we all long for what could have been (sensing) wrote in haunted_roads, @ 2008-02-26 15:00:00 |
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Current mood: | indescribable |
Entry tags: | chris |
Week Two: Thursday - Narrative
It was Valentine's Day, and Chris was scheduled off. Ironic, really, since he had no plans and no prospects for this traditionally romantic evening. If he'd been on speaking terms with his co-workers beyond nodding and attempting to smile when they crossed paths in the corridors, he could have offered to take someone else's shift so at least they could have a good evening. But he had not, and ten p.m. found him not clocking in at work but wandering up to the thirteenth floor.
He'd been on this level before, mostly to the gardens. He had even encountered a person or two up here, but tonight, as he quietly entered through the door that led to the swimming pool, there was nothing but echoing, dimly lit silence. Chris padded across the tiled floor, glancing around as if unsure what he might find. Lounge chairs, crafted to withstand both water and humidity, were arranged near the edge of the pool. The smooth surface looked brilliant blue in the low lighting.
He would have been surprised to find anyone else up here tonight. It was a night for love in just about everyone in the world's expectations, and he figured the Towers' residents were all either having romantic dinners and carnal desserts or else brooding over their solitary states. It seemed to be one or the other on this, the most commercialized holiday after Christmas.
Chris remembered the previous Valentine's Day distinctly even though he'd technically been alone then, as well. He had not quite worked up the gumption to ask the beautiful seventeen-year-old Violette Robichaux to dinner, and he'd spent the evening slipping away from his dishwashing duties to lurk in the back of the restaurant and watch her sing. He had been certain that he was not imagining the wistful gazes she cast him from the stage as she sang the most melodic Cajun love songs. He had not understood all of the French lyrics, but he'd savored the way her soft voice had caressed each syllable before lovingly releasing it from her throat.
Two weeks later, he'd mustered the nerve to actually talk to her, and their relationship, chaste and sweet until the bitter end, had started from there.
Chris had been staring blankly at the still water of the pool, distracted by his thoughts, or he might've reconsidered what he did next: he sat himself down in one of the lounge chairs, the fingers of one hand curling idly over the armrest.
A black hallway, musty-smelling and dank, unlit except for a yellowing, bare bulb high overhead. The tenebrous skitter of tiny clawed feet on bare flooring-- rats? An odor that overtook the damp and the cloying rot of mildew, an aroma both low and rich. A room, beautifully appointed yet made strangely sinister by the sight of iron manacles with one end hooked to a bedpost. Pale skin stippled with sweat, a figure narrowed at the waist and blossoming into the curves of full hips. The reek of terror that seeped from her very pores, a choked moan of pain as the tip of what looked like a switchblade sliced through skin, just to the left of her navel. A long, almost surgically neat gash that instantly welled blood. So much blood, and then a fanged mouth descending...
The flood of images had assailed him in a matter of seconds, and Chris unclenched his hand from the armrest of the chair and shoved himself up. A panicked pulse hammered in his throat, and he stumbled in his haste to escape what he'd seen, what he fervently wished he could unsee. He came within a few inches of stepping blindly into the pool, his arms pinwheeling mightily as he realized his danger and strove to rescue himself. This large, mostly empty room that smelled faintly of chlorine was suddenly too confining, making Chris' skin feel too tight and his throat close up. His foot caught one rung of the chair and he stumbled once again before kicking it aside and taking off at what was nearly a run for the door.