Molly
The passing of time was becoming a regular
rhythm with when Abraham and Molly would interact. The first time
they'd met in the park a month had passed before Molly had called.
Then, again, time was let to slip before she reached out once more.
This
time around she reached out because she told herself she needed
closure, because she had questions that needed answered. In truth it
was because the visions wouldn't shake from her dreams and the paranoia
wouldn't leave her bones. Because she kept resting her phone's contacts
list on his name, and because her thoughts kept trailing back. Because
she kept looking for him on that park bench when she went jogging.
Because the radio silence was fucking intolerable, even though
self-preservation should be thankful for it.
So, she would finally
break and send a text nearly a month later. As though it were becoming
a tradition, they'd agreed to meet precisely a month after they had
last. Molly had selected a bar, told him the name and address, an a
time that she would be there.
When Abraham arrived, he'd find
Molly there waiting. The Irish Snug was a popular enough bar, but not
incredibly crowded on a Wednesday evening. The fenced-in patio out
front housed a dozen or so wire circle tables, and iron-wrought fencing
to separate the space from the sidewalk. Molly was sitting at a table
in a corner created by the front window of the establishment and the
fence that claimed the patio space.
She had a pint of beer in
front of her, sipped down to about 3/4ths full, and was doing something
with her phone to occupy herself while she waited. She wore her hair
down tonight, with bangs swept across her forehead and red tresses in
loose waves that sat on her shoulders. Her legs were left bare by the
white shorts that she was wearing, crossed at the knee with a sandaled
foot bouncing under the table. A bold blue tank-top was cut low and
loose on the chest and shoulders, was cut to give comfortable space
around the stomach and waist. A gold chain necklace and bangles served
as decoration, and make-up was light and summery rather than darker as
she may normally choose for a night out.
A scrape was still in the
final stages of healing on her right shoulder, a matching mark on the
same arm's elbow. Other than this, she appeared to be in fine health.
Tense, perhaps, but that was with reason.
Abe
Abraham
arrives at the time and place marked out in the text message. He wears a
pair of tough looking khakis, blue carpenter's pants made for holding
up to the elements and whatever other wear and tear he might throw
himself into, and a tailored denim shirt buttoned neatly up to his neck
and around his wrists. He does not seem stifled by the way it contains
him, collared and cuffed, moving calmly through the bar with even paces
and a bowed head, hands in his pockets until he pulls up next to her.
The
mad vampire climbs up onto a chair beside her. His hair is tied in a
black bandana, the knotted little chunks of bound together braids pulled
back, and his sneakers hand onto the rungs of the chairs so that his
knees rise up in front of his chest. He places forearm on top of
forearm, but atop the peaks of his knees, and looks over them at her
when he rests his chin on them.
"You got banged up," he comments,
looking to her arm, but not over the rest of her body. His eyes go back
to her face. Rest on her own.
Molly
His approach
did not go unnoticed. This could be blamed on the faint, humming, dying
power of what was left of his blood within her. It could be the
sensitive ears and sense of surroundings in general. Could also be just
that she was waiting on him in general, and had been anticipating his
arrival. Either way, her eyes had hopped up to find him before he was
even at the propped-open gate to the patio.
Molly offered no
smiles to greet Abraham when he folded himself into a chair beside her.
She didn't look cold, necessarily, did not scowl at him. She was
simply watchful. What trust may have been forming had been dashed to
the wind, and he knew precisely why. So she was cautious, watchful, and
wary.
Blue eyes hopped down to her arm when he made mention of
her nearly-healed abrasions, and that same raw-skinned shoulder rolled
in a shrug to dismiss the comment. "That's nothing compared to the
other guy." She reached for her pint and took a drink, and kept her
hand wrapped about the glass when she rested it back on the table.
"You've been well, I hope?" Did she really though?
Abe
[ Does she really, though? Perception + Empathy. ]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Molly
As
a matter of fact, she did. In some way. The wishes for his well-being
were tinged with reluctance and shame, but the sentiment is genuine
none the less.
Abe
Abe keeps looking at her. His
chin slips and his head falls another few degrees, eating up a few more
inches of his face behind his crossed forearms. His nose now sits them
smashed up against it. To say he is reading her poker face is too
sterile. That's gamesmanship. There is something deeper there. It isn't
about a ledger, wins and losses, black and red. He wants to understand
how she has been effected by what has happened.
Abraham's voice
would be muffled if he spoke. He doesn't. He keeps watching her,
closely, and seems to pan away what she has just said in favor of the
glimmering truths beneath it. He is waiting for her to say something.
What?
Something
meaningful. Something that has nothing to do with social niceties and
strained conceits that either of them could possibly be well.
Abraham
could watch her for some time. His eyes dip, though, watching how she
is holding that glass. A life preserver? A weapon? A security blanket?
Molly
Distraction
would be a better word for the glass that she kept in her hand.
Fingernails painted a soft baby-blanket pink and clipped short and neat
tapped silent and gentle against its side, shifted droplets of
condensation to and fro until they'd slide to collect on the wire
tabletop beneath. He didn't answer her, just tucked his face behind his
arms and watched carefully. Waited for what she had to say.
