katabasis
[The Rules.
Caveats.
Such as they are.
This will be mostly freeform. I may ask for a flavor roll, now and again, but we're doing this chill-style. If you aren't comfortable with that, let me know.
If you have any questions, or want your character to try anything, anything at all - even if it seems kind of strange, don't hesitate to ask.
All things are possible.
Maybe.]
Alexander Brandt
[Just because]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
katabasis
He is at Pike Place Market. He is in Seattle. He is dreaming, and he knows that he is dreaming. He has known he is dreaming for quite some time. Pike Place Market is Pike Place Market as he has not seen it before in his dream. It is empty, as it gets some nights: cobble-stones and litter, maybe some angular junkie huddled up beneath a blanket by a cart of cans, or some drab and shaking woman going through the trashcans one after the other after the other deliberately, slowly, reddened rough-raw knuckles searching for anything to eat or anything that can be turned into money or anything at all, and it is very dangerous just a couple of streets over, Tourism-center, but an ugliness beneath. That is all accurate. That is all something he has seen before: the neon signs in some of the shops that actually have shops; the labyrinthine curl of open buildings, emptied out and hollowed of tables, waiting for another day and another market.
He is at Pike Place Market but the difference is that Pike Place Market is cold. Often has he seen snow on the mountains across the bay, often has he seen clouds rolling over the mountains like Heaven's coming boiling out've the sky ready to descend a black shadow on the bay and on the city and it brings out the crazies the storm it always brings them out but he has never seen the snow lying on Pike Place Market as it lies on Pike Place Market in his dream. The snow is thick and his boots are becoming iced over. When he moves, the ice cracks and the sound it makes is a child's sob or a crow call or no. That is the sound of his girlfriend, remember her? That is the gasp-sound she made, she was moved to make, just before he walked in and saw what she was doing with another detective, another friend on the force, an ally; that little sound, and it should be difficult to remember, but it isn't, it isn't.
He is dreaming and he knows he is dreaming. He knows he does not have to wake up early today because he does not have work. He knows he has nothing to do at all when he wakes up. Too new, still, to have many friends. A couple of guys are going to a bar, and maybe he'll go to. Or wasn't he going to go hiking? He was probably going to go hiking, but it's warm in bed, even though it's cold in his dream.
Cold, cold, cold.
Alexander Brandt
Like so many parts of the city that are full of life and light during the day, Pike Place Market is another part of the city that takes off its makeup when it sleeps. A flickering street light spreads jaundiced yellow light across the showy ground. Dark shadows hiding people getting up to things that most normal people wouldn’t even think about, in their cosy, warm, comfortable lives.
But the snow is different, here. It’s new, fresh, with no trails of footprints bar the ones he’s leaving as he slowly walks through the market. The sound of... No, not that sound. That was another time, another life. But the thought still lingers, the pain still fresh. Alexander hadn’t stayed long after walking in on... them. That night, he’d just turned and walked out. Ignoring Sara’s shouts, he’s gotten back onto his bike and driven... He can’t really remember where. Some little two-street town in the mountains, where the sound of breaking snow...
Alexander screams out in frustration, kicking at a pile of snow that had gathered near an overturned bin. He sits on the bin and looks down at the ground, watching the loose powder swirl around in the breeze.
He may know this is a dream, but some things are still very real. And with his subconscious apparently wanting to prod at fresh wounds, he’s not in any kind of mood to be sociable.
The cold will do. He shivers.
katabasis
He shivers, and the ice begins to rim his boots again. The ice crawls up his boots, and reaches the laces. Time has passed in the dream (None has passed for the Dreamer), and the ice is up to his ankles. He can watch it un-fold, can feel it through his skin and all the way into his bones. Now there is a wind; the wind is bracing, but it has voices in it. The voices wish to tell him something, but they can't quite manage. They try, though, they try and they try, and what is that he hears now? That is the sound of his own frustrated scream; it blows back at him.
