numenviscera (numenviscera) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2021-04-04 01:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | #june 2018, lem, lem x vex, mal, vex |
Who: Lem & Vex
Where: Ludlow
When: Saturday night, June 9th
It was Saturday night and Vex hadn't slept a wink. Neither had Lem, but this wasn't really unusual for the two of them. Insomnia and messed up sleeping patterns had followed them for as long as Vex could remember and before he met Lem, he'd always had these manic phases where sleep was insignificant to him. The only sign something might be out of the ordinary with this particular bout of sleeplessness was the fact that their neighbors weren't sleeping either. Then there was the fact that they'd actually tried to go to sleep at some point and usually that was when the mania ended for Vex. He didn't try to sleep unless he wanted to sleep and right now he wanted to sleep but he couldn't. They'd both been a little irritable all day and had stayed out of each other's way for the most part, some ingrained self preservation working for them when neither of them really paid too much attention to regulating their feelings and lashing out at each other.
Vex kept bouncing between two states, one he was intimately familiar with and that was the manic state of mind that was both the effect and cause of his many of his insomniac bouts, the other was the less welcome and more alien feeling of being intensely tired yet unable to sleep. Depending on how he was feeling he spent his time in the basement or the living room and he was currently in the living room, feeling zombified and morose. Don't try to sleep - was the mantra. Just rest. It was like meditating, resting his eyes and breathing deeply to let his body at least have some semblance of rest, only he kept yawning and that broke his concentration. So in essence, this really sucked. He'd had one vision this morning, nothing particularly interesting, just Neil sitting on a bench somewhere with a book, looking more sullen and tired than usual. So perhaps he was feeling this too, maybe everyone was. That familiar tingle was there now, that maybe something was about to reveal itself to him and he only felt it grow stronger when he heard Lem come bounding down the stairs and stalk over to the kitchen. She could be so loud for such a small girl.
Was there anything more frustrating than being unable to sleep when you really wanted to? Lem was sure there was something out there in the world worse than that, but she was hard-pressed to think of anything for the past couple of days. The night before hadn’t been so bad -- she was used to pulling occasional all-nighters for various reasons -- but she’d always been able to make up for a long bout of no sleep with lots of sleep the next day. So far she hadn’t been able to make that happen, in spite of lying down and being still dozens of times. Lem couldn’t figure it out.
She had called Nic for help at some point around noon, feeling horrible and cranky with lack of sleep, but as it turned out he and Zania were having the same problem, and none of their magical remedies were working. So they were pretty well fucked, she guessed. She didn’t know what time it was when she left her bed yet again after another unsuccessful attempt to nap. If she couldn’t sleep, she wanted to eat, so she headed downstairs, her mind full of curses against everyone and everything and the whole fucking universe. Lem knew Vex was around somewhere, but he always seemed to handle the weird stuff like this better than she did, and she didn’t want to even speak to anyone else until she’d had some shuteye.
Lem wasn't in the room with him but Vex could still feel that tingling sensation get stronger when she got closer and he sat up straighter, watching intently as the room in front of him started blurring with what looked like an overlayed image. This part he was used to, things that didn't belong in his current space appearing for seconds up to a minute at a time, sometimes harrowing, sometimes so mundane and boring it made him wonder what the point to them was. This one seemed like the latter but it was the boy whose name he didn't know so he just called him the boy with the pills. There were no pills this time, just this young man sitting on a couch with a controller, focused on something in front of him that Vex couldn't see but could only guess was the video game he was playing. He looked tired and irritable, a silent show of him jolting and cursing as he assumably failed whatever he was doing and started again.
Vex knew he had to be linked to either him or AIR but he'd never found out who this was, unlike the others. He watched but the vision didn't fade and the longer Vex watched the weirder that felt. "Lem!" he called out, half expecting his voice to carry into the vision or shatter it but the boy just kept playing, bleary eyed and frustrated.
