Re: Second Class; Theater smoking room
He came to the smoking room because the smoke felt right. It was hard to say why, except that it made him feel really fucking good, like the stuff was sinking into his pores.
He didn't know how he'd come to be on a boat, but he could feel its gentle rocking well under his feet. The fact that there were miles of water down there unsettled him, but he felt good. Really, really good. Mostly, it seemed to be because of the horns.
He'd made other plans for Halloween, but when his feet first skidded across the wet deck upstairs, he noticed them first. The horns. The heavy hooks of fear were pulled loose from his soul on arrival, and the world seemed lighter even as his head was heavier.
They curved up from his head, hematite black with a red, pearlescent sheen. They twisted subtly on their way to disappear beneath his matted hair. His predictably black eyes were all out of sync with those lips like a cartoon cherub, too red and full to be real. He was missing a shirt, but that only exposed bare chest the color of milk, smooth and perhaps dead. He looked more like a ghost than a demon, actually, killed halfway dressed. Long, loose fitting blue jeans trailed under his dirty heels. The boy next door had gone all wrong somewhere, but he mostly seemed confused. He wasn't worried because he couldn't summon up the feeling, but he knew he ought to be.
It was the horns that kept drawing his attention, and what little fight remained in him to be concerned. They tingled and pulsed, faintly. He could feel them as much as he could feel his fingers, or his legs, and he knew that if he was given the opportunity to do so he would use them to make people do very bad things.
That was innate. It bubbled up from inside him. He could bring out the worst in people, and that was a fact.It was hard to make himself fret about doing it, but something felt wrong, and he was going to try not to. He really, really was.
When the flickering figure asked for a light, the horned man turned sharply, startled, big black doe eyes staring back like dead coals.
He answered without hesitation, even a little eager, glad to be of help. "Of course." He reached up and snapped his fingers, without thinking, and fire sparked from them in a short gout, lighting the cigarette in a red hot flame. He looked from the cigarette end to the pretty film star for a moment, lingering just an inch too close, then drew back, puzzled, and looked at his fingers. "Huh."