Pike Place Market has grown darker as the ice creeps up his feet and legs, as a little snow-devil plays between his boots, snowflakes frisking like they're auditioning for Fantasia. Behind him, there is the sound of heavy footsteps.
And he knows, of course, that the footsteps belong to the man without a face. Who is the man without a face? We will see, won't we. With the footsteps comes a taste in the back of his throat, something metallic, something like he'd bitten on his tongue, the copper-sweet slick of - well, what? Blood, maybe, but less iron in it. It isn't blood, but it's similar.
Alexander Brandt
Sitting there, staring down, the flare of anger has passed. Numbness has returned, and his mind is empty. Curious, if anything, at the way the ice is growing over his boots, starting up towards his legs. A quiet, distant, logical part of him wonders why it’s not melting from his body heat. But then this is all a dream, isn’t it. And it’s not like anything here can hurt him, really. He tries to brush his feet together, to work off the spreading ice.
The wind blows up, though, bringing flecks of ice along with it to scour his exposed skin. He pulls the hood of his jacket up to protect his face and neck from the stinging pain. He tucks his hands under his arms to keep them warm. But the voices, the echoed scream, in the wind pull his attention up from the ground and into the swirling snow – flakes seemingly falling in stop-motion as the failing street light flickers.
How he knows there’s someone behind him, he doesn’t know. Maybe it’s a quirk of the dream. Maybe it’s the hairs on his neck standing up, just before something happens. Maybe maybe maybe. Either way, there’s someone (something?) there. He spits on the ground to check for blood, and runs his tongue around his gums. Whatever he finds, he’ll turn to meet the newcomer.
katabasis
[Let's see.]
Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 3, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )
Alexander Brandt
[WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
katabasis
He turns. And what he sees is terrible.
The man without a face is there of course. The shape of him is familiar and if he were to describe this dream or the man without a face to a therapist they might draw a connection to his father and how he never really and anyway maybe it's something else. Maybe it doesn't matter at all what it is or what it means. The man without a face is there of course, but that is not the terrible thing. The man without a face is walking briskly toward him (and getting no closer), and behind the man without a face there is a woman with a gun. The woman is as white as the snow so she is hard to see at first but her mouth is as red as blood would be if it dripped on the slow and when Alexander's eyes meet the woman's eyes there is a flash of recognition
and he feels that, too, in his bones, like a cry, like the sound Sarah was making, like realizing that sound was for somebody else, like
he feels that recognition, he feels that look, and
then she changes on him.
The dream changes on him. Pike Place Market is nothing but snow; nothing but storm. Nothing but storm and snow and he's in the heart of it; somewhere in the snow and storm is a moving -- person, and he sees its shadow, and it is
absolutely terrifying. Though he is stalwart enough not to run;
(part of him wants to wake up, very badly)
"Why won't you help me?" That voice; it's in his ear, a young-voice sound.
But then the wind claws it away, sorrow, sorrow.
You're going to die today.
Alexander Brandt
There’s an old photo album that Alexander’s mother has, and it remembers happier days. An old Polaroid of a smoky bar in Germany, showing his mother and father with their mutual friends: when they met. The two of them looking happy on their wedding day. A photo of the home in Seattle, with his dad huddling under a black raincoat against one of the regular downpours that the city is well known for.
It is this photo that comes first comes to mind when Alexander turns and sees the man, but the resemblance ends with the shape. Alexander tries to check, see if it is his father coming to see him but... there is just no face to see. Is it blank skin? Blackness and shadow? Whatever it is defies his attempts to focus and really see. There is only a feeling of this being wrong. This is not normal.
But the woman comes into view, as fleeting glimpses through the snow. It’s hard to know which he sees first – the crimson mouth (wasn’t there that corny film about vampires on the motel TV on the drive down..?), or the weapon. It’s certainly the gun that gets his attention though. The strangeness of the whole situation (thisisjustadreamthisisjustadream), the man he can’t seem to focus on, and now this. He reaches inside his jacket for his weapon, crouching while he does. As he draws...
