Tweak

InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "i'll get you my pretty"

Morgan Freeman (sweetwaterkill) wrote in paxletalelogs,
@ 2010-10-08 00:41:00

Entry tags:

coyote, eris, mania

Who: Dorcas & OPEN
What: A girl explores the building...
Where: Starts on the first floor.
When: October 7th, 6 AMish
Warnings: Very little likely. Maybe some language.

Dorcas had managed to unpack her camera while stocking her bookshelves full of her books and collected items of... random. She had old surgical tools, a human skull, some fish bone and leaf fossils, one dollar figurines of Hellsing characters... That sort of thing. But then she had found her camera and found that it was the best opportunity to document the building.

So today, she had dressed in blue and headed down to the first floor to work her way up. Starting in the lobby, she started taking very strategic pictures of the room - ones that captured as much of the room as possible then a few of the smaller details. Yeah, she could get this done by the end of the day, working up towards the tower...

At the moment, she was taking pictures of the urns... Having read a previous statement, she was not going to open them. She didn't want to throw up in the lobby. Although she did sort of want to steal one for a souvenir; she just wasn't sure it would get added on to her rent or something.

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whiskey_jack
2010-10-23 06:50 am UTC (link)

Jack was many things -- an asshole and a jerk, primarily -- but he wasn't stupid. He knew full well that he was on the verge of either a punch in the face or a knee to the groin. He was also very, very tired, much too tired to persist with either woman; he hadn't slept since he left Pax Letale two days ago. The exhaustion seemed to catch up to him all at once, and it hit him like a bus. Yep, time for hungover bad boys to finally go to bed.

"I'm not testing the elevator either," he stated, dropping his hand as Dorcas made a tentative escape from his clutches and Charlie headed in a no-nonsense manner toward the stairs. Stifling a yawn, he trudged after them, grateful that he only had to schlep up to the third floor.

He just couldn't keep his mouth shut, though. "...Laughter? Inconceivable!" he grinned, not wanting to let Dorcas' Princess Bride ref slip by unacknowledged -- then sobered as he recalled the laughter he'd heard on the eighth floor, with his hindbrain tingling and Kami's anger sharp and raw. That shut him up.

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sweetwaterkill
2010-10-25 03:54 am UTC (link)

Dorcas wasn't exactly the kind to hit a guy. Honestly, she would have more than likely started crying if he persisted. Thankfully, Jack let up on the touching or anything else. "No, definitely not going for the elevator," she started after Charlie, apparently the only one who had gotten up at this hour and thus was a little more energetic. "Although it would be interesting to see if its theme changed with each floor..."

She glanced at Jack, a flicker of a smile there but she was still too uncomfortable with him for anything else. "It's l-less c-creepy than organs. At least everyone sounded cheerful rather than crazy insane." Dorcas stayed close on Charlie's heels like maybe the woman could protect her better than Jack. Maybe it was that lingering familiarity that made her feel more comfortable.

"Wh-what floors are you both o-on, if I may know?" Dorcas's tone was almost ridiculously polite like she was afraid the minor question would insult them.

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eristic
2010-10-25 04:14 pm UTC (link)

The door to the first landing swung open easily, despite the aged look it held - the sand and stone continued upwards, until it hit the second floor. The floors suddenly became marble, and columns climbed to hold up the third floor from crashing down. Lighting suddenly flickered rather than holding still like proper artificial lighting; Charlie had walked past this and the sixth floor numerous times and had always felt a pull towards it, but had done her best to avoid the floors entirely.

Since the Egyptian one made her feel like killing something, she didn't want to know what the other floors might do. Still, she found herself pausing for a moment, looking at the door to the second floor. Dorcas' question broke her reverie, causing her to glance back.

"Seventh. Like I said, it went all medieval. Walls went wood, weaponry everywhere. At least I know I have something at hand if somebody tries some home invasion shit," she replied, her tone as impassive as ever.

