It's Brittany, Bitch | Ερις (eristic) wrote in paxletalelogs, @ 2017-08-01 07:31:00 |
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Entry tags: | eris, maui |
bb and the no good, very bad, awful day
Who: BB & Kal.
What: BB is just looking for someone to talk to.
Where: Kal's apartment.
When: Previously in July.
BB was having a no good, very bad, awful day.
First, she'd misplaced her keys. She had not lost them, but that hadn't stopped Stephan from charging her a $100 replacement fee once she'd finally been able to find the concierge. He hadn't been immediately available once she'd come back from her 6 a.m. run. And then a source canceled on her for an interview, a story idea she had suggested was rejected, and it seemed like every comment on her latest piece was absolutely the most negative it could possibly be.
Normally, she would have gone and complained to Alice, or, in lieu of that, annoyed her brother for however long it took her to feel better. Except now neither of them were answering her calls or her texts, and come to think of it, they'd been rather avoidant all month. Daniel, too, still wasn't speaking to her after the whole 'drag photo' fiasco, which she still felt he was overreacting to. Feeling particularly morose, BB showered and dressed herself after work, and dragged her sorry, self-pitying ass down the hall to the doorway that pretty much reeked of pot.
"Kal. KAL. Sufer dude, open up," she all but yelled as she banged on the door.
“Jesus Christ,” Kal’s voice murmured from the other side of the door. He pulled it open, his hair was wet and loose and only a towel was knotted around his waist, and looked down at the small woman who stood in the hallway. “What do you want, BB? Looking for photos of me in drag? Because I don’t have any. Although you still have to tell me how you got ahold of that picture.”
BB sighed, heavily, rolling her eyes.
"OK, I know this is gonna come as a surprise, but that was, like, a one time thing, OK? And he was pissing me off, and besides, you're, no offense, not having a shitton of sex and keeping me up at night." She crossed her arms over her chest, then let them fall at her sides, switching her weight from one leg to another. For someone of her energy levels, she fell amazingly quiet for a moment.
"Unless you're like beating off in the shower or something, can I just come in for a blunt and some conversation? I'm kinda, like...between people, right now."
Kal rolled his eyes and pushed the door open. “Come in, let me just get some clothing on.” He didn’t wait for her to make her way through the door, instead turning to retreat to his bathroom. “And I get plenty of sex, alright? I’m just not living next door to you for you to hear,” he called over his shoulder as the door to the bathroom closed behind him. He continued speaking, although his voice was muffled. “I don’t just get stoned in here, but if that’s what you’re looking for, I have a collection of pot and you’re welcome to a blunt. Where do you normally get your bud from?”
"Places," BB replied, stepping into the apartment and kicking the door shut behind her. She let her eyes wander around the space as she waited for Kal to dress.
"Why, you looking for a new source?" BB approached a strange looking little statue; she put a finger on its head, making it lean to one side. Unconsciously, her face started to mimic that of the statue's, her tongue lolling out.
“I’m obviously good to go, it’s you who seems to be having an issue getting your stash,” Kal replied as he opened the door and stepped out wearing rolled up sweatpants and a tshirt whose sleeves were torn off. It was optimal relaxation wear, which is what he had been planning to do for the day. He stopped in the doorway and studied BB for a moment before smirking. “Admiring my collection of artifacts?”
BB's gaze switched from the statue to Kal, this time sticking her tongue out in his direction. "Just a little. You've got a lot of junk in here. You know what Indiana Jones would say." She let her hand move away from the statue, allowing it to fall back into place. "And I'm not having trouble getting Mary Jane at all, I'm just bored and figured we could spend some quality time together, you know, for whatever this is, surfer dude." She shrugged. "Believe me, I wouldn't be bugging you if Alice or Gus or Daniel would return my texts, but seems like everybody's got a stick up their butt lately. So where's the pot?" She started to wander toward other items in the room, some of them bowls and jars, looking at him pointedly.
Kal waved her forward, urging her to continue her inspection of the various odds and ends he collected. His apartment was surprisingly clean, mainly due to the few items he actually owned for living there. The clutter was contained to the many bookshelves that displayed the many items he picked up on his travels, but otherwise he maintained the bare minimum; stools at the island of the kitchen to eat, two old couches, the record player, tv, and a coffee table that his laptop sat on. Otherwise it was just gear, most of which was tucked into the various closets until he needed it. “For you, I’ll get you some of the good stuff,” he offered an olive branch of sorts, reaching into a vase on the top of a shelf and withdrawing a bag of weed. He crossed to the kitchen and pulled out rolling papers from a drawer before sitting them on the counter. “And it’s not junk, just items from the countries I’ve been to. Asia, Africa, all that. Anyway, why are your friends ignoring your texts? Well, not Daniel, I know why he’s ignoring you.”
