Alex Fisher
Its been a little while, a good solid
week really since Molly and Alex had their brief encounter with the
horrors in that basement on a night out gone south. They had not parted
on the friendliest of terms, because in truth they could not agree on
what precisely to do about their shuffling opponents, and in the end
Alex had won out with the dial of a phone and the summoning of the local
boys in blue.
The zombies were killed of course, when they could
not be stopped they were gunned down, and their actions put down to the
berserker rage of men well and thoroughly on a drug induced frenzy. Alex
had remained for most of it, and only when the creatures were well and
truly dead, did she depart.
But they had shared numbers, and Alex
had said she would call, and soon, but as days turned into that full
week perhaps Molly had thought Alex had simply decided to retreat from
that looming darkness, to return to her simpler life. She might be
surpised if that was the case, when Alex called her up, and asked her to
meet downtown at the Denver fire department, or as it was known to
some, House 52.
It wasn't right to the modern building with its
many bays that Alex called her, but to a park just on the opposite side
of the road, it was there, under a tin roof stood Alex, before an
outdoor grill with tong's in hand and the sizzle of meat upon the grill.
She was dressed in her uniform tonight, obviously on duty, at her
shoulder sat a radio, ready to call her back to the house at a moments
notice.
But here she was, grilling in the face of the oncoming
storm, waiting as she gazed into the flame, her hair pulled back in a
simple, utlitarian pony tail.
Molly Toombs
The entire day and into the night had
promised storms, but not yet delivered them to this part of the state.
The sky had still been overcast all day, though, and proved to remain so
tonight. The moon and stars were blotted out from the sky by heavy
black clouds that sometimes rumbled promise but never seemed to deliver.
So,
when Alex called up and asked Molly to meet her at a park she was
skeptical. But, reassured that there was a roof under which to grill,
and lured with the prospect of a firefighter's grilled meats (everyone
knows firefighter grills like whoa), Molly agreed.
She arrived
dressed in a pair of khaki shorts (for despite the threats of rain it
was still warm and humid out) and a quarter-sleeved black shirt with a
boatline neck. Her hair was done up in a ponytail to keep her neck
ventilated in the damp warm air.
She waved to Alex when she
approached, and smiled too. As far as anyone could tell, she had
forgotten the zombie encounter entirely. Or refused to let it spoil her
fun. Or put on a really good act, one of those. Her eyes were already
trained in on the grill when she stepped near enough to Alex for
conversation.
"Hey, thanks for inviting me to the BBQ. How you been?"
Alex Fisher
Alex's
uniform was the a casual thing, a blue work t-shirt and a pair of brown
trousers, oddly enough held aloft by a pair of suspenders. When Molly
approached, dressed in considerably more casual attire and waved the
woman responded with a brief wave of the tong's. An act that was casual,
relaxed, as if she had chosen to forget about the situation as well, or
at least decided not to hold it against the woman who approached.
On
the grill was a veritable cornucopia of meats, from sausages to steak
to simple honest hamburgers there was considerably more meat there then
the two of them could conceivably pack away. But then, being in uniform,
it was likely that Alex was cooking for a whole lot more then just two.
She offered Molly a quick, sloppy grin as she let her eyes fall back to
the work at hand and nodded.
"No problem, theres always way more
here then the guys can conceivably eat. Bigger eyes then their stomachs,
thats for damn sure." She said as she turned the sausages.
"I
haven't slept well all fucking week." She says, though her features do
not betray that fact. "But otherwise I've been good, workin, drinking,
you know how it goes." She said as she tilted her head and glanced at
Molly.
"You?"
Molly Toombs
When she was
invited to meet in the park directly across the street from a fire
station, Molly had guessed that the grilling situation was intended for
the others on duty at the house. That might be part of why she was
still baring leg even though the sun had gone down (she still had the
excuse of early summer humidity, at least). Oh Molly, you scandalous
thing.
There was a comment about not sleeping all week, and
Molly's eyes flashed dark humor for a second and she looked like she
might have had a comment for it (Oh honey just you wait. I take pills to calm myself down enough to sleep at night.).
Instead, she shifted her eyes down from Alex's when asked how she had
been herself. Molly busied them with the visual surveying burgers (oh
yes, it was Memorial Day weekend, she was definitely eating a burger)
and clasped her hands together behind her back.
"Oh, you know. Between work and raising a puppy--"
She
was holding a leash, by the way. This wasn't mentioned earlier, but
she did bring her dog along, because it would be cruel to leave a
7-month-old puppy of a large and lanky dog breed cooped up in an
apartment while you went to a park. If Florence could
understand the betrayal, she would never forgive her mistress. The dog
was sniffing around near the bottom of the grill, tail wagging.
"--not
much else. I just read in my spare time, really." She shrugged
casually, then glanced around. "So, ah, how long until the others are
supposed to come to join us?" It's difficult to tell if she's asking to
gauge how long they have to talk, or if she wants to check out firemen.
Alex Fisher
Molly
had come as they would say, well prepared. Dressed in her short's, with
her dog, and being as short and curvy as she was, it was quite possible
she would make for just as much a hit as the food on the grill. Alex,
wether she knew this consciously or not offered a brief chortle and a
nod in the direction of the firehouse. "Oh they'll be along in a little
bit, just in the middle of finishing up their weight training." She
smiled, slyly even as she looked for Molly's reaction to that before
flipping the burgers.
"Probably in the next, ten, twenty. Depends
on if Dillion turns into a prema-donna in the shower again." She shook
her head at the idea and closed the lid of the grill, letting the meat
bath in the warmth as she turned to Molly and gestured to the nearest
park table.
"Have a seat, if you like I have beer, though its just
for those of us off duty, so try not to sneak any to the others eh?"
She said as she hoped up on the table and sat down on the top, letting
her feet rest on the seat as she picked up an already opened beer.
"Id rather not have them drunk and fighting fires, makes for a really bad headline."
Molly Toombs
From
the solemn and evaluating look that Molly cast across the street, she
was apparently more concerned about the time they had to talk. She
didn't perk up or seem to brighten at the prospect of weight training,
and instead nodded and said: "Good," and left it there. "That'll give
us time to catch you up a bit."
The offer of a beer was met with a
smile and a nod. "I've understood that alcohol and fire don't mix
well. I mean, even on a chemical level that's a fact." Wherever it was
the beers were stashed, Molly would fetch herself one with a 'thank
you'.
Next she sat down with her can and/or bottle of beer in
hand, near as she could to the grill that Alex was tending, and sat so
she could face the woman still.
"So," she asked, cutting straight to the point, "how much have you read into things since that, ah, other night?"
Alex Fisher
Alex
drank in silence as she let Molly get comfortable, occasionally tearing
a piece of bread off a bun she had left out, and popping it in her
mouth. She chewed slowly, relaxed until Molly at last brought up the
night they had both been waiting to discuss. Molly might notice the
gentle tensing of the woman, as if she were preparing for a strike from
an unseen enemy. But she relaxed after a few moments and shook her head.
"To
be brutally fucking honest? I haven't I tried to blot that shit out,
get back to what matters to me." She said with another gesture to the
firehouse. "But...that worked about as well as a whore in a nunnery.
So.." She said gesturing to Molly. "The call."
She had tried to
block it out, tried to make it go away. But like so many others in her
situation, once that curtain was pulled back, it was so hard to turn
away. Alex still stood beyond the threshold though, still stood looking
in, if anyone could back out now...it might well be her.
"That
said, I guess it means the world is bigger, scarier, and faaar more
fucked up then I even I could come up with, and I like some twisted
humour." She took a swig of her beer, gulping it down before popping
another chunk of bun into her mouth and said, as she chewed.
"So...what is the deal?"
Molly Toombs
The
question roused a low chuckle from Molly, who took a drink of her beer
as well. When the mouth of the bottle left her lips she sighed for the
refreshment of the beverage, then settled to lean forward in her seat.
Her elbows propped on her knees and her bottle dangled loose but steady
from her fingertips.
"The deal is that things aren't what we've
always thought they are. Things we've been told are impossible are, as a
matter of fact, not. By this point, I'm pretty sure that nothing's
impossible."
Another sip, and she continued.
"I don't know
every single way a zombie could happen, but the most common way they
come about is necromancy. Magic of the dead. Someone must have
summoned them up and then locked them away and forgot about them, or
something." She shrugged, the gesture loose and summarizing. She'd
read about the incident in the papers, smirked to see she was accurate
in how they explained the incident.
"You can opt to take my word for it or not, but trust me when I say I've spent a lot of time looking into this."
Alex Fisher
Molly
tells her, just as she had on that night that she had considerable
knowledge, perhaps even experience with such situations, such beings.
She talks of necromancy and dead magic and a myriad of other things that
while they do not go over Alex's head, the look on her features did
indeed tell the story of Alex having resigned such things to the realm
of fairy-tales, or at the very least, religious mummery.
She
seemed to toy with her beer label as she did that, slowly but surely
peeling away at the paper wrapper, making confetti of it rather then
peeling the label off whole those hard blue eyes looking at the ground,
and then the grill before at last settling on Molly herself.
"Ok...sure,
I mean what fucking choice do I have, they were there, I wasn't on
anything, and it sure as fuck took alot to bring them down when the cops
finally showed up." She paused, as if trying to figure out what it
could all mean, and more importantly what it mean't for her life, for
her world view.
"Why the fuck would you want to look into this
sorta thing?" She asks before downing the last of her beer before
tossing it bodily into an open recycling bin.
"And better yet,
what the fuck does that mean for me? I'm no occult believer, hell I
don't believe in anything beyond what i see in front of my own two
eyes."
Molly Toombs
The smile that Molly gave Alex
when she inquired about why Molly would look into these things was a
sad expression. Almost self-pitying, like when somebody asks an
alcoholic why they keep going back to the bar. She looked back down at
her beer bottle; left the label completely alone.
"I find myself
much more comfortable feeling prepared for the things that crawl around
the city at night. 'Ignorance is bliss' works for the masses, but I've
just seen too much to subscribe to that anymore."
A pause for a
sip, again, before she carried on. "The good news is that you're not in
this nearly so deep as I am, so this doesn't have to mean
anything to you. If you want to act like nothing happened and carry on,
then nothing will change for you." Blue eyes hopped up to meet those
of similar hue. "Except we already know you can't just forget about
it. You said so yourself."
She twisted her beer bottle around in
her fingers, and dropped her eyes back down to watch the motion as she
pressed on. "So I guess it's up to you what it means. Probably just
that you're looking over your shoulder a bit more now. Looking deeper
into the weird shit you come across than what you did before."
Alex Fisher
Molly
explains as best as she can what it mean't for Alex, and in the end it
was precisely as she had expected, and precisely as she had feared. This
feeling manifests itself as Alex grimaces, plainly unhappy, plainly
pissed off as she swore.
"Fuck!" She was on her feet in a flash
and paced briefly before the table before moving to the grill and
throwing open the lid to inspect the food. She seems to calm herself in
that moment, using the normality of grilling settle her mind and her
spirit before she let out a long sigh.
