After Midnight

Charming | 22 | Human/Hunter Charming is good guy and he’s got a good heart, but he doesn’t always make the best choices. “Sometimes the best and worst times of your life can coincide. The beautiful ghosts of our past haunt us and yet we still can’t decide if the pain they caused us outweighs the tender moments when they touched our soul. This is the irony of love.” S.L. Adler

[miss-drizzle]

I’m a comedienne, didn’t you know?

[charming-hunter]

I wasn't aware of that, no. Do you perform often?

[nobody-puts-art-on-the-wall-blog]

Maybe it took too much magic? *Waggles brow* Is that how magic works? Do you run out?

[charming-hunter]

*shrugs* I have no clue. It makes sense that ... since most things are finite, magic would be too, right? Otherwise everyone would be magical and there would be so much magic everywhere.

[the-ugly-reckless-tuffnut-blog]

I was talking about the quiet… 

I don’t like any of that, not really. It beats the alternative, though.

[charming-hunter]

The quiet seems unsettling too ... now that I've gotten used to the noise.

*sighs* But yeah, you're right. It's better than dying.

[nobody-puts-art-on-the-wall-blog]

Right? And if it was Hera like we thought… I just… *purses lips* maybe she did something wrong? I don’t think she’d let her citizens suffer if she knew there was actually a cure… but obviously *waves around* that’s what she’s doing.

[charming-hunter]

*frowns, thinking* Maybe you're right. Maybe ... whatever she did, it ended unexpectedly. Maybe she's trying to fix it right now?

[miss-drizzle]

*Behind Charming, joking* Boo!

[charming-hunter]

*turns, can't help a slight chuckle, drily* Very funny.

[the-ugly-reckless-tuffnut-blog]

*Shrugs* I actually like it like this.

[charming-hunter]

You like going back to ... hating people? Having to kill people? People trying to kill you?

[nobody-puts-art-on-the-wall-blog]

Yeah, I think it’s like how it was when the apocalypse first started and the zombies were banished, everyone wanted to stay inside. *Sighs* It was nice when everyone was normal…

[charming-hunter]

*scuffs at the ground idly, folds his arms* Yeah. It was cruel ... to give us that taste of happiness and then take it away. Don't really know what to do now, you know? Everything seems ... meaningless. If someone can just cure everybody ... why don't they just do it permanently?

[charming-hunter]

Man, it's like this place is a ghost town.

[fckingzoe-deactivated20150304]

So you’re lost? It can’t be that bad, just find a destination and try to get there.

[charming-hunter]

No, it's just a general feeling of ... metaphorical lost-ness?

[oh-captain-my-captain-and-rum]

For the first time in forever

[oh-captain-my-captain-and-rum]

No, I haven’t. Are they huge? All the sudden I feel completely famished. I could eat an elephant… sized… salad. 

[charming-hunter]

... That would be a lot of lettuce. The only way to find out is to go get one yourself.

[the-ugly-reckless-tuffnut-blog]

Not a zombie in sight,

[the-ugly-reckless-tuffnut-blog]

*Laughs* We all need shirts with a slogan like that, “survived the apocalypse of 2014”

[charming-hunter]

We should, yeah! Best shirts ever!

[fckingzoe-deactivated20150304]

I’m sure there are people who know where they are… 

[charming-hunter]

Well I haven't been one of them in a while, then. The world is changing much too fast for me to feel comfortable every really truly saying that I know the place I'm in.

[dodobirdzazu]

The Humdrum Life (We Left Behind)

[dodobirdzazu]

"Oh, sorry, yes I am, although it doesn’t look like one much anymore, with the crowd and everything."

Zazu smiled and added, “Funny that when the apocalypse that’s been plaguing us for months, killing us in droves and ruining our lives, finally ends, the first thing we do is go get coffee.”

It was odd, though. Everyone was overjoyed and no one quite understood why, but the only thing people wanted to do was go back to how things were before, and at the same time they couldn’t, because even as bright, cheery happiness spread like a virus through the fortified city, dead eyes sill looked out from worn faces and hungry bellies.

The worst part, was that right now, Zazu didn’t even care.

Even happiness was dangerous, in it’s own way.

The man had gotten in line behind her and was scanning the room in mild boredom. Zazu wondered what he was looking for.

