Repose

[The Arcade in Repose has always been rumored to have a few "haunted" machines. Some of them make comments that seem beyond their programming, others give a sense of dread the second you get close to hitting the high score. These are all rumors, of course, tales told by children and adults to psyche their friends out. That said, this merry week in March seems to have more regular occurrences of oddities. Players report machines spitting out an odd number of tickets, the screens flashing memories from their own life and even a few odd looking patrons that are there one minute and gone the next.

In the back of the arcade is the "graveyard" where all the broken machines are kept. In this office is a computer facing a window that people can look in. This ancient computer sometimes does creepy things.

The owner of the arcade seems completely oblivious.]

Who: The Revenant and Hannah
What: By the pricking of my thumbs...
Where: A pawn shop in the Capital slums.
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: Violence.

( By the pricking of my thumbs... )

[He was, as Jack was repeatedly told by the ER doctor, rather lucky. Actually, she was talking about getting shot anywhere that wasn't vital, but it applied to the lengthy interview conducted afterward. He had been grazed rather than outright shot in the thigh and caught twice in the shoulder at a low velocity, but the bullet had passed through which meant it was painful and his left arm was entirely useless for the time being but he wasn't in imminent danger of anything more life-threatening after treatment. It helped, as little as the police offers who interviewed might say it, substantiate the (entirely true) story that he was a bystander rather than anyone material in the late-night fiasco.

It was, after all, declared possible to treatment in outpatient rather than in after assessment, and there had been a series of questions, repeatedly and over and over until he was more bored than they were, and until pain pressed against the blunted edge it had been given, at the police station itself. They had found the notepad and the camera in his jacket pockets, and taken a keen and obvious pleasure in announcing that both had somehow been 'lost' somewhere between admittance to the emergency room and the return to the police station. Over and over and no, he didn't know anyone there, yes, he was carrying various items but he was a journalist it wasn't a crime. They rang his editor, who confirmed and then threatened to send a lawyer and after that, they rang Newt as he'd asked all along.

By the time he was permitted to leave, it was another day entirely. Jack waited in the foyer of the Capital police station, in a scrubs shirt he'd been given and his own jeans and with his phone dead in his pocket.

[For those who are receptive and open on this evening, the signal comes through with a pop of radio static. Telepaths and dreamers, those who have experienced her influence before, those that are angry tonight, those that are reaching out in prayer, those that are just having a real unlucky night... these residents are all capable of hearing Lyssa. It is a wonderful night for a bedtime story, and she reads to them with a soft, smiling voice.

To bed,
to bed,
the
mother said.

To bed,
she said
the angry boy
his face
turned red.

His face
turned red.
And with a cry,
he chopped
her head.

No bed.
He said.
And
snicker snack
his mom was
DEAD. DEAD. DEAD!]