"That so does not make my
day Molly." She said with a quick look over at the woman. "It's made it
about as pleasant as a trip to the gynaecologist. " She smiled ruefully
as she flipped the steaks and pulled a package of buns covered in foil
and tossed it on the uppermost rack before closing the lid again.
She
moved to the beer cooler then and grabbed another stepping up to the
table where Molly sat and cracked the bottle open on the edge of the
table before flopping down beside Molly and asking.
"How do you
manage it? I mean, what gets you through? If you've seen as much as I
imagine you have then how the hell are you still alive? It's nothing
against you, its just...i mean if zombies are real..." She lets it trail
off, as if to say..what else could be out there.
Molly Toombs
Again,
Molly answered with dark humor. She chuckled and shook her head
lightly, plainly in agreement with much of Alex's sentiment. She wasn't
thrown off by the sudden curse and pacing, but instead watched the
taller woman in firefighter's suspenders pace back and forth. While she
watched, she drank her beer.
Once Alex had settled beside her, Molly swung her legs back under the table and propped her arms on the table's top.
"It
sounds cheesy as fuck? But like I said-- I feel more... armed by
learning more about the things that are out there." The beer bottle was
set on the table, and her fingers stayed curled loose around the middle
in an absent cradle. She would still periodically steal sips here and
there while they talked.
"I stay alive because I'm not completely
reckless. I don't go poking monsters in eyes and looking for fights-- I
just act respectfully and try to keep out of dark alleys where I could
be made into something's food." Molly smiled here, and the expression
was bracing and apologetic both. Like she was sorry that Alex had to
have seen anything in the first place. It really did look like a much
happier life not knowing how helpless you actually were in the scheme of
things.
Alex Fisher
Molly might imagine how this
would be for someone like Alex, strong, in charge of her own life and
having fought tooth and nail to get there. She might well know first
hand out of her own experiences what it would be like to feel at the top
of your game, bowing to no one, and then find out that for all your
efforts there is still something bigger, badder, and hungrier then you.
Something that wasn't just another human or societal habit, but
something genuinely dark, and perhaps even alien.
Alex certain
looked unhappy as she listened to Molly, her lips pursed and her legs
splayed out infront of her as she leaned back into the picnic table as
if trying to relax..but failing.
"Ok..so all I gotta be is
respectful, the opposite of reckless and stay out of places I'm not
supposed to go too..." Alex looked at Molly with her brows raised as if
the joke in those requirements should be evident, some of them might
well be but regardless the firefighter shook her head slowly and a dark
chuckle slipped from her lips.
"Well at least I'll know what I'm
getting into next time." She sipped her beer as she sat there, her head
turning to the grill to inhale deeply, the look on her face turning to
one of attention, as if smell alone could tell her the meat was ready.
"You
might be better armed, but how do you stand up to some of these things?
It isn't possible that you've been looking into this stuff for who
knows how long and you haven't had to fight to survive, especially as
I'm guessing the shit out there doesn't care if we think were at the top
of the food chain."
Molly Toombs
"Oh Alex, that's
just looking at it all wrong." Molly's lips pressed together too, and
the expression was concerned. She had a good idea of the kind of woman
Alex was, and she respected it. Strength was a valuable asset-- it made
heroes and legends and changed the world over, after all. But human
strength was capped, regardless of who you were, and Molly knew full
well that it was hardly worth anything compared to other beasts that
she's met and shaken hands with personally.
"There are things you can try to
do to defend yourself. But there isn't any one single thing that's
going to prepare you against everything that's out there. What might
protect you against... say.... zombies? That won't keep you safe from
ghosts."
Molly decided that facing inward on the table while Alex
faced outward was uncomfortable for conversation, so she swung her legs
around and propped her elbows up on the tabletop behind her. The beer
was already more than half gone at the pace she was sipping, and she
took another swig before pressing on.
"We're soft and vulnerable
compared to the horror stories. We might get lucky and, with the right
tools and know-how, manage to fend for ourselves long enough to get away
with our lives. But overall it's better to just turn tail and walk the
other way when something sets its sights on you."
Which is hilarious advice, coming from Miss Toombs.
Alex Fisher
Molly
offers candid advice, honest and true. IT just seems that Alex is set
in her ways, or simply still in too much shock to make good use of it as
she shakes her head. "Not every predator is going to let you walk away
Molly, most don't. Once somethings got its eyes set on you, its
generally you or it. Thats how it works in the wild, I can't imagine it
working much differently here."
She sighed as she stood up then,
moving to the grill one more time to pull open the lid and examine what
lay within. "Alright.." She said warmly, her tone perking up as she
spoke. "I might not be on the top of the fucking pyramid anymore, but at
the very least I can eat this beef without worrying about it biting
back." She said as she started to pull things off onto a plate, wrapping
some things in tin foil so it would still be warm once the others
arrived.
"What can I get you?" She asked, looking over at Molly
once more. "Burger, Sausage? Maybe a side of firefighter?" She asked
with a lopsided grin before managing a laugh, trying to change topics at
least briefly to something more mundane, something manageable.
She
plated a burger for herself, slapping a slice of cheese on top and
letting it sit on a nicely toasted bun while she waited for Molly's
order.
Molly Toombs
"Yeah, I know that. Which is
why it would probably be a better choice for you to just learn to avoid
it instead of go wading in like I did." Oh Molly. She sounded so
resigned to her own fate.
But then Alex was up and they were on to
other subjects. Molly's answer was to smirk, the expression switching
pretty easily to playful. "Burger. And if side of firefighter's on the
menu, I sure wouldn't mind being introduced."
That would be all
that they said on the subject of weirdness and what bumps in the night.
There would be enough time to finish grilling and to get all of the
meat cooked and plated up before thunder cracked and the sky burst
open. Everyone would have to finish eating inside, and so they did.
Maybe Molly got a name and a phone number. Maybe not.
But she did
get a burger and a beer out of the situation, that's for certain. And
an assurance that she would be in touch with Alex too.
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Shadow-Reflection-Thing 5.21.2014 [ST'd by Joey]
Molly Toombs
In the life of a blossoming young occultist, you found yourself and your daily activities making a gradually tightening orbit around the consumption of knowledge. Discovery was key when information was currency, and to stay on top you had to treat it like trying to strike oil. Dig and dig and dig. As a result, Molly's spare time began to wind its way around reading, or the pursuit of new things to read. Her laptop occupied her lap more often these days too-- the internet could not be discounted for its usefulness after all.
So when she woke up one mid-weekday and found the weather beautiful, she set out on foot for a bookstore on the other side of town. Florence, now about seven or eight months old, was no longer small enough for Molly to lift. She was a lanky brown thing whose head came up past Molly's knees now. Give her another two years and she would be something to contend with, to keep her mistress safe while she slept.
Both mistress and hound were happily worn out and basking in the sun after the jog to the bookstore and back again. Molly had changed out of running clothes into a pair of shorts, a tank top, and a cardigan (a warm-weather fallback if she ever had one) and gone to sit out on her balcony. The door was propped open, and Florence was laying in the sun, sprawled out to take up as much space as she could. A young orange cat was dozing on the window ledge, and Molly was in a chair with her legs stretched out and up, heels propped on the railing.
Sunglasses on, hair piled up, book in hand. The subject: dimensions and their alternates.
Spiegelung
Sometimes cats stare at walls. Dogs do it too.
It's fucking weird.
Molly has been on the business end of a number of weird scenarios and activities playing themselves out like her life's the sage. Especially as of late. Why should today be any different? Because the sun is out, goddammit, and it's shining. The weather is temperate and there is even a cool breeze that picks up and playfully ruffles the stack of red locks atop her and the pages of her book. There is no way that dark world could touch her here.
It's reason enough to look up and enjoy the feel of the air on her freckled face.
That's when the barking starts.
That glass door is the target of Florence's ire. She's still a puppy and is no doubt still learning to bark, but has she been exposed to something so terrifying she's trembling and whining between the loud explosions of anger she's directing at the balcony door? This is something very different. This isn't kids playing in the hallway and exciting her to playfulness. Has Molly ever witnessed this gentle creature growl as it is now?
In a strange intersection of happenstance Lucy the cat is standing on the other side of that propped open door, staring up at the same spot Florence, absolutely quiet and still except for its hackles raising and hair bristling.
Molly Toombs
Reading in the same position for too long would cramp a neck up, plus the sunshine felt great on her legs and arms (protected by liberal amounts of sunscreen, of course) and she'd like to have it on her cheeks as well. It was like a tiny victory, knowing that she could still feel the sun's warmth and smell the same-no-matter-the-brand sunscreen smell of the lotion on her skin. The Undead hadn't stolen that away from her yet.
Molly had just closed her eyes and pulled in a breath of the cool air when her dog started to bark. That breath came out with a startled exclamation, and she'd jumped and jabbed herself in the thigh with the spine of her book. "Jesus fucking--... Florence, what are you--?"
Having been prepared to scold her dog, Molly had twisted to see the dog quite suddenly different from how she had been before, in many ways. No longer laying down, no longer sprawled and sleepy and resting. Instead she was up, arched in her back so her spine was showing, snarling and whining and barking-- frantic with terror. Molly had never seen the puppy behave this way, not even after that explosion that had knocked both of them silly for a second.
She stood then, approached the puppy but didn't touch her yet. Looked, simply, then took notice of the cat on the other side of the doorway.
A sense of dread began to bubble like tar boiling in her chest, and Molly's eyes shifted to focus instead on the space in her doorway. The book was still in her hand. She glanced down to it, back to the doorway.
Thoughtful and testing, she tossed the book in a light underhand through the doorway to see what would happen.
Spiegelung
The door lands and like a lot of things that are thrown it doesn't land how it started its journey. It's open to a page and it's a random page, maybe, though there's always a reason to be suspicious of randomness.
Especially when you're reading dimensions and their alternates and all the possibilities while your dog is still barking away, and now that she's said something, looking at her like: Come on, are you fucking kidding me, we're going to fucking die, because Molly knows Florence doesn't speak human and she's asking her what's wrong instead of taking a look.
That's if you're going to anthropomorphize the canine.
The cat had remained still until the book fell and that makes it start. It bolts through the doorway and into the apartment and, no, it doesn't disappear through some interdimensional gateway. It keeps running under the coffee table and under the couch and disappears after that.
Molly Toombs
The book landed with a harmless 'plop' on the floor, and Lucy scampered away to tuck herself under a piece of furniture. Molly wrinkled her nose, as though she didn't trust it, but her pages didn't hop to life. There was no portal that had suddenly appeared, and the book did not land on any alternate planes.
So Molly looked back down to Florence, as she noticed a passerby looking up as though concerned about the animal he heard while passing in front of the building.
"Shhhh," she hushed, the sound a comfort rather than a command. She crouched down and put an arm over the dog's side. Scrubbed her hand in the dog's short chest fur and soothed her as much as she could manage or hope to. Then she stood and cautiously, skeptically, walked through the doorway.
Spiegelung
It doesn't happen when she goes to comfort Florence, which works to an extent, and it doesn't happen when she begins her way through the door. As she now knows from her research of mirrors and reflections, the geometry is a mathematical science of angles.
