The Graverobber (necromerchant) wrote in genetic_opera, @ 2009-03-14 02:02:00 |
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Entry tags: | doll, graverobber |
AIM log
Setting: Streets and the sewers
Time: Night
Characters: Graverobber, Doll
Rating: PG-13
It was never quiet in the city. Oh, of course some minutes, hours were quieter than others. Just before dawn, the sleepy two o'clock lull. But the city was a living, pulsing, living, seething organism, and it never truly slept.
Still, Doll liked the noise. She liked the constant feeling of activity, as if the streets were a nest of ants, always busy. The photographer walked through the streets, her steps even and smooth, her dress and hat clean, well-pressed, her hands gloved, as always. But her eyes glittered as they sifted through all the sights that presented themselves, looking for one face in particular. She gave no indication of having found her prey, finally, just moved to stop near a pile of rags and leather, and giving it a delicate nudge with her tiny booted foot. "Are you awake?"
Dark grey eyes glanced up at her from a pale, kabuki-like face. The darker lips spread in a smirk, and suddenly the man was on his feet, pulling himself up to his mildly impressive height of over six feet. "No, I'm sleeping," he told her, shaking out his multi-colored mane. "What can I do for you, sweetness? You slumming again?"
"Oh, darling." The tiny girl smiled up at him, her perfectly painted lips curling into a smile. "So very perceptive. You never disappoint, do you?" truth be told, Doll rather liked Graverobber. His appetite for irony and sense of humour matched hers to a T.
"Depends on what you're looking for," he said, still grinning. "But I like to think I have a little of everything." He hooked his thumbs in the pocket of his raggedy coat. "You got a theme tonight?"
Doll's gloved hand came up, her index finger tapping softly at her lower lip in a very affected gesture of thought. Then again, what about her wasn't affected? She gave a little nod, her eyes rising to meet his. His height required that the tiny girl tip her head up to see him, but she didn't mind. It made her look innocent, delicate. Fragile. She liked that. "Desperation, I think."
"Desperation ... " he repeated, rolling his eyes up, as though thinking, and then stepped away from her, starting to walk along the long, low wall that bordered one of the many cemeteries the city 'boasted'. Graverobber found Doll intensely amusing. The first time she'd come down here, he hadn't known what to make of her, but now he had a better handle on the little woman. A photographer who wanted to put 'real' things on film ... thus rendering them sterile and utterly unreal. How could any photograph possibly capture the depravity and filth of the slums? They didn't smell rank, you couldn't hear the groans and whines and pleading, couldn't feel the hot breath of a dying man on your face. Couldn't sink fingers into rotting flesh ... it was hilarious, thinking her photos were real. He liked that. "I think I know just the place."
He always did. He knew the city better than anyone she'd ever met, and better yet, was always willing to come along on whatever fanciful project she'd gotten her mind set to. It was refreshing, his up-for-anything attitude. Doll followed along, her steps quick to keep up with his.
Graverobber didn't slow down for her, but he did occasionally glance down to make sure she was keeping up. It was a bit of a walk, but eventually they came to a circular grate set into another stone wall. The air that wafted out of it reeked of sewage and death, and he kicked the grate lightly with the toe of a scuffed boot. "You ever been down in the sewers?" he asked, raising his eyebrows at Doll dramatically.
"No. Of course not." The sewers. Dirty, miserable, filthy. She'd be utterly ruined. It would take hours to clean herself up again, and what if someone saw? The idea was unthinkable. She smiled up at him. "I don't suppose you'd be willing top provide me an escort home, afterward."
He considered it for a moment, then decided he didn't have anything better to do. "I don't know where you live," he reminded her.
She smiled. "Well I suppose tonight is when you find out." Doll was aware that some might have taken her words as flirtatious. That was perfectly fine. She knew the extent of her intentions, and she suspected he did too, no matter her tone. "You're going to have to assist me in our descent." it was clear the girl was not planning to enjoy the trip down into the hole, but she covered it up well, gracefully. As always.
"Of course," he agreed, with a dark chuckle, and pulled what looked like a very short crowbar out of a pocket. He wedged into the grating, and with a bit of a yank, levered the thing open. From the scrapes around the hole, it was clear he wasn't the first to have done so. Inside was dark, but a pocket flashlight was produced as well, and he shone it around inside.
"Anybody home?" he called cheerily, then stooped to step inside, holding out a hand to her. The hole itself was fairly low, but inside he could stand almost fully erect, only having to stoop a little. He shone his light down the tunnel, light of the wet, lumpy floor, slick with various unknown substances. Look back to Doll, he flashed a ghoulish grin. "Ready, princess?"
