#interactions: rylan

[exanimate]

@mechbeaut​

Hands in his pockets, Ghost made his way down the snow covered sidewalk after spending hours in yet another cemetery. He would spend days sometimes reading gravestones in hopes that a name would jog his memory, but he would always leave with nothing; not even a single hint of an idea of who he was or how he died. This time was no different. The sun had set and everything in the far distance were mere shadows against the streetlights, the trees that had lost their leaves while the wind howled making for a rather eerie setting near the cemetery. His gaze had been downcast while he walked, but an unexplainable sensation soon had him lifting his head in curiosity. He felt a certain pull, which had never happened before, so he decided to follow it. Maybe this was finally it--a clue that would help him remember his past.

As the minutes passed and he drew closer to the source, the pull got stronger and he soon came to discover that it was coming from inside a house. He was no stranger to trespassing, because what did it even matter at this point? He was dead and nobody could see or hear him. He was his own company and had been for longer than he was even aware. Phasing through the walls of the house, Ghost found himself standing in the corner behind two girls who were sitting in front of a Ouija board with candles lit around them. They had their fingers on the pointer and, it seemed, were waiting for a response from the dead. Maybe if he actually knew how to touch things, he would give them a response, but he was shit out of luck. Besides, was this seriously all he’d been drawn to? A goddamn Ouija board? An unamused expression crossed his features and a sigh passed his lips. The sliver of hope he’d felt had been fleeting, and he was once again left feeling a combination of defeated and numb.

“Really? These things are bullshit,” Ghost said aloud to himself from where he stood in the shadows, giving a roll of his eyes. It still didn’t explain what the strange pull he felt was, but if these boards really were that legit, then wouldn’t more people have stories of encounters with the dead? Wouldn’t it be making the news and influencing more people to try it out?

[hopesang]

@mechbeaut​ said: “ i guess we’re stuck here, now. ”

The trial was dragging on particularly long this time around, with four generators still needing to be completed before the exit gates could be powered on. To make matters worse, it was down to just Kate and Rylan left. As optimistic as Kate wanted to remain, she knew that the odds were heavily stacked against them. It would take a long time to get all of the generators done, and that was if Michael didn’t catch them first. There was no telling where he was lurking around in the town of Haddonfield, but she wasn’t eager to leave the house and go venturing out into the pouring rain in the dead of night. It made it too hard to see and it would be just her luck to walk straight into Michael.

Sitting on one of the mattresses, Kate hugged her knees to her chest and looked over at Rylan, who had voiced the same thing she’d been thinking. “Y’know, I’m lucky that you’re my partner in a situation like this. It ain’t easy to repair those generators, but havin’ a mechanic sure does speed it up,” she said, fingers toying with the frayed ends of her sleeves while she stared out the window. There was only one way into the room they were in, so if Michael were to sneak up on them, they would have to jump. “Once it stop rainin’ so hard, we can scope out the gens left and figure out a plan. If we’re real careful, I think we can pull it off.”

[narcotlcs]

     It had all happened so fast. Felix had been in his trailer house, listening to the news on the cheap TV he had set up in the corner, when all of a sudden things outside had gotten wild. He heard gunshots and screaming, cars crashing and people crying. Curious, he had looked out his window to see what all the commotion was about. Fights were normal in the trailer park. It was the shady side of town; the type of place you wouldn’t want to go walking alone at night. This sounded way beyond a typical fight, and what he saw confirmed it. One of the guys who lived nearby was talking about seeing something as he frantically pointed to seemingly nothing. He was backing up, trying to get away, and then with a sudden turn of events he had taken a gun to his head and pulled the trigger, killing himself on the spot. Felix barely had time to react. Another person was driving a car straight into another one at full speed, and a truck was headed straight for his house, which Felix immediately fled from as the vehicle crashed through the walls. He didn’t know what the hell was happening, but he knew that staying here was no longer an option.

     Fast forward half an hour later, and Felix was in a community over, trying to find some place to go. There were cars and people cluttering the streets, many of them committing suicide and only adding to the chaos. It was painfully slow to try to drive by without hitting a car or person--especially when some people were trying to jump in front of him to get hit when he managed to pick up speed. Thus, he’d been forced to get out of his car and make a run for the nearest house he could find. The door proved to be locked, and rather than wasting time banging on it and hoping that someone would open up, he instead went around to the nearest window, grabbed a nearby large rock, and smashed it open. Without hesitance, he pulled himself up, being cautious of the pieces of glass that could easily cut him, and promptly found himself inside someone’s living room. It looked like a nice enough house. Average, but beautiful in comparison to the trash he lived in. As he turned to inspect the immediate area, he found himself staring down the barrel of a gun instead.