Rolling her eyes once more, BB moved to inspect what looked like a musical instrument made out of a reed, sitting on papyrus.
"Daniel's just being a spoilsport," she muttered under her breath, the words not intended for Kal's ears. "I don't know," she said more loudly, covering up her earlier complaint. "Alice has been avoiding the hell out of me, I think she's going back to working more shifts at her shop, after I specifically told her that she was overworking herself, so now she probably thinks I'll just give her another earful, and Gus... Well, Gus is Gus, who the fuck knows how my brother works. I think he got a job or something somewhere, I know he's not in school right now. Ugh." She passed her hand over the object, and then took a step back, turning around to watch Kal prep their smokes. "At the least, I guess it's better that he's not snitching on me to mom and dad."
Kal shrugged, his focus on the blunt he was artfully rolling. “If Alice wants to work overtime, that’s her own business. You’re not her mother.” He tapped at the blunt and frowned, giving it another tightening twist and pressing the ends down to ensure it was sufficiently sealed. “Although I go to that bakery of hers a lot and I haven’t seen her recently. At least, not more than usual.”
"That chick would run herself into the ground if someone didn't tell her to slow down," BB replied peevishly, crossing her arms over her chest as she moved toward Kal across the room.
"Hmm, if she's not there, I don't know what then. It is kinda weird, how both she and Gus both started ignoring me, but it's not like they hang out or anything. It's just, ugh, you know? Why people gotta be like that, I mean, it's just a text message. And maybe a few voicemails. Why is it so hard for people to be punctual and responsible?" She cocked a hip against a counter, leaning with a slight pout as she watched Kal roll the blunt.
“With all the crap that’s going on in this apartment, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s messing with the cell phones,” Kal pointed out as he lifted the blunt once more for inspection and offered it to BB, satisfied with the state of it; she took it without hesitation, a small sniff eliciting a smile over her mouth. “That shits strong, by the way, so take your time with it.”
Rather than making one for himself, he put the supplies away before turning to his fridge and opening it wide before selecting a beer. “But yeah, you may get more progress by just going to their apartments, you know?”
"Yeah," BB agreed nonchalantly, clearly the annoyance of her friend ignoring her forgotten in the moment. One hand was patting her pocket, pulling out a bright pink lighter. "Just, with everything, it's been kinda hard to balance work and all the other shit... the Linkin Park singer dying made everything at work kinda flip into a madhouse, you know? So... Just need to find time." Elbows on the counter, she leaned forward with the blunt to her lips and lit the tip. One brief inhalation gave her a taste. "Wow, this is good. Where do you get your stuff, again?"
“All I can say is that I travel for a living and I’ve come to know a lot of people and a ton of various strains of weed,” Kal said with a smirk before taking a sip of his beer and frowning. “Linkin Park was the prime music for my teen days. It sucks, still hurts to hear that news, but I can imagine that your job was a shit storm. This apartment is like a black hole. We all have shit going on in our personal lives and when we come home, the place to kind of calm down and chill out, we can’t because we’re thrown into more chaos.”
He thought of Chris becoming the coyote and pressed his lips into a line. “Has shit been weird for you lately? Other than your brother and friends ignoring you and the music scene turning into a hot mess.”
BB took another, this time longer, drag, puffing out a few small clouds as her brows knitted across her forehead. "Um, lately? Yeah, something's been stinking the fuck out of my apartment, and eating all my food, and making a bigger mess than usual. And I guess someone or something's been stealing food from people all over -- and stuff, too," She added, remembering Vinnie's post about his missing razors. "Maybe it's another cat infestation like before. Or who knows, something worse." She shuddered, bringing the blunt to her mouth once more. "Why, something happen to you?"
Kal wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand and leaned back against the counter that ran along the wall. “Weird dreams, my neighbor found something in his closet.” He considered mentioning Chris but decided, mainly due to Chris’s tight lipped policy of being a pain in the ass and not opening up to anyone, he’d keep that to himself. “Hey, by the way, what happened to that guy? The one with the cats. Did anyone ever figure out what exactly went on there?”