Lord, that grin. Doll had seen many things in her life, things both beautiful and horrifying. She'd seen things that could turn the sturdiest stomach, and yet there was something about the grim glee of the Graverobber's smile that made a low shiver go up her spine. "No. I shall never be ready for...that." still, she gave him a weak little smile, and her tiny, Italian leather boots moved to take her to the edge of the grated. She took a breath, and let herself fall in a fluff of lace and ruffles into the Graverobber's arms.
He caught her neatly, a little surprised at how heavy she was. Not that she was all that hard to hold on to, but she looked as though she should be about twenty pounds, as substantial as a creation of plastic and air. He set her down on the filthy ground, then flicked his light forward to show them the way. It stunk in here, badly, and not just of human waste, but some sort of vegetative substance as well.
Doll knew she'd be able to keep from showing her disgust at their surroundings, even the smell. She was less sure, however, that she'd be able to keep the last meal she'd eaten in her belly. She'd always been of a delicate constitution; while her self-control was unshakable, her digestion was another matter. So Doll walked close to the Graverobber, one tiny gloved hand clutching his coat, just in case she slipped. She could feel filthy water soaking through the seams of her stylish boots. She wondered, absently, if the shot would be worth all this.
Graverobber didn't often smell all that wonderful himself - one of the hazards of his profession - but his own slightly decay, unwashed aroma paled in comparison. He actually stopped looking amused a little way in, mostly because he was examining the walls for signs. Those that lived down here, the absolute bottom rung of society's ladder, left marks, so they wouldn't get lost. It was a reasonable fear - the sewers were labyrinthine in places.
Yes, there was a dark mark, starting to be overgrown with green sludge. "Almost there," the necromerchant murmured as turned another corner, into a passage that widened out a bit. The ground here was rough where the concrete had cracked and broken, and there was garbage lying about here and there. And the low murmur of voices ahead, in the direction of a faint sickly glow.
"I wonder," Doll started, conversationally, "If this is all some fashion of rarefied joke that you are playing at my expense." she said it with no rancor in her tone, simply thinking aloud. Still, it was an interesting proposition. In the time she'd known the man, she'd observed him capable of callous cruelty, indifference, and surprising kindness. Indifference had typically seemed to win out, but she had seen enough to think of him as a man with a morality made up much more of several axes than one single spectrum. All that aside - he was, she reflected, certainly not above a practical joke.
Her rumination occupied her as she followed him, until the sound of low voices and the light caught her attention. Her hand tightened on his coat, her stomach lurched uneasily.
"Ask them that," Graverobber said, nodding toward the glow. "If you want pictures .... hm." He led her closer, flicking off his own light, but stopped before they were visible to the dark shadows moving around in the yellowish white flicker that marked the small camp of homeless. The worst of the worst lived down here. The medically hopeless, the crippled, those so damaged by brain injury or drug use that they couldn't scrape it together above ground. No one cared about the sewers - it wasn't like the cemeteries where squatters were chased out by GeneCo security.
"Stay here," he told her. "I need to pave the way, so to speak." His smirk was a ghost of its usual self, as he eyed the lurching, shambling figures, listening to the low rise and fall of voices - some speaking intelligibly, but some spouting gibberish, or stringing words together nonsensically. "You'll know when you can move in."
She'd know. Doll considered that for a moment, using the thoughts to keep her from fear. This place was less policed than the graveyards, than the alleyways. What sort of depraved sub-humans were these, she wondered, to warrant less protection than the dead? The thought made bile rush into her mouth, and she pressed her painted lips together, letting her eyes close for a moment. She'd known when it was safe. She told herself it was no different, really, than any party, any gathering. Everything was encrypted in glances and body language, one just needed to know how to read it. Doll was very good at social reading. She just hoped this was a language she knew.
There was a raise in noise level as the necromerchant stepped into the light, some of the voices sounding angry. "What th' hell you want?" one rang out, slightly more clearly. Graverobber dipped into his pocket and pulled out a little glass vial, glowing a faint blue, just visible against the wan flicker of chemical lanterns. That got their attention.
Graverobber was suddenly besieged by the sewer people. They crowded around, mumbling or greeting or pleading, swirling around the man like a stinking, limping human whirlpool. The vial was quickly shoved into a small gun, and then the necromerchant was injecting anyone who came up to him, one by one. For a few minutes he was barely visible among the crowd of people, but they peeled off, little by little. If money was changing hands, it wasn't anywhere that Doll could see - it looked for all the world like the man was giving it away for free. But the hubbub was dying down, and now the tall man had the chance to move around to the poor souls here who couldn't walk, couldn't move - some without limbs, others that twitched and drooled.
It was as good an opportunity as any.
