Will Graham (purelyempathic) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2014-06-01 00:18:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, will graham |
Who: Will Graham
What: Seeing things
When: 5/31, afternoon
Where: Irvine Police HQ
Rating/Warning: High. TW: violence, blood, Will's dreams, psychological trauma.
Status: Complete
He's found himself running checks on dream names more and more these days. He knows what will be there - an enormous lump of nothing - but he can't stop himself; Will knows that the way this place is, he could wind up with Beverly or Georgia or Jimmy Price on his doorstep tomorrow. Or even Zeller. Please, not Zeller. It scares him - as much as he'd love to meet Georgia Madchen, he doesn't want any more of that world sneaking into his.
He hasn't seen Lilo in a few days - too much work, too much death, too much wakefulness. Instead he's tried to bury the Grand Guignol-ness of the dreams in the real death he sees every day; it's safer and easier. When you're faced with a dead gang member with one neat hole through the back of his head, it's a refreshing contrast to decapitated girls with Glasgow smiles and burning black stags on your lawn.
Indeed, Will feels nothing short of awful that he's so relieved that there seems to be a serial killer loose on the northern fringes of Orange County. He shoves his jangled nerves and triple espresso into the assembly room, where the Chief of Detectives Himself has called a briefing. Though the break in routine is jarring, it's welcome where it would normally be anathema. Give him something to turn his considerable intellect toward - something tangible, instead of inchoate phantoms whispering in his ear.
He's shoehorned into the back corner, arms folded across himself, the tweedy feeling of his cuffs digging into his palms. The banal details of the four shootings are easy enough to digest, and he busies himself looking around the room instead. It's the same scuffed linoleum and faux mahogany chairs that are in every police briefing room. A few framed certificates - the fire marshal's occupancy advice. A huge deer head reposing on the opposite wall, dappled grey and black. He hadn't known anyone here was a hunter.
Will turns in his corner, leaning against the side wall instead of the one behind him, wondering if the antlers are actually growing bigger or if it's an optical illusion. The room is definitely smaller than he anticipated, which is annoying; filling any room with people steals air and space, but he can actually feel the loss; it's as if someone's sucking the breath from his lungs.
He restlessly stands, wringing his hands in the way he does when he's trying to focus; the Chief is still talking about gangland alliances and fucked up wadcutter ammunition and unreliable witnesses. It's starting to irritate him a bit - the killer is disappointing. This one has no order, no code, no governing force except blood lust and pride. He could hang the little idiot from those antlers and calmly interrogate him, and Will has no doubt that any stuck-up, silly kid would confess in boring detail.
It's hot in here. Will shrugs out of his coat, draping it over a chair. He's still wringing his hands; the room is filling slowly with cold dark horns, though no one's been impaled yet. He can feel them kiss the sides of his face, whispering genteel threats soaked in blood not his own. He closes his eyes; he gets too nervous if he tries to look at the labyrinth right now; a thousand people surrounded by the presence of his own dreams, and he knows it's not his design. No, he is a passive participant this time around; there's no rhyme or reason to this and that's what scares him far more than any blood or imaginative torture scene.
He's breathing hard, wondering if Garrett Jacob Hobbs is real, if Abigail knows. He can feel people looking at him, though Jack Crawford isn’t there. There isn't any dead girl hanging from the antlers now; they're too mobile, growing like weeds until they threaten to shut out the entire room. His hands are flapping away at the sharp points, and he's belatedly aware of blood pricking his palms, trapped like a corpse in a drawer. In that moment, he'd swear that the other world bled over, that it was out now, that there was no way to contain it.
There's a dull murmur of noise. Will steps up, seeing questions being taken. He opens his mouth to speak. Nothing happens. The room goes black.