#character:skeleton

[wadeillinois]

—  LET’S POKE IT WITH A STICK!

Your mother says you’ve always been curious. You were always the first one with your hand raised in class, ready to challenge the teacher with some preposterous question that you knew she wouldn’t have the answer to (it bought you & your classmates some time to mess around)–sadly, your grades never reflected your supposed interest in the subject matter.

One teacher wrote on your report card in middle school that you were “highly engaged, but had little motivation to do anything other cause chaos” – well, she certainly had you wrong. You are motivated… just only when you want to be motivated. When it means something to you. School just wasn’t your calling. Yeah, you haven’t exactly found your calling– but you’re always searching.

It may not be your calling, but you’ve found something in Wade. A place where there are a million unanswered questions, and countless mysteries to solve. It fascinates you. You watch the news nightly, and you keep track of the happenings in an old notebook. If the police won’t get to the bottom of this, someone has to– and if that someone is you, so be it.

WE SHOULD SPLIT UP is currently a taken character. 

[wadeillinois]

—  WHAT’S YOUR NAME? AND WHO’S YOUR DADDY?

Wade has never known a man like you, and honestly, they probably never wanted to. People ask you how you’ve still got that thick accent after living in the United States for so long, and you only chuckle in response. It is not a light-hearted sound, rather, it’s one that sends chills up the spine of anyone in earshot. But you know that, and you like that. Intimidation is your craft. Perhaps that’s why you’ve been so successful in all your various business ventures. You scare the living shit out of people.

The ostentatious houses in the “gated communities” you’ve built near the edge of town are selling faster than you can build them, which has caused quite a stir within the small, tight-knit community. You really couldn’t care less about Wade, nor anyone who lives there. This is simply a paycheck for you, and you’ll do whatever you have to do to keep things moving in the right direction.

You’ve got plans to build more, and more homes on the land you’re constantly acquiring in Wade, and its surrounding towns. Soon enough this place will need a couple yoga studios, and a Whole Foods to accommodate all the wealthy soccer moms you’ll have cruising around in their Mercedes, creating unthinkable traffic. You’ll probably buy a house in Switzerland, or something to celebrate.

SHARK is currently a taken character.

[wadeillinois]

—  TOO YOUNG TO TALK ABOUT THE GOOD OLD DAYS.

You carried Wade High School to nationals two years in a row. You were the best quarterback coach had ever seen, and you were practically on the fast track to the National Football League. No father could have been prouder of their son; no teenaged boy could have been so beloved, or envied by his peers.

It seemed like everything was falling into place, just as it began falling apart. The pain was like nothing you’d ever felt. You fell to the ground, and you actually let go of the ball. You never let go of the ball. People call that injury an athlete’s death. You were convinced you’d done nothing more than sprained it. Unfortunately, you weren’t so lucky; the tendon was completely severed. Recovery was a longer road than you anticipated, and you had to sit out most of your senior year– the year you were really supposed to shine. The team didn’t make it to the championship without you. You were the backbone of that team, after all. Wade hasn’t had a good season since, and you haven’t had a season at all.

Colleges quickly retracted their extravagant offers when the word got out; no one wanted a flight risk like you as their starting quarterback. You ended up at a nearby, small college that didn’t even have a football team, dozing off through most of your classes. You studied physical education, but haven’t gotten a job teaching yet… You haven’t even applied. Instead, you coach football at the recreation center every year, and you tutor high schoolers in calculus on the side for a little extra cash. You struggle to go one conversation without bringing up your glory days, and you (despite your strong leanings towards logical thinking) still holdout hope you’ll make it to the pros. An impossible dream. It would be admirable if if wasn’t so fucking pathetic.

PEAKED IN HIGH SCHOOL is open, and available for application. Please bear in mind this character is African American.

[wadeillinois]

— SARCASTIC, MR. KNOW IT ALL.

We get it, you have better music taste than us. And you liked that band before they were popular. None of your tattoos have any real meaning, and you like to incorrectly quote long dead philosophers.

You were stuck between two dreams– writing the next Great American Novel (screenplay, novels are dead) from the most comfortable chair in the local Starbucks, or opening a bar where most of the drinks contain gin, because gin is like… super versatile, and call back to like… Ernest Hemingway, who is, of course, your idol. You actually achieved one (much to your dad’s surprise– oh, yeah, that’s right, major daddy issues) in the Conifer Lounge. You basically had to gamble every penny you had, and even a few you didn’t, to turn the once dive into something kind of fantastic.

Now you spend most of your time washing leftover dishes, or putting in the liquor order, attempting to keep the place afloat. You make literally just enough money to get by every month, but you’re working on promotions, and custom cocktails to really get the place booming. If only these Wade-ians were at least somewhat cultured. Throw another keg of Bud Light on to that order.