When she walks through the doorway there is a flash in her peripheral vision. It follows the catching of the sun's rays as the gleam and hit her own eyes. A sudden movement over the surface of the glass door. A sudden and deliberate movement, like a cockroach scurrying when a light is flicked on, that carries whatever creature (not Florence, not Lucy, and not even Molly's own reflection) out of that pane of glass, over the next, and into...
Into the wall where the balcony's window ends past the bulk of her air conditioning unit.
Molly Toombs
[Perception 3 + Awareness 2]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )
Molly Toombs
[Wits (Cool-Headed) 4 + Alertness 3]
Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 1 )
Spiegelung
As every alarm bell Molly has set up begins going off, telling her that something is not right, something is quiet wrong, she gets that very feeling that is becoming all too familiar. Maybe it was just the shadow of a large bird passing overhead? Disappearing as the creature continued over the roof?
No. It's a large form and it is shadowy, yes, but not a shadow.
She knows this and she also knows that it hadn't just disappeared at the edge of that windowpane. She just manages to notice the subtle passage of darkness over a picture frame in the far corner of the living room. Get gets the feeling that she could give chase if she reacted quickly enough, or run if it's the creature that's stalking her.
Molly isn't sure which. Like its form, she can't make out its intention.
Molly Toombs
The sudden movement in the corner of Molly's eye startled her, not unlike the barking had. Her hands moved up, a reflexive move to protect her chest and neck and face if she needed to. The thing was fast, and many people less aware would be quick to dismiss it as nothing more than the light reflecting off the window catching them off guard. Molly knew better, though. It wasn't long before that she was fending off a shadow-not-shadow creature with a beam of light. Fleeing from it when it charged.
This thing seemed to have vanished, but Molly was fast and sharp minded. She spied the thing as it slipped through the cracks of window and air conditioning unit and glided past a picture frame, deeper into her living room and home.
She could chase. She could run, too.
Instead, Molly took a breath and approached this as she did, many would say unwisely, so many other things supernatural.
She gathered herself, did her very best to collect her calm and make herself appear so. Her hands went into her cardigan pockets, and with a controlled and stroll she stepped back into the apartment. The balcony door was left open-- she wasn't going to lock Florence out four stories above the ground, nor was she going to drag her back past the thing by force.
In a voice that she so very much tried not to let shake, she spoke into the room. "Out of sheer curiosity, I'd really love to know who it is that's skulking around in my home, scaring all of my animals."
Molly Toombs
[Charisma 2 + Empathy 2: Spending WP]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
Spiegelung
Molly doesn't give chase and there is another movement. This time it's across her television screen and it seems to hesitate for a moment. It's just long enough for her to almost get a good look at it. It almost seems intentional in it. Not taunting? Playful. Almost playful.
And then its gone again, a bob and a weave and it is off, through the apartment and across another picture frame, existing only in the surface of those reflective objects scattered throughout her living room, through the kitchen and across a coffee pot before it's headed toward the nearest bathroom.
The only bathroom.
Molly's bathroom.
Molly Toombs
Eyes had already been keen to keep track of the shadow-reflection-thing, so she noticed that its pace had slowed when it reached her television. She could nearly make out a shape, the substance of that blur of consciousness and motion, but then it was onward again.
Into her bathroom.
Molly paused, then cleared her throat and turned her head to call over her shoulder. "Florence, bed." It took her two repeats of the command and beginning to walk back over to the dog before she moved, but soon the pup darted into Molly's bedroom, aiming for the dog pillow on the floor that was associated with the word. Whether the cat darted along with to keep protection of the big brown thing with teeth or not was inconsequential, ultimately.
When the dog was through the threshold, Molly closed her bedroom door and then turned to the bathroom.
Well-practiced in the art of not committing to remaining in a room (thank you college years), Molly gripped the doorframe of her bathroom, for the door had been open previously, and leaned into the room to look immediately to the mirror.
Call it a hunch.
Spiegelung
What's there to see is something she has never seen before. The creature is looming and its form too large to be fully contained inside the framed mirror hanging above her sink. Its size isn't the most horrific part about it, but everything else about it accumulated.
Let's start at the top, shall we?
Its hair is plastered against its scalp, melted like candle wax and bubbling drips, a dark blonde like rancid tallow. Calcified and stuck there. Its flesh is all salt sore and dry and smooth like a scar in spots, but built up like scales in others. Its face is asymmetrical, eyes strangled and sunken and somehow blue and familiar, one side of its face smashed flat and the nose as well, almost reptilian, but not actually an animal's because no natural animal looks this putrid. The other cheekbone is raised like it's trying to escape, burst free, full of bone knob and puss, and it's jaw also seems to be trying to get away, one side distended with a beginnings of a tusk like too many teeth trying to emerge from one patch of gum, even making that half of its chin bulbous.
But shall we return to the eyes? Sunken as ugliness tries to overtake it, swallow them hole, and only telling them see the light of day to know it should never touch it. The eyes look very sad. And they look very familiar.
She knows those eyes.
The thing looks back at her from where she looks and seems to expect what reaction she will have.
Molly Toombs
[Courage]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
Molly Toombs
What Molly spied in the mirror was reason in part for her clinging to the doorframe and leaning into the bathroom instead of simply strolling in. What she saw in the frame didn't only take her by surprise, but it repulsed and horrified her. This was a monster in its purest form. It looked like some Hollywood practical effects and make-up studio was given the project and time of their dreams to make something that could turn as many stomachs in a glance as possible.
Molly wanted to fling herself out of the bathroom, to look away and flee and find some way to banish the thing from her home. Her stomach twisted from cheek to skin to tusks as she registered each of them. Nothing good could possibly come of what she'd found.
But then she met its eyes, and it flinched back in uttered a low oh my god.
Her resolve wasn't flinty, but she pulled it together enough to keep herself from flinching back and fleeing the bathroom. She was pale, her eyes wide and expression unable to utterly wring the horror and, now, mutual sadness for what she saw. Molly let go of the door frame and stepped further into the bathroom to stand in front of the sink.
A part of her wanted to reach out, the part that remembered and knew and even loved those eyes. The other part was riddled with caution, addled with worry and distrust for the situation. She didn't know the rules here. She didn't know what would happen if she touched that glass. So she gripped the sink instead and asked, sounding heartbroken:
"What did she do to you?"
Spiegelung
The creature is the one who flinches.
It's not at the first look or the ensuing and deliberate steeling of Molly's resolve.
It's the question. The words seems to lash out at it the way she had tried to keep her reaction from doing. It recoils and shuts its eyes, opening them to give Molly a final glance through the mirror before it turns and flees again.
Molly Toombs
"Harald!"
She cried after it. Perhaps this is fueled by the reflection's owner, mangled though it may be, having burrowed his way into her life. She cared for the homely man dearly, cherished him even. This was unknowingly reinforced and fed gasoline to fire by blood laced into a mug of coffee or two. All that Molly knew was that it made her mirror the mirror-man's reaction (that is to say: flinch) in turn.
The monster that loomed in the small space of a mirror over a sink that stood as a pedestal rather than built into a counter had turned and fled, and Molly broke her own resolving rule and pressed the tips of her fingers to the glass, like that could help call him back.
"I'm sorry! I-- I want to help, come back."
But, no matter how long she waited, the monstrous thing didn't reappear in her mirror. After about a minute, perhaps, she felt the air return to normal and the tingling notice of Something's Wrong abate. She was almost reluctant at first to step away from the mirror, but once she did excitement replaced that reluctance. This was a development out of nowhere-- something she'd been actively seeking had come right to her, into her very home!
She knew precisely who she had to share the news with.
Soon as Florence was calmed and mellowed and Molly was back in place out on the balcony, she made a phone call.
In the life of a blossoming young occultist, you found yourself and your daily activities making a gradually tightening orbit around the consumption of knowledge. Discovery was key when information was currency, and to stay on top you had to treat it like trying to strike oil. Dig and dig and dig. As a result, Molly's spare time began to wind its way around reading, or the pursuit of new things to read. Her laptop occupied her lap more often these days too-- the internet could not be discounted for its usefulness after all.
So when she woke up one mid-weekday and found the weather beautiful, she set out on foot for a bookstore on the other side of town. Florence, now about seven or eight months old, was no longer small enough for Molly to lift. She was a lanky brown thing whose head came up past Molly's knees now. Give her another two years and she would be something to contend with, to keep her mistress safe while she slept.
Both mistress and hound were happily worn out and basking in the sun after the jog to the bookstore and back again. Molly had changed out of running clothes into a pair of shorts, a tank top, and a cardigan (a warm-weather fallback if she ever had one) and gone to sit out on her balcony. The door was propped open, and Florence was laying in the sun, sprawled out to take up as much space as she could. A young orange cat was dozing on the window ledge, and Molly was in a chair with her legs stretched out and up, heels propped on the railing.
Sunglasses on, hair piled up, book in hand. The subject: dimensions and their alternates.
Spiegelung
Sometimes cats stare at walls. Dogs do it too.
It's fucking weird.
Molly has been on the business end of a number of weird scenarios and activities playing themselves out like her life's the sage. Especially as of late. Why should today be any different? Because the sun is out, goddammit, and it's shining. The weather is temperate and there is even a cool breeze that picks up and playfully ruffles the stack of red locks atop her and the pages of her book. There is no way that dark world could touch her here.
It's reason enough to look up and enjoy the feel of the air on her freckled face.
That's when the barking starts.
That glass door is the target of Florence's ire. She's still a puppy and is no doubt still learning to bark, but has she been exposed to something so terrifying she's trembling and whining between the loud explosions of anger she's directing at the balcony door? This is something very different. This isn't kids playing in the hallway and exciting her to playfulness. Has Molly ever witnessed this gentle creature growl as it is now?
In a strange intersection of happenstance Lucy the cat is standing on the other side of that propped open door, staring up at the same spot Florence, absolutely quiet and still except for its hackles raising and hair bristling.
Molly Toombs
Reading in the same position for too long would cramp a neck up, plus the sunshine felt great on her legs and arms (protected by liberal amounts of sunscreen, of course) and she'd like to have it on her cheeks as well. It was like a tiny victory, knowing that she could still feel the sun's warmth and smell the same-no-matter-the-brand sunscreen smell of the lotion on her skin. The Undead hadn't stolen that away from her yet.
Molly had just closed her eyes and pulled in a breath of the cool air when her dog started to bark. That breath came out with a startled exclamation, and she'd jumped and jabbed herself in the thigh with the spine of her book. "Jesus fucking--... Florence, what are you--?"
Having been prepared to scold her dog, Molly had twisted to see the dog quite suddenly different from how she had been before, in many ways. No longer laying down, no longer sprawled and sleepy and resting. Instead she was up, arched in her back so her spine was showing, snarling and whining and barking-- frantic with terror. Molly had never seen the puppy behave this way, not even after that explosion that had knocked both of them silly for a second.
She stood then, approached the puppy but didn't touch her yet. Looked, simply, then took notice of the cat on the other side of the doorway.
