with: @boneyardstarters
when: may 20th, 1996
where: the riviera casino & hotel
heather stood stiffly in the corner, a pink dress that felt at once too short and too suffocating. she had no desire to try her hand at the cards, memories of late nights being taught how to play by her drunk father clouding any enjoyment she might get from it. in her hand, an empty glass with just the clues of what was a negroni. the bitter campari still coated her tongue, and she itched for another one. if she was going to play the role of sociable, nice and harmless little heather, she would need a few more. "lovely party." she said to the person resting next to her, a smile that almost didn't look sardonic. "still looking for the prawn cocktails, though."
her face hurt like a fucking bitch when she woke up. for a minute, all she wanted was to sink back into the white (now certainly blood stained) sheets, to find the half empty bottle of whiskey in her kitchen and self medicate until not just the pain, but the entire day had faded away. but the memory of her father made her jump awake, stumbling out of bed like if running from a night terror. the memory of him back then, drunken eyes and quiet rage. and the memory of him (and was it really him?) then. there was no reason to be at the newspaper today, a rare day off, but heather still went through the motions as usual, button up shirt, silk tights, hair in a practical up-do. she cleaned up her face with a bit of the whiskey. a good enough reason to take a sip. she wandered the streets, hunting for a cup coffee (or perhaps for a shadow, a memory). finding it in an unassuming quaint little place. her eyes searched through the few people there with the precision of a scalpel, always cutting and precise, looking for clues that would make most people call her paranoid (but what is it that they say about if they're really out to get you?). she sipped the espresso. it burned down, flavorless. "good. it would be awkward if i was the only one with eyes here." she said, unrepentant. a few years ago she would have cowered at the confrontation, but working for the lv sun came with a sense of unabashedness she didn't have before. maybe it was the desire to emulate alice, or at least a version of alice that existed in her head.
where : soft & hard ice cream parlor.
when : may 3rd
who : @boneyardstarters
despite the seemingly disastrous weekend, diego was enjoying vegas. it was a welcome change of pace from los angeles. there was hustle and bustle, he still went on auditions, but there wasnβt that edge that made him want to be better than everyone else. he didnβt have his mama whispering in his ear, pitting him against his baby sister. his manager and agent still called him on the payphones at the townhouses, but after brief conversations, heβd usually hang up and go about his day. today, however, after wandering around for a bit, he found himself at the ice cream parlor. he wanted to decide on a flavor, but as he stared at the case, he heard someone clear their throat from behind him, and a shadow eclipsing his own. turning around, he looks at the person behind him. βwhat would you recommend?βΒ he asked, gesturing to the case of ice cream flavors in front of him. βiβm torn between bubblegum or honeycomb.β
the scarring wasn't the worst heather ever had. as a wild child growing up in a forgotten little town between new york and boston, she always had scrapped knees, elbows, even her face. of course, they normally weren't mysterious claw marks. still, there was not much to do besides going along her days, digging deeper, clawing her way out of another mystery. and, when it all got too much, she ran from the office with an excuse - some coffee, a snack, anything. that's how heather found herself at the ice cream parlor, behind a clearly indecisive man. "coffee." she answered, pushing the sunglasses up her head to stare at the stranger. "the dark chocolate is not half bad either... though i'm not sure you would like either of them."
many times, heather has been accused of poking open wounds. first by her father, drunk and angry, then by her professors, reading pieces that were too angry and personal, and finally by her editor in chief, with a tired sigh. it wasn't her fault that she could never leave well enough alone. and in a city like vegas, with too many dark corners and shady people, that particular personality trait was a dangerous one. still, there was nothing wrong in making friendly questions to a patron of the weekend of horrors. even when that person happened to be connected to one of the mafia bosses heather was investigating. "hello there! can i ask how are you feeling about the horror fair? has it been an enjoyable weekend so far?" her best, most harmless smile.
heather didn't like to think about the whole vampires among us thing. she had inherited the notion that if you didn't talk about something it would eventually disappear from her grandparents, though to be frank, it hadn't happened so far. still, when her work included walking around at odd hours, and getting herself in not totally safe environments, it seemed better to forget about the blood sucking being things.
