Jacob Keller (bodyonthetracks) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2019-07-24 18:30:00 |
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Entry tags: | #december 2017, enzo, enzo x jacob, jacob |
Who: Enzo & Jacob
Where: 16 Bit Bar & Arcade
When: Wednesday Afternoon 12/27
Status: Complete
Jacob really didn't feel like working today. He just wanted to stay with Connor or, since Connor had work, go spend some time with his friends. But no. He was at the arcade before it opened, helping his boss set everything up and checking the machines. They were expecting it to be a busy day, the schools were still out and people were restless and bored after the holidays. They opened at four and already Jacob felt like he really was masochistic for taking this job. It was so damn loud in there even before it was full of kids yelling at the machines but he was slowly getting in that mindset where he could ignore it though sometimes he found himself mouthing along to the fighting game phrases. They were just so tacky and hilarious.
There were already customers right off the bat, none of them old enough to drink so the bar was empty for now. Jeff went to the back and Jacob was settled with monitoring the floor and making sure everything was in working order. That mostly meant he could play a game or settle down somewhere his phone, especially this early when they weren't very busy yet. He opted for the latter, lounging by one of the shoot-em-ups to browse the net for a bit.
Enzo dropped another quarter into the pinball machine, determined to make the high score this time around. He was slowly eating through his meager spending cash, but it was his last week of freedom before he started working. He’d finally gotten his application in to the Orion and they’d given him a training date, just in time to go back to school. He felt like he needed to make the best of his free time while he could. As he started up another game, he checked his phone, brows drawn together as he noted the lack of texts. Ryan should’ve been there already. If he was going to be late, the least he could’ve done was text.
By the time Enzo checked his phone again, he’d eaten through a dollar’s more in quarters, but he’d climbed the scoreboard to first place, so it felt like money well spent. He grinned as he picked up his phone, but his smile fell when he noticed he had no new texts. Then he realized he had no bars, the reception seemingly spotty where he was standing. Enzo began to walk around the arcade, phone up as he tried to get a signal, but the entire arcade seemed to be in a dead zone. Stopping by a guy who looked like he was reading something on his phone, Enzo spoke up. “Hey, you have a signal?” He asked. Maybe it was just his phone.
Jacob had gotten sucked into the comment-hole, reading a lengthy ramble from some random Reddit user and so he hadn't noticed when the signal cut out. The page was already loaded and he was pretty engrossed in it when Enzo approached him. He gave him a distracted hum, not sure what he was asking right away as he couldn't link 'signal' with job duties. "Yeah," he muttered when he caught up, then looked at his phone again and frowned.
"Actually... No. Fuck." He opened up a new tab to check if anything would load and nope, nothing. It was almost five and he had to send a text to Connor between four and five every day or there would be consequences. Jacob was okay with consequences but he didn't want to let Connor down so this was decidedly not cool. "Maybe just a glitch," he mumbled as he turned off the mobile data to check the wifi at the arcade.
“Dammit,” Enzo sighed, then wandered towards the front of the arcade, hoping to get a better signal. He was so focused on his phone that he didn’t notice anything weird until he was right up next to the glass. That was when he looked outside, unable to see even a foot in front of him out the glass windows. “Holy shit,” he muttered, staring for a moment, then looking around to see who was there with him. He wandered back towards the guy who worked there. “You’ve gotta come see this,” he said, gesturing towards the front of the arcade.
Jacob was sulking at his phone when Enzo came back and he didn't think much of it. The distraction was kind of welcome if anything and he hummed softly again, pocketing his phone for now as he followed Enzo to the front. He immediately saw what he was talking about and his stomach knotted up fast. "Oh shit," he said softly and it was probably stupid and overly optimistic but a part of him hoped maybe something was just wrong with the windows. He opened the door just a bit to look outside but no, it was fog and it was thick as soup. Could their phones be on the fritz because of a fog? That didn't sound right, but then again they were in Point Pleasant and Jacob had heard all about the last fog that hit town. He backed up again and let the door close. "That? Is not safe," he said, glancing at Enzo as he wondered just how much the kid knew. It was weird coming back home and seeing all those kids who were new-adults or near-adults and he had no idea who any of them were. Well, by now he knew a few names because of the chatty ones who came to the arcade, but he didn't know this guy. "Guess we're stuck here for a bit."