A frown cut its way across her face, and she shook her head. "Nope. Just gone. All his shit was there one day, and then they cleaned it out. Maybe he's a hobo on the street somewhere, but honestly, if you ask me..." Which he was clearly doing by even bringing up the topic around her, so BB pressed on, leaning forward and whispering conspiratorially. "He disappeared right around when management was offering that spa thing, right? And then more weird stuff happened after that, right? I mean, come on, it doesn't take a genius to realize this shit is all connected."
“I didn’t go to the spa,” Kal admitted. There was something gnawing on his mind in regard to the spa. Chris’s steadfast pursuit to keep Kal from going; not just Kal but Daniel too. “I wanted to, but I didn’t. Neither did anyone else I’m super close with. But what do you think the spa has to do with him leaving? Like he just went to the spa and disappeared? Never came back here? I mean, I didn’t go to the spa and I’m still having creepy shit pop up in closets and the floors changed, all this odd shit.”
Falling suspiciously quiet for a moment, BB left the blunt on her lips as she seemed to weigh telling Kal something. Finally, she shrugged, a small voice in the back of her mind telling her that Alice would heavily disapprove of her speaking about this.
"My friend was coughing up seeds after a spa visit," she replied, matter of factly, even though there was little evidence to connect the two events. After all, Alice's hair had mutated into wheat during the floor changes. One would assume the problem was bigger than just a mere spa visit. "I'm not saying it's the cause of everything but you have to admit it's weird that they've got us in here like rats in a maze and then they're like 'ooooo have the blue pill! It'll make up for everything else we've done to you!' Like it's not just another experiment."
“Yeah they do seem to be very controlling, huh?” Kal said with a sigh as he picked at the label on his beer. “Have you been having strange dreams about a specific god or anything? I’ve been dreaming about Maui...which I’m not sure if it’s entirely weird because I am Hawaiian. But Daniel dreams about Ares and he’s definitely not Greek.” Then he paused and his eyes narrowed as he looked at BB. “Eris. I’ve had a dream and Eris was in it. Her attitude, her behavior was a lot like you…”
BB's hand held the blunt a few inches from her face, her brows rising on her forehead.
"Yeah," she agreed, nodding slowly. "I've had a lot of dreams about that weirdo. Eris. Some with Daniel, and ones with a chick named Uke Mochi. She's my friend Alice, who's not Japanese. And then there was some goat dude, but I'm not even getting started on that stuff. So, yeah. Dreams everywhere. And then there was the floor change and..." BB put the blunt down, balancing it carefully on an empty cup left on the counter. She held out her arm, putting a hand to her bicep.
"My arm changed, during the floor changes. First it was a tentacle, and then a crab claw...and just... It was so weird but I could feel it..." She squeezed her bicep, straining her arm a little as if to test her blood pressure. Then she put both hands palm down on the counter. "Like, someone knows what's going on here, and I think it's that dude at CASKET."
“That’s the place where you want to go with Daniel, right? The one from the invitation we found in the closet.” Kal took a swig of his beer, before letting his arms fall to his side and tapping the bottle against his lower leg. “I think you’re Eris. From what I can get out of the dreams, these gods and goddesses just sort of live in us. Sometimes they get control, like you with your arm changing. It’s not… totally unheard of in this place for people to change physically. I know someone else who lives here who changed, too.”
BB's curiosity perked up. "Oh yeah? Who?" For such a large building, there were still only a handful of people around, and within that only a small number that BB knew personally. Hearing about others was always a priority high on her list.
Kal shook his head, “Not telling you who it was. Just take the fact that there was another physical change in the building and it was only temporary, nothing long lasting and it hasn’t happened since.” He drank another sip of his beer and considered BB. She was a curious little thing and he knew, without a doubt, that Chris would murder him if he mentioned to her what had happened.
BB narrowed her eyes at Kal, taking another hit from the blunt. She was a quarter of the way into it, but set it back on the empty cup as her head felt like it was floating.
"Fine, be that way. But yeah, that's what, three people? And then Bront, or Brenden, or whatever his name was, that 'moved out,'" she added, making quotation marks in the air with her fingers. "It's just, all too weird. But yeah, I wanna go back to CASKET. Went there before with Alice and this guy Rafe, not sure if you know him, he's a porn star, but anyway, yeah. Need to go back because he said some really shifty shit to us, especially at the end. Daniel was supposed to go with me, but everyone thinks I'm a loon for suspecting shit of this place. You know someone was murdered here, right?" Her brows climbed her forehead, aggressive eye contact underlining her words.
“The guy on the first floor? I thought that was a suicide,” Kal replied with another sip of his beer as he shifted on his feet and pointed to his living room, silently offering for BB to join him on the old couches which were more comfortable than standing at the kitchen island.
