annie thompson (bumptiously) wrote in horror_story, @ 2013-03-12 20:37:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | annie, complete, cycle002, gilman |
Who: Gilman and Annie.
What: Gilman goes to Vic’s for a hot meal, and for the heating, and Annie notices what a disaster he is lately.
Where: Vic’s Diner.
When: January 5th, 1pm.
Rating: Mentions of dead people.
All Gilman wanted was some peace and quiet. There were murmurs, whispers in his trailer, and he was partially convinced it was some kind of early-onset hypothermia. He’d left, and come to the only place he knew that would have cheap coffee and the heater running: Vic’s. Gilman was looking rough around the edges. There were dark circles under his eyes, and despite being indoors, he was completely bundled up: beanie, scarf, coat, the works. He was even clutching his coffee in gloved hands, and he was trying to make it last so he had a reason to keep sitting there. Gilman hadn’t ordered food. His funds were low, and all the food he had was canned and back in his trailer, which he was avoiding for the moment.
Maybe baking in the sun for the day would warm it up a little?
He looked like a homeless person, in any case, his already shabby, shaggy appearance exacerbated by exhaustion and hunger. When the bell for the door sounded, he didn’t even look up, not caring. Nobody would know yet what he’d done, and for the moment, the album’s demands were quiet, like they had been at the start. It was building, but for now, he had some respite.
---
Annie had her own reasons for wanting to get out of her house. There were no corpses, no murmurs that weren’t her own, but every new day felt like the walls were closing in a little bit more. Just when she thought she might stop having nightmares of Gideon falling (jumping, technically) off the tower, she began having nightmares about Alison. They still hadn’t found her body, and Annie didn’t think she’d really taken a decent breath since she went missing.
The diner was warm and welcoming as it always was, and she waved at all the familiar faces. “Hey, guys,” she greeted, eyes scanning the diner. It was a pretty slow day, probably because lunch was already over. There was a couple on the far side, a blonde girl with her head tossed back in laughter while her boyfriend beamed, and there was a homeless guy just a few booths away from where Annie stood.
Only he wasn’t homeless.
What the fuck?
It was none other than Gilman Black, looking like he was expecting a blizzard to hit Crows Landing any day now. More than that, he looked exhausted - even shaggier than usual, which was saying more than it should have. It hadn’t been that long since they saw one another at Hunter’s Christmas Eve gathering. He looked fine then, a far cry from his appearance now.
“Hey,” she said, concern already creeping into the edges of her voice. “You cold or something?” Annie didn’t wait for an invitation as she slid across from him.
---
Gilman jumped when a voice close to him spoke, his hands clutching his mug. Had he not half-drank it already, he might’ve sloshed the contents onto his gloved hands. As it was, it just slopped around dangerously inside the mug, but steadied when he did. He looked like a deer in headlights for a moment when he saw Annie, but quickly looked away and down, sipping his coffee casually, like he hadn’t just been spooked by her abrupt appearance.
“Yeah, it’s winter,” he said, his voice cracking. Gilman cleared his throat and glanced at her. Normally one for eye contact, it was obvious Gilman was having a hard time looking at her, nevermind holding her gaze, “There’s this thing called frostbite I’m trying to avoid. I don’t have health insurance, so it’s kind of a thing.”
He shrugged and looked over at her. It didn’t look like she was going to leave.
“I’m heading out soon,” he lied, and for once, he shook his head and backtracked, “I mean, I’m just drinking coffee. I can’t really afford to be a gentleman so you’ll have to buy your own shit.”
Gilman didn’t ask how she was doing. He was vaguely aware of a suicide and Hunter’s dog, but he didn’t want to talk about it. Gilman had his own problems.
---
Something was wrong. They weren’t close, at least not anymore, but Annie knew him pretty damn well. Gilman wasn’t acting like his normal, nonchalant self. The attitude was there, but it felt forced. She couldn’t put her finger on what exactly seemed so off about it, save for the fact that he looked homeless and all, but there was definitely something. Something was enough for Annie to decide to stay and talk, though it didn’t take much for that to happen. Naturally nosy, she was more than content to weasel his problems out of him.
It would be a nice change to hear about someone else’s.