Lem could feel a familiar tingle of her own, the sign that meant Vex was having a vision close by. Usually that would excite her, she loved looking in on what he could see, but today it filled her with nothing but irritation. She was so tired, she didn’t want to be a conduit or see anybody getting murdered or whatever was on deck today. She ignored it for as long as she could, rummaging through the fridge for something to eat, but when Vex called for her, she couldn’t block him out. With a heavy sigh, Lem turned, leaving the fridge door wide open as she stalked toward the living room. “What?” she asked, her tone a bit gruff. She stopped in the doorway, squinting at the semi-transparent boy in front of them. He wasn’t even doing anything, how pointless. “Who is it?”
"Pill boy," Vex murmured as he slowly got up from the couch and walked closer. "It's taking a long time leaving." He'd never gotten so close to a vision before, just a couple of more steps and he might be able to reach in so close he was almost touching the boy and that was weird and then he realized that the boy's room was bleeding into their living room, bit by bit, growing outward. "Lem," he whispered. "This is different." He almost got excited because this was new and his visions hadn't changed in decades, but then he remembered that sometimes things he perceived weren't real, but that's what Lem was for. When she saw it too, knew what he was seeing without him telling her, that's when he knew it was real. "Can you see it too?"
Oh right, pill boy. Lem remembered hearing about him from Vex, though she hadn’t been around for any visions of him until now. She did notice that it looked and felt different to her too, the room they were looking into gradually becoming more solid and colorful, more real. Like the spatial gap between them wasn’t really important, physics was bending ... That was crazy though, more so than their regular crazy. Lem was frowning as she stared, staying put where she was in the space between the kitchen and the living room. “Yeah, I see it,” she murmured, eyeing the boy warily. He still didn’t seem like he could see them, so that was something, but she had to admit it was weird. They were both sleep deprived though -- could they be hallucinating the same thing?
It had reached the point where Vex felt like he could walk right into the boy's room, maybe even touch him, and he couldn’t resist walking closer though he did so slowly and cautiously. "Do you think everyone's abilities are different tonight?" he said quietly as he reached forward, roughly through where their reality ended and this mirage began. It didn't shatter or ripple when he did, it just stayed there, clearer than any vision Vex had ever had and so much bigger. He stepped forward, seeing more of the room as he did so and a small grin started curling his lips as he turned back to look at Lem. "I'm in his room," he said and with one step forward found that he was limited to what was actually in his living room as he bumped into a table that was hidden by the vision. He hissed softly and wished he was in a big, empty room for this. "Come, see?"
Something about all of this made Lem very nervous all of the sudden. She could see the way the boy’s room was creeping into their living room, but not as much as Vex was seeing from his perspective. Lem saw him bump into the coffee table and she realized she had started wringing her hands. “I don’t ... I dunno, Vex,” she murmured, hesitating before she stepped further into the room, closer to the vision. The boy still wasn’t reacting to them, staring ahead at his video game, but what if he suddenly did? Was this another portal? Could Vex do that now? What the fuck? “Don’t try to touch anything,” she cautioned suddenly, her feet moving a little faster. This was bigger and more clear than any vision she could remember seeing with him, what was happening? The closer Lem got to it, the more it seemed to envelop her, and she reached for Vex’s hand once she was close enough. “What is this?” she whispered, looking around them with wide eyes.
Vex knew from experience what going through a portal felt like and this didn't feel anything like that; the air was still the living room air he'd been breathing a minute earlier, there was no new smell to get used to and he couldn't hear the boy's game even if he could see what he was playing now. It was nothing he recognized, just some strange puppet creature running around in a modern 2D game and Vex watched his frustrated attempts at a hard task which he seemed to be failing over and over. Funny how addicted to frustrating things people could be. "I think we've been upgraded to the 3D experience," Vex muttered and while he wasn't afraid it was still somewhat comforting to hold Lem's hand - just in case he needed grounding. "I don't think I can touch anything," he said and against Lem's wishes he reached out to cautiously touch the boy's TV. Just like he thought, his fingers went straight through. It was still just a vision and looking over his shoulder he could see his own couch though the living room was far darker than this kid's room.
Lem tensed and squeezed Vex’s other hand as he reached for the TV, her fear spiking up a bit. She half expected him to be yanked away from her, maybe transported to wherever this kid’s room actually was, or for something else awful to happen. When it didn’t, she relaxed, but only a tiny bit. They’d never had a vision this clear or real, and it was bizarre. “Is this ... is this the first one you’ve had since you came back?” she asked, looking up at him with worry creasing her brow. “Vision, I mean?” Vex had used the word ‘upgraded,’ which was kind of what it felt like, but why would it be happening now?