"So, what led you to come here?”

[charming-hunter]

"Thanks," Charming said with a slight chuckle, doing a little bit of a side shuffle to get in line behind her. He laughed at her remark, looking around a little bit at the mass of people that surrounded them before replying. "It's takes a lot of energy to be happy. We need coffee to replace that energy."

He smiled back at her, meeting her eyes before looking around the room again. He thought for sure that he would have seen Rita by now. Sure, they had gone time without seeing each other before ... but always when he was out hunting. Now that he didn't have to do that ... it was weird to not see her around. Now that he didn't have to do that ... it was weird to do anything, really.

As soon as he heard the question of the girl in front of him, however, he realized just how rude he had been. "Sorry," he said with a slight smile. "I was just looking for my girlfriend. I thought she might have been here, what with so many people here and everything." He shrugged slightly, smiling lopsidedly. "But I guess I was wrong. She's probably around here somewhere."

He held out his hand as he realized that he didn't even know the girl's name and yet here he was blathering on about something she probably didn't even care about. "I'm Charming, by the way. And ... yes. That's my name. Not a personality trait that I feel like bragging about. My parents had an odd sort of humor."

[dodobirdzazu]

Fell Into a Dream

Zazu stood in the crowded line for morning coffee, books tucked under her arm and bags slung over her shoulder.

The shop was filled with the warm buzz of customers chatting and laughing and celebrating the end of the Apocalypse. Down the street, someone yelled “God bless Hera” in a loud, raucous tone, his call accompanied by a wild cheer and the sound of breaking glass.

People were just happy to be happy, and finally they had a reason to.

Zazu herself was overjoyed, of course. Finally things would go back to the way they were supposed to. She could get a university degree, finally stop being Simba’s babysitter and be his friend again. She could live her life like she thought she would before the apocalypse struck down all her dreams in one heavy zombie step.

But she was curious. How had Hera, if it was her, been able to finally stop the curse, and how did she do it so fast? Zazu herself knew of the difficulties of dealing with zombies, of how the research had been trudging along even though the facility was the only building who got near 24/7 electricity.

Perhaps Mufasa would know. He was certainly higher up in the facility hierarchy than she was, and he responded directly to Hera herself. If anyone knew, it was him.

Zazu was stirred out of her thoughts when somebody spoke.

[charming-hunter]

The news had hit Charming like a flash. He had been in the middle of his shift when all of a sudden he had heard yelling at the gate. He ran down immediately and that's when he had been informed that the apocalypse was over. All of the zombies were gone ... transformed back into the people they had been before. More than that, magic was back, and Charming hadn't remembered the last time he had seen magic. The town had been transformed; denizens who had once been sad and miserable were all of a sudden happy and smiling and ... Charming wasn't sure how to feel.

Of course he was happy that the apocalypse, what he had fought against for so long, was finally over. And yet, at the same time, he felt himself suddenly ... purposeless. What did he do now that he could no longer be a hunter? It left him feeling restless. Happy, but restless.

He wandered aimlessly for a while, trying to find Rita or someone to talk to about all of this, before he finally decided to enter the transformed coffee shop. Just the other day, the shop was grey and dismal and filled only with a handful of antisocial and miserable people but now it was alive, bursting with chatting and smiling people. He thought maybe he'd see Rita inside but a quick scan inside revealed that she wasn't anywhere in the shop.

Still, the smell of coffee enticed him and now, without any real thing to do, he figured that he might as well join the long line of people waiting to order. He squinted, trying to find out where the end of the line was.

"Sorry," he said, turning to talk to a girl who was possibly the end of the line. "Are you in line?"

[puppy-with-a-pistol-blog]

"But see on Sunday you’re already thinking about the shit that comes with Monday."

[charming-hunter]

"Not if you compartmentalize," Charming replied with a slight satisfied smirk.

[oh-captain-my-captain-and-rum]

For the first time in forever

I feel like eating a salad. 

[charming-hunter]

Have you ever been to the Bed and Breakfast? They serve great salads there.

[the-ugly-reckless-tuffnut-blog]

Not a zombie in sight,

I never thought I’d live to see the day.

[charming-hunter]

You know, I haven't seen a single one all day either. I can't believe we actually did it. We survived the apocalypse. It's over!