“You hungry?” Annie asked, trying to sound as apathetic as she could when it came to Gilman. He looked hungry, but that could have been because of the whole homeless factor he had going on. No, he definitely looked a little thinner than usual - maybe even gaunt. “What do you want? It’s on me. You bought breakfast last time, so I’ll spot your lunch today. You look like you could use a good meal. And a bath or three. Maybe a nap, too.”
A waitress appeared just a few seconds later as if she overheard the conversation, and Annie put in her lunch order before sending a pointed look to Gilman; she obviously wasn’t going to budge until he told the waitress what it was that he wanted to eat and knowing Annie, even if he didn’t tell her anything, she would have taken a guess and ordered him something anyway.
---
Gilman managed to laugh when she observed that he needed a bath and a nap, and scratched at his shaggy jaw self-consciously. Another week and he’d have a regular proto-beard going. It wasn’t his best look. He already looked like some kind of Amber Alert dude with a goatee, so a full-on beard wouldn’t do him any favours. He just hadn’t had time to deal with all that shit. It had all fell away. There had been more important things. There still were.
If anything was in character for Gilman, it was accepting a free lunch.
Without hesitating, he told the waitress, “Hamburger. The works. Side of fries. And a coke.”
Once she was gone, he didn’t thank her. She owed him for last time, so they were square now. He didn’t have to say anything.
“So, uh,” Gilman was visibly struggling to find a topic of conversation, itching his scraggly stubble and not looking at her, “You recover from New Years?”
He liked Annie. There weren’t a lot of people he actually liked, and he honestly didn’t want to talk to her right now. Not about anything. She was too easy to talk to, and he was afraid of what might come out of his mouth.
---
“Recovered better than some people at the table, that’s for sure.” Though her tone was relatively light, there was no humor in the words. It wasn’t a jab; it was the truth. He looked like shit that had been warmed over, and that was putting it nicely. Annie always thought Gilman was handsome, even on his worst days, but he hardly even looked like himself now. He looked like some grim, hollow shell of himself.
Then again, Annie did have a flair for the dramatics.
“I’d ask you what your deal is, but I doubt you’d tell me. Seriously, Gil, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” If only Annie knew how close she was to the truth, she probably wouldn’t have been so eager to share a table with Gilman. He wasn’t the only one acting strange, either. A few people that Annie talked to seemed off lately, but she just kept assuming it was the stress she was under that made everything seem so weird.
“When’s the last time you ate anything? Do you even remember?”
---
Normally Gilman would scoff at the mere mention of a ghost, but instead he let out a weird, absent giggle before shaking his head and sipping his coffee. It was like he was enjoying a very strange private joke. She was right about him not telling her his ‘deal’. It wasn’t really something he could talk about. He’d never really appreciated how much he relied on expressing himself to others until he was in a situation where he couldn’t, and it was putting extra pressure on him.
“Just the other day,” Gilman said, still not looking at her. He couldn’t remember. He was trying to stretch out his supplies, to make them last. Dahlia hadn’t noticed him losing weight because she was blind, but there was no hiding his appearance from Annie, “A can of beans or something. Not all of us have salaries. Gotta ration and make it through winter.”
He polished off his coffee and sized up the container of sugar packets, but refrained from trying to eat them. There was real food coming, and he was looking forward to it. Despite the mug being empty, his fingers continued to fidget with it, holding onto it like it was a life raft.
He needed Annie to go away. Gilman hadn’t realized how... fragile he was at the moment. And the only way he could think of to get rid of her was to be an asshole. That, at least, came naturally.
“I forgot how expensive it was to have a girlfriend,” he said. It was definitely a calculated jab. Unwise, considering she was paying for his lunch, but too late.
---
The other day? God, no wonder he looked so thin. If he was going days without eating, it wouldn’t be too much longer before he withered away to nothing. Gilman was naturally thin as it was; he couldn’t lose much more weight and still be healthy, could he? And there she was, worrying about Gilman and his health when she had her own set of problems to worry about. They weren’t together, and she was fairly sure he’d think she were pathetic if he knew she was sitting there worrying about whether or not he ate enough.
She wasn’t his mother, and she wasn’t his girlfriend - a fact that Gilman felt it necessary to remind her of.
Annie fell quiet momentarily, pretending to find something of interest on the bottle of ketchup she kept her eyes glued to. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to hear Gilman talk about his new girlfriend. She couldn’t remember who she heard it from first, but she remembered exactly who he was dating. “How are things with you and Dahlia? That’s her name, right?” she finally asked, forcing herself to sound interested when she really, really wasn’t.