Everything changes. All he can see is white, as the snow blanks out everything else in the market. In the world, even. The wind pushes at him, pulling his now-open jacket tails back behind him. He’s shivering more, although whether that’s from the cold or the near-terror is hard to decide. He stays crouched, aiming his pistol towards where the man and the woman were coming from. Where his thinks they were coming from, anyway. It’s hard to tell one direction from another, but he’s fairly sure there were over there...
“Why won’t you help me?” someone asks. Who, though? There’s nobody else here. Is that a fragment from the radio that he left playing in the background when he fell asleep on the couch? Help who? "Who's there?" he shouts into the storm.
This is a dream. I can’t die here. Holding his pistol in one hand, he reaches under his jacket and pinches himself. Wakeupwakeupwakeup...
Alexander Brandt
[WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
katabasis
[Mystery.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
katabasis
Who's there? Alex shouts. The response is anguished. He can taste it in his mouth again. Meadowsweet and candlesmoke; it pops on his tongue like fizzy bubbles, holds itself in his mind like -- but no, it's gone. Just the anguish: a response he cannot quite make-out. A name, maybe.
And then he pinches himself. That doesn't always work. But Alexander, he is willful. He wakes up in his bed. The time is something towards noon. The blinds or the curtains -- they're askew, and light's slanting inward, rippling across the floor or the corner of his bed or the wall, and his feet are very cold.
In fact, he cannot feel his feet at first. They're colder than ice. They warm eventually, of course. It was just a dream.
He has some messages on his phone waiting for him. If he's the kind of guy who has an e-mail or joins lists or checks facebook, there's nothing on facebook but maybe there's something in his e-mail.
Isn't it a nice day?
It is a nice day; the weather is cooperating, warm and the sky like a flake of heartbreak gorgeousness.
Alexander Brandt
The voice? The wind again? However the response comes, is slides just out of reach as he tries to concentrate on it. He’s still none-the-wiser as he wakes himself from the dream. The transition back to normality is abrupt. One moment he’s staring into the storm, trying to work out who’s calling him while fighting back the terror that the strange man and woman conjured up in him. The next?
He stares up at the ceiling of his living room, hands gripped hard on the seat and the back of the couch that he’s lying on. His heart’s pounding away in his chest and... . Why the hell are my feet cold? Must have been lying in a draft or something. But the windows and doors are all closed. Maybe some of the insulation has come loose somewhere, he’d check on that later.
He spends a couple of minutes sat on the couch, massaging life and heat back into his feet. The radio is still playing away quietly in the background – the news has come on, with a report about an increase in white collar crime in the city. Alexander is really paying that much attention, though – it really is just background noise. He massages a crick out of his shoulder. A new bed is due to be delivered in a couple of days, so the couch is the next best place to sleep at the moment. It’s just a little too short to lie out properly, though, and he keeps waking up with a stiff neck.
The numbness in his feet slowly gives way to pins and needles, which then fade away as he walks to the bathroom. Having taken care of that, he takes a minute to get the wet laundry out of the washing machine and load it into the dryer. His phone is blinking away on a shelf, so he dials up his voicemail service while he sorts out some coffee.
“Hi Mr Brandt, this is Mary Jo from the realtor company. I’m just calling to make sure that you’ve settled in ok. If you have any problems with the apartment, just give me a call on 720-383-9187.”
*delete* The old coffee filter gets thrown in the trash and a new one dropped into the machine. He’s rinsing and refilling the jug as the next message plays.
“Hi Alexander, it’s John Howard from scheduling. We need you to head over to the station on 16th tomorrow, as your partner’s called in sick. Give me a call back if there’s a problem”.
*delete* The percolator starts bubbling away as it boils the water and turns it into coffee. Alexander walks over to a calendar on the fridge and scribbles a note about the shift change.
“Hi Alex. It’s Sara. Listen...”
This message doesn’t even get a chance to get started. Alexander’s pulled the back off the phone, pulled the battery out and thrown both onto the couch before it could get any further. He stands looking at them while the percolator gurgles to a climax and then goes silent.
