. (afrit) wrote in repose, @ 2017-07-27 10:42:00 |
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Entry tags: | *log, alyssa vaughn, sam martin |
[Antique Store: Sam & Alyssa]
Who: Sam & Alyssa
What: Nighttime window smudging and radio theft (Sorry, Lou!)
Where: The antique store
When: Fuzzynowish
Warnings/Rating: I for Insane. L for Language.
For Alyssa, the Quiet Home was more of a funhouse than a hospital. The patients were really her kind of people. The more out of touch with reality that they were, the stronger she became. One of the utility closets was now her place of worship. A little shoebox altar decorated with the jewelry that Louis had gifted her and all of the antipsychotics that she convinced her fellow patients not to take. Blue pills and orange pills, white drowsies and red doozies. She'd been lying low for awhile, but now it was easy to come and go as she pleased from the Quiet Home. The staff was becoming as out of touch with reality as the patients, and Alyssa slipped through the cracks of their crisis. She didn't have any plans for the evening, this girl wasn't a planner. But she did want to see the antique store, and with enough aimless, twisty-turny wandering, she finally found it.
It was really late at night, and all the shopfronts were closed to the darkness, but she didn't mind. Candied fingers, sticky from tropical twizzlers and nicotine gum, spread like bat wings on the glass of the antique store window front. The girl, a skinny riot of bones and fluctuating chemical levels, was poorly wrapped in corduroy overalls of a sad brown color. She was only fastened at one shoulder. Underneath was a black beater, snug on sick ribs and small tits. Her hair was bubonic black, a plague of curls that operated like a dark halo around the bonewhite moon of her face. She was sallow, and her mouth was bloodless with lips tinted green from candy consumption. The rainbow pack of twizzlers stuck out visibly from one pocket of those overalls, and she pulled a second green one out to chew on while she pressed her nose up against the dark window.
Sam was out. Nighttime was the thing for the girl right now, and she found she loved the night as much as she'd loved the bright sunshine days that happened in stickier and hotter places than Repose. It was just about being out, yeah? About being outside and the breeze on her skin, and she could feel each brush of air like touching. It was fucking amazing, but everything was amazing at night for the blue-haired-blonde. During the day, shit was muted. Ok, so she didn't need to sleep or be in a coffin or anything, and it wasn't like those old movies or anything like that, but she WAS tired during the day, yeah? Her inky vision hazier then, and her movements more sluggish, and daytime was for indoors and staying away from the blister-heat of windows. And it was nighttime that brought life to the girl with the now-cropped hair. So, yeah, nighttime, and she wandered.
Wandering to Lou's wasn't a big thing or anything. Ok, so he was all the way down Main Street, but Sam didn't tire like before. She was as fresh when she arrived as when she'd set out, and her jeans were hippy hipster and 70s blue, and her shirt was flower-power flowy in defiance of the night cool. Fuck cold, and she liked the bite on pale skin, and she was looking up at her brother's windows when she noticed movement. And, ok, so Sam was supposed to be some predator now or something, but she didn't want to EAT the person with their nose smushed to the window. Nah, newly born and devoid of soul, sure, but she was still Sam, and Sam was curious about why someone was looking into the antique store. She thought she knew everyone Lou knew, huh? But this... girl? Yeah, totes a girl. This girl wasn't someone Sam knew, and she ran up to her with loud Docs in louder yellow, and she didn't stop until she was a few feet away. So, yeah, not so big on the stealth yet, and Sam's gaze dropped to the twizzlers. "Hey, can I have one? A red one."
Drowning in the sensory new of the world and the anti-psychotic medication that she traded out for a pack of skittles and was therefore detoxing from like an emotional tilt-a-whirl of blood and bone, Alyssa's posture wobbled when she wasn't using the glass window front of Louis' shop as a kind of support beam. She was floaty, disassociating like a ballerina on a landmine. Sway to the music… tick, tick, boom. Her mouth was full of sugar, and her head was full of Space Ghost Coast to Coast reruns and the more important questions. Where could she find a praying mantis with a keyboard at this hour?