FUCKING HIPSTER BULLSHIT is open, and available for application.

[wadeillinois]

—  AND I LOOKED, AND BEHOLD, A PALE HORSE!

It’s a wonder you, and the big man upstairs are even on speaking terms. You seem to think it’s okay to break any, and all of your vows as long as no one is watching. Your vows to God? Don’t remember them. Your vows to your wife? Well, you were crossing your fingers when you said those, so that doesn’t matter. It’s not a sin if no one is there to see it.

You spend more nights at the Cherry Hill Motel than in your own home. You keep your wife up most of the time worrying about where you are, and then you lie to her, and make sure she thinks you were taking care of the church finances, or wiping down the pews, or some shit. She’s too proud to be the pastor’s wife. If only she knew.

The occasional nosebleed you have that comes out of nowhere is suspicious. You always have your hand in the donation basket. You are, to put it in layman’s terms, a fucking fraud. It’s a wonder the people of Wade haven’t caught on. Those who attend your church think of you as the closest thing to God they’ll ever meet. You’ve let that go to your head. But hey, if God wasn’t looking out for you, you’d have been caught by now, right?

MAN OF GOD is currently a taken character. 

[wadeillinois]

—  THE SUN ALSO RISES.

You come from a place where the grass is greener than it is in Wade. Your family moved here so that your father could take the promotion he’d been dying to have in Chicago. You spend most of your time alone, as he’s always commuting back, and forth, and your mother is always somewhere else– mentally, if not physically. You two have always had trouble, and you think it’s because of the scar. You don’t like to hide it. She doesn’t like to look at it. She tells you to cover it up; it’s a constant reminder of the pain she’s felt for you since the day you were born. You think of it more as a badge of honor.

When you people talk about you, they talk about you like you are some kind of blessing from heaven above. Like God himself has his eye on you. They talk about you like you weren’t meant to be here. Then again, maybe you weren’t. But you are here, and you’re determined to make the most of it while you can.

You write at a little desk in the corner of your room, where the world is quiet enough for you to transport yourself into another one. To go back to where the grass is greener. Your heart, someone’s heart, flutters at the thought.

TRANSPLANT currently a taken character.

[wadeillinois]

—  NO REST FOR THE WICKED.

Your parents think you bartend at the Conifer every night, and the cash you come home with in bundles was tossed at you by drunk, rowdy customers. While that sentiment is true, you’ve only stepped in the Conifer Lounge a handful of times. Still, of the three (maybe four times you’ve been there) you managed to swindle the manager out of an employee t-shirt; it’s really helped sell the story to your family. And to think, all you had to do was bat your eyelashes for it. You don’t worry that mom, and dad would drop in on you at the bar, anyway, they’d never come visit you there, in that den of sin. In reality, you spend your nights somewhere far more sinister; you work just outside of Wade at the “Gentlemen’s Club” under a hokey, made up name.

If they knew the truth, you would be out of the house at the very least, and at the very worst shipped off to the nearest convent. You tell yourself you like it’s better this way. What they don’t know can’t hurt them. You still carry the guilt they instilled in you through that oh-so-Catholic upbringing, though you’ve buried it deep within you. It lays dormant as you, yourself have become something inherently sacrilegious.

You drink. You smoke. You gamble. Men think they can take you like a religious offering, but you are a hard pill to swallow. You burn all the way down.

DAMSEL IN DISTRESS is open, and available for application. Please bear in mind this character is Latinx.

[wadeillinois]

—  THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT.

Okay, so you figured you’d found yourself a pretty sweet gig when you moved to Wade. After all, you worked homicide in Chicago for almost ten years, this was supposed to be your “retirement” before your actual retirement. You would have retired if you could have; you’re so burnt out. This was supposed to be a cushy desk job, it was supposed to be your time to settle down, and actually enjoy the little things in life for once. And yet, you still found yourself standing over Josie Johnson’s dead body, scratching your head.

You never even thought you’d see another dead body, let alone have another murder– well, according the coroner it wasn’t homicide, but your gut is telling you differently– on your hands. Sometimes you wonder if death follows you; from the time you were young, it felt like he was always a few steps behind. You’ve run towards him before, but now you’re back-pedaling. You’re not the same reckless as you once were. You just want to live in peace.

The frightened residents of Wade are all looking to you, and yet they still don’t know if they should even trust you– some city slicker who couldn’t care less about them, or about Wade. But the thing is… You do care. You care just as much as you did back in the day, it’s not something you can turn off, as much as you wish you could. Caring keeps you up at night, and has you drinking at eleven in the morning on your days off to take the edge off. You don’t want these people to have to see the things you’ve seen. You’ve got to protect them.

GUN BELT is currently a taken character.