Doll did watch, carefully, as the necromerchant moved through the dregs of humanity that scraped and begged at his feet.; she watched for any sign of currency exchange,even barter. Nothing, nothing to indicated any selfish opportunism in his actions. It might have been, of course, simply that he was acting to be provide her with the shot she wanted - he did tend to be rather commit ed when it came to doing something properly. It was one of the things she liked about him.
So the tiny woman stepped forward, her steps gaining more confidence as she saw that she wasn't likely to come to any harm. Once or twice a weak hand brushed the hem of her dress, once or twice a pair of eyes met her own. She gulped at the air, pressing down the feelings that were pressing at the back of her throat, quite inconveniently. Slowly, her gloved hands took out her camera and fit on a lens. She started to shoot.
The people down here looked as though they belonged in a third world country, not a modern city. There were signs of leprosy, for God's sake! Weeping sores, twisted limbs, and blank looks. Worse, it appeared that some of these people had been operated on, though shoddily. Whether it had been done after they were relegated to the sewers or before was impossible to tell. There were blank looks aplenty - Zydrate made it hard to think for most people.
While she was shooting, one woman, her arms twisted up to her chest, started twitching violently, eyes rolling up in her head in some sort of seizure. A shapeless mass of clothing with a grimy face more forward to pillow the woman's head, glaring with sharp, dark eyes at the photographer but saying nothing, just offering silent accusation.
It didn't go unheeded. Doll felt the eyes on her, and she told herself that they were only staring because she was novel - she was clean. She saw the eyes of her subjects thought the viewfinder of her camera, and she was very glad that the distancing barrier of glass was between them and her. It was something tangible, something dependable, so much more safe than the ephemeral barriers of class or wealth or education, even fate. She moved from subject to subject, taking particular care to record a small hand, curled around a dull coin, poking out from underneath what might have once been a blanket. She knew that the images she was capturing were likely among the best she'd ever managed. She wondered when that would start making it easier.
Graverobber eventually settled against a wall, lighting a cigarette and watching the tiny woman make her rounds as he smoked. There were uncomfortable stares all around, but most of these people were too far gone to care. At the northern edge of the loose group, a corpse lay, covered over by newspapers. The necromerchant knew the body would be taken care of, but most of those living down here were used to being side by side with death. It was an attitude he approved of, though that wasn't the reason he gave out some of his stock for free down here. He owed these people, and Graverobber repaid his debts, even if none of them could enforce it.
Just being down here was grueling for most above-ground types, and the man was almost impressed with the photographer for sticking through it. He wondered if she'd take anything away from this, or just turn it into another piece of art, a way to relate to the 'real' people without actually having to.
If Doll had known of the admiration the man who'd brought her here was feeling, she might have laughed, with no other way to express the grim irony of it all. He didn't see - she didn't want him to see - how hard it was. Even if her ascent back up into the light made this madness fall from her, even if the next glittering soirée made her forget about the muck he'd brought her thought, a part of her would still be here: looking at these twisted figures and dessicated bodies, feeling her jaw ache with the effort of keeping her stomach down. She went about her work with a sort of grim yet feverish intensity, recording without touching, archiving without affecting. Feeling herself gradually drawn more and more into the general malaise of the place. She wanted desperately not to have touched any of it. She wondered if this, finally, would stain her.
It would be hours later when he broke her reverie, lightly touching her shoulder. "Time to go," he told her. Free pain-killers, though they were one of the few things that made life bearable, could only buy so much indulgence. Doll was garnering more and more hostile stares.
She started when he touched her, turning toward him with wide eyes and lips parted, her camera in hands shaking from physical and mental exhaustion. She wanted to believe that she was capable of handling everything with grace, but this experience had tested her beyond her notable limits, amazing though they were. She realized with a start that she was trembling. She realized with a start that her 'subjects', now suddenly returned to being strange half-people, were watching her with something between hatred and hunger, and the realized with a shock that the hunger was the greater of those two. She didn't mean to, but she edged close to the Graverobber, her throat closing, though only the look of her eyes and a tremble of her lips betrayed her sudden inner dismay. "I want to go," she told him, not having parsed his quiet words.. "Immediately."
"That's my point, princess," he told her easily, and he shifted to push her toward the way they'd come in, much larger body solidly behind her. It meant she had to pick through a rumbling mass of unfortunates, but at least no one would jump her from behind. And possibly it was the presence of the tall man that kept her safe; it was difficult to tell.
Once they'd moved out of the ghastly chemical glow of the lanterns, Graverobber flicked on his flashlight again. He glanced over his shoulder a few times, but if anyone was following, they were hiding well. "Get what you needed?" he asked her quietly, once they were out of earshot of the vagrant camp.
