Theodore Nott (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} nottfinished) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} finnigans_rpg, |
Theodore loathed Halloween. His dad had celebrated it as Samhain and seemed to both put a lot of emphasis on and take a lot of pleasure in the creation and burning of the bonfire, knowing that this specifically bothered his son. He also liked to perform a lot of Dark magic spells, a lot of which were actually Nordic rather than Celtic and tended toward the necromancy side of things, but the worst part of the holiday was towards dinner where an empty place would be set at the table. Theo would be feeling a bit dizzy already just looking at it by the time he so much as took his seat, but he'd always wake in the morning with the memory of the rest of the night from then on smudged out of his memory, the feeling of a chill and the smell of parma violets all that he'd be left with.
He didn't observe any religion so the day held no significance to him as All Hallows Eve and while he simply wasn't interested in the commercialism of Halloween, the screams and noise and lurid colours unnerved him and put him on edge. The masks were the worst part about it all though, not just the fact that people disguised themselves on purpose, that deception and disfigurement was the whole point of the holiday, but that the masks themselves reminded him too much of his father's previous occupation. He couldn't feel safe and as the day wore on the more tense and apprehensive he became, the worse his already severe paranoia became and the more problematic his hypervigilance was. He wanted to crawl back to the flat that he only had until the weekend to stay in, his rental agreement expiring on Monday, but his therapist knew that this was going to be a problem for him and had given him one action for this holiday: go out.
He'd been tasked with going out and being around people for an hour and a half before going home and if he had to tell the truth he wasn't sure he was going to be able to do it. He'd taken half a calming potion (which in itself had been cheating as he was supposed to do this sans any help) and had cheated yet again by picking the familiar backdrop of Finnigan's to wait out the torturous time. He wasn't supposed to drink but he'd ordered a Firewhiskey on the rocks before he'd retreated to a corner in the Corner and had backed up against a wall on one of the couches, his hands curled around the glass which he stared into, his shoulders tense, trying not to look up everytime someone passed or the door shut or opened or someone said something a little loudly or screamed or shrieked or laughed.
Ten minutes in and he was already fighting with himself not to bolt the hell out of there.