Pouring a cup of coffee, he heads out on the balcony and looks out on The Rockies. "Fuck," he mutters to nobody in particular. Leaning forward, elbows on the railings, he sips the coffee and thinks of nothing.
He’ll probably head out in a while. Maybe go hiking in the foothills. Maybe ride out to the plains and really open the bike up and lose himself in the speed.
In a while.
katabasis
The dream dissolves.
But not as completely as they are wont to do. He will remember the terror for a while. This unsettled feeling, behind his collar-bone, in his shoulder muscles. He will remember something wanting help, too. And feel in the air around him a certain urgency, the equivalent of being in a haunted house - isn't it? Feeling things, or getting the impression of feeling things, which have no logical inspiration. Urgency, although there is nothing to do today.
Urgency, settling on his day like a fine dust.
You are going to die today.
He can taste ill-luck, but that is ridiculous, isn't it?
Alexander Brandt
Time passes, as he leans watching the mountains. The sun is out, the few clouds there are in the sky are skimming way about the mountain tops. He goes to take a last drink of coffee from the mug, but finds that it’s gone cold. He heads back inside and sets the mug in the sink to clean later.
Alexander has a look around the apartment as he decides what he’s going to do with the day. Things around here are reasonably in order – still a few boxes in the bedroom to sort out, but there’s nothing urgent in them. It seems like forever since he really got out on the bike – the last time was probably back in Seattle, before... before the 1,300 mile drive down in a rented truck with most of his belongings.
Decision made. Alexander changes into his bike leathers, grabs his helmet and heads out to the garage. The phone stays in pieces on the sofa. His keys and wallet come with him, though. Along with an odd feeling that something is going to happen.
But, then, Alexander has never been one for superstition. So he pulls out of the apartment block and accelerates away. Through town – even if the traffic’s bad, he can still weave through it – and out onto the 287 will do nicely. Once he gets out of the city, where the houses and cross streets start to thin out, he starts to put on speed and skirts the speed limit.
Alexander Brandt
[Per/Awa]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
katabasis
Nothing goes right for Alex. The mug he sets on the sink he somehow sets on the edge, just - just a little unbalanced. And it drops into the sink, and it breaks. When he looks at one of the boxes containing some of his stuff, he is just in time to see the edge buckle, to hear things rattle inside it, and then for the small box tower to topple. He stubs his toe. No: he doesn't stub his toe. He picks up a splinter from his hardwood floor. Or maybe there is no hardwood floor, and it is stubbing his toe. Ow.
But the sky is so lovely, so achingly lovely.
Alexander has never been one for superstition. The traffic is bad. He seems to catch every red light until he's out of the city. When he puts on speed, it feels glorious for a moment. It feels like glory, on the wind that he makes. He is reminded of his dream again, perhaps -- the buffet of it, the cacophony of it, after the man without a face, a woman, something, what happened again?
Why won't you help me.
There is a curve. And then: How did he not notice it?
There is an owl on the road in front of him. Owl in daylight, a strange thing anyway. It has a wing, trailing behind it. Is hopping, hopping, and it will not be getting out of his way, and he just has the wit and the control to swerve around it. But that's when he hits a patch of -- ice, maybe? Yes, sure, ice. And hears a pop, as a tire goes right across a nail.
As the nail tears into rubber.
Look at the world, Alexander. Alexander, Alexander. The wind kicks up sharp; and he can see a pattern. He can see it laid-out, bright-shaped: he can see the darkness coming for him, always the gloom-thorn path, always the hard way.
Ill-luck, Alex. Unlucky.
Alexander Brandt
One accident – the mug - is life, and gets shrugged off. Two – the box of glassware topping over – is annoying. After stubbing his toe, on top of the lousy mood that Sara seems to have brought about without even realising and the strange feeling of wrong , Alexander is starting to get angry. Not at anything or anyone, except maybe the universe. But he’s not the spiritual kind, either. So it’s just general-purpose anger, ready to lash out at anything that becomes a handy target.
