John Palmer is Judge Turpin (whatmanhasnot) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2010-12-21 14:24:00 |
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Entry tags: | judge turpin |
Who: John Palmer
What: Finding a suitable “holiday companion”.
Where: A club near the UW campus
When: Evening, sometime during the holiday season (but before the cops' recent swarming of the Aubade)
Warnings: Club stalking, suggested emotional manipulation of young women, drugging, sorta kidnapping, non-con restraints and allusions to passive torture. Seriously, it’s Palmer out hunting. This is mild for him, but watch your step.
It was a filthy den of iniquity that he found himself in that night. The raucous cacophony being passed off as music assaulted his ears as he sat at the bar, nursing the poorly mixed drink in his hand. The dim lighting provided shadows that covered the most improper of sins in dark corners. The smell of cheap intoxicants, human musk and vomit filled his nostrils with each indrawn breath.
Inside, he seethed with vile loathing at the impurities of those surrounding him. But the face he presented to the crowd was the same as he presented everywhere. Banal gentility mixed with a casual disinterested charm. He was not a man to belie the true nature of his thoughts towards those surrounding him with some mischance of expression.
His gaze roamed across the adumbral room, alighting on laughing faces, smiling lips and hands delivering drinks to awaiting mouths, pausing only momentarily on each before flitting on, the last stop dismissed. As he finished his drink, the ice clinking dully soft under the muffled thud of noise from the dance floor, he considered leaving. There was no purity hidden in this vile den to be saved, no reminder of - he stopped, his glass clattering the last inch to the counter, his attention captured, pulse racing.
The girl entering the dusky confines was not like the others in the club with him, not like the three girls who’d accompanied her. She still held the fleeting breath of innocence in her movements, a faltering uncertainty at her surroundings, the lingering naivete of youth. The dancing lights flickered on her flaxen hair, shimmering about her shoulders loose instead of tied back like most of the others, maidenly. Virtuous.
His breath caught in his throat as her pale eyes caught his from across the room before passing on again. This. Her. She was why he was here. Why he had waited long past when he’d normally have returned home again. The glass, abandoned on the counter, spun slightly as his fingers brushed it in passing as he descended from his stool and began moving through the crowd.
He kept his distance, close but not close enough to touch, not to speak. He watched. Observed and waited. Learning her little habits. Engraving the way her hands moved and her head tilted back as she laughed in his memory. Watching the play of the lights in her hair.
She was so much like her. Like the one he’d lost. Like the others, he reminded himself. But she had been stolen from him, ripped away from him by a thief in the dark, and the others had been weak. He had been weak. It would be different this time. His breathing grew ragged as he watched her, telling himself that he would not fail this time. He would save her. He didn’t think of what he’d be saving her from.
For hours, he slipped through the crowds, always keeping her in sight as he flit from shadow to shadow. The low rumble of a growl deep in his chest was ignored as he kept himself from removing the obstacles between them, biding his time. He ignored the fire that burned behind his eyes as she flirted and danced with boys, tainting her purity. She would know him, would not leave with another. Their eyes had met across the crowd, she knew he would save her from their lustful taint.
Then the chance. He stepped from the crowd with a charming smile and a bow. He introduced himself, Samuel Brillens, and allowed his native accent to thicken, plying the young women with flattery and the attention of a charming older man from another land. He laughed at the preening of her companions, but his eyes, his smiles were only for her. He soothed her nerves at the focus he lavished upon her with quiet jokes and conversation, drawing her into his attention.
The more they interacted with him and the charming trustworthy persona he was presenting, the more his ability brushed upon their minds, gently increasing their urges to trust him, to like the confident man. Within an hour of joining their party, the young woman of his attention, Susan was her name, had gravitated towards him and the protective circle of his arm, as she would. He learned how she was from out of town, her companions merely friends of friends that she was visiting and not people with real obligations towards her. His smile broadened faintly and his arm tightened ever so slightly about her shoulders at that news. None of those who might seek to tempt her away would come looking. He would protect her, shield her from those who would try and steal her away.
As the closing call went out, he whispered in her ear of coffee shops, an early breakfast or late dinner, of spending more time together. When she expressed doubt, he reassured her, unaware of how his ability was enhancing her mild like of him and enjoyment in his company to something much stronger than it was. He cajoled and pleaded, plied upon her with all the charm and wiles of more than a century of life, and as has always happened since he’d crossed over, she fell.