A sense of dread began to bubble like tar boiling in her chest, and Molly's eyes shifted to focus instead on the space in her doorway. The book was still in her hand. She glanced down to it, back to the doorway.
Thoughtful and testing, she tossed the book in a light underhand through the doorway to see what would happen.
Spiegelung
The door lands and like a lot of things that are thrown it doesn't land how it started its journey. It's open to a page and it's a random page, maybe, though there's always a reason to be suspicious of randomness.
Especially when you're reading dimensions and their alternates and all the possibilities while your dog is still barking away, and now that she's said something, looking at her like: Come on, are you fucking kidding me, we're going to fucking die, because Molly knows Florence doesn't speak human and she's asking her what's wrong instead of taking a look.
That's if you're going to anthropomorphize the canine.
The cat had remained still until the book fell and that makes it start. It bolts through the doorway and into the apartment and, no, it doesn't disappear through some interdimensional gateway. It keeps running under the coffee table and under the couch and disappears after that.
Molly Toombs
The book landed with a harmless 'plop' on the floor, and Lucy scampered away to tuck herself under a piece of furniture. Molly wrinkled her nose, as though she didn't trust it, but her pages didn't hop to life. There was no portal that had suddenly appeared, and the book did not land on any alternate planes.
So Molly looked back down to Florence, as she noticed a passerby looking up as though concerned about the animal he heard while passing in front of the building.
"Shhhh," she hushed, the sound a comfort rather than a command. She crouched down and put an arm over the dog's side. Scrubbed her hand in the dog's short chest fur and soothed her as much as she could manage or hope to. Then she stood and cautiously, skeptically, walked through the doorway.
Spiegelung
It doesn't happen when she goes to comfort Florence, which works to an extent, and it doesn't happen when she begins her way through the door. As she now knows from her research of mirrors and reflections, the geometry is a mathematical science of angles.
When she walks through the doorway there is a flash in her peripheral vision. It follows the catching of the sun's rays as the gleam and hit her own eyes. A sudden movement over the surface of the glass door. A sudden and deliberate movement, like a cockroach scurrying when a light is flicked on, that carries whatever creature (not Florence, not Lucy, and not even Molly's own reflection) out of that pane of glass, over the next, and into...
Into the wall where the balcony's window ends past the bulk of her air conditioning unit.
Molly Toombs
[Perception 3 + Awareness 2]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )
Molly Toombs
[Wits (Cool-Headed) 4 + Alertness 3]
Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 1 )
Spiegelung
As every alarm bell Molly has set up begins going off, telling her that something is not right, something is quiet wrong, she gets that very feeling that is becoming all too familiar. Maybe it was just the shadow of a large bird passing overhead? Disappearing as the creature continued over the roof?
No. It's a large form and it is shadowy, yes, but not a shadow.
She knows this and she also knows that it hadn't just disappeared at the edge of that windowpane. She just manages to notice the subtle passage of darkness over a picture frame in the far corner of the living room. Get gets the feeling that she could give chase if she reacted quickly enough, or run if it's the creature that's stalking her.
Molly isn't sure which. Like its form, she can't make out its intention.
Molly Toombs
The sudden movement in the corner of Molly's eye startled her, not unlike the barking had. Her hands moved up, a reflexive move to protect her chest and neck and face if she needed to. The thing was fast, and many people less aware would be quick to dismiss it as nothing more than the light reflecting off the window catching them off guard. Molly knew better, though. It wasn't long before that she was fending off a shadow-not-shadow creature with a beam of light. Fleeing from it when it charged.
This thing seemed to have vanished, but Molly was fast and sharp minded. She spied the thing as it slipped through the cracks of window and air conditioning unit and glided past a picture frame, deeper into her living room and home.
She could chase. She could run, too.
Instead, Molly took a breath and approached this as she did, many would say unwisely, so many other things supernatural.
She gathered herself, did her very best to collect her calm and make herself appear so. Her hands went into her cardigan pockets, and with a controlled and stroll she stepped back into the apartment. The balcony door was left open-- she wasn't going to lock Florence out four stories above the ground, nor was she going to drag her back past the thing by force.
In a voice that she so very much tried not to let shake, she spoke into the room. "Out of sheer curiosity, I'd really love to know who it is that's skulking around in my home, scaring all of my animals."
Molly Toombs
[Charisma 2 + Empathy 2: Spending WP]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
Spiegelung
Molly doesn't give chase and there is another movement. This time it's across her television screen and it seems to hesitate for a moment. It's just long enough for her to almost get a good look at it. It almost seems intentional in it. Not taunting? Playful. Almost playful.
And then its gone again, a bob and a weave and it is off, through the apartment and across another picture frame, existing only in the surface of those reflective objects scattered throughout her living room, through the kitchen and across a coffee pot before it's headed toward the nearest bathroom.
The only bathroom.
Molly's bathroom.
Molly Toombs
Eyes had already been keen to keep track of the shadow-reflection-thing, so she noticed that its pace had slowed when it reached her television. She could nearly make out a shape, the substance of that blur of consciousness and motion, but then it was onward again.
Into her bathroom.
Molly paused, then cleared her throat and turned her head to call over her shoulder. "Florence, bed." It took her two repeats of the command and beginning to walk back over to the dog before she moved, but soon the pup darted into Molly's bedroom, aiming for the dog pillow on the floor that was associated with the word. Whether the cat darted along with to keep protection of the big brown thing with teeth or not was inconsequential, ultimately.
When the dog was through the threshold, Molly closed her bedroom door and then turned to the bathroom.
Well-practiced in the art of not committing to remaining in a room (thank you college years), Molly gripped the doorframe of her bathroom, for the door had been open previously, and leaned into the room to look immediately to the mirror.
Call it a hunch.
Spiegelung
What's there to see is something she has never seen before. The creature is looming and its form too large to be fully contained inside the framed mirror hanging above her sink. Its size isn't the most horrific part about it, but everything else about it accumulated.
Let's start at the top, shall we?
Its hair is plastered against its scalp, melted like candle wax and bubbling drips, a dark blonde like rancid tallow. Calcified and stuck there. Its flesh is all salt sore and dry and smooth like a scar in spots, but built up like scales in others. Its face is asymmetrical, eyes strangled and sunken and somehow blue and familiar, one side of its face smashed flat and the nose as well, almost reptilian, but not actually an animal's because no natural animal looks this putrid. The other cheekbone is raised like it's trying to escape, burst free, full of bone knob and puss, and it's jaw also seems to be trying to get away, one side distended with a beginnings of a tusk like too many teeth trying to emerge from one patch of gum, even making that half of its chin bulbous.
But shall we return to the eyes? Sunken as ugliness tries to overtake it, swallow them hole, and only telling them see the light of day to know it should never touch it. The eyes look very sad. And they look very familiar.
She knows those eyes.
The thing looks back at her from where she looks and seems to expect what reaction she will have.
Molly Toombs
[Courage]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
Molly Toombs
What Molly spied in the mirror was reason in part for her clinging to the doorframe and leaning into the bathroom instead of simply strolling in. What she saw in the frame didn't only take her by surprise, but it repulsed and horrified her. This was a monster in its purest form. It looked like some Hollywood practical effects and make-up studio was given the project and time of their dreams to make something that could turn as many stomachs in a glance as possible.
Molly wanted to fling herself out of the bathroom, to look away and flee and find some way to banish the thing from her home. Her stomach twisted from cheek to skin to tusks as she registered each of them. Nothing good could possibly come of what she'd found.
But then she met its eyes, and it flinched back in uttered a low oh my god.
Her resolve wasn't flinty, but she pulled it together enough to keep herself from flinching back and fleeing the bathroom. She was pale, her eyes wide and expression unable to utterly wring the horror and, now, mutual sadness for what she saw. Molly let go of the door frame and stepped further into the bathroom to stand in front of the sink.
A part of her wanted to reach out, the part that remembered and knew and even loved those eyes. The other part was riddled with caution, addled with worry and distrust for the situation. She didn't know the rules here. She didn't know what would happen if she touched that glass. So she gripped the sink instead and asked, sounding heartbroken:
"What did she do to you?"
Spiegelung
The creature is the one who flinches.
It's not at the first look or the ensuing and deliberate steeling of Molly's resolve.
It's the question. The words seems to lash out at it the way she had tried to keep her reaction from doing. It recoils and shuts its eyes, opening them to give Molly a final glance through the mirror before it turns and flees again.
Molly Toombs
"Harald!"
She cried after it. Perhaps this is fueled by the reflection's owner, mangled though it may be, having burrowed his way into her life. She cared for the homely man dearly, cherished him even. This was unknowingly reinforced and fed gasoline to fire by blood laced into a mug of coffee or two. All that Molly knew was that it made her mirror the mirror-man's reaction (that is to say: flinch) in turn.
The monster that loomed in the small space of a mirror over a sink that stood as a pedestal rather than built into a counter had turned and fled, and Molly broke her own resolving rule and pressed the tips of her fingers to the glass, like that could help call him back.
"I'm sorry! I-- I want to help, come back."
But, no matter how long she waited, the monstrous thing didn't reappear in her mirror. After about a minute, perhaps, she felt the air return to normal and the tingling notice of Something's Wrong abate. She was almost reluctant at first to step away from the mirror, but once she did excitement replaced that reluctance. This was a development out of nowhere-- something she'd been actively seeking had come right to her, into her very home!
She knew precisely who she had to share the news with.
Soon as Florence was calmed and mellowed and Molly was back in place out on the balcony, she made a phone call.
Zombies Are A Thing Now Too - 5.17.2014 [ST'd by me][Alex]
M. Toombs
It's always nice to run into someone you got along with while out on the town. Molly and Alex experienced this earlier in the evening, when the sun had just barely dipped below the horizon, in a loose crowd of people just outside the Ogden. They'd been there to see the same music show (go figure), but much like the night that they ran into each other at the club they were in agreement about bailing early tonight.
It had been a summer-warm day, a day for tank tops and shorts, and that heat carried well into the night even when the sun had gone down. Molly was dressed in a pair of high-waisted black denim shorts with a loose white tank-top tucked into them. She wore a light-knit sweater overtop for the sake of not showing too much, with sleeves that stopped just above the elbow. Black and white canvas sneakers, somewhat faded, were on her feet, and her hair was done up in a high ponytail. Make-up on her face, nails painted, Molly's sense of vanity hadn't diminished since Alex saw her last.
They'd left the show and were walking to get food. Molly knew a place about five blocks up, and they both decided that they may as well just walk if it was that near. Between the Ogden and this restaurant in particular, they had to go down one of several side-streets to cross west.
This is where we place the ladies as of current-- walking down a residential street of squat brick and wood-siding homes that was crowded with parked cars, just wide enough for one vehicle to pass through at a time. Molly had her hands in her sweater pockets and was gabbing away merrily:
"...and that would be probably the third time someone's tried to give me their number in the E.R., I think. At least he wasn't doing it puking into a pan, like the first time."