But things don’t get any better once he’s out. The traffic, the red lights... The idiot drivers who seem incapable of using their mirrors before swerving between lanes, nearly knocking him off. He’s never gotten to the point of road rage – getting off and laying into somebody – but it’s getting close.
It almost seems too good to be true when he can finally open the bike up. A few minutes of leaving all the aggravation behind, when...
It all happens so fast, as these things tend to. One moment, he’s easing the bike around a bend and starting to put on speed again. The next, is all a jumble of images and sounds. The owl on the road. An owl? What the hell? The screech of rubber as he swings around it. Then the moments of weightlessness as the bike skids over something slippery and catches a nail. He comes away from the bike, rolling along the road and, judging by the state of the helmet when he takes it off, bangs his head several times on the way.
Alexander lies still for a moment, making sure nothing feels broken, before he sits up. The helmet comes off, and he looks back up the road. The anger from earlier has faded into a dim resignation that the day just isn’t going to get any better.
He gingerly gets up – nothing broken, but plenty painful – and walks back along the road, limping to start with until his leg muscles relax again. He loosens his jacket – with the sun bearing down from the breathtakingly clear sky, he’s starting to get quite warm. The bike is lying on its side on the road, safe where it is for the moment. He carries on past the black ice. Ice? In this weather? And back to the injured owl.
Assuming it's still there, he'll kneel down at the side of the road, near to the poor thing, and take a look.
Alexander Brandt
[Per+Alert.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
katabasis
The owl is still there. Wing-dragging, feathers-so-fine. And he can taste it again, that anguish; that flower-sap something, on his tongue, replacing -- well. The taste of coffee, perhaps, which had chased the ozone out've his dream, chased off morning breath. The owl is still there, but it makes a grating sound of alarm when Alexander kneels near it. Turns its head around. Not all the way around, as they are said to do. Just: around, feathers rumpled, ruffling, and
he can see, while he looks a the owl, the owl's fate, twisting and twining with his own. What does that look like to Alexander? Perhaps he experiences is as a gut-hunch and an intuitive leap of the imagination -- or perhaps the dark-gloom pattern he saw earlier, just before and just after the accident sent him bruising across pavement and winter-spare weed, just as the nail tore apart his bike's front wheel (and thank god for his helmet), maybe he sees that again, but he sees it interlaced with brightness.
The owl's not going to die, but then it hops, it hops: and yes, the owl is going to -- something bad is going to --
Maybe it's the adrenaline that makes Alexander so alert. He can feel the rumble of a truck speeding down the lonely road before he can see it. He can feel it through the asphalt and it will not take him by surprise, although surprising, the truck is not on the road exactly: it is on the of the road. Someone who has started to sleep while driving, what, maybe it's a 48-hour day, and only half an hour until home, so why stop to take a nap.
The truck is going to hit him. The truck is going to hit the owl. The owl has hopped nearer into the path that the truck will inevitably take.
Alexander, and all that delicious adrenaline-sharped alertness. He also notices something else, although: What is it? He won't know.
He'll just notice: a rent, a thin - line - in the air. Like a hair, floating and suspended.
A crack. A fissure. A break-down, reality. Probability.
Alexander Brandt
Alexander crouches, watching the owl. The poor thing is obviously scared, maybe after having been hit by a passing truck. Although that still doesn’t explain why it’s in the middle of nowhere, during the day. Do you get owls that are awake during the day on the plains? Who the hell knows? He certainly doesn’t. A glove is pulled off, and he holds the hand out towards the poor, battered creature. “Hey, fella. What happened to you?” he asks it.
Then what he does know is that... he’s concussed? He must be. He’s seeing a pattern, that has no right to be there. Strands of dark and light, woven together. Reaching out towards him, the owl, the bike, the ice, the road, a rock... The pattern shifts, from moment to moment. It ties things together, then lets them go. Nothing is fixed, nothing is definite.
It. Doesn’t. Make. Sense. It has to be a hallucination. Something bounced badly inside his head.