“Dude!” Enzo jumped back from the door when Jacob opened it, as if the fog was some kind of poisonous gas. He didn’t understand even half the shit that went on in Point Pleasant, but he knew danger when he saw it. Even though it didn’t melt their eyeballs or burn their lungs, he nodded in agreement with the guy. “No shit,” he muttered, looking out into the vast whine nothingness with a look of concern. “A friend was supposed to meet me…” He didn’t actually expect Jacob to do anything about it. It was more that he worried Ryan might be out there somewhere. “You got a landline? I should call my brother.” He wasn’t sure how long he’d be stuck there, but at some point he’d probably start to worry.
Jacob might have laughed at Enzo's reaction but he knew that fear intimately, so he didn't. Instead he let his own instinct lead him, stepping forward again to lock the door. It was probably stupid but if someone came in, well, they could knock. "Yeah," he said absent mindedly at the question. "We've got one in the back." They'd probably be using it a lot today, there were kids in there who would need to call their parents. Jacob just hoped those parents had landlines too. "I hope your friend isn't out there," he offered up as he gestured to Enzo to follow him, leading the way to the back. He wondered idly if the kid knew who he was and how much weight the words held to him but he doubted it. He was a few years younger than Jacob by the looks of it and Jacob had been gone for a while.
While there were probably people out there that needed in out of the fog, Enzo felt better with the door locked. It was a false security, sure, because giant windows really didn’t protect against anything except the weather and even that was conditional, but it was better than an open door. That just felt like an invitation for something bad to enter. “I hope so too,” he frowned, following Jacob to the back. He had no way of checking on Ryan, so he just had to hope that he was so late that he was still at home, not out in his car somewhere. He looked around as they walked, noting who he was holed up with for the time being. There were no familiar faces in the crowd, no one he could easily pass the time with and he knew he’d run out of quarters if he kept at the machines. Depending on how long they were there, he might need the money for food, so he should probably stop playing altogether.
Jacob exchanged a few quick words with Jeff to let him know what the situation was and once Jeff went out to see for himself, Jacob led Enzo to the phone. He checked his phone again just because but there were still no bars and when he tried the internet he kept getting error messages. It was telling how used to having easy communication he was because his first instinct was to text Jocelyn about how annoying this was but that was obviously not an option. He sat down by the phone, not wanting to leave Enzo alone in the area reserved for staff only.
Enzo picked up the phone and started to dial, his brow creasing further when he heard nothing on the line. He clicked the receiver a few times, but it was still silent, like the line was dead or not plugged in at all. “I think the land lines are down too,” he frowned, handing the phone over to Jacob. Maybe there was some trick to the phone he didn’t know and the guy would show him and he’d feel like the idiot kid who didn’t know how to use a normal telephone. That he actually wanted that option was probably a bad sign. The arcade was a fun place to spend a few hours, but he could think of a lot of other places he’d rather be stuck.
Jacob furrowed his brows and accepted the phone, listening for a moment. There was that annoying continuous sound before he dialled a number but as soon as he tried to call anything, nothing happened. He even tried 911 for the hell of it because that was one number you could always call, even if your phone was out of service. Nothing. "Fuck," he whispered and hung up, setting the receiver back in the cradle. "Were you here during the last fog?" It was a loaded question, considering what he'd heard about that day. Jacob had been in Portland at the time and he couldn't say he regretted missing out on it. It looked like Point Pleasant was making it up to him now.
A chill ran up Enzo’s back at the memory. He’d gotten into a fight with his brother on the front lawn, resulting in cuts and bruises that had taken weeks to heal. If he hadn’t seen a ghost there in the mist, he might not have retreated to the house and one of them would probably be dead. “Yeah,” he answered. “It was bad. Really bad. What about you?” People were always willing to buy into the lies the city stated as a means of explanation, but how many times could the water or air be contaminated with some kind of weird drug? He always thought that people would figure it out eventually, but wondered if that was his own personal experience talking. If he hadn't had first hand experience with the supernatural, would he be blind to it too?