today, she wasn't really after clues or a newsworthy occasion. she had seen a movie, and afterwards been filled with the desire to walk around, feeling the cool night air of vegas, the only time of the day when the city didn't seem so oppressively warm. her eyes were closed when they opened suddenly, the noise of someone next to her almost causing heather a heart attack. "jesus fucking christ, you scared the shit out of me!" she said, sighing loudly, terror slowly draining out of her body as she saw Γ‘lvaro.
as a teenager, heather had gone to the movie theatre almost religiously, a dark celluloid chapel amidst the hot chaos of vegas. she didn't have much time for movies anymore, or the teenage need to hide in darkness. but she couldn't deny the comfort of a movie after long days and long nights, getting lost in fictional horrors to forget the real ones... which is why she was waiting in line to buy popcorn before a showing of the shinning. (she would have gone for the dracula showing, but that felt a bit... wrong). "have you seen this one before?" she asked the person next to her in line, still in full interviewing mode from the day. "it's really good."
where: downtown vegas, just outside the weekend of horrors
heather was no stranger to nightmares, but they had been a particularly annoying occurrence in the past year or so. her already short sleeping hours were cut drastically, and this night, that meant leaving home in the morning looking like the dead with a half packed bag. now, almost done with work for the day, her finger itched for something. she had a pack of her clover cigarettes (the only kind that didn't make her stomach churl with memories of her father, but rather the smell of her grandmother's old couch and curtains), but unfortunately no lighter. with a sigh, heather walked on the edges of the fair, trying to find anyone else still lingering, and moving closer to the first person she saw. "hey, do you have a light?"
unnerved. that's how heather felt. crawling out of her skin to be more specific, completely fucking insane, in a shakespearean nightmare og her own creation ( what was that that hamlet said? my father β methinks I see my father . . . ) as her hands reached for the clocked figure, relief and disappointment both exploded at the pit of her stomach. damiar. not exactly who she was expecting, but perhaps not the worst person to have found. especially when she felt like a fucking lunatic.
"did you see that person?" she asked, voice shaking with a tinge of despair. "they were wearing a hood, just down the street, did you see them?"
where: downtown vegas, next to the food stalls in the weekend of horrors
heather's expression was one of palpable relief at the sight of rory. being tasked with an article about the horror fair had thrown heather in for a completely unpleasant loop, stalling her investigation for a couple precious days. she felt like she had talked to a thousand people today, mostly edgy teenagers, and was ready to have a long break. with a funnel cake. "hey there!" she said to her flatmate, sliding beside her in a bench. "are you having fun? do you want some funnel cake? it's kind of disgusting to be honest... but the caramel sauce helps."
as a kid, heather loved halloween. it meant her birthday, but also carving pumpkins, drinking her grandmother's warm tea, trips to new york to buy new winter clothes, her mother's voice as she read out scary stories and cuddled her close at night... she hadn't enjoyed halloween since moving to vegas, and the whole weekend of horrors thing was, honestly, getting to her nerves. nonetheless, there were fluff pieces to be written, as she was reminded extensively by their editor, so there heather was, with her notepad and a contrived expression. "hey there! do you have a couple words about the weekend of horrors?"
heather would like to think of herself as a friendly person, a nice person. that's what she had spent most of her life as, the easygoing child in the playground, the university student with friends everywhere, the girl who bakes cookies and visited old ladies... but in the last couple of years that girl seemed more like a fantasy than a memory. still, she was good at making her smile seem genuine, if just a tad too sharp. "samantha, hey!" she exclaimed, waving wildly to the editor. "fancy seeing you in a place that doesn't smell like stale coffee."
Alice couldn't help but chuckle to herself when she saw the excitement in Heather's eyes. Make no mistake--no reporter with a conscious was pleased with death and destruction, quite the opposite. Anyone that knew the brunette well enough knew that she would much rather have the world be a peaceful place--but that wasn't the cards that they'd been dealt, not here in Vegas. No, rather it was an excitement to get another piece of the puzzle, to get one more step closer to solving the whole thing. Of course, Alice had recently been made aware of a puzzle piece from her brother but she didn't dare share it with Heather, nor anyone else. She couldn't. The last thing she was going to do was put her family in any sort of danger.