The feeling... no, the certainty that something is going to happen is something that he just knows. The logical part of his mind, sped up on adrenaline, is screaming that this doesn’t make sense. How can you know that? You need to get to a doctor! But that part gets pushed to one side by the more primal, survival instinct as Alexander feels the vibration in the road. The truck is speeding towards them, driver blissfully unaware of the man and owl that he’s moment away from running over.
The pattern, though, carries on shifting. The truck catches a rock, and shifts to the right and misses them. A wheel catches the patch of ice and the whole truck jack-knives across the road.
There may be hope that he’ll wake up, but he’s really not willing to take that particular chance. Grabbing at the owl, he runs towards the far side of the road – trying to get out of the path of the 18 wheels heading towards them. The rent does get a moment’s notice, but the truck is the much bigger, heavier issue.
Alexander Brandt
[Dex+Ath]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3, 3, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Alexander Brandt
[Str]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5) ( fail )
katabasis
He is deft enough to grab the owl, to clamber to his feet, aching from his recent tumble -- oh, Alexander. What will you look like in the shower? Just bruises, superficial, just bruises and more bruises, maybe, it is all aches in his muscles, soreness which will fade over the following days. He is deft enough to grab the owl, to run.
The owl makes a sound. The sound is hideous: it's worse than nails on a chalkboard, it is frightened, frightened -- and it slashes at him with its beak. He's trying to hold it and instead he's dropping it, tripping over it bones-go-crack-CRACK, and Alexander is rolling right back toward the truck.
The truck which is passing, but if he hits it
He'll still die
The owl -- it fell under; didn't it? It did, and Alexander is falling, too
And then
nothing is moving at all. Except for Alexander. Not the truck. Not the clouds. Not the feather-pulped owl (or maybe it survived?). Not the wind. Nothing moves at all.
Alexander Brandt
Tick
Was grabbing the owl the sensible thing to do? Maybe not, but Alexander wasn’t exactly thinking sensibly at the time. He just wanted to save the owl from being crushed. Help me. And he was so close to getting them both to safety. Only the owl was frantic too, scratching and digging its beak into Alexander’s arm in its own frenzied terror.
Tock
If only it had realised that he’s been trying to save it.
Tick
Instead the poor thing goes under the wheels of the truck. There’s the sound of the owl’s body being broken. And Alexander is rolling back, towards the enormous wheels thundering inches away from his head. A gap in the wheels passes, and he sees the next set heading right towards him. The noise is unbearable. He tenses, closes his eyes, waiting for that moment when it would all be over.
...
Only it isn’t. The silence is almost deafening after the roar of the engine, of the tyres on the road, and the screeching of the owl. Alexander had never really considered there to be an afterlife before, but was this it? He can't really remember that much about what the religions had to say about what happens after death.
But he's fairly sure none of them mention having a rock digging into his back.
He opens his eyes a crack. Then wide open, looking up at the tyre print of one of the truck’s wheels a couple of feet from him. The truck couldn’t have stopped. Could it? Alexander rolls himself out owowowow and sits up on the road for the second time in the past few minutes. The world is silent, and nothing moves. Dust is frozen in the air. Weeds along the road are bent over, as if waiting for the wind to release them.
Am I dead?
katabasis
Is he dead?
That is an excellent question. One which there seems to be no answer to. Time continues to be stopped. And nothing, well, nothing continues to move. Maybe that is what happened. Maybe this is what happens. You get hit by a truck. You don't have to remember what happens when you are hit by a truck. The world just stops for you. There is no flash-reel of your life, unspooling: There is just that one moment
that one moment, so still, so complete in its stillness
and maybe that lasts forever.
Alexander Brandt
Certain things in the universe are definite. Gravity sucks. Time passes.
Only it isn’t.
Alexander stands and looks around some more. Not a thing moves. Some little flying thing is caught mid-flight. He pokes it: it moves a little, then stays where it is again, apparently lifeless. He kicks a rock from the side of the road: it arcs a couple of metres through the air before it slows to a stop.