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whiskey_jack
2010-10-26 01:28 am UTC (link)

Behind them, Jack raised an eyebrow at Charlie's remark. Yeah, hardcore as hell. He mentally made a note to stay on her good side. Never know when being acquainted with a heavily-armed biker chick might come in handy. Besides, he liked her snarky sense of humor.

"I'm just one floor up, on three," he answered Dorcas, pointing up the stairs and returning her smile in as non-threatening a manner as he could. "Like living in a forest. There's some carvings on some of the beams, and the outer wall is stone, but not too bad. Now this floor," he nodded at the entrance to the second floor, "looks like a set from Clash Of The Titans. All marble, like the stairs here." He grinned at both women. "Yeah, I checked 'em all out. At least up to the eighth floor."

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sweetwaterkill
2010-10-26 02:30 pm UTC (link)

Dorcas paused at the change to marble. Now this was more familiar. More interesting. Certainly more comfortable anyhow. For a moment, she forgot her question and stepped up to the door leading to the second floor. Settling her hand on the cool marble and then her cheek, she felt sort of drawn to it like a moth to flames.

Her gaze flicked to Charlie and she smiled a little, "I just buy things like that. Instead of an umbrella stand, I have a sword stand." Not that she actually knew how to use them but they had been sharpened and they were ready for slicing. To Jack she asked, "Why were you up on my floor?" Like the whole thing was her's only it wasn't? Though she wasn't expecting them to follow, she opened the door to the second floor and started in enough to take a couple of pictures of the whole area.

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eristic
2010-10-26 04:07 pm UTC (link)

She almost (almost) did a double take at Dorcas' comment and the purple-haired woman definitely just went up a few pegs in her book. A sword stand? Righteous. She actually returned the smile. That added to the unknown familiarity started...what, was this a potential liking? Like, girl talk and sleep overs and painting nails? She shook her head, pushing all of that away and followed her into the hall that felt, well, quite welcoming.

"Yeah, this has got Rome written all over it," she acquiesced to Jack's description. It all felt like...well, not home, exactly, but perhaps...a bit like the masses that the nuns had the orphans attend from time to time. A gentle sense of calm pervaded her, though in the background danced the thoughts from before. Blood. Killing. The joy of slaughtering one's enemies on the battlefield, screaming defiance and anger and rage and hate and... Strife. Something in that word encompassed it all and for once she stopped denying it for just a moment.

She, too, turned to look at Jack as Dorcas did, unaware of the accusing stare she was giving him. Trespassing where he was unwelcome; then she started wandering around, looking at the elaborate carvings on the walls. Stories that she felt like she knew a hundred times over - a hand went out to touch them, running over the cool marble.

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whiskey_jack
2010-10-26 04:51 pm UTC (link)

"Hey, I didn't mean anything," Jack started, hands raised as he edged his way past as far against the outer wall as he could get. "I was just checking things out. Y'know, out of curiosity." He watched first Dorcas and then Charlie enter the second floor, but didn't follow them; he wasn't prepared to deal with hostile women again, not in the state he was in, and besides, he'd seen it.

To the purple-haired woman he added, "The eighth floor was as far as I got. It's funny, that floor felt... I dunno, familiar, almost like... coming home." He shrugged. "Didn't know you were up there."

An uncomfortable feeling settled into his gut, as if he were intruding on something personal; he decided to heed it. "Welp, Charlie, Dorcas, it was a pleasure meeting both of you," he nodded. "My bed is calling. Have fun exploring -- maybe I'll see you around."

((OOC: Exit Jack, exhausted and weirded out, stage up. XD))

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sweetwaterkill
2010-10-27 12:54 am UTC (link)

With that smile, Charlie suddenly didn't seem so bad. She would covet that smile and keep it all to herself like a treasure. Weird thing to think but hey. She almost corrected Charlie in that it would be more Greek but managed to stop herself before even opening her mouth. After all, she wanted to keep the woman happy. She was not the confrontational type. Things just slipped out of her mouth.