"No," Vex muttered, stepping closer to the boy and leaning down until his face was close to his, though he still held onto Lem's hand like it was his tether to the 'real world'. "The last one was normal though, not like this," he told her. "He looks so real. I feel like I can touch him." He reached up with his free hand to do just that but stopped an inch away from the boy's cheek because it felt wrong somehow, intrusive, touching his face. "I could... find out where he is if the curtains weren't closed," he said. "And if it was daytime. I wonder if we had more space to move, if we could follow him out of this room - or even move out of it ourselves." He could see the door, though it was on that part of the wall that was swirling a bit with the image of the room they'd left behind. "I feel like a tingling I haven't felt before, like maybe I could do more with this."
She kept her distance from the boy as much as she could with her hand clasped to Vex’s. It was kind of creepy and she didn’t want to get so close to him, unable to shake the sense that he might see them. “You think it might be because it’s him? But the other vision you had of him wasn’t like this, right?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer to that. This was all very new. Lem was just nervous about it and the nerves made her want to keep talking. She looked back over her shoulder at the dimmed living room they were used to, hoping it wouldn’t disappear completely. What if it somehow stranded them in this weird ethereal in-between? Lem suddenly wanted to retreat, tug Vex back with her, keep him from trying to explore this more. Six months ago, she would have thought this was the coolest shit she’d ever seen, but after losing Vex for so long, now it was just frightening to her. “At least he’s not jerking off or something,” she added in a mutter, a lame attempt at a bit of humor.
Vex snorted quietly at the idea of catching someone in a vision doing something embarrassing or overly personal. It hadn't happened yet but who was he to say it never would? "It was nothing like this, it was boring," he muttered, straightening up and backing up into Lem as the boy got to his feet and tossed the controller onto the couch. Vex just barely managed to get out of his way and then he watched him open the door, a dimly lit hallway appearing beyond it. Open door was like an invitation but following the boy meant walking into his own living room wall. As the boy walked away, the vision started fading around them and Vex felt restless and frustrated as he watched it happen, unable to follow and keep it going. "It goes with him," he said. "We need a bigger living room."
Lem moved away from the vision-boy with Vex, irrationally afraid to touch him even though Vex’s hand had gone right through the TV. She clung to Vex’s hand as they watched the guy leave his room, then felt a bit of relief as everything started to fade away. If the vision had been extra-ultra-3D for some special reason, it definitely wasn’t obvious. “Or to just be outside,” she murmured, able to hear the frustration in Vex’s voice. She knew if they’d had the room, they would’ve been trailing along behind the pill boy for as long as they could, watching him like ghosts. It was the first time with one of Vex’s visions that Lem felt more like they were the invaders, instead of the vision subjects showing up in their space. She nibbled on her bottom lip as their living room faded back into full view. “Well, guess ... we’ll see how the next one goes?” she offered.
Vex was still staring at the wall and he couldn't help but think that the vision was still ongoing on the other side. He still felt that tingle that he couldn't quite articulate and he had a feeling he could somehow bring it back if he wanted to but that wasn't something he felt certain enough about to say out loud. Not yet. "I guess," he said instead, looking at Lem finally and then glancing down at where he still held her hand. "It got stronger when you came down," he told her and while he often called her his conduit, he hadn't felt it at this strength before. Usually she just saw what he saw, participated and witnessed it, but this time... "You amplified it." The vision hadn't given him anything to work with, not really, but he felt fired up again, thinking of all the visions he could remember, making connections in his mind. He turned and cupped Lem's face with his free hand, grinning. "I need to start writing them down again."
At least Vex seemed happy about it. Lem couldn’t help but smile back a little, though the intensity of the vision still worried her a little bit. It was something New, and considering what they’d been through recently, anything New felt kind of scary. She squeezed his fingers and nodded a bit. “I’m just along for the ride as always,” she murmured. “But yeah, you should take some notes and stuff, just in case.” Even though she hadn’t spotted anything significant in the boy’s room or what he was doing, Vex may have picked up on something she didn’t. He was the visionary, after all, she was just ... an amplifier, apparently. It would probably be good to keep track of the changes in his visions anyway, just in case they started to progress even more. Lem gave the wall the boy had disappeared into a wary look, like he might stroll back through at any moment.