Oh, hello. The ballerina imagery exploded into confetti bits and bug parts. She blinked, at home in this body even if the skin felt itchy and the mouth felt chalky when it wasn't coated in three layers of corn syrup. The rollercoaster of her imagination was all well and good, but she was testing the shark infested waters of communication lately. A little fresh blood and it was a party. She chewed the inside of her cheek raw while masticating on arsenic green confection. "Hey," she echoed.
She didn't know anything about flower power or hippies, but the lady's colors were bright like the insides of sacrificial lambs. Alyssa smiled like a knife, shiny and bright and sharp… although not as sharp as someone else's. Chomp and grin, green candy all in her teeth like electric mold. "So pretty," she proclaimed sweetly before she curled some Twizzlers up in her skinny fist and extended her long, white arm to Pretty with the sloe eyes. Red and yellow. "Pomegranate and pine cone." No wait, that wasn't right. Alyssa wrenched the entire package from her deep-slung pocket and examined the words in the moonlight. "Pineapple." Much better. Satisfied, she shoved the candy deeper into corderoy, and she stopped hogging the antique store window in case Pretty wanted to look too.
"I like night time." Now, so newly awoken from her biblical slumber, Alyssa wasn't exactly in her prime for ripping and raging through other people's heads, but she did pick up on something. Night time was the thing.
Sam wasn't detoxing, and she wasn't flying high, but the world was still fucking kaleidoscope wonder, and she hadn't asked if it was normal. Maybe other vampires didn't see shit like this, like the night was alive and smotes were flying everywhere, and she could see every fucking bit of dust lingering light on the air over their heads. It was like magic, yeah? And the blonde-blue girl fucking loved it. There was no two ways about it, yeah? That this was not a child grounded with feet of lead and anvil weighing her down. She was light. Standing there, unworried and none of her problems chasing her across Repose's sticky-warm night, she was weightless. In her mind, Cris slept and the baby was fine and the dog was dreaming of treats. Shit was blessed, and she was wandering wild and had somewhere soft to return to and curl up. Warmth awaited her in dark arms, and adventure awaited her now, and this girl was new. Sam hadn't met new in ages. Or, yeah, she hadn't met new that hadn't been poisoned against her.
Sam fisted the Twizzlers that were held out in offering, and she took a bite of red and yellow together with perfectly white gapped teeth. She could eat, huh? Which she'd thought was totes weird at first, since fictional vampires didn't chow down or anything. But, yeah, the Twizzlers tasted like sugar divinity, even if they didn't do anything to feed her hunger. Which, yeah, downside, but the taste was still good, and she chewed too many of them at a time and allowed herself to just unravel and be a girl. She didn't need to act like MOM SAM here, and no one expected her to be mature or chill or anything. So, she chomped, and she looked at the window, IN the window, and she pointed at a green box that was visibnle from thew window. "That," she said. She didn't know the story behind the green box, but the color was vibrant apples, and Sam liked bright pop.
And Sam was simple as fuck, huh? She was a girl made for thoughts on the outside and her heart on her sleeve, and she didn't think anything of the girl saying she liked night time. "Me too." Had she already said that? Whatever. She placed a hand upon the glass, and she breathed nothing onto the flat and cool surface. Her breath left no shadow and no heated smog, but Sam didn't notice that shit, either. "Who are you?" she asked, and it was almost like she was asking the art deco radio, since she didn't look over at her companion when she asked the question. "I'm Sam, and I can't go inside, but I want that." Will you get it for me?
Alyssa didn't know anything about vampires. She knew about Lamia, Empusa, and the Strix, but knowing nothing of vampires didn't allow for a connection to be made. In the Quiet Home they'd never said or thought the word, not that she could recall, so the word twisted unknown and phantasmic in her head like a great swirling cloud of fizzy gray. Vampire. A storm without a home to destroy, the unknown word raced like angry wind through the corridors of Alyssa's head, and she chewed candy from her clenched fist while Pretty went for a peek at the storefront window. The mystery didn't upset Alyssa, she wasn't bothered by the unknown. There were so many other things to absorb from Pretty with the gap teeth, like a surge of apple pie warmth, the motley surge affection of a man and a dog, and something smaller than a dog that Pretty thought of as a 'baby'. These were all words that Alyssa knew, they each had a picture of meaning, like some flashcard of reference.