Instead she spoke to Jack, "Yeah... Understand that." Which she really did but hadn't until just now. So weird. She waved a little as Jack decided to depart, absently saying, "Goodbye Captain Sparrow." Well it was either that or Skellington and he looked more like a Captain Sparrow than he did a Jack Skellington. So shut up.

When Jack had made a fair distance from them, she looked at Charlie again then up at the ceiling like there was something there. Dorcas shook her head sharply, shaking that feeling of absence from her mind away and asked the question that she really wanted to know, "Have I met you before?"

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eristic
2010-10-27 03:34 am UTC (link)

She gave no acknowledgment to Jack's departure, instead intent on the hall itself. Maybe kicking herself a little for not having gone to this floor earlier, because maybe the rest of it wouldn't seem so bad. She was still feeling a little psychotic, but...as though she had some control over it. Though reconciling the idea that these thoughts were coming from her and not some foreign entity was still beyond her grasp. At the question she turned on her heel, one hand still on the wall. It dropped slowly, fingertips skimming the marble.

"I was going to ask you the same. You don't seem like the biker type," she started, taking a few steps forward like a predator sizing up its prey. Before she had been impassively volatile and mischievous; now she was acting quite different. There was nothing fun or comical in her movements or speech. "You act weird, but not druggie-weird. And unless my convict-detector is broken, I seriously doubt you've done any jail time." A question sprang to mind - Dorcas was the second person she felt familiar with, the first being Samuel.

"Have you...recognized anyone else? Like...I dunno, deja-vu or whatever they call it?" Because that was exactly what she was feeling right now, a weird sense of having known her. And not just as friends or even for a lifetime, but...for a very, very long time.

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sweetwaterkill
2010-10-27 04:27 am UTC (link)

Dorcas really kept expecting something to come out of the walls or the ceiling or one of them. The feeling was starting to be a little overwhelming and it seemed to come radiating off Charlie for some reason. She chewed on her bottom lip, watching Charlie quietly, hands clasped in front of her.

For a moment, she was afraid of the way Charlie was approaching her. And then she just wanted to laugh and draw butterflies on her cheek. And then she wanted to make a dress out of cake and make a man cry and-- a lot of things. All the wants were distracting her from the words and Dorcas fought to pay attention. "No, not a biker... Never done jail time," she confirmed. Dorcas was just weird and shy.

And now her answer was going to be very disappointing. "I haven't met any other people actually... I'm... a bit of a hermit to be honest." That was an understatement. With her hesitating words, she had started further down the hall, looking around and occasionally snapping a picture. She was sort of gravitating towards the altar at the end of the hallway.

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eristic
2010-10-27 06:47 am UTC (link)

A frown creased her face, disliking Dorcas' answer. "Yeah, me too." Well, less of a hermit and more of an avoider. Alas, there wasn't much more to be said on that topic, especially since Charlie was lax to start chit-chatting needlessly. Especially since she was starting to feel a bit, ah, restless.

She followed Dorcas' gravitation towards the altar at the end of the hall; her eyes, however, lingered on the walls. The friezes depicted battle, men and women in certain, ahem, poses though there really wasn't anything lewd, animals...people turning into animals...a man holding a lightning bolt, chariots and all manner of things one would expect from the ancient Greek time period. Most of it meant nothing to Charlie, and yet she felt as though she had had a hand in some of these stories. Which was complete nonsense, of course.

And then she looked at the altar, actually looked at it. And it was like, bam, articles of the past, your past, hey there, lookit me. Come over here and touch me. The little want in the back of her mind, the desire she felt when she had been boosting cars. Only now it was something that was...well, hers, and not something that she was stealing. She started on a bee line towards the altar, and though she hadn't seen it yet, she was fixated on a particular object that was already in her mind.

