ojovivo
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dirt enthusiast
h
Peter Solarz
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
titsay
Misplaced Lens Cap
Product Placement
Andulka
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if i look back, i am lost
shark vs the universe
Janaina Medeiros
d e v o n
hello vonnie
Show & Tell
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
cherry valley forever
seen from Canada
seen from Germany
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from Switzerland
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Greece
seen from Italy
seen from Argentina
seen from United States
seen from United States
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seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from Malaysia
seen from Türkiye
@dread-frequencies
( ella purnell / cis f / she/her) — Holly Price has been living in Port Leiry for A Few Weeks. They currently work as a PIRATE RADIO HOST, and are TWENTY SEVEN years old. No one is sure if they’re actually a HUMAN or if they’re connected to DREAD FREQUENCIES AM. They tend to be quite ARROGANT and IMPULSIVE, but can also be PASSIONATE and BRAVE. — ( skunk / est / she/her / 38 / n/a )
His brows furrowed at the headline. Blood Farm. Who the hell came up with something like that? Conspiracy Megathread. Colt stared at the words as if they were written in a foreign language. Before he could stop himself, he dropped her phone and grabbed Holly by the elbow, and hauled her across the barn, through the wide doors and out into the freezing air.
"I've got no idea what that's supposed to mean, lady," he snapped, "But there ain't no blood farm on my property." He'd know if there was something going on behind his back, wouldn't he? Fingers tightened around her arm, yanking her closer to him, keeping his hostile eyes on her brown ones. "This Atlas you're looking for, you ain't gonna find him in there."
He'd built that barn with his own two hands. The scars across his palms were proof enough of that. Just a kid when death turned him into an orphan, left to bury his father and mourn his mother and sister. Holly called it a miracle, but nobody had ever handled him one. It was work. Colt refused to quit when every damn thing in the world told him to.
His eyes turned to slits. "The only monsters I see are people like you, folks stickin' their noses into other people's business like they've got some God given right." He was so close, his breath fell warm on her face. "If I catch you around here again, I'll use this shotgun, lady." A promise he'd have no problem keeping. "I mean it."
"Wh, hey!" Holly shouts as he spits and yanks her around, reaching back for her phone as he hauls her away, spitting hellfire.
"I'm not here for him I'm here for-" Holly starts to protest, but he drags her close, gets in her face, and her features pull tight and sink into something between guilt and anger as he lectures her further.
She feels something rumble in her chest, a sort of flare of dark resentment, oily and thick. She's so tired of feeling like she's chasing endlessly after nothing. And then out of that spins something else - a sort of push. Something that tells her she deserves so much more than what she's getting here, dragged around and called a liar and a monster and told she's nuts and have a gun pointed at her.
She rips her arm away from him. "Then shoot me now, because I'm not gonna stop looking for the truth ever, and trust me, you'd be doing me a huge favor."
Ambition and pride flare in her, driven to a sudden red hot frenzy, and all the eyes red-rimmed nebula around them blink into existence in the shadows, filling the dark spaces with glistening hands and chattering teeth shrouded just enough to stay hidden. He can't see them, she can tell he can't - because he's too closed off to truth.
"So? Do it."
It could be better for her, if she does not pry too deep at Gods who do not wish to make themselves known. Not to her, at least. A witness to something not meant for her eyes. Windows to her soul opened wide to power her body cannot handle.
Maja does not know exactly what this girl has done, or what she has wrought to tangle her soul in the power of Gods beyond her scope. She also does not think she cares to know, and risk the wrath of the one she worships. Would taking an audience with a thing beyond her realm, in the next life, ever dare share that with her, if she asked? A fool's errand, to even try.
"Echoes." She says it again. They do no harm. They're loud and repetitive. A voice in a tunnel that coils around and around. Like the mirror maze. But an echo is harmless. Just noise on repeat. "You keep them as that, yes? As long as you can."
Sometimes, is not her problem. A small pocket ripped out of existence — like the one this girl has shown her on a screen, is a power, and a magic that Maja cannot contend with, no matter her mastery.