I don’t understand.
Not something he’s any particular stranger to saying, but this particular situation is much stranger than most. He’s at a complete loss as to what’s happening. This just doesn’t happen.
He walks around the back of the truck – just in case it starts moving again – and looks underneath it. Partly out of guilt, to see what happened to the owl. Partly to see where that strange black thing went. Maybe that’s what caused it? Some kind of... weird science thing? Has one of those big experiments that gets mentioned in the news, where they’re looking for such-and-such a particle, gone wrong?
He would try calling someone to see what would happen, but his phone is miles away. The driver might have one, but trying to get into a possibly-temporarily-frozen-hurtling-truck doesn’t seem like the best of ideas.
Maybe it was that thing that Alexander saw before it all went strange. The truck would probably be where it was. Maybe things would get back to normal further away from it? But, then, he isn’t going to be going anywhere on the bike with its trashed wheel.
Then a thought comes to him. Why aren’t I frozen like everything else?
Alexander Brandt
[Per+Alert.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (2, 4, 6, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 1 )
katabasis
Around the back of the truck, then.
He scans the horizon, doesn't he? But the clouds aren't moving, so how far does this effect go for? Are they moving, and he just can't tell because they haven't moved where he is? Not yet? He can see little gravel-shards, stones, grass, things kicked up by the truck's wheels floating motionless on their way back down to earth, and when he stoops to look underneath the truck and find the smooshed-owl with the broken wing - and perhaps that fissure, that crack, that thing he saw (what happened to the patterns? The dark and the bright? Has he wondered? Does he wonder?) -
This is what he sees. The owl: yes. The owl's pieces, but as his gaze skims past them: the owls feathers move.
He barely notices, but notice he does. Barely, barely: barely is still something. The owl coming together again: re-shifted, re-made, no - no no. Not even re-shifted and re-made, but not hit. Rewind, see: just for the owl. A rewind, until it is an owl whole again, and this would be a disturbing smear of a thing to watch in reverse, to watch happen slowly piece-by-piece, so perhaps it is good that Alexander barely notices. That he misses some of it.
Why isn't he frozen like everything else?
He can't really see the fineness like-a-hair-caught-and-still that he saw before the truck stopped, everything stopped; but he judges that it must be somewhere within the back of the truck, that the truck has ridden right over it, so - maybe it was blown away, if it's not now WITHIN the truck.
Maybe.
He hears something else, though: shiverling thing, in his bones. Why won't you help me? Do something! Do, something!
That urgency; that urgency is back.
Alexander Brandt
Do the clouds move? Does the sun move through the sky, as the planet continues its eternal dance with its star? Have the stars stalled in their journey through the cosmos? Black holes frozen in their endless consumption of matter and energy? Assuming he even thinks to ask the questions, the answer remains the same. I don’t know. How can he know? He’s just an ordinary man who... is injured? Hallucinating? Having a nervous breakdown? Tripping on something? Still dreaming? He pinches himself again – you never know.
The pattern of light and dark is, for the moment, forgotten. Maybe out of sight, out of mind. More that Alexander is just trying to sort out what he can see and touch right here, right in this apparently endless now. Given time, it’ll come back into his thoughts. Maybe to be written off as a head injury again. But the owl and its strange... what, passage back through time? That’s... yet another thing he just doesn’t understand.
Turning slowly on the spot, he calls out. Shouting, “Hello!”, “Anybody there?”, “Help!” until he gets hoarse. No answer? He’s not sure he really expected one.
Alexander reaches out to the back of the truck, towards the door catch. If it’s inside the truck, maybe he can get a closer look. As he touches the handle, he shivers as if back in the snowstorm. The voice, someone he knows? He looks around again, trying to figure out where it came from.
“Who are you? Where are you?” he shouts.
Alexander Brandt
[Stam]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )
Alexander Brandt
[And a little Wits]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 10) ( success x 1 )
katabasis
He calls. He calls and he calls and he calls and his throat aches and he loses his voice but he calls a long time before that. He feels -- feels, more than sees -- a sharping up of that urgency; follow it with sorrow. Sorrow, and a sense of something just out of reach. He does not know that voice.