M. Toombs
[Perception 3 + Alertness 3]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )
Alex Fisher
[Per+Alert]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 5 )
M. Toombs
As they're walking, Alex is tuned in to the world around her, nearly to a transcendent degree. Perhaps it's the warmth of the night and the way the air was clear and fresh and recharging in her lungs. Maybe it was that they neighborhood they walked through was economically depressed, and one of the houses they'd walked by before turning up this street had five people hanging out on the porch who grew silent and watched when she and Molly walked by.
Whatever the reason, she could hear and sense that the people didn't get off the porch to follow them. She saw a glint and noticed a dog watching them through the slats of a wood fence in someone's backyard. She smelled charcoal from a grill a dozen homes away.
More importantly than that, though, she could hear the tones of a human voice coming through the half-open window of the house she and Molly were about to walk in front of. She could hear it well enough that she could tell it was coming from the small window well of the basement, the window itself pushed open about half a foot for ventilation.
The voice was male, and it was trying to command authority. The authority was flimsy and weak, though, for everything beneath it was wrought with panic and terror.
"Stay yourselves... Stay-- no. No! Back! Shit, no-- I said stay!"
Alex Fisher
Fate had brought them together once more, first there'd been that bit of business, at the pawn shop. Then there was the night outside the club where the pair had indeed agreed to bail early for the sake of their own desires. It seemed that fate would have them repeat their previous experience, and so here they were tonight walking down that back street with smiles on their lips, yes even Alex is smiling.
Molly was dressed in shorts and a tanktop, which was appropriate for the weather. Alex for her part was fighting that appropriate weather gear in a way. She wore a pair of dark red jeans and a grey tank top, which left muscular arms and broad shoulders apparent to all as they strode past.
Alex for her part offered up a snorting chuckle at the thought of the guy puking into a pan as he asked for her number. "God damn, guy thought he was being a suave and debonair stud with puke rolling from his lips?" Her hands came up slightly as she shook her head and looked utterly grossed out before chuckling again.
"Fuckin ridiculous." She exclaimed. But then she's stopped, her eyes narrowing deeply as she listened for a long moment before turning to Molly. "You hear that?" She asks quickly. "Someone sounds like their about to shit themselves." She said as she turned and started for that ajar window, moving cautiously...slowly.
One never did know what you'd run into after all.
M. Toombs
When Alex had heard something out of the ordinary and stopped, Molly did as well. That could have just been because Alex stopped, though, so asking to clarify if they'd heard the same thing still made sense. Molly was looking around, like she was trying to locate the source of something. She'd heard a voice, she thought. Something, maybe an animal? She wasn't sure.
Alex had explained what she had heard, though. Molly's brow furrowed, and the frown portrayed a number of things at once. Dominantly, reasonable human concern and curiosity and confusion. Secondarily, and this is the curious part, Molly looked aggravated. Like she didn't much care to have her evening interrupted by antics like this.
All the same, Alex started to cut across the yard and the driveway to where the window well was. Her feet crunched on the gravel driveway, and Molly's steps followed not far behind.
There are no floodlights or motion sensors to illuminate the two, so they soon slip into the shadows created by fences, buildings, and trees on the residential plot of land. No one is outside to stop them, and this property has no 'Beware of Dog' signs or animals to follow the promise.
Before the ladies have a chance to bend low enough to peek into the window sheltered by the well cut into the ground, they're able to hear a strangled, weak, gargled cry for help. It's barely the word 'Help', really, and is more comparable to a sheep's bleat than it is language. A pathetic dying cry if ever one was heard. Then, to follow, wet sounds.
When knees bend and bodies are lowered enough to peek through the window, they find that they have to peek through the six inch gap to see anything, for the glass panes are opaque from years of cobwebs and dirt and dust. What they do see through the gap is a horrible scene.
Bodies, figures, with pale skin and open wounds, huddled in around and actively tearing apart a man in his thirties who is either dead or nearly there, pinned up to the wall by the monsters that sought to consume him.
Alex Fisher
[WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
M. Toombs
[Molly, do you hold it together nearly so well?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
Alex Fisher
Alex had expected a number of things, trapped animals, abused and beaten perhaps attacking their master's and imposing a little bit of poetic justice. What she finds as she looks through the window slit is however, much...much worse. Worse then the dogs, worse then some home invasion scenario...no they had to look in on something out of a true blue horror film. Cannibals was the first thing that went through Alex's mind as her stomach made flip flops.
But then there were the wounds, the pale skin, and the feral way at which they tore at the poor man. Alex recoiled from the scene, pulling her head away from the slit to avoid any more of the sight, the smell, and the sounds and she turned to Molly as she backed up.
"oohhhh fuck." She said taking a deep breath. "We....we have to help him, or...I don't know, call the cops. Yeah, cops." She said as she started to fumble for her phone. Her hands were shaking, but they were growing steadily calm as her training took hold in the crisis. The guy was still screaming though...and Alex looked at Molly.
"Does he have a chance?" She asks quickly, and looked ready to bolt...the question poised as if she might try to help him.
M. Toombs
Molly had crouched down with her knees open and apart, one hand on the ground between her ankles to help keep balance. Otherwise she would have needed to place bare knees on the gravel, and that's just plain uncomfortable. She was huddled near to Alex's side when they both looked through the window. Near enough that when they both registered what they were seeing, Alex could feel the dry heave start deep in Molly's gut and roll up into her shoulders and neck. She clapped a hand over her mouth, but did not recoil like Alex did.
Instead, Molly stared in horror, but the tiniest bit in fascination too.
So, zombies are a thing now too.
When Alex started talking, Molly's wide eyes pulled away from the scene inside the window to stare up at her instead. She blinked once, twice, then gave her head a small shake. Alex had suggested they call the cops and went for her phone, and that apparently was what it took to snap Molly out of her horrified daze and back to her senses.
She shook her head again, but this time with meaning. "No." Inside, through the window, the screams were little more than gurgle-gargles. There wasn't enough strength or life left in the man to muster a real voice anymore. "No," she said again, confirming her initial statement. It was difficult to determine if she was saying no to the situation as a whole or answering Alex's question pertaining to survival. Thankfully, she swallowed hard the bile and lump in her throat and clarified.
"He's... He's gone. Don't call the cops."
Pale as a sheet and shaking faintly, Molly leaned forward and reached out to the window. Slow and careful, desperate not to make a sudden sound to alert the beings that appeared all the more rotted, bloated, and dead the more she looked at them, Molly closed the window over.
[Dexterity 3 + Athletics 2, spending WP 'cause please don't let them know we're here]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) [WP]
Alex Fisher
This is where things start lacking sense for Alex, she'd been prepared to call the cops, or to rush in and save the guy. [Well pull his likely half eaten corpse out of the hands of the creatures in the basement. This had been her plan, so far in that she had been on the cusp of enacting it.
But then Molly says what she says, and it flies in the face of everything that Alex knew, everything she had been taught and trained and told to do. She looks incredulously at Molly as she pulls the window closed and tells her not to call the cops. She watches Molly like shes a completely new individual, and for a moment revulsion flickers on her features.
"What the fuck?" She asks as she stands up straight, her phone still in her hand. "You wanna just leave that guy to those fucks? Let them eat him or whatever the hell they are doing to him?" Her voice starts to rise, anger becoming apparent on her features as she sought reason in Molly's action, and when she couldn't she reacted as she did. With anger.
She started to turn shaking her head at Molly as she started to move intent on the door. She'd find a weapon, maybe a fire poker or a...something.
M. Toombs
[Manipulation 3 + Leadership 1: Trust me to be the authority here! You know you wanna]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
Alex Fisher
[WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
M. Toombs
Though her fingers were shaking when they reached for the window, touching the pane stilled and steadied them. The window slid that six inches closed silently, gliding like a knife through butter, and snugged into its seal to be closed with zero protest, little more than a sigh of thanks. It was tired of being open anyways.
There's a flash of anger and disbelief in Alex's voice, and Molly looked back up to her again, then shook her head sadly and rose back to her feet. The pebbles from the driveway were dusted from her hands. Molly's voice was reedy and it shook when she answered back.
"There's no medicine that would save him even if we did go in to get him. Alex--," but Molly paused when the firefighter stepped around her to walk toward the front door of the house. A small jolt of panic struck Molly in the chest, and that made her words stronger, more authoritative in a way. It came across as bossy when she said: "Alex, wait!"
But the panic does shine through, and the worry. She wanted to compel Alex not to go in the house, and whatever reasoning she had it was probably very sincere. Molly hustled along after the woman, circling toward the front of the house and the front door, and tried hastily in a hushed voice to explain.
"Those are zombies, Alex, what are you going to do? Drag the guy out just for him to reanimate and eat us or something? Huh? And then what happens when the cops get here-- they call the CDC and this shit hits media and scares the world to death? Just hear me out, please."
Alex Fisher
Alex was almost at the door when she is finally stopped by Molly's words. Her jaw is flexing though as she turned to look at her, and those hard blue eyes were harder then she had ever seen. Her intentions set, and the force of her voice having no effect on the headstrong woman.
Infact she might look like she's about to deck Molly, she just needed a reason, any reason.
But she was listening and when Molly mentions Zombie's, fucking zombies the woman's features go from anger to incredulous and she she shook her head and chuckled obviously disbelieving.
"Zombies, what the fuck is this the walking dead?" She asked with ire in her voice as she turned to grab the door. But something stops her, ever so briefly...because how would the cops react if they were actually zombies.
"You've got five seconds to say your piece, and if I don't like what I hear I am calling the cops, and then I am going in there and I am fucking those assholes up, Zombies or not."
M. Toombs
[I probably should do this before Molly starts busting knowledge out: Intelligence 3 + Occult 3]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 6) ( success x 1 )
M. Toombs
[Molly you're better than that. That was balls. Redo.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
M. Toombs
When they stop, Alex is at the top of the three-step concrete stoop, about to find out whether the door behind the busted and tattered storm door was locked. Molly's standing down at the foot of the stairs, face aimed up to this could-be would-have-been friend. She can see the energy written into Alex's shoulders and arms and jaw. She was tense, she was a woman of action. She couldn't just sit by while something terrible was going on, she had to at least try to help.
But these waters were unknown. Alex could confidently march into a five alarm blaze and handle herself fine, but as much denial as she could put herself in she knew that the skin was rotting off those bodies that huddled around the man. She heard the wet animal hunger and the snap of bone, slurp of marrow in that last instant before Molly sealed the window closed.
This was scary shit, right out of horror movies, and Molly seemed to be acting as though this was a sequel for her. She was shaken and disgusted, but there wasn't an ounce of disbelief or doubt in her. She knew what she saw.
And she was going to try to share that to stop the firefighter from going in, even if it did look like said firefighter was looking for a good reason to bloom a bruise on Molly's pretty cheekbone.
"It's not the walking dead, this isn't some mystery plague or anything. It's..." Her mouth pressed into a line, and she faltered. Molly wasn't sure the best way to explain this to make it easier to believe. But, that was an extra second of waiting, so she pressed on even if the only words coming to mind already sounded stupid and impossible.