Maja takes a step towards the door, as if the girl has sullied her own soul with her knowledge, and her Gods curse; like she has touched something filthy and now carries the stain on her palms, like a symbol of betrayal. "This. Or you dare to ask them to lead you to what they serve." Everything serves something. Mortals, men. Gods have their ambitions and their beliefs all the same. Physical, or not. Their purpose, as she seems to say, might become hers. If she delves into the veil that keeps her where she is, maybe she'll see what drives them. Curiosity is enough to keep Maja interested (and she has been, thus far — eager to know her secrets), but it's not enough for her to risk stripping the layers of the realms to see which one her ghosts lay between.
"I go now."
Holly's head shakes; she can't tell if the strange girl's been scared off or if she's incredulous or if she's just having her on, but her body language pre-empts her words, and Holly can tell she wants to get out of this van. She can't blame her - and there's a piece of Holly Price that wonders if simply showing somebody this will mark them the same way she seems to be marked.
Maja keeps talking in her frustrating riddles though, and Holly follows to the edge of the van's hatch, half hanging out.
"I'm Holly," she calls after - maybe uselessly - but a name is something to hold onto, something to make this mean anything. "What's your name?"
"You're in Exquis, the club underneath my art gallery." He explains, calm and deadpan. But then she scrambles away from him, and he drops his head with an exaggerated sigh. He is decidedly not why she's here. Standing up straight, he turns to open the door out of the room they're occupying and calls for an attendant. "Water, please, and a few warm towels if you can manage it. Quickly."
Door shut again, he turns back to the shivering, frail woman trying her best to get away from him. He keeps his distance, and stands with his hands in his pockets.
"I am not, nor did I. I compelled you to take me to your home, and I fed from you. We have not had contact sense." He says it, gently, as if coaxing her to remember - because he did not wipe the events from her mind. Frustrated, he starts to move forward, but there's a knock on the door.
Taking the items from the attendant, he shuts the door again, and actually moves forward this time. He hands her the bottle of water first. "It's below freezing outside, and you're not dressed for warmth, let me help you." The words grumble out of his chest, and he takes one of the towels to wrap around her shoulders - the other for her lap and feet.
"Did you hit your head?"
She watches as he moves to the door, watching him like a hawk. When he comes back, she realizes something- there's something strangely incensing about just how calm and collected he is. Envy strikes her as the shivering starts to slow, and Holly's eyes, wide awake and wary now, scan the still shape of him.
She hasn't forgotten. It's been everything she could do to keep it in. Wakefulness spills into her, and she starts to shake off the confusion of being pulled out of a sleepwalk. She takes the water bottle, and is made aware of the stinging heat in her reddened fingertips, which makes her similarly aware of the same in her toes and nose and cheeks and ears.
"No..." She says, looking into his eyes. "I was... I got home, and was working on a thing for a friend and fell asleep I guess, and-"
She cradles her fingers together, breathes into her cupped hands and curled digits. "Something followed me here."
Holly's eyes widen further, and she brings her fingers to her eyes, counts them under her breath, then starts looking over the water bottle before she looks back to Cam. "Am I awake? Are you real?"
Showing is more delicious than telling.
Even if it is within the walls of an electrical tomb, with wiring dangling from above and sockets plugged into generators. It's a just a dimmer, crass depiction of their caravans at the circus. But this is not her home soil. It is tin she does not know, with a woman plagued with shadows of different origin. She's been thrusted a tape that she watches, with transfixed eyes.
She does not want to be sold on a woman and a microphone —
But then.
A civilisation torn out of its root.
What trickery is this? This cannot be magic like they know. This is the power of the Gods. Must be. Like what Hel possesses. Odin has struck down a town and punished them for something. If not him, then another. All of them. Maja stabs at the screen, reversing the line back and forth, as if she might see a signature of something other that tells her what she desires to know.
"You saw it." And now so has Maja. A witness to something not intended for eyes to know. A clever curse of sight, and sound. Of nothing, and no one. Maja turns to look at her own phantom, trapped in the gap of a closed van door, and then she searches for the ones this woman has; whatever entities hold onto her, and her ability of knowing. "This is the work of Gods." Not magic like Maja's, or the Circus. Real, divine. Celestials that can vaporise worlds. What has this woman done, to deserve this retribution? "But they do not hurt you, no? They watch." Like she watched. Maja drops the tape back to the woman's messy desk, before she is hexed by whatever origin power has tangled itself in it. "An echo of what you have seen, yes?"