Pretty pointed at the window, and Alyssa leaned in again to squish her nose against the glass. She even kissed the glass too, leaving behind a smeared print of green sugar-syrup stickiness. The girl said that, and Alyssa would have known what item she was referencing beyond the window even if the girl hadn't pointed it out. She could see it in the girl's head, green plastic outlined in the desire of ownership. Alyssa eyed the green box, and she didn't know what it was either, but she could appreciate the color. Like her neon bright Twizzlers and her affection for the more colorful pills that weren't her's to take but could be traded for easily back at the Quiet Home. Alyssa watched the girl breathe wanting against the glass front window, but there was no sign of breath left behind at all.
Alyssa found that really interesting, and she wanted to dig around in Pretty's head like scrambling chopsticks at the bottom of a to go box, searching out the last good piece. "I'm Alyssa," she told Pretty while stepping in line a bit closer to the other girl so that they were hip to hip and facing the shopfront window. Pretty said that she couldn't go inside, but Alyssa took that thought and stirred it up, weaving it like warm silk back into the other girl's head. Pretty should find a rock, she should break the window, they should play in the glass.
"Then I'll get it for you," she answered the unspoken question. "Louis won't mind." It was a fun idea, and Alyssa liked fun.
Sam knew nothing about Lamia, Empusa and Strix. To be fair, she didn't know a lot about vampires either. But she wasn't worried about it or anything, because Sam didn't worry. She'd worried before, but not now, not on the surface. It took some more prodding or something to get to the places where the girl was scared now. It was buried deeper, buried darker, and there was just a hint of it beneath burnished gold and Jersey tarnish uttered in vowels fat between the wild child's lips as she chewed on that Twizzler. She smiled at her new friend, because that was how she thought of the girl unhinged at her side. Sam could tell the girl was eccentric or something, huh? This girl in the night in front of Lou's shop. But Sam didn't mind eccentric. Sam had spent time in and out and in and out and in and out of rehab and head-hospitals, and she knew unhinged. Unhinged like this was good, and Sam just wanted friends. Even more now than when she'd been human, and maybe that longing just rose to the surface like a buoy or some shit. So, yeah, Sam was down with this chick and her brand of unique pressed smush-nose to the window.
The girl kissed Lou's window, and Sam laughed loud and like barking unrestrained, and she dragged her cool fingertip against the window's dew-humid night glass. She drew a heart there, yeah? Like someone in high school or something, and she felt like she could let herself just BE right now, and being felt like young and tiptoes, and Sam wrote Cris' initials in the humidity-heart and smiled over at her companion.
And, ok, maybe breaking into Lou's shop wasn't the best thing, but Sam had grown up with a house filled with brothers and antics, and this was fun and no big fucking deal or anything. She wasn't worried about Lou being pissed, and she'd just ask Cris to pay or whatever, and she smiled at the girl brightly and nodded when the offer of green-radio retrieval was made. "Thanks, yeah?" She was pleased by the offering. "If you get it, we can turn it on out here and listen to music." Because, yeah, what was better than listening to music on a creepily haunted radio in the middle of the night, on the sidewalk, after stealing the fucking radio from your brother's store? Totes perfect, huh?
Maybe it was all of the sugar or the companionship, or just the prospect of adventure, but Alyssa was bouncing. She was corduroy and energy, bunny hopping to the shop's front window and then away again. Now, your average burglar would have been eyeing every possible score in the window, but not Alyssa - she only had eyes for the radio. And she only had eyes for the radio because Pretty wanted it. Alyssa on her own didn't have much use for a radio, she was better invested in Twizzlers.
