eye trauma phobia
Characters: Rusty and Rosa Setting: the courtyard morning
The sun was beating down this morning, even with the early hour. Rosa had headed downstairs to explore the courtyard as an excuse, but really she’d needed some coffee and a smoke and now that she had both, she might as well make the excuse truthful.
She’d read the note from their keepers on her computer and her thoughts were wandering as she very carefully walked with one foot directly in front of the other, taking small steps around the green grass of the courtyard. She seemed to have some campaigning to do, but without knowing the rest of the people here, she wasn’t really sure how to do that. Or even if campaigning was a thing she could do.
Rusty was hungry, and had realized that he'd been forgetting to eat again. It happened, really, when he started really getting himself going on shit. And while he had promised Mazie he'd kind of back off...he hadn't been able to keep that promise. It was just too tempting to not go for, and he imagined that she'd be coming back around to it eventually anyways, so no harm no foul, right? Sure.
That was his story and he was sticking to it.
As he got out of the kitchen, a sandwich in hand, he paused as he saw some girl kinda...er...he didn't know what she was doing. "Hi." he greeted, with an awkward wave. "Did you like, lose a contact or something?"
Rosa looked up, mostly reactionary since when she processed his words, she wanted to make him wait for an answer. It was only a few moments but the longer Rosa studied him, the more she was curious about what the hell this guy could have done to get himself into the joint in the first place, let alone sprung from it for the Ritz.
"No but I have a glass eye. Wanna see?" She gave him a look that matched her tone, deadpan, and then took a sip of her coffee.
He looked like a rabbit in the headlights at that. Frozen, and mildly horrified. "Umno." he said, shaking his head immediately at that. Though he couldn't help but try and see if her eyes looked the same, or if one was clearly off. "So, er, sorry for disturbing you, or something." he added. "I'll be..." he made a few flaily gestures indicating 'elsewhere'. "Somewhere else, doing....things." He wasn't good at excuses on short notice.
Rosa grinned a little at that, liking the fact that he seemed so upturned by it. “You didn’t bother me. I wouldn’t have offered to show you my glass eye if you had.” She came closer, making no attempt to explain that her eye wasn’t actually glass even though it would be evident the closer that she got. “I’m new here, Rosa. Or One-Eyed Marge. You are?”
"Really? Cuz in my book that's sort of a good way to chase someone off." Rusty said, not confrontationally, just an off the top of his head statement. He also just kinda couldn't tell if she was fucking with him or not. She is. Because you just scream 'fuck with me!', sugar. Jessy murmured. "Rusty." he said. "Or Russ, or whatever. Hi, Rosa. It's...er...super weird to meet you, so far."
"Or a good way to suss out if someone's cool enough to hang out with…" Rosa countered, watching him for a moment again. He was definitely awkward, but in a way that Rosa appreciated. "Russ? Rusty…Whatever your name is, it's been perfectly normal meeting you. How long have you been in here?"
"How on earth does a reaction to a possibly fictional glass eye actually give you any type of accurate assessment on whether or not someone is cool enough to hang out with?" Rusty asked, truly puzzled by that. "What if someone's just squeamish? Or has weird occular phobias? Eye trauma is terrifying, you know. There's a reason people cringe when they watch A Clockwork Orange and it isn't just the subject matter. Or why needles in the eye are so hard to watch in movies. It's like when someone gets a shot to the junk, you just kind of want to cover your own parts and can't wait til there's something else going on on screen to distract you. So, you don't know. Their reaction to that could be based on something that has nothing at all to do with how cool or not someone is. I for instance am freaking out a little bit, but..." he paused. "Well, actually, that is pretty normal for me." he conceded. "So, maybe you're right after all."
God, shut up. Please. This is painful even for me, at this point. Jessy hissed. "I. Er. A while?" he suggested, rubbing at the back of his neck nervously. "Not that long. Just long enough to know things are kind of weird here."