If they stay their distance, then she is merely a syn seer, of sorts. She wonders if her uncle dared want to touch this magic, or know. Grimhjarta thinks that she is has adopted the residue of a power she stood too close to. Maybe it would fade, with time.
Maybe it would devour her, eventually, the same way it ate that city up.
Maja wonders too, if she brings down some layers of one of the veils, how long it would take her to find the woman's shadows, and to see if they like to be found.
"I have no idea what it is," she says, her tone a plea without a question behind it. Tell me, she thinks, you seem crazy enough to have an answer. Talk of Gods and stuff, that's out of her ballpark. She signed up for ghosts and goblins. She hadn't expected to find man-shaped monsters like Tom has. She was fine with that. But this? This is something she never wanted, and certainly doesn't want now.
"I don't know if they'll hurt me - I just know I don't want to let them, and sometimes..."
Holly's voice trails off into nothing, because she won't say that. That kernel she'll keep in her pocket. "I just know I don't want to find out, and I am here for a reason and I can't leave right now, and I think they know that.." Even if she wanted to, she couldn't - the world beyond the city limits turns into a desolate tundra of snow and scrub full of things that seem even worse than what's chasing her.
It is not often that Cameron actually indulges in his own club underneath the gallery. It's a simple scene, one where the object he holds is merely a tool for pain. It does excite him to inflict where it is needed, but that is the most he allows himself these days. Those who prefer it will sign up, and if he is available, he will take the slot.
Sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and gloves still adorning his hands, he looks over to see the commotion at the front end. Handing the crop off to one of the other professionals, he leaves the area.
At the front, the first thing he notices is that not that the woman is from his feed the other night, but that she is shivering and barefoot in his club. Moving forward, he first checks the doorman for damage. The scent of blood is ripe in the air here, and his lips press into a thin line. "Go, get to the hospital."
Then to Holly. He does touch her, because he can handle the pain if she lashes out again, with a simple graze of his fingertips to her shoulder. "You're freezing. Let's get somewhere private." It's warmer here than it is out there, but it's certainly not somewhere to give proper care and attention. He doesn't know this girl, but he is not so cruel as to let her succumb to sickness under his roof. She's here already, after all.
He doesn't wait for her answer, and leads her to an area that would usually need to be rented out for privacy. Perhaps, he thinks, it might be better to head to his office upstairs - where there is a somewhat comfortable couch and at least something to make tea. Later, then. The only surface in the room is a leather bench, but he sits her on it anyways. Kneeling down in front of her, he checks her feet for wounds or signs of frostbite.
"Why did you come to my gallery?"
As she starts to wake up, she starts to warm up, too. This makes her shiver, shake, and tremble, even as she's lead through some sort of carnal dreamscape into a small private room. The bench isn't comfortable, and her eyes are wide and worry as she surveys the rest of the room. How had she gotten here? All she can think of is how but he's busy asking why.
She watches him inspect her feet and pulls away, ticklish. "Wh-where am I?" Is the first question, but then the timbre and tone of his voice seems to make a few latches tumble into place. "Wait..."
She startles, scooting down the bench from him, jolting to her feet. "You! You're why I'm here,"
Has to be.
"You... you... juju'd me!" She borrows the word from Tom. "From the other night!" Her finger points accusingly, and it adds nothing to the menace of her though, shaking like she is. Then, accusingly, her quivering features stare with accusation; "Didn't you?"
Didn't he?
She's being too kind. Forgiving, about him being a bundle of explosive information. But she's got a curious smile, and he hopes she knows he's just as keen to know things. It's genuine. Between them, he wonders exactly how much they could corroborate, and collaborate. Maybe enough for him to write streams of articles again, and for her to write new material for her work. A mystery solved that could get him out of the writing rut he's in. Back to the real business outside of a masters, and to informing the public.
But Holly doesn't need to know that part. "Right?" It's less question, more agreement. "If more people thought that, there would be so much acceptance. Folks would get it, they'd understand." He never understood the afraid of knowledge part, until recently, but he knows there's ones that need some working on; folks that need a reminder that the world isn't out to do any harm, if they aren't.
Tomás notices her glancing around, because he supposes she's new to town and there's a bunch to see. He was fresh out of the water when he got to Oregon, too. She's going to get her bearings, just the same.
In the van (her van's awesome, and it's awesome she has a van), there's a lot of directions, and talking about radio. Mostly, Tomás is thinking about the questions he wants to ask, and to talk in person, opposed to online.