She didn’t know Dahlia personally, but she knew of her. Everyone did. If they didn’t know her before, they knew about her after the accident. It made the papers; a beauty queen in a coma was big news for a little town like Crows Landing.
“She seems pretty high maintenance,” Annie remarked, shrugging. “No wonder you don’t have enough money for food.”
---
Gilman had a strong urge to flee when she asked about Dahlia. Of course she would -- he’d brought it up -- but instead of being driven away, she was sinking her teeth into it. Just like old times. They were pretty good at fighting. Gilman didn’t know if he had the energy to keep up, though, and he very much didn’t want to lose.
“I dunno,” he shrugged, “She stopped returning my calls since New Years Eve. I guess she wasn’t impressed with my reaction when her friend cockblocked me.”
He brought his mug up to his lips and made a face when he was reminded he’d finished it. Where was their damn food already?
“I’m sure she’ll get over it,” Gilman said, shrugging, “She’s really reasonable about stuff. I’m not really used to that.”
---
Things had been really, really good between she and Gilman lately. They seemed to have fallen into a friendly pattern, at least, and Annie was enjoying it. Until now. Now, whatever it was that had Gilman on edge, also made him more spiteful and mean. Or maybe he wasn’t being mean; maybe Annie was just too sensitive for her own good. Either way, it stung to hear all about Dahlia Palmer and how expensive and reasonable she was.
Annie forced a smile and thanked the waitress as she appeared with their food. Once she left, she turned her eyes back to Gilman, and she hoped to God he couldn’t see that she was even the tiniest bit wounded by all of this.
“That’s really great. I’m happy for you guys.” She took a rather hard bite of her own burger, contemplating what she might say next. The tension was there; she could either diffuse it or ignite it even further with little more than a sentence. She wanted to be a bitch, to make as many jabs as one could make about Gilman and the blind girl, but was her own pettiness a good enough reason to set them back into the old pattern of biting each other’s heads off?
Seeming to wilt, something that didn’t happen often with Annie, she took a sip of her coke and tried again for a smile, this one without the cruel edge of a woman scorned. “It’s good that you’re happy.”
---
Instead of escalating, Annie diffused, and Gilman was somehow relieved and disappointed at the same time. Getting drawn into something familiar, even if it was negative, would’ve been a nice distraction from how worn out he felt. He’d done something, and something was pressuring him, and the muttering...
Gilman smiled back, and his was tired and defeated, almost like waving a white flag. He was never one to give up, but he was showing Annie his belly on this one. Fine. She won.
“Are you seeing anyone?” he asked. Annie wasn’t chaste, but he knew she was all relationshippy. And this seemed to be the topic of conversation they’d settled on, for some fucking reason.
Oh right. He’d started it. Gilman took a huge bite of his burger, making one cheek puff out like a hamster as he chewed it, and he’d barely swallowed before he replaced it with a half-dozen fries. He didn’t even bother with ketchup -- he just wanted the food inside him.
---
Lying seemed like the best option here. Maybe she’d tell him about some out-of-towner she met on a recent trip to Portland and how he swept her off of her feet with his dashing smile and modelesque form. Hell, maybe he was foreign.
But Annie wasn’t a liar, and Gilman wasn’t an idiot.
“No,” she replied, choosing instead to be honest. “I’m not seeing anyone.” There’d only been one guy after Gilman, and their relationship fizzled out just like it started: hard and fast. Jereme was attractive, but the thing that drew her to him was the fact that he was different from Gilman in nearly every way. Where Gilman was tall and lean, Jereme was broad. Unlike Gilman’s dark hair and eyes, Jereme had sandy hair and a pair of blue eyes that were possibly the brightest she’d ever seen. But he was also boring, and Annie needed someone who could make her laugh. Someone who wasn’t predictable all the time.
“Just been busy with work and everything,” Annie added in hopes of not sounding quite as pathetic. There Gilman was, with his high maintenance beauty queen (albeit, a blind one), and the only constant male presence in her life at the moment was Axel. Fucking perfect.
---
Gilman nodded a little when she said ‘no’, like it was somehow reassuring to him that she was single. It was, in a way. You couldn’t really tell if the person you were with was some kind of murderer, after all. At least she had a dog that would make an effort to defend her, if push came to shove. Axel would probably crawl on his belly through Hell to protect Annie.