For a long moment Vex didn't say much but his mind was going a million miles an hour. He felt different, there was a new feeling somewhere inside of him that he thought he might be able to call back upon. Maybe all those annoying therapists he'd had to deal with over the years might actually end up being helpful for once, just not in the way they thought. Recognize the emotion, name it, let it come and go. What if he could make it come back? He felt fired up, forgetting he was tired for now and all but bouncing on the soles of his feet. "I want to try something," he said, clutching the front of his shirt in his fist as if he could grab the feeling before it left and keep it there by force. "Come outside with me?" he added, turning to Lem again with that familiar expression of manic enthusiasm. "I don't think I can do this without you."
Lem hadn’t forgotten that she was exhausted, and the fact that Vex obviously had more in mind to try made her want to groan and lie down on the floor. She’d never been very good at keeping her expression neutral, especially around him, and her worry was written all over her face. “Outside?” she asked, her fingers clutching together. Safety wasn’t usually her biggest concern, but there were cars outside and that vision had been very immersive, and what if they just strolled out into the road and got mowed down like a couple of stupid deer? At least then they would go together, but gods, she couldn’t lose Vex again. Lem licked her lips and gave another uncertain glance around. “Okay, but ... in the back, okay? There’s room but also the fence.”
The backyard was more spacious than their living room but Vex was thinking bigger than that, he wanted more space and his mind wasn't overly clear even when he'd actually had sleep. "We could go to the supermarket parking lot," he said excitedly. "Or the Fallow! It's this old farmland just outside of town, big field, plenty of space." Sure, it'd be dark out but they had flashlights and if he really could call upon another vision, it might come with a light source all of its own. "No walls to limit our vision."
She knew that light in Vex’s eyes meant he wanted to go do things now, that he had an idea in his head and wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d pursued it. But it was dark out and going other places involved driving, and Lem felt like she could barely keep her eyes open as it was. Not to mention all the other dangers that lurked around Point Pleasant in the dark. “No, let’s ... let’s try someplace like that later, okay? When it’s daylight and we’ve had some sleep.” Lem reached out to take his hand again and tugged at it a bit. “What are you even thinking? Like you can bring it back? Or force one to start?”
"No, we should go now, before I lose it," Vex insisted, his excitement turning sour with agitation and urgency. He could still feel that strange tingle but it was fading and what if he forgot what it felt like? What if he couldn't bring it back? This felt big and important, he couldn't just let it slip through his fingers so he was already pacing, grabbing his phone, looking for the keys. It was a whirlwind of mania that came on fast and faded equally quickly and he stopped abruptly, clutching his phone and frowning to himself. He'd sort of snapped at Lem and maybe running around in the dark outside wasn't the best course of action. He ran his fingers through his hair and let out a little growl before he turned to face her again. "Sorry, firecracker. This insomnia is driving me up the wall. I can still feel it, I just need to... I need to memorize it."
Vex’s tone stung more than it probably should have, but Lem was so tired and feeling small and worried. She let him go when he moved away, crossing her arms over her chest and watching him grab stuff up, making no moves to get ready to leave the house herself. If he needed her with him, she could stop him by just not going. Lem got a flash of bad-but-disjointed memories of Vex picking her up to take her out of the house with him, but she wasn’t going to let that happen this time, not while she was so stupidly awake. Luckily Vex seemed to come to his senses a bit before she had to dig her heels in. Lem’s posture relaxed a touch, but she still looked wary. “Even if we can’t, like ... walk around much in here, you can try to bring it back,” she offered. “One step at a time, you know?”
It was pretty telling about her current state of mind that Lem didn't want to act on his impulses and Vex's mood softened a bit as he really looked at her. She was a great deal younger than him but he was so used to their moods aligning that he'd rarely had to keep up with her mania when he didn't feel it himself and vice versa. She looked exhausted now though and he consciously tried to rein in his excitement. "You're right," he muttered. "If I can, I can in here just as much as out there." That wasn't what was driving him outside though, the idea that he might have another vision that moved like that and he wouldn't be able to follow it was what had him feeling caged tonight. But she was right. If he could bring it back, he might as well practice. Baby steps. To show her he meant it he stalked over to the couch and flopped down, sprawling with his hands in his lap. "We can do this in here."