His apartment's still something he's getting used to, since the storm wrecked his camper, but he supposes the stability works for storing all his papers, and his research.
He waits, after they're parked, for her to get what she's forgotten. "All good?" A smile, still giddy, with all the expectation, or anticipation. He's barely noticed Holly's assessing, and skirting over details Tom doesn't see.
Too busy talking. "You think it's juju? It's gotta be, right?" He doesn't linger on the part where he's so very close to saying, my boyfriend's got juju. He'd know. Because he's no longer his boyfriend, and Tom's trying not to think about him, if he can help it. "I think it's bigger 'cause why isn't anybody talking about it like it's not tens of thousands, y'know? I don't see it covered like, do you?" Is he missing the details?
It's secret, like the ones in the dark think is best. "It'd suck less if all kinds of folk worked together, don't you think?"
She shifts his train of thought, when they're inside his place. He probably should have tidied, some. But he'd thought it important; all the stuff he's got out, are what he thought maybe she's wanna talk to him about. Gods, he's got a whole list to talk to her about. First, he claws hospitality out of his arsenal, and pads to the kitchen, "You want anything? Coke?" a beat, and a wide eyed clarity: "Soda. Not, uh..."
It takes her a moment to realize he's probably not talking about the flickering overhead that had caught her attention. It alarms her, because she's never been around somebody who's mind goes to the same place as hers in the same order - well, she has, but they're hobbyists. People who think it's chemtrails or some sort of grand practical joke. They've never seen a whole town swallowed in darkness and left quiet. They've never seen the sky looking back at them.
She wonders if Tom here has.
"Uhm-" she ponders. "I don't know, honestly?" Her laughter's quiet and nervous. "I don't know what's for the best. But I do think working together's better - rising tide lifts all boat, and what have you yeah?"
"Coke's fine, thanks," she says with a sweetened smile. She could do with a bit of caffiene and sugar anyhow. Holly peruses disheveled papers - some look like mockups for issues of his newsletters, others are dartboard-worthy collections of information. She waits for the drink while she reads about the city she's arrived in as told by him. Masquerade balls, moon-shifters, magical hurricanes.
The world, it seems, is keeping less and less of a lid on its wily secrets. "How long you been out here, Tom?" She asks absently.
Voyeurism is a common habit of things on the other side of veils. Maja thinks they crave the warmth they do not possess. Always so dry, and arid on the other side. It makes her crave for damp soil, when she revives from the skull-laden shores. They never touch. Then what does she fear? For her soul to be ripped from her eyes — and eaten, chewed up by mouthless shadows? Maja knows her shadow is not a friend, but she treats it as such; the power in knowing that its perversions mean nothing, until every phalange on her talisman is ground to dust.
This one has no such ties.
"You upset someone." A hex, a curse, of illusion and mist. She saw something? Allowed the gateway to wrap its desperate hands around her, and refuse to let go. Maja laughs, because she is still not sure of what energy entangles the girl. She wants to take her tongue and see what that power hums like on her cheek.
But maybe she does not have to, because the girl knows.
Grimhjarta's curiosity climaxes, as she darts forward and places hands either side of the girl. Eyes searching the uneasiness, as the reapers at her back, listen too.
"Tell me."
Holly stares at Maja - and she knows - knows that she shouldn't do this. But she wants to, because nothing hits like a harder drug to her than to be believed. Not just acknowledge, not just a skeptical concession that it's not impossible. But believed.
"I can show you."
* * *
It's cold as hell outside, and she misses the damp humidity of the laundromat almost instantly, but sitting in the back of her van with all its equipment and wires, she's spent five minutes with shivering fingers digging through memory cards full of digitized tape.
It's like she has a religious epiphany when the screen lights up with the right file, and she practically shoves it into Maja's hand. She hasn't show anyone this - she has no idea why she's so giddy to show this woman now.
The tape starts, and its a different Holly than the one sitting in the back of this van with Maja - more full bodies, more rested. There isn't this morose aura about her - it's a Holly who is still just living the next day of her eventful life. She delivers what seems to be the opening of a public access television show. She talks in enticing, sensational tones about convergences and rumors and celestial phenomenon, and then, as if out of nowhere, there's a shudder in the image, and a wave jostles everything in the picture, and Holly stands, staring at the horizon where a town goes from a twinkling oasis in the flat heartlands of the flyover country to a dark monument of nothing, and Holly, speech stopped, stairs into the sky, as if she's seen something immense and captivating. The camera seems to jump then, and Holly flashes from that standing position to one sprawled out in the grass. She slowly stands, moving for the camera, and the video ends.