“I actually miss work,” he said, taking through mouthfuls of food, “Normally I don’t, but I don’t know. This winter is really dragging. I need this snow to go away so I can get back to squatting in bushes and watching people have illicit affairs.”
He felt a bit more human, having a conversation with a living person and eating warm food. Gilman even pulled off his hat, his hair standing up in funny directions. He’d always had the worst bed head, and his hat hair was no better.
“I didn’t take enough jobs to get me through winter,” Gilman said, “They need any extra help at the daycare?”
The joke was that he was completely unhireable. The joke was that he’d murdered a woman so he could take her picture, and mount that picture in a photo album. The joke was that he’d made a huge point about wanting nothing to do with kids in their break-up argument.
“Or maybe I should just work here,” Gilman said quickly, having an extraordinarily rare moment of contrition, “I could sneak fries all day, save money on groceries.”
---
Annie almost laughed at the sight of Gilman’s hat hair, but even her amusement was stopped short. It made her think back to his bed head, the way his hair would stand up in every which direction in the mornings. Fuck, Annie thought, taking a drink just as an excuse to take her eyes off of him. Stop acting like a goddamn school girl, Annie. She was a big girl; there was no use pining over someone that had moved on.
Up until a few weeks ago, she thought she had moved on. But then she and Gilman started talking again and cracking jokes like old time, and everything that Annie forgot she liked about Gilman came flooding back. Maybe it was temporary. She hoped so.
“The parents already think I’m a boozehound that loses kids.” It was meant to be a joke, but it wasn’t funny because it was true. The parents who decided to keep their kids in the daycare seemed to be checking in more often, always reiterating the fact that they weren’t allowed to go with anyone that wasn’t a parent. Annie knew that. Alison just … slipped away, under the radar. There were so many kids, always so much excitement at the end of the day. It was a mistake, yes, but it was a mistake that might have cost a little girl her life.
It was no wonder she’d been drinking more, with that kind of weight on her shoulders.
“Hunter already sneaks enough fries for two people. I don’t think you’d get away with it for long.”
---
“Hey,” Gilman said sharply, completely bypassing her comment about Hunter, “There are sick people out there, Annie. It’s not your fault someone stole a kid. How is it your fault that you weren’t sick enough to think about how easy it could be to steal a kid? It isn’t. You can’t know how people are. What they’re capable of.”
It was ferocious, but softened by the fact that he was waving a fry around to make his point, and ate it when he was done, like it was putting a firm period on the whole matter. He almost asked about the boosehound thing, but he couldn’t get caught up in Annie’s problems. He’d enjoyed her company more than most, but that was ancient history. Long term, they weren’t compatible, and Annie was a long term kind of gal.
“Besides, we live in a small town,” he pointed out, “Nobody expects that shit to happen. If anyone is blaming you, they deserve a fucking smack on the mouth.”
Gilman plowed through the remainder of his meal and started on his coke, which had remained untouched while he’d eaten like a starving man. The sugar was a welcome luxury.
---
“And that’s why there are rules about walking the kids to the cars,” Annie murmured. It was an honest mistake, really. Every single day, Alison got into a silver SUV, like clockwork. Her mother, a beautiful redhead with wild curls, always sat in the front seat, eager to pick up her daughter after a long day. On this particular day, the kids were even more chaotic than usually, and she hadn’t taken the time to approach the SUV to make sure it was Alison’s mom.
And now everyone was waiting for Alison to turn up dead.
She finished her burger without really tasting it and, deciding to change the subject, shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “I’m sure you could find something around here that’s hiring. I heard that the antique shop hired a new girl.” Come to think of it, though, hadn’t he been acting a little off ever since he got that camera or whatever from the shop? Maybe that wasn’t the best idea. “Or maybe you could work at the Brass Key.”
---
“The antique shop,” Gilman repeated, “You know, that’s a good idea. Maybe I’ll stop by there. I haven’t really been by since I got my camera and,” he cut himself off, not wanting to add the album. Annie didn’t need to know about it. She wasn’t the album’s type anyway, “And yeah. I don’t know about the Key. Doesn’t that dickhead Ian Whathisface work there? And I don’t think Max likes me.”
He wrinkled his nose. A lot of people didn’t like him. It wasn’t hatred, but he just wasn’t anyone’s favourite person.
Even the people he killed wouldn’t stop fucking criticizing him.
