There'd been certain things that he'd been forced to make peace with when Rusty had dragged him, screaming and wailing, into this [...] oddly mundane existence where masked monsters roamed freely and preyed on humanity, but damn, he missed sunlight. The glare of neon tubes was a poor replacement, and not even the light bulb - which boasted one of those 'daylight bulbs', was able to stand up to scrutiny. But when he opened his eyes to find his - well; what barely passed for a kitchen and living room awash in sunlight, he froze. His body, pressed deep into the cheap mattress that the former tenant had left behind, stayed trapped in the same position that he'd laid down in just hours prior, because - did he fucking want to move?
He couldn't decide. In the earliest days of his new existence, he'd toy with that risk, and had come tor relish the burns that came with it. It was only [...] Malkavian, after all. But that had been years ago, long before good old Rusty had finally kicked the bucket. And then he swallowed, against something hard to define without the breath-hitching, heart-revving kind of dread he'd known in life, but then it registered. There was a disturbance in the Force. Someone had tugged on those fragile spider web threads that connected his clan, and so hard at that, that it had jolted him straight awake in the middle of the day and like, fuck-
No- he needed to focus on something else, anything else but this dread that was building up inside of him. God, this place looked even more rundown and unwanted in the middle of the day. He needed better curtains, and not these pieces of very nearly see-through pieces that he'd bought off of Craigslist. The walls needed a fresh coat of paint to hide all the scratches and marks that its previous tenant had caused during his stay here.
The night was kind, after a fashion. His apartment had seemed cozy in the feeble light of the kitchen's single light. And now the spell had been broken. Pity. A couple of noisy children played in the apartment above him, a dog barked in response, and their mother, his tireless and impatient landlord, yelled - and then the dread inside him built and all that ruckus was gone, all gone.
Scuff marks, peeling paint, daylight filtering through see-through curtains - all gone.
This place was quiet, somewhere high up, and immaculately kept up and for some reason he was walking through carpeted rooms barefooted, past warded windows that were a Tremere's handiwork, and closer to a figure that slumbered in a bed that he'd never be able to afford. Ventrue or Toreador - Devan decided, seconds before the knife - no, a dagger - cut his finger - not, not his hands, but somehow close enough? - in anticipation. And then it plummeted straight down, into flesh, cut muscle nicked bone and up and down again and again until they grunted with efforts and the blood was pouring over his bare feet.
At long last, those slumbering eyes opened and stared at him with [...] familiarity in his eyes. Devan had never met him before, and he was already repeating a mantra that went unheard by the two people in that room- thiswasnothisdoingthiswasnothisdoingthiswasnothisdoingthiswasnothisdoingthiswasnothisdoing until it was broken up by a "Why?" - a dying man's last words. They needed to be heard.
The knife in his - no, her hands faltered for a brief moment, and Devan swore that he could hear - regret? in her voice. "I'm so sorry. It has to be this way." And then, with a final blow, he watched a dead man die - an oxymoron in itself, and one his brain had had trouble with right about now because surely it couldn't just end like this - and after one last look at his - no her feet and a glance at a clock stating a godawful early 12:35 nearby, he was back in his shithole of an apartment, lying on a bumpy mattress and listening to the neighbor kids yelling 'TAG!' as their feet scampered around on the wooden floors above him.
He squinted at the crappy, sun-stained digital clock near his bed, its numbers already faint in the steadily brightening room. 12:36. It had just happened. Or had happened. Or had never happened at all, or was to be a future event at this exact time. There was no way to tell. But he could feel it, those precious, but loose threads of sanity in his brain with a comedic sound effect - like a plunk - just springing loose and falling into the abyss as he lay there, trying to process whatever he'd just seen. Was it truth? Or lie?
The Cobweb wormed its way forward into his mind with an electronic, yet suspiciously happy-sounding *beep*.
Did you wish to share this content with the network?
The spider web threads trembled with anticipation, but Devan mouthed a no, and changed the message to the first thing he could think of. A pink banana with blue dots.
Content edited to 'pink banana with blue dots'.
MESSAGE SENT. Thank you for being our valued customer. We are so grateful for the pleasure of serving you and hope we met your expectations.
As it sounded off, the beep sounded almost depressed, but he'd already pushed himself off the mattress and gingerly put his bare feet down on the concrete floor, although the sensation of walking walk through a pool of blood was a hard one to shake, and his hands felt slick and stained with much of the same, but he managed to reach for his phone all the same, and hit speed dial.
When someone finally picked up, Devan spoke and found himself briefly grateful he didn't sound anything like her. "You should wake the Sheriff. I think there's been a murder."