"I... if I'd just had the camera pitched up, even a few degrees..." she breas the quiet. "I... I don't even know how to describe it but... five hours, like that-" she snaps her fingers. I drove the whole night, trying to get away while it just... watched me from the sky, and then when the sun came up... it was gone. But it hasn't... left me alone ever since. Not for long, anyways."
@huntercam exquis
it's freezing. it's frigid cold and she's pretty sure she's dying, but she can't stop, because it's behind her. the whole world's frozen but her feet feel hot.
she stops to turn and look, to see if IT is still there.
it is. it's walking, slow but inexorable.
she remembers a door next, a door and a floor that's slippery. rows and rows of moving images that evoke nothing - sludgy oils locked in simple frames.
she sees two shapes, clung together, descending into some dark hole in the wall. she follows, but not too close. halfway down the endless steps, holly looks back, and IT isn't there anymore.
'The hell are you doing?'
He hums as she stumbles a bit through an explanation hoping she realizes whether she had or hadn't doesn't bother him much. He's sure he's done worse, if not the same. He never can remember fully what he gets up to on the nights he isn't kept locked away. On the nights he is used like some kind of leverage as an attack dog.
"I believe you." He says, because though he can smell and hear the anxiety coming off of her, he feels like ( even with pieces missing ) that she isn't lying to him. If anything that makes him all the more curious. Playing through the different creatures, both visible and not, that could be plaguing this area. It wouldn't be a stretch. Port Liery is a supernatural magnet. The residents are enough proof of that, himself included. She knows more than she's letting on, but is candid about her knowledge regarding blood. He wonders if this Holly is always so forth coming.
"Right, we should probably get rid of him first then." He surmises. His eyes look over her a moment, she still looks — well, small, but he supposes if she can't keep up he'll just have her stay somewhere safe until he is finished. He gives a nod, she has a shovel and that solves another problem. It's her next question that makes him pause. Monsters, she knows. Though he wonders what all she knows about. His answer is vague as he regards her.
"I wouldn't consider myself a monster. No. But I do suppose that depends on who you ask. It's better not to know the ends and outs of things. Ignorance can lead to safety, or perhaps doom.But the world is full of those kinds of occurrences. As the body in your van can demonstrate. We should go before the snow starts up again."
It's a long evening, with a few close-calls, besides. There is a curfew, she recalls all too late, but the officer lets her off with a warning to get herself home quickly.
There's the matter of cleaning off the van, too - it's not the first time she's done that either, nor - if she were to guess - the first time for August either. Her mind races as they clean - vampire, werewolf, witch? They're all apparently real after all, but like he'd said; sometimes, not knowing is better, and she's not one to push - not when the person warning her's done her a solid already.
She treats August - his name is August - to a coffee and a danish at some small shop, and resolves to meet him again sometime under less... morbid circumstances, another new name and potential lead in the endless line of strange folk this town is putting in front of her.
He listens, picking and pulling at what she tells him. Is she sure she didn't do this. Yank the Television down on the guy by a cord? "I think I can understand that. I blackout and bad things tend to happen too." He answers. Even if he is still suspicious that he isn't getting the full story, but he supposes she isn't either.
"Should we put this inside? Dry blood is harder to clean. And so is gore." He offers, and adjusts the VCR in his arm, freehand coming up to scratch the back of his neck. "I know a place. It's a bit far, and then a lot of it is a bit of a hike. If you don't mind it? I could carry him through the wooded parts. I promise anyone with a brain stays clear." He tells her.
Up in the thick of werewolf territory only another wolf could find it and even then he doubts anyone would be quite worried about a dead body. "We'll need a shovel too. I'm sure I can break through the frozen ground with a bit of force. Stronger than I look." He really does look scrawny, but between workouts and his natural strength there is no problem with either task.
She shakes her head - "Uh. I mean... I really don't-" she stops, because she's about to say think but she corrects, "-didn't do it. It was... I don't. Do that."