Lem’s shoulders relaxed slightly as Vex headed for the couch. She didn’t want to have to argue with him about it, they could both get super unreasonable sometimes, and Lem just didn’t have the energy tonight. She had no idea why they were both still awake, but she didn’t want to deal with Vex’s bullshit on top of being so tired. “Okay,” she murmured with a soft sigh, heading for the couch herself. Lem climbed onto it with him, sitting on top of the back cushions. She tucked her toes underneath Vex’s body and looked at his face. Her conduit contributions had always been a passive thing, and if that had changed along with Vex’s abilities, she didn’t know about it yet. So Lem just stayed quiet so he could concentrate, her fingers fidgeting with the hem of the big t-shirt she had on.
Vex still had a nagging feeling that he needed to go outside to fully grasp what was happening. It was possible he was simply being difficult though so he tried to focus on that feeling instead and to remember that it was what was going on inside of him that mattered and not his environment. He was expecting the boy to come back, that was the person he had in mind at least but it wasn't until he let go of that notion and focused on the tension inside himself that something actually started happening. It was faint at first, nowhere near as clear as the earlier vision but Vex could see the silhouette of a man, the coloration blurry at first before it slowly started clearing up and the vision spread beyond the half-naked body. "It's Mal," Vex whispered, leaning forward and resting his arms on his knees. Funny thing about visions, they were always clear, even if he didn't have his glasses on so he didn't need to squint to see this better.
She watched with awe as Vex seemed to make a vision happen, which wasn’t anything he’d ever been able to do before. They usually came and went as they pleased, but there was no mistaking that he’d conjured this one up out of thin air. It was a room, a smallish looking one, with nothing inside of it but a wooden cross up on the wall and a man kneeling on the bare floorboards in just a pair of pants. He was hunched over, his lips moving in rapid words she couldn’t hear, as he rocked back and forth. Lem slid off of the couch to take a couple of steps to one side and saw that it was indeed Mal, the man who’d shown up asking about Vex’s research after he’d disappeared. His hands were clasped tightly together and his eyes were squeezed shut. “Is he ... praying?” she whispered back, shooting an uncertain glance at Vex. When she looked back, Mal had unclenched his hands and reached to pick up something next to him. It looked like a whip to Lem, and she found out she was right a second later when Mal slung it backward, the tails slapping hard against the exposed skin of his back.
Vex was not one to judge, not when every now and then he got his kicks by getting kicked in the balls. He slowly got to his feet to go closer to his new vision, watching in morbid fascination as the whip struck Mal's back soundlessly. "I wonder if this is real," he said but some part of him knew it was. It was just a higher definition than he was used to and he could actually walk around the kneeling man to get a better view of what he was doing and where he was. "You see it all too?" He glanced at Lem for reassurance because as crazy as she herself was, she was his anchor to reality and sanity and always had been.
Lem knew some people were kinky and liked whips and chains and stuff, but there was nothing erotic about the position Mal was in, or the way he whipped himself. She winced a bit in sympathy as the leather struck skin again, leaving red marks on his pale back. When Vex looked at her she nodded vigorously -- unless Vex was seeing something else crazy, she was seeing it all too. Lem was about to open her mouth when the hunched man froze and lowered the whip, sitting up straighter. Lem could see that his face was beaded with sweat and he was breathing hard, and the lack of sound in the vision just made it all look creepier. Mal brushed some blond hair off of his damp forehead and looked around himself, his expression troubled, and a little chill ran down Lem’s back. It was almost like he’d realized someone was in the room with him, he just couldn’t see them. His gaze lingered in Vex’s direction, and when he said “I’m here ... I’m listening,” Lem actually heard it. The sound was muffled, like Mal was talking into a pillow across the room, but it was clear enough to understand. Startled, Lem’s eyes went wide as saucers and snapped to Vex’s face.