"No, I was in Portland," Jacob replied and Enzo had more of his attention now because there was something in his voice when he replied that said he didn't just mean the traffic had sucked. "I heard about it though. This town is... It's fucked up." He picked up the phone again, just to see if it worked at all but his mind was only half on the task, like he was more running on instinct than anything. "What's your name?" he asked, they might be stuck here for a while and Enzo was the oldest of the people attending which made him one of the three actual adults in the arcade. Jacob might need him later.
“Yeah. Things happen here that… I don’t think other towns have the same issues,” Enzo said. That was putting it mildly, but he was pretty sure they were both thinking on the same wavelength. If the whole world went through this kind of shit, it would be on the news. You could cover up in a small town, but not in the big cities. At least, that’s what he told himself. He hated to think that someday, if he got out of there, he’d just end up somewhere else with the same shit to deal with. “Enzo,” he said, offering a small smile. “Yours?” If they were going to be stuck there for a while, he might as well be friendly with the guy working there. Besides, he was kind of hot in that older, more mature kind of way.
Jacob moved his hand to his chest to tap his name tag, only to realize it wasn't there. Oops, that wasn't very professional of him, was it. "Jacob," he said since Enzo actually had a reason to ask. "The boss man who just left the room is Jeff, I don't know any of the kids out there." He really hoped this was just normal fog that would clear up before dinner time because the last thing he wanted to do was play parent to a bunch of high schoolers. Some gut feeling told him this fog wasn't normal in any way but he could still hope that it was just his own well-earned paranoia speaking. He tried the phone again. At this point it was pretty useless to do so but the urge was too strong to resist. He needed something to work. He might not be able to call Connor but the kids out there could call their parents and let them know where they were.
“Cool,” Enzo said, committing the names to memory. Jacob and Jeff. That should be pretty easy, so long as he didn’t get them backwards. “I know a few of ‘em. Not well, just names.” It was a small town and an even smaller high school. Enzo was pretty sure he knew at least the name of everyone in his year, plus everyone a year behind him. He’d known the year ahead of him before they’d all left, too. The sophomores and freshmen he wasn’t as sure about, but he suspected Jacob could find those out if he needed to. He was the authority figure. “Hopefully this’ll just blow over and we can all… go home for dinner.”
"Hopefully," Jacob agreed with a wan smile that said he wasn't holding his breath for it but still, they could hope. The arcade wasn't a great place to be stuck at for a long time. Supplies were limited. There was some coffee, a lot of alcohol and candy but not a lot of food, just bar snacks and whatever the staff had brought with them to and stuffed in the small fridge in the back. Jacob had brought cold pasta today, just enough for one.
As it turned out the fog didn't clear up by dinner time. Jeff came back with the kids so they could call their parents and Jacob told him the phone wasn't working which caused a little panic with some of them who were supposed to be home early. Jacob told them he was sure their parents would understand since there was no way anyone could walk out in that fog but of course that was provided these kids actually had reasonable parents which wasn't always the case.
Eight PM rolled around and the fog was as thick as ever. The small amount of worry Jacob had felt at the start had grown into something much bigger, a familiar anxiety that usually came from having a tunnel related nightmare. At least the power was on and they could distract themselves with games but it was hard to focus on anything. The kids started complaining about being hungry and Jeff did his best supplying everyone with peanuts and energy bars. Jacob was more than fine leaving it up to him to deal with the younger ones in there, he'd never been good with kids. He ended up joining Enzo again, the only person in there remotely close to him in age.
"How are you holding up?" he asked as he plopped down next to him. He'd fully expected to be at the arcade until closing time but it felt different being stuck there with no way to communicate with the outside world.