Does she? No. She's not having this talk again. Not with herself and not with this guy.
"Oh, haha. I know." She says, as if it's a normal thing to know the obstinacy of blood. "Not my first mess." She says with a wide-smiling laugh before she realizes this likely doesn't help her case in any given direction. Holly's head shakes. "I can trudge up trails with the best of them." Sometimes it's a must for good reception.
"Oh I have a shovel." She says, nodding back. "It's... hehe, it's in there. You know." She looks him up and down, like she doesn't believe he's not trying to impress her a little. "Yeah..." Seeing is believe, she thinks. "Are you a serial killer? Or a monster? I know there's monsters, here. Like in this city."
He watches the panic on her features, and smiles into the wound he's created. There is a thrill here that's quite different than the docile feeding he's been doing to keep himself fed and not wasting away. Cameron knows not to take too much, and makes sure that she is able to speak and walk after taking just enough. He might have to feed again after this, but for now, it's satiating.
Pulling back, he wipes the blood from his lips and watches the wound on her wrist seep blood out, dripping down her skin and splattering onto the carpet beneath their feet. Without a word, he unties the makeshift tourniquet and rubs the indent left behind with his thumb.
"I do not plan on killing you." He says, simply. "I was only hungry. There is no need to plead." The blood continues to pour out of her wrist and he hums. "You'll be lightheaded for a bit until you recover."
Looking around, he wonders if she has a first aid kit somewhere. Or at least a bandage. Surely. Leading over to somewhere to sit, he gets her comfortable and departs to look for just that.
When he returns, he kneels beside her to clean the wound and wrap a large bandaid over the wrist. It would be simple to just give her a taste of blood, but he does not care enough to let her sample him. Looking up, he tilts his head to watch her wide-eyed stare again. "Thank you for not screaming. Would you like to forget this?"
She stands there, unsure of what to do or where to go, save to hold herself up against whatever it is behind her, because the room's swaying a little while she waits. She winds up stumbling gently until she finds the small bar that separates the kitchenette from the rest of the apartment, where a notebook sits under a few works in progress, but than a sharp pain draw her to stare at the hole he's left in her, beads of blood tracing rivers down the contours of her arm.
In her anemic daze, she can't help but smile, sleepy eyes at it. She's not crazy. Neither is Tom'. Things unseen are just that, things unseen.
Whether she's lightly delirious or Cam's just quiet, she's gently startled by his return. He pulls the stool back over from where she'd left it for her to sit again. She watches him wipe blood clean from her wrist, then swab it with alcohol. As he's wrapping the bandage around, she nods, head full of fuzz. "No." She says. "No, I don't ever wanna forget this. This means it's all... real."
Colt had been so wrapped up in the day to day grind of ranch work, he hadn’t spared a second thought for the internet; endless information at anyone’s fingertips, from ridiculous medical advice his patients trusted before ever coming to him, to stalking whoever you pleased. Somewhere in all that noise, someone had said something about his ranch and his involvement with the Brotherhood. That couldn’t be true. Could it? No human got their hands on Brotherhood intel without ending up staring down Aurelia’s gun next. He’d been on the other side of that. He knew exactly what she was capable of.
Colt swallowed. "Who says that? Where’d you read it?" There was a gravelly undertone to his words, scratching at his throat as they left his mouth in a hurry. “Show me, lady, on your phone." She wasn’t going anywhere, not until she told him what had led her here, onto his land, his home. Fingers loosened on the weapon, just slightly. The barrel dipped, no longer aimed at her toes, but toward the ground as she started talking.
Holly Price. Twenty something, if he had to guess, claiming she’d run from monsters that ate up her town for breakfast. Colt went pale as a ghost, listening, filing away every word she said.
"I ain’t ever heard of a guy called Atlas Jay." His brow furrowed. Hell of a name to give a kid. "Doesn’t sound like he’s from around here. There ain’t no Atlas Jay in this town. Closest town you can try is Portland, you might wanna check there."
He made sure she heard it, there was nothing for her here, nothing to put on whatever radio show she was running. The rifle’s butt hit the ground with a dull thud. Colt rested his forearm over it, "I understand you’re having a hard time, Holly,” he said, quiet and soft. "But you need to get moving. This ain’t the place for someone with a troubled mind.”