The shock that flooded Vex at actually hearing his vision was so great that it seemed to wash over that tingling that was keeping the vision alive. Almost like a TV that got turned off, the vision disappeared and Mal with it and Vex stared at the spot where the man had been kneeling, utterly dumbstruck. "What the fuck," he whispered after a moment, scrambling to get that feeling back but he was too shaken to focus. "He knew we were watching, what the fuck." Ideas stormed around in his head, too fast and too chaotic and he started pacing, shaking his head in disbelief. "Or maybe it was someone else, maybe it was a coincidence. He is psychic." Or maybe this was a dream, or the lack of sleep had them both intensely loopy. Vex felt like a kid who'd just seen a ghost in his room, though it was also mixed with that feeling of getting caught doing something naughty.
Her body gave another little jolt as everything around them changed back into their usual messy living room, and Lem blinked rapidly, the adrenaline making her heart race. It felt awful on top of the weariness in her body. Ugh, what was wrong with this day? Everything was weird and wrong, and she wondered for a second if she had fallen asleep after all, and all this was a bad dream. Lem clapped her hands to her round cheeks a couple of times, trying to focus. “Psychic like how? Can’t he read your mind, isn’t that what you said?” she asked, unable to remember at the moment. She hadn’t really thought of Mal in months until just recently. “Does that mean we were actually like, there? Or, or he could feel you watching or something?”
"I don't know," Vex said and he knew none of the answers to any of her questions and it was driving him insane. I don't know was really the shittiest answer ever and he wanted to know, wanted to explain it to Lem and himself and be right about it. But this was new and it was weird and he was oh so tired and jittery. "But we heard him," he added. "So that's gotta be... that's gotta be his psychic thing because that's never happened before. Pill boy didn't hear us or notice us in any way." Granted, Pill boy hadn't actually said anything at all so maybe this was just a new thing that would start happening; audio to go with the visual. Just thinking about it was a head trip.
It was weird and scary because it seemed like a big thing, just like the 3D nature of the visions he was having today. Lem didn’t know if it was because of the sleep deprivation, or if that was just a side-effect of something in the air that was turning everybody’s psychic abilities up to eleven, or what. Neither of them had answers, so she bit her tongue on the rapid-fire questions flashing through her mind. Instead she closed her eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. “Okay,” Lem said when she opened them again, moving close to Vex to catch both of his hands in hers. “He didn’t like, call out your name or anything, or seem to see us, so maybe he just like ... got a weird feeling or something. Or maybe he was just talking to God and it was a coincidence. But your visions are getting stronger, at least like, today. Maybe we should try again tomorrow and see what happens.”
Vex nodded to everything she said, even if he had a feeling Mal had been aware of them specifically. He needed to go talk to the man but Lem was right, he had a bad feeling about pushing this tonight and he wanted to try to sleep again and see if he was still capable of doing this when he wasn't operating on zero hours of sleep. If insomnia was the price to pay for richer visions, he would gladly push himself to the limit whenever necessary but before he actually started punishing his body in such a way, he wanted to be sure it was necessary. "Tomorrow," he agreed. "If we sleep."
That was unfortunately a big ‘if’ at the moment, but Lem nodded anyway. She couldn’t even say when they slept, because there was no guarantee of that. Maybe this would end up severely impairing them or worse -- this town was dangerous, they’d learned that lesson well. She squeezed Vex’s hands a little and then let go, glancing wearily toward the kitchen. She’d come down to eat something, but now she really just wanted to lie down again. “Do you want to try to sleep together?” she asked, her eyes coming back to Vex. They’d been in their own beds so far, and it hadn’t been working. Lem had always liked sleeping with Vex, so maybe it would help.
Again Vex nodded, and he didn't really care where they slept - his bed, her bed, the couch, the floor - just that she'd be close by. This town was dangerous and something was causing this lack of sleep so it felt safer to be close to her in case something went terribly wrong. With everything that had happened to him in the last few months, he no longer felt as invincible and cavalier about his life and hers; it was safe to say he'd learned a lesson there. "Pick a room and lead the way, firecracker," he murmured with one last glance at the spot Mal had been kneeling in just minutes ago, so clear he might as well have actually have been in the room.