Once there, she didn't even have to sift through the items - they were all laid out quite nicely, anyway - but near the back was a rather strange object. An apple, molded out of what seemed to be nearly pure gold. It was solid to the touch, and hard rather than the malleable texture that pure gold had. Her hand hesitated above it for a moment before picking it up, feeling the weight in her hand. Not that it was hers, necessarily, but certainly something she'd used before. Before? When? She'd never even seen such a thing in her life.

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sweetwaterkill
2010-10-28 04:34 am UTC (link)

Well, she couldn't please everyone with her answers. Dorcas was generally an honest person and honestly, she didn't deal much with people. It was only the strange comfort that came with being with Charlie... Like maybe they were distant family or something.

Occasionally, she snapped a picture of the art on the wall but it didn't interest her so much as the altar did. Pieces of the friezes made her want to laugh or break them or paint over them with crayons. Like maybe they were the lies people told to make themselves look better. And Dorcas... Dorcas knew the truth somewhere. It felt like she had all the secrets of the universe bouncing around in her head somewhere that she just couldn't touch.

Charlie reached the altar before she did. Dorcas was going at a more leisurely pace. It wasn't going anywhere, was it? She watched Charlie and sidled up to her to peer at the golden apple but she didn't want it. Slowly, she turned to look at the items. Though it was an afterthought, she took a picture of the altar, of the golden apple. Her main concern was a set of two figures.

One was a man who appeared to be in a frenzy and the other was a boy with a ram's head. Their names were somewhere in the back of her mind, wriggling like worms. One half of her mouth went up in an empty smile before the figure of the boy slipped out of her hand and broke on the floor. She wasn't particularly heartbroken. "I'm not sure I like this place anymore," she said softly, voice wavering with indecision. "There are icy fingers in my brain and they're tearing me apart." Wait, what?

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eristic
2010-10-28 06:59 pm UTC (link)

She tossed the apple from hand to hand like a baseball - it was...a gift, of sorts. A little something for those who had...done something to her, but she couldn't put her finger on what. All she knew was that they had pissed her off, and one didn't piss her off without consequences. Besides, the fallout of this simple action would give her sooo much fun... Her eyes glanced at Dorcas, and then to the statues - now those were weird. When Dorcas dropped the statue, the pieces flowing over the floor in a small shower of dust, a ghost of a smile showed up on her face and she was hardpressed to not send the rest of the objects on the altar flying.

"What?" She gripped the apple tighter in her right hand, turning to look at Dorcas with a...yeah, it was an angry expression. Not angry at her necessarily, but just angry to be angry. She half-wanted to tell Dorcas to can it, to just start screwing up everything in the hall because they could, it was their right, perhaps even a divine right, and that destruction would lead to more... "The fuck are you talking about? God, I want...I just want to hurt something..." Her fingers were growing white around the apple, the stem of it cutting into her palm and a small rivulet of blood started dripping from her appendage to the cool marble floor. Just a few drops, little bitty things that were barely unnoticeable, but she could smell the coppery tang. She wanted more.

The apple, gold stained with red, fell from her fingers, bouncing with a metallic sound against the floor and Charlie took a step away from the altar.

"Yeah, yeah, let's..." She brought her hand up to her face, smearing blood on her forehead before she realized what she was doing, and she wiped it off with the heel of the same hand as best she could. "Let's get out of here." That was supposed to be followed by a quick turn and brisk steps back towards the stairs, but she found herself staring at the dried blood on her hand, a manic grin on her face.

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sweetwaterkill
2010-10-29 06:16 pm UTC (link)

When she met Charlie's eyes, there was nobody home - not in Dorcas's head anyway. There was like some piece of her that made her human and normal that had just flitted away. It wasn't even bothered by the angry look on Charlie's face like the woman could just punch her in the mouth without a single warning. And she wished she could tell Charlie what she was talking about but not even she knew...