"It's all over the internet, sir!" She says, almost over-enthusiastic as her brain tries to jog itself into selling the truth, and her hands seem to somehow reach even higher when she remembers she's at gunpoint.
At the command she - slowly, and painfully so - reaches down to her pocket, and pulls out a cell phone, it's screen cracked, it's wallpaper a eerie shot she'd been really proud of at the time, of a town that isn't there anymore, wiped from nearly every memory but her own, as far as she can tell.
She flips it to a forum, types, one handed, PORT LEIRY BLOOD FARM CONSPIRACY MEGATHREAD and hits enter, before holding it out to him, and when he takes it, she winces at his response.
"He's not," she says. "He's from England. But he's here. I know it."
That doesn't matter though, not right now, not while she's still staring bug-eyed at the gun. "I know it's not. It burned down years ago, or near enough, comes back pretty miraculously - but, uhm, sir, I run in uh, well you could call it a circle of independent investigators, sir, and they're pretty convinced this place is full of monsters - or evidence of them."
She can't really help but ask. "B... before I go, do you want to comment on that? And could I use your restroom?"
The apartment complex is fine, just fine, he thinks, as they walk up the stairs together. His hands remain in his pockets, and to any passersby or neighbors, they simply look like they're meant to be here. He watches the back of her head as they go, and when the invite comes, a foot slowly passes over the threshold to make sure before he crosses into the dwelling fully.
The mess laid out before him makes his nose wrinkle, and he does not wait for an introduction into the home, nor does he wait for any sort of hospitality - he simply paces and roams, drifting fingertips over bits of wire there, a sheet here.
Neurotic. It amuses him.
Lifting a bit of a longer wire in between his index and thumb, he moves back over to where Holly stands. "This has been an interesting glimpse inside your mind." He takes her hand and lifts it, turning it over as if gauging where best to do this. Of course, it would be more intimate and cliche to taste of her neck, but he finds he likes the idea of looking into her eyes while he feeds much more compelling.
He wraps the wire around her forearm, a few inches below the elbow to create a tourniquet of sorts, and ties it off neatly and tightly. This part will be.. interesting without compulsion. He'd never done it on an unwilling participant without compelling them to calm down or not scream. There is.. a thrill here.
Pressing a thumb to her wrist, he massages the veins while he works his jaw to allow his teeth to elongate. The whites of his eyes turn deep, dark red, and veins expand beneath them. "Do as you wish, but it will be easier for you if you do not fight back."
One hand curling around her wrist, and the other pressing into the small of her back, he brings his eyes to hers and sinks his fangs into her flesh.
Tensing when he grabs the wire. "Uh. thanks..." She says at first. "I think."
Holly winces as he tightens the blue-wrapped wire, pulling it tight. A shallow ache spreads outward from it as she watches him - Cam - raise her hand to his mouth and hang his jaw wide. Curious horror spreads across her features, and there's a tug at her arm at first, just one, before she realizes she won't be anywhere near strong enough to pull away. "Ow-!" the whine escapes.
A part of her tries to fight the reflex to pull free, another the urge to slap him upside the head. But feeling blood pull out of her, she also can't help but stare. Her face crinkles, watching him. "Uhm. Are you going to kill me? If so I'd like to maybe try and talk you out of it?'
She stumbles a bit, as her head swings, or the room does, and she feels his hand at her back catching her weight with a groan.
His upper lip twitches at the bulging of the bag. The body would need to be disposed of relatively soon. Lest the bag expand too far. It'd be a much bigger mess and smell than it was already. 'His whole egg in.' It reminds him of his time overseas before traveling here, to America. He purses his lips at the thought of a tv smashing someone's head in regarding her with a bit of scrutiny.
It was clear she was leaving out bits and pieces, if this was fully an accident, why wouldn't she call the police? Not that he himself trusted them, but still, Holly was human. Didn't most of them trust brutes with a gun? Why was she trying to get rid of him in such a chaotic fashion? Beyond that, how had she even managed to carry him this far? Honestly that fact was pretty impressive.
He gives a small shrug of his shoulder. "It isn't anything I'm not accustomed to." He answers, moving back to pick up the discarded electronic. "I'm guessing he is the one who caused the…*mess*? Like I said, I don't mind helping with cleanup. A bit of gore and blood doesn't bother me. Should probably get rid of him too before something rips and the stink starts to seep even more."