     “Whoa,” Felix exclaimed, his arms raised above his head in the typical way of telling someone not to shoot. “I thought we were using those on ourselves, not each other.” From what he could tell, whatever sickness this was (the same one he’d heard about on the news earlier) was causing people to take their own lives. Even worse news was that it was travelling fast and he didn’t know how it was spread. From the way the guy at the trailer park had acted though, pointing at nothing while looking scared out of his mind, it made him wary of keeping his gaze anywhere except the ground. He’d seen others behaving similarly. Maybe this young woman had clued in too, for the house looked pretty dark inside and she had probably been on her way over to close the blinds on the window he’d just crawled through.

@mechbeaut​

[narcotlcs]

@mechbeaut​ sent: “ there’s no turning back . ”

It had been just their luck to have the car break down on them in the middle of trying to reach their next destination: the hotel. If it hadn’t been picked over already, it wouldn’t make for a bad place to stay at for a little while before coming up with a more solid plan. They would just have to be cautious of the windows and make sure they’d shut them all with each room they checked out. For around fifteen minutes now, Felix had been trying to get the car started back up. It was all to no avail. Even if he wanted to try to fix it, being at least somewhat knowledgeable when it came to cars (though not as much as Rylan, who specialized in it), he wasn’t sure how either of them were going to do it while blindfolded. Plus, what if they didn’t have the right tools for the job?

“Fuck,” Felix groaned, leaning forward to rest his head in his hands. He knew Rylan was right in saying that there was no turning back now. They’d come too far to be able to simply walk back to the house they’d left around an hour ago. Besides, too many crazies had been showing up around the town and it just wasn’t safe anymore. A few seconds passed before the tattooed male straightened himself back up and slumped against the seat, his head turning to look over at Rylan. “We made it this far without even seeing where we’re driving, and this is what fucks us over? The car shitting the bed? So stupid.”

The car windows had been securely covered up so that they’d still be able to see inside of the vehicle, and navigating was made possible with the aid of a GPS system and a device that detected objects around the car. “Well, I see two options. Either we exit with our blindfolds and try to repair the car, or we figure out where we can go next that’s closer and then we haul ass over there.”

[narcotlcs]

@mechbeaut​ said: “I wasn’t actually that confident, it was more of a fifty-fifty.”

     Getting lost out in the woods was one thing, but getting lost in the woods while blind was on a whole new scale of dangerous. The rope Felix and Rylan been using to guide themselves had been cut by one of the crazies who wanted to make them open their eyes--to make them look at whatever the fuck was infecting people’s minds and making them suicidal. One look, however small, could be enough to seal their fate. He’d seen it happen too many times already. People were careless and stupid and took chances that they shouldn’t for complete strangers. Felix thought it was no wonder they were dropping like flies.

     The gun held in Felix’s hand had been knocked out of his grip and he began wrestling with the crazed man to keep him away from Rylan. His goal, it looked like, was to injure them seriously enough to get a chance to remove their blindfolds. Meanwhile, Felix had come up with a new plan. Without his gun, maybe he could get the guy in a chokehold, cut off his oxygen and kill him that way. At least, that was the plan until the sound of a gun went off. It was loud and close and startled him, and he felt the stranger go motionless against him. Reflexively, Felix stepped back and listened to the sound of the body thudding against the ground. Well, he’s fuckin’ dead, he thought. He was pretty sure that nobody else was around, so it had to have been Rylan who had felt for the gun on the ground, found it, and fired. His first question upon reaching the safety of walls was how she knew where to shoot, and the answer he got in response wasn’t one that he had hoped to hear.

     “A fucking fifty fifty? Jesus, Rylan. No big deal if you would’ve shot me instead, right?” Felix spoke, sarcasm clear as a bell in his tone. Was he mad? Nah, not really. In that type of situation, there wasn’t a hell of a lot a person could do and he knew it. The crazies, as he called them, had the advantage of vision and being able to predict movements more easily than those who were blindfolded. More than anything, Felix was just relieved that it had all worked out in his favor.