The longer they were stuck there, the more restless Enzo became. The sounds of the arcade seemed louder, the kids seemed more annoying, and a place that had started out as fun now felt like a prison. He paced, his irritation with the middle schoolers growing until he snapped at them with such venom that they went out of their way to avoid him. Things got a bit better then, but only mildly. His headache subsided, but the lack of real food in the arcade was becoming more and more apparent. Enzo settled in to one of the chairs for a racing game, claiming it as his own. He had the feeling he was going to end up sleeping there and it was more comfortable than the floor.
“I’m fucking fantastic,” Enzo drawled, stretching out his legs and leaning back the seat as far as he could make it go. “I don’t know how you work here without going insane. The noise alone would drive me bonkers and it’s only been a few hours.” He’d had no complaints when he was there of his own free will, but it was totally different when he was unable to leave. Everything grated on him, even things he’d previously enjoyed.
Jacob thought this might be an okay place to sleep but he was still clinging to the hope that either the fog would clear out before closing or else someone would show up, a cop or firefighter or someone with killer wheels and monster high beams who could drive them all home. It might take hours and hours, but it was better than staying here all night. He sprawled out in the chair a little, listened to the bitching and moaning going on a few feet away from them then re-focused on Enzo. "It can be hard. If you're not in the mood or have a hangover it's total murder but otherwise it's okay. I think I'm going to go fucking crazy if we're stuck here much longer."
“A hangover would suck,” Enzo agreed with a nod, then smirked. “Being drunk, not so bad. How much trouble would you get in for hooking me up?” He’d probably get fired, but it wasn’t like Enzo would tell anyone. A little buzz might help them survive the night. “I’m starting to think the kids are worse than the noise. I know they’re scared, but I can’t do shit. If I could, I would’ve done it already.” It was weird to be seen as a responsible adult when he was still in high school, but he supposed that happened when he was the oldest and still looked approachable. Jacob, on the other hand, was a real adult. He could only imagine how much worse it was for him.
"Might just turn off some of those machines," Jacob said, looking around them. "I'll talk to Jeff about it." They definitely would when it got late if they were still there but sooner was probably better than later. There were only a handful of games the kids seemed to be interested in and right now they were mostly just moping and talking to each other. Jacob glanced at Enzo again, calculating the risks. "Ask me again in a couple of hours if we're still stuck here," he mumbled. "How old are you anyway?"
“How old do I look?” Enzo grinned. He had a fake in his wallet that said he was twenty-one that was passible, but for some reason he wasn’t sure Jacob would card him. Or maybe he would and he’d just take it at face value. You didn’t get in trouble for serving a minor if you didn’t know they were a minor. It was Enzo who’d be in trouble, but with whom? He didn’t have parents around to give a shit and his brother would probably agree that he’d been through enough to have a drink when he wanted one. “Nothing to do in this town, but drink and get high.” And screw, he thought, but that was unlikely.
"You look twenty-one," Jacob replied and let out a little laugh, shaking his head. "If anyone asks, I'll swear you had an ID." He had started drinking at sixteen and he knew most teens were already getting booze somewhere. A beer or two wouldn't hurt. "You've had a beer before, right?" he asked then, giving Enzo a skeptical look. "You know how to handle your liquor?"
“If I hadn’t, this would totally be the time to start,” Enzo snorted in amusement. “But yeah, well enough. I’m not gonna get sloshed if that’s what you’re worried about.” It would be a nice escape, but not worth it if he couldn’t curl up somewhere nice and pass out. And he was willing to bed Jacob was right about a hangover being a pain in the ass here. “Let’s just cross our fingers and hope it doesn’t come to drinking. I’m still hoping we all get to go home sometime tonight.” But if not, a drink would definitely be in order.
"I'm stuck here until one am either way," Jacob sighed but it would be so much more tolerable if he could reach people and use the internet. "Ask me again in a couple of hours," he said again, though he was pretty sure he'd indulge Enzo if he asked again now. Jeff was pretty chill, Jacob wouldn't get fired for it and this was definitely extenuating circumstances. Jacob was for sure thinking about getting himself a drink now, he was going stir crazy and alcohol at least helped numb his senses so the noise in there would be more tolerable.