"Please, cousin!" She didn't know why she called the other woman her cousin but Dorcas did not stop to think about it, "If we stay here then the others will find us and we'll be in so much trouble and then it'll be dark and mazey again. And I don’t want to get lost and have the butterflies pour from my mouth again with lies to save my skin!" She grabbed Charlie by the wrist and started tugging her down the hallway, other statuette still in her other hand with her camera. He was coming with her one way or another... Why was she thinking of the statue as alive?! "Please please please..."

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eristic
2010-10-30 08:58 pm UTC (link)

Her eyes tried to meet Dorcas', but there was nothing there, at least, not a person. She let herself be dragged along a few steps before wrenching her wrist free, pulling back with a strength that wasn't Charlie's. The manic grin was still in place, but there was something hateful about it.

"You fear, dear cousin?" It wasn't even a question that they were family; it was a given, something that had been known since before man even walked the earth, before he'd been formed from clay and other materials, before he'd taken his first breath. They were older than that, older than the stars themselves. "What have we to fear?" But it was almost as though Charlie wasn't speaking, it was something speaking through her, like it had stuck a hand in her and was using her like some obscene puppet.

"Fear is for sobbing men and children, who don't know what lingers in the dark. I want to stay - I like it here...I am free here." What the hell was she saying? Part of her wanted to punch Dorcas in the face, just to see what she'd look like with a bruised eye, or blood running from her nose. Charlie fought back the grin, putting hands to her head and her teeth gritted to fight back a scream. A scream that was of pure unadulterated joy.

Her eyes opened and stared at Dorcas - Charlie was afraid, very afraid, but whatever was using her was most definitely not. After a moment - did Charlie move? She seemed...physically unstable for a moment, but she hadn't even moved - she reached out to grab Dorcas' hand again and started running down the hall, almost as though she were forcing herself to, moving quickly towards the landing as she felt some kind of carnal bloodlust rising in her throat. She didn't know what she might do if she stopped, if she paused for a moment.

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sweetwaterkill
2010-10-30 11:27 pm UTC (link)

Dorcas pulled at her hair, whining loudly as her fingers twined into purple locks, "They don't like me because i Kn0w ThiNGgsSs anD mAke thEm d0 thInGs!! BecaUsE i'M olDeR!" That was simply a paranoid reason for being fearful but considering what it felt like she was channeling, that was a lesser symptom. Dorcas was naturally paranoid anyhow and she had every right to be, damn it.

She looked up from between her arms, face sort of smooshed between them but not really helping the dark look that was on her face. "SsOmtimeS iT's the THIngS in thE liGhT thAt haVe to BeFeared. YoU forget. but i never forget. never ever." This needed to end. They needed to leave. The desire to run was Dorcas's translated by whatever was holding onto her brain with the wiggling tendrils that made her belly run cold. They were so many colors with an underlying blackness to them...

When Charlie grabbed her, Dorcas followed that run going blindly where ~~her cousin~~ she led. No stopping. Only running. And even once they were back on the landing, she was headed upwards to the next floor to create some distance between them and the marble. Third floor, forest floor. Once she hit that landing, she collapsed and to be honest, she started to cry very hard.

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eristic
2010-10-31 01:38 am UTC (link)

The thing in Charlie was almost insulted at Dorcas' comment, whatever it was about forgetting. But Charlie wasn't about to let it voice it's opinion, and instead just kept running until she was out of the hall. Then she realized that she had left her bike helmet next to the altar at the end of the hall.

"Fuck it," she muttered under her breath. She wasn't going to go back in that hall if someone offered her a million dollars. Dorcas continued up the stairs to the third floor, and collapsed - Charlie just stared at her for a moment before shaking her head and continuing up to her own floor.

Counting the steps helped her regain what felt like lost sanity. She had no idea what the hell had just happened, and she didn't want to think about it. She added the second floor to her list of things to avoid, and she hit the seventh floor after step seventy eight.

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