Doll was shaking, she didn't even know if she could hide it any longer. Her hands shook as they tucked her camera and lenses away; even if the way back hadn't been treacherous, she wouldn't have trusted herself to hold it. Now that she was out of there, it all started to hit home. The smells, the sounds of whimpers and lost hope, the acrid taste in the air, but most of all the images that had burned themselves into her mind as surely as they had the magical, evanescent mechanics of her camera. She gave a shaky nod, her voice a pained whisper. "Yes. Oh, yes." She stumbled.
He regarded her with cool appraisal, as he shifted to catch her and let her lean against him. If she was going to fall again, he'd just have to carry her - a little annoying but unavoidable. He supposed he could drop her to get his arms free if he needed to in a hurry. Graverobber rarely felt any sort of real connection with people, and so he didn't quite feel sympathy for the photographer, but he did wonder a little how she would recover.
"There's the grate," he said after they'd traveled in silence for some kind, and indeed, the much warmer artificial glow of the street outside was filtering down the tunnel now, competing with the small flashlight. "You going to make it all right?"
"Yes." And then, a moment later, "No." It burned to admit it, especially to one she was fairly certain wouldn't care. Or worse, would think of her as somehow less than she had. But she had been strong, was strong: she hadn't cried, hadn't been moved by despair or mercy, she accomplished her mission with admirable grace and aplomb. She knew that. Her body, though, was another manner. It was rapidly telling her that she'd pushed herself too far. She opened her mouth again to tell him that she was weary, that she was weak, that she was ill She closed it again: he knew. Her hand pressed to her brow, leaving a dark smudge on the immaculate skin.
His eyes immediately tracked to the smudge. He liked it, the bit of filth on that falsely perfect skin, and he smiled a little. "Little too real for you?" he asked with soft mockery, even as he maneuvered to scoop her up and carry her the last block or so.
Doll tried not to recoil from him. She knew he saw nothing in it, carrying her. He'd always been gentlemanly when it had come to her physical limitations; always given a hand to help her along, let her rest when she was weary. She told herself that there was no harm in his arms around her, and forced her tiny hands to loop around his neck. She wondered, out of nowhere, what Alex would have said about the sight.
"No," she whispered into his ear, an answer to his question. Whether it was the truth or not, not even she really knew for sure. "Exactly what I wanted." And then, because she didn't know how else to thank him, she gave a shaky smile. "Just right."
He laughed. It wasn't quite a musical laugh, but it was mellow, almost pleasant, rather at odds with his more raggedy appearance and odd, un-handsome face. "I always deliver," he told her, amused, as he glanced at her. His skin was startling chalky white from this proximity, the thick grease paint he used like a mask of sorts. "Known for it. Come on, up you get." They were at the grate now, and he shifted to push her up and through the hole, out into the street, then climbed after, brushing off his already dirty coat and looking around.
"And now to get you home ... which is where?"
Doll was tired, and she could feel her stomach making all sorts of very un-ladylike noises. She was pale and trembling still, and she could feel her boots squish with sewer-water as he set her back down onto the pavement that glittered in the holo-light of the floating displays. She looked up at him, reciting her address dutifully, and in her mind she mulled over the thick white mash he wore. Both of them, they both had one. It might have made her smile, on another night.
The trip back to her place would be a quiet one. She was exhausted, after all, and he only tended to over-talk when he had a livelier partner to impress. He helped her hop on one of the ubiquitous garbage trucks, where they rode in the miasma of trash odor. When he started smoking again, he offered her one, but otherwise he was content to let her to her own thoughts as he watched the streets roll by.
The shock of the truck ran through Doll with every pothole and every sharp turn, and by the time they reached her door she felt sore and bruised, every bit of her hurt. She led the man to her door, and looked up at him. How strange, that she was such a consummate adventurer in so many social strata, and when faced with one pale-faced, smirking Harlequin she was struck dumb? Blinking heavy eyes, she simply held out her hand.
He took it, shaking it gravely before the smile quirked up his lips again in dry amusement. "Let me know if you need anything else," he drawled. "I get bored sometimes, when I'm not working."
"I realize." she replied, just as dryly. Of course he'd try to play it off like that. As if it had nothing to do with her, or them, but only himself. Doll could see herself removed from the tangle and mess of it all to see the lines strengthened by every interaction, but she wasn't going to tell him that. Instead she only gave his hand a squeeze and let it fall. "I shall." she promised, and she meant it.
He tipped an imaginary hat and gave her an elaborate bow, flourishing his hand in a theatrical manner. And then he turned and was gone, back to the slums she mostly saw from the other side of the lens.