Okay, so they were going to jailbreak this radio and that probably required a plan, but remember that Alyssa wasn't a planner. She was just a doer. So she bunny hopped and she ballet twirled, the shadows that chased her from every corner of her eyes only made her laugh under the gawking eye of the streetlamp, who was their only witness when Alyssa wandered into the gutter to look for something useful. Gutters were the best place to find useful things. Tetanus shards and gum wrappers, cigarette butts and broken pieces of asphalt. A car crawled by at a lazy pace, and Alyssa paused to watch the shadow cast of its driver's side window with mild inconvenience. If only that guy would drive straight through the window, then they could get the radio. But the driving man was tired and he wanted to get home to his wife. Even if Alyssa could twist the memories of his wife and make him remember her as a stone-eyed gorgon who ate the family dog, she couldn't make him drive through a store front. Her abilities didn't work like that. She could alter what seemed like reality, but she couldn't make people do things.
It was a real fucking inconvenience actually, and Alyssa was fed up when she scooped a tangerine sized chunk of rock from the gutter. "We're getting that radio," she promised again while she marched up to the front door and smashed the rock against the pane of glass near the handle. Now, Alyssa didn't know anything about the possibility of alarms or anything, so… you know, hopefully there wasn't one. She banged the rock around inside the door's pane, dislodging any shards of glass that were still stuck in place before she reached in to unlock the door from the inside. When she kicked the door open, it was with her arms raised and palms out flat like ta-da! Maaaagic.
"I wanna paint you." Sam liked the bouncing, huh? It was infectious, and she liked the feeling of not needing to worry about shit. None of the heavy thoughts of being dead or being inhuman, and she didn't feel like a monster who everyone feared. Yeah, she knew how shit was now, and it didn't require some weird fucking mind-reading or anything, huh? Daniel was fucking weird with her now, and she knew Marta would eventually run her mouth, and life was different. That was the word, huh? Different, and she was different, and she kinda wanted to throw her arms around this sticky-maelstrom girl, because this girl was weird and maybe weird was what Sam needed to look for huh? And Sam had picked plenty of pockets for her pops and moms as a kid, but her brothers had never let her do the big stuff, so she hadn't broken into stores or anything. She didn't know if her new friend had any experience in criminal antics, but Sam didn't doubt they were gonna get their hands on that radio, huh? Girl had FAITH.
And Sam's faith was well-fucking-founded, because Alyssa went gutter diving, and now it was Sam's turn to bounce. Bounce, clap, disturb the night and make the driver of that car wonder what the fuck damage belonged to the girls loitering under the summer sky. Sam was smiles and gapped teeth white in night, and there weren't any fangs or anything visible. She was hungry, yeah? Of course she was fucking hungry, because that hunger in her belly was like a permanent fucking maw that gaped in search of succour, but distraction was good, huh? And this was distraction, this madness that touched the mind of the girl once-dead and now blue and bouncing.
Sam wasn't worried about Alyssa returning with a rock. She totes didn't think about Lou being upset, or about cops coming, or about what might happen if cops came with all their fucking heartbeats and bloodthrum that she could hear from feet away. Alyssa was one person, and Sam could do that. Still a little warm from feeding, she could do that, but throw a crowd in and who the fuck knew. But Sam wasn't thinking about that, and she just stopped her clapping with realization that they should be silent when it came to busting Lou's windows. She felt young. She felt so fucking young, and she clapped hands over her mouth in silencing of glee when Alyssa busted the glass.
But... But...
"Careful, careful, don't fucking cut yourself," Sam cautioned. Very fucking important, and then the door was kicked open and Sam moved to nudge the other girl inside. She, herself, couldn't go in. Sam felt a wall in that empty air, and she'd need to get Lou to invite her in so this shit didn't happen again. But, there, from her place just beyond the now-kicked door, she pointed at the radio in all its bright green glory. "Grab it, yeah? Grab it!"
"What color?" Alyssa liked the idea of being painted. She thought about paint as color, and color was tied to Twizzlers, and Twizzlers were good. "Strawberry banana or pistachio moonbeam?" Both were good options for painting, the non-painter presumed. She could be a very sweet strawberry banana or a very bad pistachio moonbeam, all it would take was a flick of the wrist. She didn't immediately understand that Sam meant she wanted to paint a portrait of her, but rather assumed that she would be physically dipped into a vat of lead-poison paint.