"It's corpses-- people that are already dead, reanimated by some really fucked up magic. They're tough as hell, and they will tear us apart or die again trying. And they'll keep coming at you." It's with a tone of pleading that she concludes with: "Please, this is over our heads. Don't go in there. We're not prepared."
Alex Fisher
Would-be-could-be's. There were a lot of those in this moment, Alex could go inside, she could fight valiantly, she could also die horribly. She would like to punch Molly for cowardice, she would also like to call the cops, because Molly was right. They were unprepared, they were very much in over their heads. But Alex was the sort of woman who fought hard and desperately till there was no fight left in her.
But she stood on that stoop, seeming ever so tall as Molly stood below her trying her best to explain this situation and why Alex should concede to the woman's supposed expertise on this. Her eyes narrowed as she tried to absorb that information, and it looked like she might be choking on these revelations.
It was that sound in Molly's voice, that certainty that Alex knew she was lacking in this moment that stopped her from turning and going through that door. She stood there looking Molly dead in the eye as she spoke, the language of her body saying that she was still very ready to go inside if what Molly said didn't jive.
"Ok, then what the fuck do we do? Who the hell could possibly be more prepared for this? If not the cops huh?" She asked as she tilted her head and gestured back towards the door. "I don't know about your facts, but mine tell me there are no superhero's. No one but us, or some other guy with enough guts to get the job done. So unless you got some super friends emergency signal stuffed down your bra, explain to me what we do about this?"
M. Toombs
What they fuck did they do?
If Molly were alone here she would have phoned a friend as soon as that window had been closed. She knew people who were better equipped for handling situations like this, who she knew were likely to answer her call and come to her aid. After all, who better to help handle something that's undead than a person who is Undead themselves?
The fact was, though, that Molly wasn't alone. She didn't want to pull the rest of the world into the realm of the supernatural along with her, which was a big part of her insisting they not phone the police. She didn't want to keep being associated in a recorded way with odd occurrences like this. Her name was already on paper and electronic file somewhere in association with that curious pawn shop explosion. If she were to be recorded as stumbling on scene to another strange event so soon after, eyebrows would raise and new questions would too.
She had to shed her reluctance to share for Alex's sake, since the woman had already seen so much, but she didn't want to bring vampires to the firefighter's door any more than she already would have. So, phoning a friend was out.
And she was right, they had to do something.
So, Molly furrowed her brow and stepped back from the stoop, a half a dozen steps so that she could look over the building in a wider scope. It was a one-story establishment, probably only had two small bedrooms unless the basement offered more than the ground floor. The siding was made of wood, and the white paint has long since yellowed and begun to peel. There was a dusty Cadillac in the driveway, but no other indication that the place was occupied. It didn't look very lived in at all.
When she answered, finally, Molly swallowed and went out on a limb with:
"You don't keep a gun, do you?"
Alex Fisher
"A gun?" Alex says incredulity in her voice as she took several steps towards Molly, at the very least the nurse had managed to get the firefighter to step back from the brink right? "What are you going to do? Go down into that room and shoot them? How is that any better then my plan to find a weapon and stopping them?" She asks, her brows furrowing as if she were trying to understand the woman's reasoning.
"You start shooting, someone is going to notice, and then the cops get called anyways." She says matter of factly. "So I don't really see how effectively implicating your own ass in murder is the best way to deal with this, because if the cops get here and you have a gun and some dead motherfuckers in the basement..they are going to blame your ass."
Shes still angry, though it seemed now more to their inability to come up with a real course of action then anything else. IF the man wasn't dead before, it was fairly certain he was dead now. This fact hit Alex and a grimace of anger and disappointment flashed across her features, though it was disappointment in herself more then anything else.
She turned back to the house then and shook her head.
"Theres only one thing you could do, and if these things are that tough...that aint gonna fucking stop them anyways. And I am NOT helping you do that." She doesn't say exactly what that thing is, because she wouldn't she couldn't. To do so would be to go against everything she stood for....and if it happened, what would that mean for her?
M. Toombs
A gun would draw attention, of course. Alex demanded to know how it would be better than a weapon, and the exasperation and stress was apparent in Molly when she answered by tossing her arms up in the air helplessly and grating out in a voice that would have been an excitable yell were she not actively trying to keep quiet.
"Well at least you can hit them with a bullet from across the room! I don't know what you were going to use, a knife? A 2x4? What if it got hold of you?"
But there was one thing they could do.... Molly set eyes on Alex's face with a small gleam of hope in them, and recognition as well.
Fire.
Molly licked her lips with a tongue that felt as dry as they did. She took a breath deep enough to move her chest and shoulders, and looked back to the window well. Wondered if the animated corpses would start trying to find their way up out of the basement, or if they would return to some kind of dormant state when no one was around them. She wondered also about the logistics of weaponizing fire. Again, a glance to Alex. If anyone knew anything about fire....
"Isn't there some way to just.... contain it to them? And put it out before it sets the rest of the house ablaze?" Quick thinking, thankfully, was something Molly could claim to be in most occasions, and after a quick glance to remember it was there, Molly approached the Cadillac that was sitting in park. "If this thing has gas....," she started her thought to indicate what she was thinking, but trailed off rather than finishing the sentence.
Alex Fisher
Molly was getting irritated as well she threw her hands in the air and the grating excitable sound in her voice didn't help Alex keep calm either. Her jawline was tensing, flexing under the pressure of Alex trying to keep herself in check and when Molly started to talk about a controlled burn....
Alex could only look at her like she'd just lost her marbles, like she was talking about burning down the neighbourhood to take out a few rats. It boggled her mind and as Molly approached the car, trying to figure out what exactly she could do with the resources she had Alex moved.
She was up behind Molly quicky, anger in her features as she grabbed Molly by the arm to stop her. "No, you are not fucking doing this, WE are not fucking doing this." Alex looked more sick to her stomach then she had when she had seen the man being eaten alive.
"If burning down a house is your best fucking idea to get the job done then you have some serious uni-bomber mentality that will NOT fly." She'd let Molly's arm go after a moment of vice like grip and held her hand up.
"Fuck it....fuck this." She had her phone out again, and she was dialing.
M. Toombs
Some people respond with fight or flight when grabbed hold of. Were Molly more easily offended, more quickly drawn to defensiveness, then she may have tried to wrench herself free when Alex grabbed hold of her arm to stop her. Or, alternately, she may have answered by striking her.
Instead Molly just stopped walking and looked down at the fingers around her forearm, then up into Alex's face. Disbelief and anger and stress all muddled together there, and in that moment Molly's conscience flinched inside her. She felt bad, really. She remembered disbelief like that. Hell, when she'd first been confronted with undeniable proof of the unreal she'd actually started to cry herself. She knew the spiraling loss of control that accompanied, and perhaps this was why she just looked at Alex and didn't fight when she grabbed her arm and stopped her from pursuing the attempt to kill the things with fire.
Maybe it was why she didn't go after the woman to stop her from calling the cops either. I mean, really, what was she going to do? Try and take the phone away from her? No, she could already tell that was a fight she wouldn't win. Molly wasn't big or strong-- she was fit, sure, but chances weren't high that she could beat Alex if it came down to fists. Given Alex's current state, there seemed a very good chance that it would if Molly tried to take her phone away.
"Fine," Molly said finally, and put her hands up in the air in a gesture of surrender. "They'll just dismiss it as fucking bath salts or new meth or something." She knew Alex was on the phone, that she probably had a dispatcher in her ear by now, but Molly pressed on by saying:
"I'm not sticking around to be a part of this, though."
And, almost reluctantly, Molly started to walk away from the front of the house and back toward the sidewalk.
Alex Fisher
Alex was with a dispatcher at that moment, and she was giving the address, details and even her name. Because that was protocol, that was what was supposed to happen when a first responder called in, you identified to lend extra credence to the moments that came next, because dispatchers listened to responders more then others, that was just the way it was.
When she gave it all, she had the option to mention any other witnesses, and she looked at Molly as she turned to start walking away, their good night spoilt, their growing friendship perhaps irreparable now that this had happened, and they had failed to come together on a solution.
The dispatcher asked once more if there were any other witnesses on site and Alex, well, she didn't lie. But she simply said as Molly stepped off the property. "No, there are no other witnesses on site. Just me." She said before adding. "I'll be on site when the police arrive." At that she hung up. She wasn't supposed too. She was supposed to stay on the line but she had something she had to do first.
She hustled then, right up to the edge of the property but didn't step off it.
"This is the right thing to do." She called after Molly, almost reluctant herself, perhaps for once not entirely sure if it was. "I'm....." She bites her lip in frustration and then plowed forward. "I shouldn't have grabbed you. Gimme your number, please. I won't tell them, but I wanna know how the fuck you knew what they were."
At that she stood there, waiting, and if Molly didn't give her a response, then she would simply stand there...and wait.
M. Toombs
A keen observer, and very much invested in whether or not Alex would mention that she was there with her, Molly was listening in to the phone call even though she was still walking forward, away from her and the house and the vicious slippery scene in the basement. So she overheard when Alex specified that nobody else was on site, and paused to look back over her shoulder.
In that moment, their eyes met. Molly could see that Alex would want to talk, would want to come over and follow up. So when she finished with the call with the dispatcher she did not have to hurry to catch up to a retreating Molly, nor did she have to call out after her. She simply needed to step up within conversational space of Molly and the sidewalk she stood on, and speak.
"I suppose you're right," she relented when Alex insisted this was the right thing to do. "I'm not willing to put myself in bite's distance for the sake of putting those things out of their misery myself, and--..." She paused and looked away from Alex, and masked that up by pretending to not remember what pocket she put her phone in. Pretended to glance down and search her pockets with her eyes and hands both.
Pretended to continue the same thought rather than make it apparent she was starting a new one. "...I don't exactly know of any task forces or help lines for these types of events exclusively anyways."
With her phone out, she would raise her eyebrows to inquire after Alex's number. She would share her own phone number with Alex as well in exchange. With that done, her phone went into her back pocket.
"I kind of specialize in these things. I'd call it a hobby, but it's really more of a lifestyle when it gets down to it. And I'm really sorry that you now have to consider it for yourself. I'll text you in a couple days, we can plan a date and I'll give some more insight, alright?" She looked at Alex sympathetically, quiet for a moment, then added: "Goodnight. And thanks for not mentioning me."
And Molly would turn, then, and walk back toward the Ogden and where she'd parked her car.
It's always nice to run into someone you got along with while out on the town. Molly and Alex experienced this earlier in the evening, when the sun had just barely dipped below the horizon, in a loose crowd of people just outside the Ogden. They'd been there to see the same music show (go figure), but much like the night that they ran into each other at the club they were in agreement about bailing early tonight.
It had been a summer-warm day, a day for tank tops and shorts, and that heat carried well into the night even when the sun had gone down. Molly was dressed in a pair of high-waisted black denim shorts with a loose white tank-top tucked into them. She wore a light-knit sweater overtop for the sake of not showing too much, with sleeves that stopped just above the elbow. Black and white canvas sneakers, somewhat faded, were on her feet, and her hair was done up in a high ponytail. Make-up on her face, nails painted, Molly's sense of vanity hadn't diminished since Alex saw her last.
