open her eyes. Blindly, she clawed a few inches toward the center, knowing that any affliction she endured here would follow her to the waking world, but unable to leave Issac to suffer this nightmare alone.

The cackle of the whip startled her into focus; a gasp caught in her throat as she looked on at the horrific scene before her. "No--!" she choked, digging her nails into the ground and pulling herself closer. By sheer force of will she found a quiet corner of her mind and drew out more power. The vines covering the room began to slither down from their walls, twisting and meshing together into thick braids with hardened skin and thorny claws. Upon Marlow's silent command they struck like vipers, creating a protective net over Issac and attacking from other angles the whip and its surrounding army of molten barbs.

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sleepdeprived
2017-11-09 03:05 am UTC (link)

The magic could not be covered. The molten silver shifting from its dripping claws back into its liquid form and sliding through the vines. Spilling out the top of the braids, it continued to hunt out the victims in the dream. The voices echoed over and over, never ending, never the same voices, but millions more continuing on. The reverberating sound shook the vines protecting Issac, cracking their exterior. A silver glow began to penetrate through around Issac's ankle.

The molten magic split itself in two once more, one going to the call of the silver light inside of the protective shell and the other attempting to eradicate the Dreamwalker. When the first pile found a crack in the vines it dug through allowing Issac's sob to escape. 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.' The words kept repeating in a whisper of Issac's voice that could somehow be heard over the noise of the thoughts.

"You cannot save him," a dark double layered voice spoke softly in Marlow's ear. "You could join him, if you want; Join us, if you desire change; or leave."

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dreamdrifter
2017-11-09 05:16 am UTC (link)

Panic started to set in. Where there were cracks, Marlow tried to close them. When the silver struck, she put up more blockades. But as the magic weakened her defenses, the vines began to rot. She reached again for Issac, hearing him, but unable to follow. Trying was like going against a violent current and getting carried off, worn down by crushing waves of sound until she eventually tired out and drowned. There were tears in her eyes from the pain, from the helplessness washing over her. And from sheer terror as the voice in her ear slithered in and coiled around her spine. Gave her her options.

Marlow buried her head into the crook of her arm, still gasping for breath. She wandered into something dangerous, something she had a feeling she wouldn't be able to come back from if she stayed. She could leave now, mostly unscathed, and wake up and like that, the nightmare would be over. But for Issac? "I won't leave him," she whispered, shaking her head. "No." She couldn't. Not alone.

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sleepdeprived
2017-11-12 12:46 am UTC (link)

The layered voice laughed at her sad attempt to stay with the Mentalist. "So you prefer to suffer at his side? That is all well and good. You stay here and he cannot wake up to escape." The shadow of a feeling of the entity stepped away from Marlow, out into the noise of the pocket nightmare.

When the vine protection broke from around Issac, he fell forward, clawing at the floor to get out of the ringed center. While he was very aware that Marlow was there, he could not break out of the nightmare portion. The intensity of the dreamworld mixing with magic did not appear all the time, though the voices were neverending.

The invisible entity grabbed Issac by the ankle and flung him back toward Marlow. His body landing sprawled directly next to her. Green eyes blinked up, focusing on her face. 'Dreamwalker?'

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dreamdrifter
2017-11-13 02:55 am UTC (link)

She winced and opened her eyes, too unnerved by what the dark presence told her to be relieved that Issac was with her now, conscious of her presence. Wordlessly she nodded, then pushed herself up onto her knees and leaned over him. Protectively, for all the good that had done so far. Marlow looked her friend over worriedly, swept hair out of his face.

"What--" Too shaken to speak, she realized, she responded through their telepathic link, though even her mental voice couldn't evade the tremor of dread. 'It said you can't escape if I stay, what does--what is that thing? What does it want?'

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sleepdeprived
2017-11-13 08:44 pm UTC (link)

His breath heavy as if there could never be enough air entering his lungs, Issac grasped Marlow's arms that lay on either side of his face. 'You have to leave. You have to leave.... please, just let me go.' His voice was weak and uncharacteristic of the typically upbeat and unfocused Mentalist. 'They rip me apart. Want to hear the world in my head and then punish me for no other reason than we are not and they want...' His thoughts trailed off, unable to finish the thought that had started t deteriorate.

The voices got louder. An unseen force grabbed onto Issac's wrist, slashing it and ripping him out from under her but dropping him once more a few feet away. Issac managed to get to his feet, using the newly formed wall to help stabilize him. As soon as he made it to his feet, though, he collapsed to the ground unconscious.

Blackness. A void of nothingness floating in an undetermined place filled the dream world before kicking Marlow back out of the whimsical door she had entered. The soft telepathic whisper of Issac's voice floated on a mysterious wind. 'It is hard to walk when the ground is shakes and rocks fall. Ask and I will travel to you, but my head is not for others to witness.'

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