“I’ll figure something out,” he said, pausing to drink deeply from his coke, like someone was going to take it away from him, “I always do.”
He polished off his beverage and sat back, looking slightly less strung out now that he had a proper meal in him, “Have you been to the antique shop yet? It’s a pretty amazing place.”
---
“No, I haven’t been yet.” Now that she thought about it, hadn’t she run into Gideon one day as he was leaving the shop? Yes, she could remember it perfectly now. He had something tucked under his arm, but she couldn’t see what it was. Was it that box? The one he’d been holding just moments before his plunge to the pavement? And Tatum talked about running into Gilman at the same shop, and they all knew she was acting strange. “It kind of weirds me out, to be honest. I don’t like old things, and I don’t really need to spend money on something I don’t need.”
More than that, it seemed that the people who were going there were acting strangely, but that could have been a coincidence. Or, given her current state, it could have just been Annie seeing things that weren’t there at all.
“I don’t see what’s so amazing about a bunch of used stuff,” she muttered, lifting her gaze to Gilman once more. He already looked a little better - more like himself, at least. “Don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but do you need some money?” Annie wasn’t exactly rolling in bills, but she was financially stable. It wouldn’t hurt her to help Gilman, anyway. Money was a touchy subject with some people, so she was nervous to hear his reaction. “I can help you out some, if you need it. If not, that’s okay too.”
---
“I’m fine,” Gilman snapped, immediately retreating in on himself, “I don’t need charity. Winter is always lean times for me, I just made a mistake, is all. Everyone makes mistakes. I know how to fix it, and I’ll be fine. I’m a grown man, Annie. I don’t need any mothering.”
He tried to get a little more out of his glass of coke with his straw, but only came up with air and a slurping sound.
“Anyway, thanks for the meal,” he said grudgingly, “I should probably get going,” Gilman yanked his hat back on, trapping his crazy hat hair, “And you shouldn’t badmouth the antique shop until you at least go and look for yourself. You might be surprised. The guy who runs the place is really nice, too.”
He shrugged his shoulders and shifted his weight like he was about to leave.
---
“Fine,” she snapped back, instantly regretting the offer. Gilman was so testy today, like a dog that was just waiting to be poked so it could bite the hand. She wouldn’t make that mistake again. “I wasn’t mothering you, Gilman. Excuse the fuck out of me for caring.” Gilman wasn’t an easy person to care about, honestly. It seemed like every time they took a step forward, they’d bite each other’s heads off then move two steps back.
It was exhausting, but Annie couldn’t just stop caring about him. She wished that were possible.
When he made it clear that he was about to leave, she leaned forward, her face a mask of concern. “I don’t know why you’re acting all twitchy, and I know you’re not going to tell me why you haven’t been taking care of yourself, because you obviously aren’t, but please be careful, Gilman.” She had the distinct feeling that he was involved in something -- something that Annie, even with her love of gossip and rumors, didn’t want to know about.
“You know that if you need to talk …” She trailed off, the words bearing too much weight to so much as say. “Well, you know.”
---
Gilman couldn't look her in the eye when she leaned forward, his face downcast and his entire body tense. He tugged on his beanie and his gloves while she spoke, even checked the zipper on his coat, before shrugging and getting to his feet.
"I'm fine," he said, shoving his hands in his pockets, still not looking at her, "You'll be fine, too. Bye, Annie."
Gilman slouched off, bracing his shoulders against the cold before he stepped outside. His car was nowhere to be seen -- he'd walked to save fuel.
---
"Gilman--" But he was already leaving, and all Annie could do was watch as he walked out the door, the cheery little bell making everything seem sadder, somehow. As if things weren't melancholy enough, now Annie was left sitting alone at the booth, watching Gilman disappear out the window. He wasn't fine; he wasn't even okay. Not even close.
No longer hungry, she put a twenty on the table and stood from her spot, casting a little wave to their waitress before wrapping her scarf back around her neck and shuffling out the door into the cold. Inwardly, she hoped Gilman had enough money to keep the heat on. Maybe she'd check on him in a few days, see if things were improving.
Or maybe she wouldn't. He made it pretty clear that he didn't need or want her help. He had Dahlia for that.
When she realized that her vision was suddenly blurry with tears, Annie cursed aloud and smacked the steering wheel hard - hard enough to make the horn give a short blare of distress.
So far, the new year was not looking like it would be a good one.