Once they were in the parking lot, Alice fished her keys out of her purse, which were buried amidst a sea of notepads, pens, her wallet, and one of Rhea's toys that she always had on hand--you have to be prepared to distract a toddler at any moment, after all. Unlocking the doors to her 1994 Ford Taurus, she sat down in the driver's seat and fired up the car. "If we're lucky, we'll get there before the coroner does."
in the old, unstable elevator of the sun, heather pressed the ground floor button one too many times, practically floating with the new goal she had in mind. βtwelve days ago, yesβ¦ at least that we know of.β she added the last part with a grimace. for all of alice's tricks, all their sources and goodwill, heather frequently found herself afraid of missing something, leaving a body ( a somebody ) behind. the police were not happy with their snooping around, but that only made heather more determined. there was something rotten in vegas. and she wanted to cast a light in that darkness once and for all.
she sighed as the two got inside the car, starting to rummage her purse for the notebook she threw into it carelessly. heather loved alice's car. it was so different from her own temperamental beetle, long and sleek and not in an red color she didn't have the money to cover up. βI'm sure you can ignore a few red signsβ¦ I really don't want to deal with the csi team today.β she quipped, grimacing a bit at the end of the sentence. driving all the way into the desert only to be stopped by the cops' pet scientists was something she was becoming all too familiar with.
Though frowned upon by local law enforcement, Alice kept a police scanner on her desk that she covertly listened to throughout the day--that's how she knew where to be and when and she knew that the cops hated to see her on the scene. They saw her as a vulture--and maybe, in their eyes, that was a fair characterization. Naturally, though, there was always more that lay underneath the surface.
This morning, she was sitting at her desk, sipping on her third cup of coffee when she heard noise over the scanner. She figured it was just another classic armed robbery--happened all the time in Vegas. Still, she turned it up just a smidge, just in case. Then, she heard it: We've got a 10-66 at Red Rock Canyon. Alice's eyes lit up. A 10-66 was the code that referred to notifying the medical examiner. That means they had another body.
heather was biting a pencil absentmindedly, clicking through computer files with a bit more force than necessary. the past few months, her editor kept giving her menial assignments, flower shows and fluff pieces, nothing close to what her mind was truly set on. perhaps it was for the better β keep her true story close to the chest, only between her and alice. still, she couldnβt bear to think of flower prices when she knew something was out there.
alice's voice made her jump up, eyes wide with eagerness. "another one?" her hands moved clumsily over the messy desk, grabbing her trusted notebook and an old camera and shoving them on the bag. heather was tougher than she looked. crime scenes, even the ones filled with blood and gore, were just pieces of a puzzle. what really irked her was the timing, the tragedy, the inability to do anything. which is why she was trying to do something.
βis it outside the city?β the past few days, heather had been trying her hand at a geographical profile of the crimes, something that involved a map, some pins and way too much red string only to make her grumpy and nowhere closer to a lead.Β
@boneyardstarters
kenny + ??? : april 5, blockbuster video @ midday
cap : β
the register was lonely up until 2 o'clock, when the high schoolers were relieved from their studies and flocked to the store in search of a flick to get them through the grueling nature of algebra coursework. not that kenny could relate - she was a professional at neglecting her studies, and she didn't envy anyone who had to devote any of what could be their free time to it. she much preferred sitting on her ass all day and preoccupying herself with either her gameboy pocket or assisting a wayfaring stranger in selecting their perfect joint for family movie night. she was doing the same thing as always: leaning back in the spinning chair behind the counter, propping her brand new sneakers up on the flat, recently cleaned surface, and indulging in some well-earned true silence after she discarded her processor in favor of focusing on evolving her charmander. whenever the bell dinged and signified the presence of a new customer, kenny didn't blink an eye until their shadow eclipsed her handheld console. "shit," she murmured, pushing away from the counter and completing a full spin in her chair before she caught herself and went to scramble for her processor. "sorry, my bad," dumb laughter left her lips as she slid the implant up to where it'd snag on her skull. "aloha. what, uh, what can i do ya for? let me guess... something to do with movies? or are you just here for the snacks like me?"