"I won't." The warning to be careful was met with a twisted expression because being careful was completely not the point of a night like this. Yet, even with little regard for personal safety, Alyssa managed not to lop off her own hand while reaching through the busted window to unlock the door. Such dexterity! Such grace! These skills were surely honed after endless games of Cat's Cradle played with contraband shoelaces back at the Quiet Home. She was less accomplished at balancing acts, something made obvious by the way she stumbled through the spooky doorway of the shop. Creeping forward through the dark, the only real light being provided by the street lamp outside. She knew what she was looking for, and she knew where it was, so there wasn't a need for very much exploration… unfortunately. Alyssa gave a sad look to some of the shelves where the oldest items sat. She thought it was very kind of Louis to look after the old things. As a fellow old thing, she could appreciate it… as much as she could appreciate anything with attention span of a sugared up goldfish.
Speaking of sugar, Alyssa decided to leave what remained of her Twizzlers pack in place of the stolen radio. It was a Tooth Fairy-esque kind of IOU exchange made for the radio, which she scooped up like a crutch beneath one arm. Breaking out of the store was a quicker process than breaking in had been. Barely a minute after making her way inside, Alyssa was back out with the radio in tow, and she darted past Pretty toward the waiting maw of the nearest alley, where they might find seclusion away from the streetlights and judgemental moon.
She knew what a radio was. They had one at the Home, although like the television kept behind wire and plexiglass, she wasn't supposed to touch it. So, with curiosity officially piqued, Alyssa set the radio down, gently gently, on the cement before she began twisting the dials left and right in an attempt to wake the thing up. "Do I know you?" This was asked of the little, gold-plated hieroglyphic figures depicted on the front. They didn't reply, but that was alright because in that moment, like radio clicked on.
"Bingo," she grinned up at Sam, and her eyes looked a little wild.
"All the colors," replied the blue-blonde with paint on her mind. She could imagine this girl in colors outrageous and bold, dark shadows and secrets, and she chewed at the inside of her cheek. "You have to come one day. I have a studio, and I could paint you there, and I would use six canvases and make you huuuuuuuuuuge. You could be my centerpiece in sunshine and hurricane, and everyone would totes look up, up to see you," and it was a statement made grandiose and with arms spread wide like wings in flight, and she was unencumbered and haloed here, this little dead girl standing in front of her brother's store.
Alyssa said she wouldn't cut herself, and Sam totes tried not to think of blood flowing like rivers and rivulets over jagged glass. Luckily, Alyssa was hella good at breaking into places, and it made Sam think of home and cons and being hella fucking small. It made her think of running so fucking fast with a stolen watch clutched in fat and sticky little fingers, and it made her think of how Shane would lift her and swing her over his head and compliment her hella awesome thieving skills.
And then Alyssa was back, old green clutched tight, and Sam followed with hoppity-hop and eager step into the alley. Alyssa talked to the radio, and Sam rocked impatient from heel to toe, and then she crouched when the radio turned on. It was totes not a ladylike crouch, but the radio was alive, and Sam wanted fucking music. She wanted to dance, huh? To twirl like mad, and she wished Cris was here so she could swing him around. He would like Alyssa, she decided with a gappy grin and lost in thought, and then the radio started doing fucked up shit that had nothing to do with Lady Gaga or Lorde or Halsey.
"What the fuck?" Because that fucking radio was playing a girl's voice. Small and tiny, and there was the sound of water rushing, and the girl was crying and begging and shit: "I don't want to die... mommy... it's cold... please.... HE...LP," and water and fucking water and more fucking water, and the girl screamed, and Sam reached for the knob to change the channel away from the girl gurgling and gagging and gasping as she fucking croaked right there, on the adorbs green radio.
Sam stared, yeah? Wide inky gaze and she didn't like it. But she didn't need to worry about it very much. Alyssa grabbed the radio, and Sam was left watching as her new friend ran free with the green death-song clutched to her chest. Maybe she should message Lou.
Nah.