But he knows that voice. He knows that voice in his heart of hearts. That is how it reacts on him, that voice; that voice, and that sense of -
His hand is on the handle.
Time starts.
The truck yanks itself forward; perhaps his grip is such that his fingers break. Perhaps he, just barely, has time enough to let go; perhaps he only breaks one finger, instead of three. What of guitar-playing, Alexander? What of music?
Everything is loud, noisy, with Time-started again, and the owl
The owl was somewhere else, having come back together in such a way; it survives, do you see that? It survives, but only for now.
Alexander Brandt
Sorrow, follows urgency, follows a need for... what? Someone he doesn’t know, doesn’t recognise, but somehow feels as though he’s known the voice all his life. Is this how schizophrenia feels? Having a voice sat on your shoulder? But... don’t those voices tell you to do stuff?
Tock
Time restarts, the pendulum again measuring and cutting away second after second. 0 to 40 in the instant it takes Alexander to grab the handle, and there’s a cracking of bone. A cry of pain and he shields his hand against himself. Turning away from the truck, and the cloud of dust it’s towing with it, he closes his eyes until everything settles a little. Coughing and spitting away grit, he takes a look at his left hand. The middle finger is at a strange angle, and he can’t bend it.
Talking quietly, to himself or to the voice, he says hoarsely, “I don’t know who you are. How can I help if I don’t know where you are?”
The truck swerves back to onto the road as the driver wakes up, oblivious to the events of the past few... seconds? Minutes? Who knew time could be so subjective.
Alexander Brandt
[Per+Alert - Ohgodohgodohgod...]
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )
katabasis
[Hmm. NPC Mystery.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 4, 4, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
katabasis
The truck backs up immediately and so quickly and so quickly and then Alexander feels it this time for a split-second as the truck -- no. That isn't what happens. The truck leaves. Gravel hits Alexander in the eye. He is still ill-lucked, still unlucky; can't he still taste the unluck? The owl screeches and hobbles away, and there is not another driver on the road. At least there's that.
Hey.
Hey.
Hey. There it is. That faint fissure, that crack. And he can hear something coming from it, too. A quiet sussuration, as of leaves rattling in a rain.
There is no rain; there is no wind.
He hears it though. And another voice, too. Sweet and high; it hooks at his heart and calls him by name.
Alexander Brandt
[WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Alexander Brandt
[WP again, because dice rolls are fun!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 3, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Alexander Brandt
Those days when you just wish you could wake up in bed – or on the couch – and try again? Today is so past that stage. If there was any belief in signs and portents, it would be back to Seattle to pick another random city to run away to. But, then, Alexander survives and carries on. Not like he has a lot of choice, it’s just what he does.
The owl survives, too. Alexander doesn’t know how much the poor little critter remembers, but decides to leave well alone. The scratches on his arms and clothes are reminder enough at its earlier displeasure. He has no intention of finding out that it does remember everything, and is even more annoyed.
The fracture is back. Or maybe it was always, and will always be, there. The other pattern, the play of light and dark arcing between everything, isn’t. Does that mean the two are separate? Wait, what does he mean separate? This still isn’t real, right? But if it’s not real, why the hell does he hurt so much? The bumps, bruises, scratches, claw marks, bite marks, broken finger all feel very real. But what happened with the truck, with everything freezing? That’s just...
The syrupy sweet voice calls to him, tempting him, calling him. It’s almost too much to resist. Almost. He takes a few steps towards the crack, towards the whispering, to get a closer look. He takes a walk around it – checking for more traffic before walking on the road again. There’s an urge to reach out and touch it touch me come to me be with me. Holding back, Alexander instead grabs a rock from the ground and tosses it towards the crack.
What’s the worst that can happen. That’s a dangerous thing to ask today.
katabasis
[NEXT TIME, on Denver Mage...]
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