They'd left the show and were walking to get food. Molly knew a place about five blocks up, and they both decided that they may as well just walk if it was that near. Between the Ogden and this restaurant in particular, they had to go down one of several side-streets to cross west.
This is where we place the ladies as of current-- walking down a residential street of squat brick and wood-siding homes that was crowded with parked cars, just wide enough for one vehicle to pass through at a time. Molly had her hands in her sweater pockets and was gabbing away merrily:
"...and that would be probably the third time someone's tried to give me their number in the E.R., I think. At least he wasn't doing it puking into a pan, like the first time."
M. Toombs
[Perception 3 + Alertness 3]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )
Alex Fisher
[Per+Alert]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 5 )
M. Toombs
As they're walking, Alex is tuned in to the world around her, nearly to a transcendent degree. Perhaps it's the warmth of the night and the way the air was clear and fresh and recharging in her lungs. Maybe it was that they neighborhood they walked through was economically depressed, and one of the houses they'd walked by before turning up this street had five people hanging out on the porch who grew silent and watched when she and Molly walked by.
Whatever the reason, she could hear and sense that the people didn't get off the porch to follow them. She saw a glint and noticed a dog watching them through the slats of a wood fence in someone's backyard. She smelled charcoal from a grill a dozen homes away.
More importantly than that, though, she could hear the tones of a human voice coming through the half-open window of the house she and Molly were about to walk in front of. She could hear it well enough that she could tell it was coming from the small window well of the basement, the window itself pushed open about half a foot for ventilation.
The voice was male, and it was trying to command authority. The authority was flimsy and weak, though, for everything beneath it was wrought with panic and terror.
"Stay yourselves... Stay-- no. No! Back! Shit, no-- I said stay!"
Alex Fisher
Fate had brought them together once more, first there'd been that bit of business, at the pawn shop. Then there was the night outside the club where the pair had indeed agreed to bail early for the sake of their own desires. It seemed that fate would have them repeat their previous experience, and so here they were tonight walking down that back street with smiles on their lips, yes even Alex is smiling.
Molly was dressed in shorts and a tanktop, which was appropriate for the weather. Alex for her part was fighting that appropriate weather gear in a way. She wore a pair of dark red jeans and a grey tank top, which left muscular arms and broad shoulders apparent to all as they strode past.
Alex for her part offered up a snorting chuckle at the thought of the guy puking into a pan as he asked for her number. "God damn, guy thought he was being a suave and debonair stud with puke rolling from his lips?" Her hands came up slightly as she shook her head and looked utterly grossed out before chuckling again.
"Fuckin ridiculous." She exclaimed. But then she's stopped, her eyes narrowing deeply as she listened for a long moment before turning to Molly. "You hear that?" She asks quickly. "Someone sounds like their about to shit themselves." She said as she turned and started for that ajar window, moving cautiously...slowly.
One never did know what you'd run into after all.
M. Toombs
When Alex had heard something out of the ordinary and stopped, Molly did as well. That could have just been because Alex stopped, though, so asking to clarify if they'd heard the same thing still made sense. Molly was looking around, like she was trying to locate the source of something. She'd heard a voice, she thought. Something, maybe an animal? She wasn't sure.
Alex had explained what she had heard, though. Molly's brow furrowed, and the frown portrayed a number of things at once. Dominantly, reasonable human concern and curiosity and confusion. Secondarily, and this is the curious part, Molly looked aggravated. Like she didn't much care to have her evening interrupted by antics like this.
All the same, Alex started to cut across the yard and the driveway to where the window well was. Her feet crunched on the gravel driveway, and Molly's steps followed not far behind.
There are no floodlights or motion sensors to illuminate the two, so they soon slip into the shadows created by fences, buildings, and trees on the residential plot of land. No one is outside to stop them, and this property has no 'Beware of Dog' signs or animals to follow the promise.
Before the ladies have a chance to bend low enough to peek into the window sheltered by the well cut into the ground, they're able to hear a strangled, weak, gargled cry for help. It's barely the word 'Help', really, and is more comparable to a sheep's bleat than it is language. A pathetic dying cry if ever one was heard. Then, to follow, wet sounds.
When knees bend and bodies are lowered enough to peek through the window, they find that they have to peek through the six inch gap to see anything, for the glass panes are opaque from years of cobwebs and dirt and dust. What they do see through the gap is a horrible scene.
Bodies, figures, with pale skin and open wounds, huddled in around and actively tearing apart a man in his thirties who is either dead or nearly there, pinned up to the wall by the monsters that sought to consume him.
Alex Fisher
[WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
M. Toombs
[Molly, do you hold it together nearly so well?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
Alex Fisher
Alex had expected a number of things, trapped animals, abused and beaten perhaps attacking their master's and imposing a little bit of poetic justice. What she finds as she looks through the window slit is however, much...much worse. Worse then the dogs, worse then some home invasion scenario...no they had to look in on something out of a true blue horror film. Cannibals was the first thing that went through Alex's mind as her stomach made flip flops.
But then there were the wounds, the pale skin, and the feral way at which they tore at the poor man. Alex recoiled from the scene, pulling her head away from the slit to avoid any more of the sight, the smell, and the sounds and she turned to Molly as she backed up.
"oohhhh fuck." She said taking a deep breath. "We....we have to help him, or...I don't know, call the cops. Yeah, cops." She said as she started to fumble for her phone. Her hands were shaking, but they were growing steadily calm as her training took hold in the crisis. The guy was still screaming though...and Alex looked at Molly.
"Does he have a chance?" She asks quickly, and looked ready to bolt...the question poised as if she might try to help him.
M. Toombs
Molly had crouched down with her knees open and apart, one hand on the ground between her ankles to help keep balance. Otherwise she would have needed to place bare knees on the gravel, and that's just plain uncomfortable. She was huddled near to Alex's side when they both looked through the window. Near enough that when they both registered what they were seeing, Alex could feel the dry heave start deep in Molly's gut and roll up into her shoulders and neck. She clapped a hand over her mouth, but did not recoil like Alex did.
Instead, Molly stared in horror, but the tiniest bit in fascination too.
So, zombies are a thing now too.
When Alex started talking, Molly's wide eyes pulled away from the scene inside the window to stare up at her instead. She blinked once, twice, then gave her head a small shake. Alex had suggested they call the cops and went for her phone, and that apparently was what it took to snap Molly out of her horrified daze and back to her senses.
She shook her head again, but this time with meaning. "No." Inside, through the window, the screams were little more than gurgle-gargles. There wasn't enough strength or life left in the man to muster a real voice anymore. "No," she said again, confirming her initial statement. It was difficult to determine if she was saying no to the situation as a whole or answering Alex's question pertaining to survival. Thankfully, she swallowed hard the bile and lump in her throat and clarified.
"He's... He's gone. Don't call the cops."
Pale as a sheet and shaking faintly, Molly leaned forward and reached out to the window. Slow and careful, desperate not to make a sudden sound to alert the beings that appeared all the more rotted, bloated, and dead the more she looked at them, Molly closed the window over.
[Dexterity 3 + Athletics 2, spending WP 'cause please don't let them know we're here]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) [WP]
Alex Fisher
This is where things start lacking sense for Alex, she'd been prepared to call the cops, or to rush in and save the guy. [Well pull his likely half eaten corpse out of the hands of the creatures in the basement. This had been her plan, so far in that she had been on the cusp of enacting it.
But then Molly says what she says, and it flies in the face of everything that Alex knew, everything she had been taught and trained and told to do. She looks incredulously at Molly as she pulls the window closed and tells her not to call the cops. She watches Molly like shes a completely new individual, and for a moment revulsion flickers on her features.
"What the fuck?" She asks as she stands up straight, her phone still in her hand. "You wanna just leave that guy to those fucks? Let them eat him or whatever the hell they are doing to him?" Her voice starts to rise, anger becoming apparent on her features as she sought reason in Molly's action, and when she couldn't she reacted as she did. With anger.
She started to turn shaking her head at Molly as she started to move intent on the door. She'd find a weapon, maybe a fire poker or a...something.
M. Toombs
[Manipulation 3 + Leadership 1: Trust me to be the authority here! You know you wanna]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
Alex Fisher
[WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
M. Toombs
Though her fingers were shaking when they reached for the window, touching the pane stilled and steadied them. The window slid that six inches closed silently, gliding like a knife through butter, and snugged into its seal to be closed with zero protest, little more than a sigh of thanks. It was tired of being open anyways.
There's a flash of anger and disbelief in Alex's voice, and Molly looked back up to her again, then shook her head sadly and rose back to her feet. The pebbles from the driveway were dusted from her hands. Molly's voice was reedy and it shook when she answered back.
"There's no medicine that would save him even if we did go in to get him. Alex--," but Molly paused when the firefighter stepped around her to walk toward the front door of the house. A small jolt of panic struck Molly in the chest, and that made her words stronger, more authoritative in a way. It came across as bossy when she said: "Alex, wait!"
But the panic does shine through, and the worry. She wanted to compel Alex not to go in the house, and whatever reasoning she had it was probably very sincere. Molly hustled along after the woman, circling toward the front of the house and the front door, and tried hastily in a hushed voice to explain.
"Those are zombies, Alex, what are you going to do? Drag the guy out just for him to reanimate and eat us or something? Huh? And then what happens when the cops get here-- they call the CDC and this shit hits media and scares the world to death? Just hear me out, please."
Alex Fisher
Alex was almost at the door when she is finally stopped by Molly's words. Her jaw is flexing though as she turned to look at her, and those hard blue eyes were harder then she had ever seen. Her intentions set, and the force of her voice having no effect on the headstrong woman.
Infact she might look like she's about to deck Molly, she just needed a reason, any reason.
But she was listening and when Molly mentions Zombie's, fucking zombies the woman's features go from anger to incredulous and she she shook her head and chuckled obviously disbelieving.
"Zombies, what the fuck is this the walking dead?" She asked with ire in her voice as she turned to grab the door. But something stops her, ever so briefly...because how would the cops react if they were actually zombies.
"You've got five seconds to say your piece, and if I don't like what I hear I am calling the cops, and then I am going in there and I am fucking those assholes up, Zombies or not."
M. Toombs
[I probably should do this before Molly starts busting knowledge out: Intelligence 3 + Occult 3]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 6) ( success x 1 )
M. Toombs
[Molly you're better than that. That was balls. Redo.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
M. Toombs
When they stop, Alex is at the top of the three-step concrete stoop, about to find out whether the door behind the busted and tattered storm door was locked. Molly's standing down at the foot of the stairs, face aimed up to this could-be would-have-been friend. She can see the energy written into Alex's shoulders and arms and jaw. She was tense, she was a woman of action. She couldn't just sit by while something terrible was going on, she had to at least try to help.
But these waters were unknown. Alex could confidently march into a five alarm blaze and handle herself fine, but as much denial as she could put herself in she knew that the skin was rotting off those bodies that huddled around the man. She heard the wet animal hunger and the snap of bone, slurp of marrow in that last instant before Molly sealed the window closed.