Rosa just listened to him while he spoke, head cocked slightly to the side as her grin grew. She flicked the ashes of her cigarette off to the sound, stifling a small laugh. This kid was a nutjob and Rosa was all about it. The weirder the person, the more she tended to like them and any guy that was just here, spouting off shit about eye phobias and needles and getting kicked in the junk was pretty ok in her book. That and she did appreciate the fact he thought she was pretty weird on her own.
"I'll fit right in, then," She said in regards to the inherent weirdness this place seemed to offer. "So…do you have eye phobias? Or are you just standing up for the huddled masses or some shit?"
"I dunno. I never really thought about it, but I don't think I'd do so well with eye trauma. Not even to me. Like, I'd have trouble watching that to someone else, like in the first Hostel movie, and...huh." he stopped. "Maybe I do have a weird eye phobia." he concluded.
Rosa sipped at her coffee again while he spoke, thinking that she might want to play a prank on him later around eye trauma. If she could track down a ketchup packet, it'd be perfect. "Could have weirder phobias. Like balloons or some shit." Flicking her cigarette again, Rosa added, "So, Russ, do you have a job here?"
"Balloons are weird. Not like, frightening, weird, but weird. Did you know there are balloon fetishists out there? It's weird. But yeah, people get all..." he trailed off, this time before Jessy could interject something else. "And er...no? I mean, I want to help with the IT stuff, but I'm sort of guessing people other than me should do that maybe, and I don't know that I'm quite cut out for anything else." he answered.
Rosa finished off her coffee while Rusty spoke, somewhat fascinated by the way he spoke. He just seemed so twitchy in a way that she'd not really seen before. It was definitely interesting. "So no job but you like IT stuff. I definitely don't understand that shit. If my computer ever got a virus, I'd probably just throw it against the wall." Rosa lifted her dying cigarette to take a last drag before speaking, smoke coming out with her words. "Would you want to learn Spanish? Well, do you know Spanish?"
"That would be...very cave-man of you." Rusty said to her first statement. "Er...you're exaggerating, right? You wouldn't really do that without like, trying to figure out how to not break it first, yeah?" he checked. "And er...I know like, 'hola', and 'como estas'...something. Usted? Is that a word?" he asked. "I didn't take much of it. Like, not even enough to call it 'conversational'. Why?"
"Well, the cavemen did well for themselves for a while." Rosa looked back at him. "I mean, I probably wouldn't just get so enraged that I threw it across the room or anything, but maybe. I guess it depends on what happened to it."
Listening, Rosa grinned a little as he spoke what little Spanish he knew. "You're on the right track. I'm just asking because if you wanna learn Spanish, you could vote for me for this Language Coordinator position I made up. Apparently our keepers think I need five people to back me up in order to get the job."
Rusty was thinking maybe he should talk to someone else. Cave men did okay? The fuck was she talking about? It was Astronauts, every time, thank you. And she was grinning at him, and...yeah. This was weird. He was getting more and more weirded out the longer the conversation went on. "If I say I'll vote for you, could I go?" he asked.
Rosa gave a quick bark of a laugh at that, actually pretty amused. She'd managed to freak this guy out enough in under ten minutes that he wanted to leave. That had to be a record. "I mean, I'm not in charge of you. Nothing's stopping you from going now, whether or not you intend to vote for me when you get the chance. But if you do go and you do vote for me, spread the word and I promise to not bring up eye trauma around you again."
"Sounds good!" Rusty said, deciding to take the out. He was under the distinct impression she'd been trying to unnerve him, and he didn't like being played with. He wasn't a mouse. Or, okay, in the grand scheme of things, maybe he totally was, but that didn't mean he liked feeling like that. "So, you have some good luck with that, and I'll be...somewhere...like, else. So...bye!" he said, abruptly rushing off.
That had to be a record. She'd managed to run someone off during their very first conversation. Surprisingly enough, it didn't really bother her. She was amused and at least Rusty said he'd vote for her. Whether he did or not, she figured she'd find out the next day, but hopefully whatever weirdness she'd projected would be enough collateral to ensure herself a vote. "See ya later, Russ!" She called after him, not trying to stop him from his escape.