"Uh. Well."
Her eyes bug wide, and she shakes her head. "Uhm. There are... things with me that uh, that tend to happen."
She doesn't really know how to explain this. Somebody being surprisingly fine with murder is one thing, but it's a long shot between that and being comfortable with somebody telling them the skinless man chasing them is what made it happen.
"Sometimes I have these - er- you know - episodes. Like I black out." It's a lie, that. "Then I come to and boom. He's Jason Voorhees at the end of Final Chapter."
There's another question, clinging to her tongue, that she's afraid to ask. Why is he unbothered by this? "Do... you know... a good place around here? To uh... you know." She blows a raspberry while pantomiming shoving something into a bin.
Maja lowers herself to sit on the edge of the washer. She understands that her manner is not always for the faint of heart. A weakness in the soul, that does not like to know of the forces moving between invisible worlds. She thinks this one knows it, though. An alle ser heks, in her land. With sight beyond Grimhjarta's power. They have a prophet of sorts in their troupe, but she is also susceptible to the most common sicknesses.
She does not know what this woman is. An enigma, then.
So, a slew of questions hang on her tongue, but she must navigate them like a rough ocean. Snare them before the waters drown them. "Do they like to watch you? Are they teeth, or eyes, darkness, or ears?" Bodies misshapen. Perhaps none at all.
Her head snaps towards one of her own blithering reapers, muttering, without a mouth. "Stille, du." She turns back, to acknowledge that she cannot leave this room, until she knows. Curiosity writes the rules of her engagement. "They talk too much." Premature. They cannot have her until her final death, and she has yet to come close.
"N-no, they just..." She looks around them, sees nothing, and breathes a sigh. "They just... watch. Sometimes they try to get close, and... I run, I try to get away. They never touch me, but they just... follow me - like they might sometime." It's not fully true - while the things that chase her may not speak to her - something does. In static. In the blurting tones produced by old circuits and transistors. In the snow on a dead channel or the hiss of dead air.
When Maja answers her question though, she blinks.
"Oh, wow." Holly breathes out, like the creepy Washer Girl has just told her some piece of banal trivia about foxes or chinchillas. Nervously, she buries her hands in her jacket and takes a cautioned step forward.
"Mine don't speak, but I know what mine are from," she says. "I've seen what made them."
He can smell the sweat, the adrenaline, the stink of fear and nerves. It all makes for a confusing combination. He looks back to the red on the ground and furrows his brows further. "That doesn't look little." He says, not trying to impose himself too far. Though he supposes his continued pushing could be seen as a bit much. But the panic in her eyes tells him it might be needed. Her heart is racing. Had someone hurt her? Was that what this was about?
"Did…someone do this?" He glances back at the store front with scrutiny. And then she's going at her door again. There is a sickening popping noise followed by a wet crack and finally he leans slightly to the left, getting sight of a boot. Wait — the stagnant stench of death. He swallows, not scared, he could handle himself. Just surprised he supposes. Holly isn't exactly large and by the size of that boot, now dangling, whoever was in there had been.
"Here." He sets down the VCR disregarding if it gets damaged, he can afford to replace it, and carefully brushes her aside. Grabbing the thing keeping her van doors open, he opens them a bit further, nose wrinkling at the sight, the smell, and gives a hard push. Sufficiently the leg bends, foot now inside and he closes the door easily, latching it. "Are you hurt? Or is that just from him?" He asks as simple as noticing the weather, unfazed by the sight of death at this point.
"Uh... yeah." She says. "Not me." She shrugs. "Kind of not me." Right? She hadn't killed anybody. Unhappy accident. When he steps past however, she is powerless to stop him, instead raising her hands uselessly in protest. "Hey, wait-!"
She winces as the sound of a joint's rigor morits giving way, tendons popping like rubber bands. "Uh. I'm... fine." She looks him over; he's so casual right now, she's not sure if she's dreaming again. The man's upper half, concealed by a big trash bag now starting to puff from gasses releasing from it's smashed contents, sit still in the back of her van, making her glad she'd ripped the old shag out of it a year ago
"TV fell on his head." She says. It's technically what happened. She makes a box with her tiny arms. "Big uh, CRT one." A nervous laugh. "Smashed his whole egg in, like, completely."
Then another beat. "Why aren't you like, freaking out?"