In the end, she agreed. As he knew she would. They stood to the well-wishes of her former companions and made their way from the heady confines of the club to the crisp early morning Seattle air. He lead her to his car, unlocked the doors and helped her inside. He would succeed with this one. He knew it. He smiled warmly across the cabin at her as he slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. He would save her.
He’d escorted her like a gentleman from a classical novel, her hand lightly upon his arm as they promenaded their way through the early morning hours. They laughed like old friends over their food at the small all night diner he’d found. Shared whispered confidences over coffee. The entire time his ability wrapped around her, driving her desire for him higher and higher and blossoming the like into love. When the sun began to pink the sky, he turned to her with the earnestness of an avid suitor and asked her to accompany him to his home. And she, the poor foolish girl, she agreed.
She laughed, cheerful and bright as sunshine on a spring morning as he escorted her into the building and led her into his home. He sat her upon the couch with a warm smile and whispered promises to return quickly. Stepping to the kitchen he prepared two wine glasses, and to hers the addition of a fine powder that hissed softly as it dissolved into the crimson fluid. He held the glass up to the light, swirling the liquid about to make sure it had completely dissolved. They never understood how important it was for him to shield them from the impurities that existed outside of his home. The powder helped.
He lifted the glasses and turned back to the living room where she waited. The reflection of his eyes in the hall mirror he passed no longer held the warmth he’d offered, promised, to the girl. Now they were only cold. He would protect her. Keep her safe from the world.
The facade of warmth had returned by the time he reached the other room and he answered her nervous smile with reassuring heat. She spoke of her plans for the future as she sipped the wine he’d handed her. Her voice had the same relaxing flow of a rippling brook, a soft chuckle of sound that relaxed the listener. For a moment, he almost doubted his actions, almost sent her home to live her life. Then she’d move a certain way and he’d remember her and what the world had done to her purity. His resolution stiffened.
She wavered almost before the final dregs of the wine were gone. Her movements no longer possessing the smooth grace of earlier. Her hands trembled as she set the glass upon an end table and she laughed nervously at the shudders racking her body. She was becoming nervous, the effects of the drug he had laced her drink with breaking through the unnatural love she’d been feeling for him.
He leaned forwards, eyes dark with some hidden emotion, placed his hands upon hers. He spoke softly, confidently. “Don’t be afraid, Carrie. I’ll protect you. I’ll keep you safe this time. They won’t be able to touch you.”
The trust that had been in her eyes dissolved into panic when he used her name instead of the girl’s. His ability wound about her, heightening the fear, enhancing the panic, now driving her away where before it had pulled her to him. She tried to scream, but the panic choked it off in her throat, leaving only a terrified mewl. She scrabbled at the couch, trying to get away, but dazed and uncoordinated by the drugs and alcohol.
She shook her head spasmodically as he advanced towards her, his face no longer that of the warm and caring man he had pretended to be. Tears streamed down her face and she sobbed brokenly, unable to escape his inexorable advance. But when he reached her, he did not touch her, did not hurt her. He merely stood over her, starting down as her eyes grew tired and she slowly slipped into drugged sleep, the tracks of tears staining her cheeks.
Once he was certain that she was asleep, he crossed the room to the hidden door and activated the toggle to open it. It slid open silently as it’d been designed, revealing the barren room inside with little more decoration than a monk’s cell, possibly less. He picked up the white silk cords from where they were coiled on the cot set in the wall from his last attempt at saving a girl’s purity. From his last failure.
Cords in hand, he returned to the girl on the couch. He tied her carefully, wrist to waist to ankle back up to loosely circle the neck and to wrist, waist and ankle again. He didn’t tie the ropes as tightly as he could. Marks were difficult to explain and besides, she needed to know that she needed him. That she needed his protection. That even if she could free herself from the bonds she could not leave without him.
He lifted her into his arms with gentle tenderness and carried her to the room. Settling her on the cot and arranging her to be as comfortable as possible without untying her. She would learn. The outside was impure. He would preserve her purity here. This room would be her shelter.
He left for a moment only to return with a metal pitcher full of water which he left on the table across the room. He used to leave them with a glass carafe and cup until he’d come in to find one had mistrusted his protection so far as to take her own life. So impure. Carrie was never impure. There was no need for food. She would rely on him. He turned back to the girl on the cot and brushed a stray lock of flaxen hair from her temple, lightly pressing a kiss there before leaving and sealing the door behind him. He would save her.
This time.