This was scary shit, right out of horror movies, and Molly seemed to be acting as though this was a sequel for her. She was shaken and disgusted, but there wasn't an ounce of disbelief or doubt in her. She knew what she saw.
And she was going to try to share that to stop the firefighter from going in, even if it did look like said firefighter was looking for a good reason to bloom a bruise on Molly's pretty cheekbone.
"It's not the walking dead, this isn't some mystery plague or anything. It's..." Her mouth pressed into a line, and she faltered. Molly wasn't sure the best way to explain this to make it easier to believe. But, that was an extra second of waiting, so she pressed on even if the only words coming to mind already sounded stupid and impossible.
"It's corpses-- people that are already dead, reanimated by some really fucked up magic. They're tough as hell, and they will tear us apart or die again trying. And they'll keep coming at you." It's with a tone of pleading that she concludes with: "Please, this is over our heads. Don't go in there. We're not prepared."
Alex Fisher
Would-be-could-be's. There were a lot of those in this moment, Alex could go inside, she could fight valiantly, she could also die horribly. She would like to punch Molly for cowardice, she would also like to call the cops, because Molly was right. They were unprepared, they were very much in over their heads. But Alex was the sort of woman who fought hard and desperately till there was no fight left in her.
But she stood on that stoop, seeming ever so tall as Molly stood below her trying her best to explain this situation and why Alex should concede to the woman's supposed expertise on this. Her eyes narrowed as she tried to absorb that information, and it looked like she might be choking on these revelations.
It was that sound in Molly's voice, that certainty that Alex knew she was lacking in this moment that stopped her from turning and going through that door. She stood there looking Molly dead in the eye as she spoke, the language of her body saying that she was still very ready to go inside if what Molly said didn't jive.
"Ok, then what the fuck do we do? Who the hell could possibly be more prepared for this? If not the cops huh?" She asked as she tilted her head and gestured back towards the door. "I don't know about your facts, but mine tell me there are no superhero's. No one but us, or some other guy with enough guts to get the job done. So unless you got some super friends emergency signal stuffed down your bra, explain to me what we do about this?"
M. Toombs
What they fuck did they do?
If Molly were alone here she would have phoned a friend as soon as that window had been closed. She knew people who were better equipped for handling situations like this, who she knew were likely to answer her call and come to her aid. After all, who better to help handle something that's undead than a person who is Undead themselves?
The fact was, though, that Molly wasn't alone. She didn't want to pull the rest of the world into the realm of the supernatural along with her, which was a big part of her insisting they not phone the police. She didn't want to keep being associated in a recorded way with odd occurrences like this. Her name was already on paper and electronic file somewhere in association with that curious pawn shop explosion. If she were to be recorded as stumbling on scene to another strange event so soon after, eyebrows would raise and new questions would too.
She had to shed her reluctance to share for Alex's sake, since the woman had already seen so much, but she didn't want to bring vampires to the firefighter's door any more than she already would have. So, phoning a friend was out.
And she was right, they had to do something.
So, Molly furrowed her brow and stepped back from the stoop, a half a dozen steps so that she could look over the building in a wider scope. It was a one-story establishment, probably only had two small bedrooms unless the basement offered more than the ground floor. The siding was made of wood, and the white paint has long since yellowed and begun to peel. There was a dusty Cadillac in the driveway, but no other indication that the place was occupied. It didn't look very lived in at all.
When she answered, finally, Molly swallowed and went out on a limb with:
"You don't keep a gun, do you?"
Alex Fisher
"A gun?" Alex says incredulity in her voice as she took several steps towards Molly, at the very least the nurse had managed to get the firefighter to step back from the brink right? "What are you going to do? Go down into that room and shoot them? How is that any better then my plan to find a weapon and stopping them?" She asks, her brows furrowing as if she were trying to understand the woman's reasoning.
"You start shooting, someone is going to notice, and then the cops get called anyways." She says matter of factly. "So I don't really see how effectively implicating your own ass in murder is the best way to deal with this, because if the cops get here and you have a gun and some dead motherfuckers in the basement..they are going to blame your ass."
Shes still angry, though it seemed now more to their inability to come up with a real course of action then anything else. IF the man wasn't dead before, it was fairly certain he was dead now. This fact hit Alex and a grimace of anger and disappointment flashed across her features, though it was disappointment in herself more then anything else.
She turned back to the house then and shook her head.
"Theres only one thing you could do, and if these things are that tough...that aint gonna fucking stop them anyways. And I am NOT helping you do that." She doesn't say exactly what that thing is, because she wouldn't she couldn't. To do so would be to go against everything she stood for....and if it happened, what would that mean for her?
M. Toombs
A gun would draw attention, of course. Alex demanded to know how it would be better than a weapon, and the exasperation and stress was apparent in Molly when she answered by tossing her arms up in the air helplessly and grating out in a voice that would have been an excitable yell were she not actively trying to keep quiet.
"Well at least you can hit them with a bullet from across the room! I don't know what you were going to use, a knife? A 2x4? What if it got hold of you?"
But there was one thing they could do.... Molly set eyes on Alex's face with a small gleam of hope in them, and recognition as well.
Fire.
Molly licked her lips with a tongue that felt as dry as they did. She took a breath deep enough to move her chest and shoulders, and looked back to the window well. Wondered if the animated corpses would start trying to find their way up out of the basement, or if they would return to some kind of dormant state when no one was around them. She wondered also about the logistics of weaponizing fire. Again, a glance to Alex. If anyone knew anything about fire....
"Isn't there some way to just.... contain it to them? And put it out before it sets the rest of the house ablaze?" Quick thinking, thankfully, was something Molly could claim to be in most occasions, and after a quick glance to remember it was there, Molly approached the Cadillac that was sitting in park. "If this thing has gas....," she started her thought to indicate what she was thinking, but trailed off rather than finishing the sentence.
Alex Fisher
Molly was getting irritated as well she threw her hands in the air and the grating excitable sound in her voice didn't help Alex keep calm either. Her jawline was tensing, flexing under the pressure of Alex trying to keep herself in check and when Molly started to talk about a controlled burn....
Alex could only look at her like she'd just lost her marbles, like she was talking about burning down the neighbourhood to take out a few rats. It boggled her mind and as Molly approached the car, trying to figure out what exactly she could do with the resources she had Alex moved.
She was up behind Molly quicky, anger in her features as she grabbed Molly by the arm to stop her. "No, you are not fucking doing this, WE are not fucking doing this." Alex looked more sick to her stomach then she had when she had seen the man being eaten alive.
"If burning down a house is your best fucking idea to get the job done then you have some serious uni-bomber mentality that will NOT fly." She'd let Molly's arm go after a moment of vice like grip and held her hand up.
"Fuck it....fuck this." She had her phone out again, and she was dialing.
M. Toombs
Some people respond with fight or flight when grabbed hold of. Were Molly more easily offended, more quickly drawn to defensiveness, then she may have tried to wrench herself free when Alex grabbed hold of her arm to stop her. Or, alternately, she may have answered by striking her.
Instead Molly just stopped walking and looked down at the fingers around her forearm, then up into Alex's face. Disbelief and anger and stress all muddled together there, and in that moment Molly's conscience flinched inside her. She felt bad, really. She remembered disbelief like that. Hell, when she'd first been confronted with undeniable proof of the unreal she'd actually started to cry herself. She knew the spiraling loss of control that accompanied, and perhaps this was why she just looked at Alex and didn't fight when she grabbed her arm and stopped her from pursuing the attempt to kill the things with fire.
Maybe it was why she didn't go after the woman to stop her from calling the cops either. I mean, really, what was she going to do? Try and take the phone away from her? No, she could already tell that was a fight she wouldn't win. Molly wasn't big or strong-- she was fit, sure, but chances weren't high that she could beat Alex if it came down to fists. Given Alex's current state, there seemed a very good chance that it would if Molly tried to take her phone away.
"Fine," Molly said finally, and put her hands up in the air in a gesture of surrender. "They'll just dismiss it as fucking bath salts or new meth or something." She knew Alex was on the phone, that she probably had a dispatcher in her ear by now, but Molly pressed on by saying:
"I'm not sticking around to be a part of this, though."
And, almost reluctantly, Molly started to walk away from the front of the house and back toward the sidewalk.
Alex Fisher
Alex was with a dispatcher at that moment, and she was giving the address, details and even her name. Because that was protocol, that was what was supposed to happen when a first responder called in, you identified to lend extra credence to the moments that came next, because dispatchers listened to responders more then others, that was just the way it was.
When she gave it all, she had the option to mention any other witnesses, and she looked at Molly as she turned to start walking away, their good night spoilt, their growing friendship perhaps irreparable now that this had happened, and they had failed to come together on a solution.
The dispatcher asked once more if there were any other witnesses on site and Alex, well, she didn't lie. But she simply said as Molly stepped off the property. "No, there are no other witnesses on site. Just me." She said before adding. "I'll be on site when the police arrive." At that she hung up. She wasn't supposed too. She was supposed to stay on the line but she had something she had to do first.
She hustled then, right up to the edge of the property but didn't step off it.
"This is the right thing to do." She called after Molly, almost reluctant herself, perhaps for once not entirely sure if it was. "I'm....." She bites her lip in frustration and then plowed forward. "I shouldn't have grabbed you. Gimme your number, please. I won't tell them, but I wanna know how the fuck you knew what they were."
At that she stood there, waiting, and if Molly didn't give her a response, then she would simply stand there...and wait.
M. Toombs
A keen observer, and very much invested in whether or not Alex would mention that she was there with her, Molly was listening in to the phone call even though she was still walking forward, away from her and the house and the vicious slippery scene in the basement. So she overheard when Alex specified that nobody else was on site, and paused to look back over her shoulder.
In that moment, their eyes met. Molly could see that Alex would want to talk, would want to come over and follow up. So when she finished with the call with the dispatcher she did not have to hurry to catch up to a retreating Molly, nor did she have to call out after her. She simply needed to step up within conversational space of Molly and the sidewalk she stood on, and speak.
"I suppose you're right," she relented when Alex insisted this was the right thing to do. "I'm not willing to put myself in bite's distance for the sake of putting those things out of their misery myself, and--..." She paused and looked away from Alex, and masked that up by pretending to not remember what pocket she put her phone in. Pretended to glance down and search her pockets with her eyes and hands both.
Pretended to continue the same thought rather than make it apparent she was starting a new one. "...I don't exactly know of any task forces or help lines for these types of events exclusively anyways."
With her phone out, she would raise her eyebrows to inquire after Alex's number. She would share her own phone number with Alex as well in exchange. With that done, her phone went into her back pocket.
"I kind of specialize in these things. I'd call it a hobby, but it's really more of a lifestyle when it gets down to it. And I'm really sorry that you now have to consider it for yourself. I'll text you in a couple days, we can plan a date and I'll give some more insight, alright?" She looked at Alex sympathetically, quiet for a moment, then added: "Goodnight. And thanks for not mentioning me."
And Molly would turn, then, and walk back toward the Ogden and where she'd parked her car.
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