who: @rivcrlethe
when: six months ago
where: Lethe Ink
When Bora was handed an address--a no-man's-land, he'd been told--and ordered to check it out, he'd figured the Jolly Rogers were planning to shut the place down. At the very least, he expected to have to find targets there, at some point, no-man's-land be damned. So even on a reconnaissance mission, he'd prepared for a fight, a gun hidden underneath his coat and every sense on alert as he approached the location.
What he didn't expect was it being Lethe Ink.
Pushing open the door, he found not rival gangsters but a familiar face. "Bil, what the hell's going on here?!"
Back before Jessica got involved with Famine, she got involved with Fazal. Though they saw each other for close to a year, to this day the Femenias cousins still know him only as “Jess’ summer fling”. (“Summer fling #3”, to be specific.)
PRE-PARTY ‘FIT CHECK. Jess should’ve focused on styling her hair but very much didn’t. + Fazal doesn’t like photos but occasionally smiles for them. But only when she says “please”.
RUNNING WITH THE HIGH ROLLERS. Fazal making friends + Jessica making eyes at the Casino de Monte-Carlo.
[ Cheeky lil’ companion post to this. Template linked in source. ]
TASK #1: NOTHING HAUNTS US LIKE THE THINGS WE DON’T SAY. ( task )
18TH MAY 1888. DARKROOM, ANDY SHARMA’S FLAT, LONDON.
TRIGGER WARNINGS: body harm, body horror, gore, mutilation
( 🎵)
ANDY MADE IT home right before it began to rain. The moonlight that had followed him home was now completely gone, and it was by muscle memory alone that house key swiftly met door lock, letting him soundlessly make his way inside, leave his boots and coat by the side of the door, and double-lock it behind him.
Anand Sharma’s job for the Police used to be different. Scotland Yard had their own photographers, but after Emma Elizabeth Smith’s death in Whitechapel last month, they had been calling on him more and more. And while he appreciated that they liked how he worked, they tended to call him for murders—and people disappeared every week in the East End. People who the newspapers figured wouldn’t be missed. People who politicians believed wouldn’t be remembered.
And what he’d photographed earlier today on the outskirts of London, the last vestiges of fog dissipating in the morning gloom as he clutched his coat closer to him, and his camera bag even closer, still chilled him: on public property yet somehow untouched for months, a haphazard dumping ground for bodies. Some were already dug up from where they’d been buried under wet, packed soil, others still trapped underneath. And while the detective at the scene had excused him from photographing them in greater detail later, while capturing the scene, Andy had witnessed one thing that linked every dead body together: a thin knife-made line under each neck, creating unnatural smiles on bodies that had decomposed weeks before.
It had been terrible, and horrifying, and sad. And while the detectives at the scene had deduced fairly quickly that this dumping ground wasn’t the work of whoever had committed the last Whitechapel murder, it was disturbing, wasn’t it? That people could disappear for days and weeks and months and no one would be the wiser—until an unfortunate soul and their hound stumbled upon their bodies, hours and hours from home, weeks and weeks dead.
///
Andy had grown up thinking that photography was an art, but on dark and stormy nights like this one, it was a science. As the photographer worked on developing the final print of the night, the image slowly appearing in deepening grays beneath the crimson light dangling above it, he stood from his seat. Letting out a yawn, Andy stretched his limbs until they let out a single, satisfying crack, right before something caught his eye in one of the prints hanging from the wire to dry.
Eyebrows pulling together, Andy reached for the print, unclipping it from where it hung. And that was when he saw it: a slick-wet photograph of the crime scene he had witnessed earlier, pale body after body after body, clothes askew and tinted darker where blood had dripped down long ago—and at the very edge of the photo, a blurred shape.
While it could have been a person, having the height of one, it had no face. The space where eyes and nose could have been was smudged as if by a determined thumb; but below, stark at the bottom of its face, was black and black and black. A horrible gaping maw.
A chill ran down his spine, and Andy nearly dropped the photograph, only his reflexes keeping him from losing his hold. “What the—?” Breath escaped him in a shaky gust, and he set the print aside, reclipping the photograph further down the wire, then reached for the next. And the next.
The shape wasn’t there in every photograph. Not in the close-up photos he’d taken. But look, there it was again, closer to him somehow. And again. A smudged shape never appearing directly in the light, nor treading on the ground. A strange, indefinable, indecipherable something in the corners of his vision, just out of sight.
///
Growing up, Andy’s mother had told him ghost stories to warn him to stay on well-lit roads at night and not stray too far from home, but his family did believe in them—not as a curiosity or a sideshow attraction the way that others often did nowadays, but as an ordinary, yet sad, part of life and death. Bhoots were souls tethered to earth, having lost their way on the road to their next life. Souls that shouldn’t be forced to leave, because everyone deserved a chance, living or dead. Even those torn violently from life had to be treated with caution and wariness, but also respect.
But as the last photograph finally hung from the wire, Andy’s hand resting on the doorknob as he readied himself to leave the now warmly lit darkroom, he couldn’t help feeling a chill run down his spine.
Because he had felt something that morning: a presence deep in the copse of trees behind him and the police officers, where the sun hadn’t reached—something eerie and inhuman, watching him. He had felt it through his scarf and his coat, the way every hair on his body had stood on end—but turning around, staring out into the darkness before him, he’d seen nothing.
Perhaps the horror of the dumping ground was still clinging to him. Photographing crime scenes always took a little something out of Andy; it always made him miss his family more, wishing that he could take the fastest carriage home and pull his mother into his arms for the longest goddamn hug. Then Nisha, and Priti, and Sunny, and Papa, too, even if he grumbled about how much taller their Anand was every single time.
But as Andy gazed out at the darkroom he had mapped out over years and years of working there, it felt like the edges of the room were darker somehow—as if the shadows he knew as well as he knew his own, were nebulously creeping towards him, inch by inch.
The photographer exhaled a shaky chuckle, his hand still on the door knob, lips cracked and dry. “Well, I suppose Daya’s right—I do need to get that camera checked, don’t I,” he said aloud. But his laugh was breathless in the nearly empty room, and when he turned off the light, stepped outside, and closed the door behind him, it wasn’t only his hands that shook, but his courage, too.
Date: During the 72nd Games
Location: The Capitol, during one of the Games parties
They were six days in, Tiberius only had one tribute left in the Game. the first dying from an idiot mistake landing with a blown off limb and bleeding to death. So there was really only one left, and Tiberius was doing what he could to make sure the kid stayed alive.
Between conversing with the Capitol socialites to sponsor his one remaining tribute, he took a break, finding Silver Ostro by themselves, who wasn’t paying much attention to the Games on the screen. “Silver,” The man croons, sitting beside the other. Tiberius always respected Silver, they did a lot of good for this nation and it didn’t go unnoticed. If Tiberius were smart like that, he’d do the same. But he’s not, leaving more room for individuals like Silver. “Another beautiful Games, is it not?”