heather would hardly consider herself a movie buff, much more likely to find entertainment on a book or her own over-active mind, but she couldn't deny the appeal of the silver screen. as a child, after she had just moved to vegas and met the man who was her father, she used to spend hours at the nearest movie theatre, hiding from the heat and the sun and being taken by dizzying colors, music, noise. to this day, there were a couple of movies from that time that she kept returning to, a safe heaven when everything else got too chaotic. and things had been absurdly chaotic for the last couple of years. "hm, hi." she said, an awkward smile and wave to the girl in the counter. "a movie, yeah. david lynch?" it sounded more like a question than a request
HEY, i think i just saw HEATHER JONES walking down the strip. stop by to catch up and youβll learn the TWENTY SIX YEARS OLD is working as a JOURNALIST at THE LAS VEGAS SUNΒ and lives in SOLSTICE APARTMENTS. given they are IDEALISTIC but IMPULSIVE, itβs likely that they ARE NOT a vampire. on the flipside, rumor has it that SHE ACCIDENTALLY KILLED HER FATHER, AFTER DISCOVERING HE WAS A VAMPIRE WITH CONNECTIONS TO LAβS CRIMINAL UNDERBELLY and it keeps them looking over their shoulder. i bet you can find them tearing up the dance floor to THE CHILD IS GONE BY FIONA APPLE and youβll know why theyβre called THE YOUNG GUN.Β βΎ .βΛ emily bader. cis woman + she/her. bisexual + scorpio.
βΎ .βΛ basics
name: heather catherine jones brown
age: twenty six
gender: cis woman
pronouns: she/her
sexuality: bisexual
profession: journalist
hometown: chester, connecticut
religion: relapsed catholic
character inspo: fox mulder (the x files), natalie scatorccio (yellowjackets), donna hayward (twin peaks), veronica sawyer (heathers), theo decker (the goldfinch).
extras: pinterest
βΎ .βΛ family
mother: amelie jones, mother, literature teacher, deceased
father: henry brown, cassino accountant, deceased
pets: her beloved black cat called ivan karamazov jones
βΎ .βΛ physique
faceclaim: emily bader
height: 5Β ft 4" / 163Β cm
eyes: large hazel eyes, with an effortless innocence that must be hiding something else
hair: long and brown, normally held up haphazardly by a pen or pencil
βΎ .βΛ about
heather jones was the product of a one-night stand. half connecticut frost, half desert fever, never quite at home in either. until she was eight, she lived in a creaking colonial house with her mother and grandparents: slanted floorboards, dust-filtered light through lace curtains, and the distant toll of sunday bells. the kind of place where grief hid in trunks at the top of the stairs, and secrets were spoken only in the hush between hymns. she was a teacherβs pet with scabbed knees and ink-stained fingers, nose always tucked paperback.
her mother rarely spoke of the man out west. heather imagined her father as a ghost, or worse, a gambler.
and then, her mother died.
vegas was a different kind of cathedral from the ones she was used to.
heather arrived at twelve and learned to pray in neon: slot machines for confessionals, motel bibles stuffed with sin.Β she never became a vegas girl, not really. but she understood it. she kept to the shadows, watching from the sidelines as sequins winked and dice hit felt. she learned fast: every showgirl has a mask, every winner pays eventually. and in the end, thereβs no glamour that isnβt half rot.
by twenty-six, sheβs a reporter at the las vegas sun, a press pass on her hip, cigarette between her lips, and too many headlines in her back pocket. she types fast, drinks faster, and files stories like confessionals sheβs too scared to read out loud. she doesnβt believe in god, but she believes in ghosts. especially her own. ( the night she found out what her father really was, and what she did to him. the day she stopped sleeping with the lights off. )
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