"No, no no no, not that, though that is a whole other kettle of fish," BB offered, pulling her hands back to curve her palms around the counter's edge, bouncing off of it. "Back before this place re-opened, a woman who lived here was murdered on the island in the bay. She lived here, though, and people who were tenants back then said...a lot of weird shit happened. Like how it is now. And they all were at CASKET the night the woman died. How does that not raise a million red flags for everyone here now?!"
“But what would all of them being at that club have to do with the night the woman died?” Kal asked, egging BB on to continue as he settled into one of the couches. “Are you saying that maybe they had a hand in it? Like, they killed her? I mean, it all sounds like a red flag, you’re right, particularly if they were reporting the same type of weird shit we have going on here, but their being at that club that night… I don’t follow.”
BB slapped her hands down on the counter. "Because they were having a party just for Pax people! It was a Halloween party, and she went from there and then she got murdered, Kal!" One finger streaked across the countertop, as though she were painting a picture for him. "And the guy was hella shady, OK? He told me we needed to get out of here. Why would he say something like that if he didn't know something we didn't?"
“The guy from the club? When you met with him?” Kal asked, all interest but also a tiny bit of a spark in his eye from something else, something that enjoyed a little bit of chaos and uncontrollable emotion.
Those same hands rose up from the counter, waving, a little frustrated that Kal was focusing on the wrong thing.
"Back in May, I think, I mean, I went with Alice and Rafe, and he wasn't at all happy to hear from us, and yeah, but what I'm saying is we need to go back," she sputtered, almost pacing from foot to foot in her quickly evolving excitement. She stepped away from the counter, her hair almost moving of its own accord as though it too were a living thing. Her hands gestured as she spoke.
"Like, they must've been interviewed by the police but I haven't been able to get records, and obviously he did something to cover up for the club however they were involved but mostly I wanna know what he knows about this place, about what happened before, and why or who was involved in that woman's murder. It's something, you know? There has to be something." She continued to pace, well distracted from the issue of her friends ignoring her by the mystery at hand.
“I wonder if we could break into the old message boards. I’d assume they still exist somewhere, right? You can never delete anything that’s on the internet? It’d be interesting to see if people were posting the same questions as what we did. If they spoke about the same problems. Floor changes, transformations, all of that…” Kal moved forward and leaned his elbows into his knees. “Because, really, how much more will you find out at the club? The murder didn’t happen there. All the apartment folks were there but unless they started turning into gods or something, what would they have seen? Unless they’re being paid off by the apartment…”
BB's head bobbed along with Kal's suggestion. "It didn't, but something happened there, I feel it, OK? Like. There's something that he knows about this place that we don't. Even if it's not about the murder, necessarily. But there's something, OK, surfer dude? Something.
"But that's not a bad plan," she finally acceded, nodding again as she crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against another counter on the opposite side of the kitchen. "I know some guys who used to be black hat hackers, I could see how much it might run to get them to try and hack into the accounts..." One hand went to stroke her face, the beginnings of a plan in mind.
“There you go, and you don’t have to wait for any of your friends to work on that plan either,” Kal pointed out, literally, with one finger raised from the glass of beer. “I bet you’ll find a lot of good information if you can hack into the message boards from the previous tenants. It may indicate if it’s worth going back to CASKET too.”
BB nodded, suddenly beelining for his fridge and pulling it open. With one hand on the door, she cast a glance back at Kal. "I think it is, but yeah, more evidence is never a bad thing. You know, for a travel reporter, you're pretty good at this stuff. You sure you didn't do something before that was a little more publishable?" She helped herself to a beer, closing the fridge and settling against a counter to face him as she popped it open.
“Nothing like what you do,” Kal laughed. Not bothering to comment about the beer she took. He was running low anyway and had to make a grocery run, so she couldn’t do too much damage. “I was just a sneaky teen. I got into a lot of trouble and stuck my nose in places it didn’t belonging. That sort of spark for trouble sticks with you, I think. But you’re the one in full control. You’re leading the charge.”
Taking a long swallow, BB pointed a finger in Kal's direction with the hand that was holding her drink. She fixed him with an inquisitive, narrowed gaze, far more curious about this otherwise seemingly innocuous surfing mountain than she had been before, given this new information.
"Man, you better believe it. Now, exactly what kind of trouble did you used to get up to...?"
Kal grinned, a spark in his eye that was both devilish and eager. He leaned back into his couch and nodded towards the fridge. “Grab me another beer and I’ll tell you all about the trouble I used to get in.”