Molly
looked back and her brow furrowed as silence filled the space that a
conversational answer would have otherwise. This stalemate, this
staring at one another, lasted for more than a dozen seconds. It wore
something, some kind of resolve, just a little bit, and Abe would find a
momentary glimmer of worry and exhaustion and loss in Molly's eyes
before she reigned it in and looked away-- off to traffic that began to
move after the change of traffic signals.
"I can't sleep anymore,"
she confessed. Her voice was mellow and even, just as conversational
as it had been before. Intentionally so, either for the sake of
avoiding drawing the attention of passers by, or because she didn't want
to show him how affected she was, even as she was telling him in plain
language.
"It's in my dreams, what you showed me. In the corners and the shadows, too, not just under the streets."
Her eyes found his again, and looked part-accusing when she asked: "What did you do?"
Abe
Abraham
lifts his chin, straightens his neck, and rolls back a bit. His arms
loosen into a wider loop and hold his knees to his chest when he goes
so, so that his feet sort of dangle in those black sneakers, tapping on
the edge of his seat.
This all means he can speak without his voice being muffled.
"Last
night three kids got shot on a corner out deep on East Colfax. Maybe
two or three miles from here? A prostitution bust got five women from
South Korea sent over to an ICE lockup for deportation and the citizen
running the place is already out of bail with no human trafficking
charges. A cop got shot making a routine traffic stop and they found the
car dumped out on Route 46. That was all going to happen whether I
picked up the paper to read about it this morning or not," he says, like
he is reciting a litany. The end of some black mass, pray for them, it
will do something.
"You aren't seeing anything that wasn't already
there. You wish you couldn't see it?" He means for the question to be
answered, but is already interrupting himself.
"What were you
looking for? What did you think you were going to find? What's your own
shadow look like?" It's a litany of questions, a grand inquisition, now.
He still manages to look calm, even as he presses her, backing her into
a corner with each insistent and persistent interrogation. The last one
hangs there, defying gravity because it has its own pull.
Molly
[Self-Control: Corners aren't fun to be in]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Molly
The
recent suffering of local humanity is laid out, and Molly takes the
news in as evenly as she would were she reading it from the newspaper
with a morning coffee in the comfort of her own home. It was likely
that much of that wasn't news to her. Molly worked the emergency room
at a hospital downtown, she saw the immediate aftermath of violence and
devastation in this city, even before she had her eyes opened to the
deeper, hidden causes for so much of that misery.
Then came the
questions, and though Abraham was still curled into his chair it was one
question after the other, almost demanding of answers, like he would
put her in a corner to find them and each question dropped was a fence
erected to keep her there.
Most people hate being put on the spot,
but Molly didn't even bat an eyelash. She looked at him flatly, took
another sip of her beer, and uncrossed her legs so that she could lean
forward toward the table, toward Abraham as well.
"I wasn't
prepared for the level of what you showed me. I wanted a glimpse behind
the curtain, and instead you held me still so I could watch the entire
fucking opera." Her gaze was cool and sad both, with a lingering dollop
of accusation. Like she was to remind him that maybe it wasn't nearly
so dismissable an offense as it was being played to be.
"I seek
the truth, what I need to know to keep myself safe. I have no goddamn
idea what I'm ever going to find, but usually it's valuable and useful.
This, though?" Her hand left her glass so she could tap a pretty pink
fingernail against her temple. "This isn't equipped for what you did.
"So, I'll ask again. What did you do?"
Abe
"Keep
yourself safe? You want an umbrella. You could just keep out of the
rain. I made it so that you couldn't lie to yourself. Whatever you saw's
already there. I just made you look at it," Abe says. She has him
talking.
She'd done a bit of it herself. She had tapped her head, said she wasn't ready. "But-" a pause- "And," rephrasing, "you're still here. You have to be a little fucking crazy to survive all this," he says.
All this. That other world.
"If
you want to keep yourself safe, seek the lies. Wrap yourself up in
them, nice and safe, alright?" Shaking his head and letting go of his
knees, he stands up, the back of his legs sending the chair clattering
across the floor.
Molly
"The lies are exactly
that," she said, and her tone was sharpened by the fact that the man was
shaking his head and standing. Tense, because she was worried that he
was going to walk away after having only sat for a few minutes. She
didn't have the answers, there was no cure for the lack of sleep and the
stress and paranoia that she'd suffered. Somehow she was associating
Abraham with an answer that would help with the rest, and that he may
simply walk away had her worried.
"There's no safety in them," she
said bitterly, and straightening and adjusting her posture so she was
sitting still, but positioned in a way that she could stand promptly as
well. Another table on the other side of the patio held four people,
and they glanced over when Abraham stood abruptly enough to make his
chair tip and clatter and scrape across the pavement. Molly ignored
them, kept her eyes on Abraham's instead.
"Remember in the park, how I told you the way back's caved in? You said that isn't so, but I disagree. That
is why I don't seek the lies. I already had them, and look at where I
am now." Ghouled to a Madman, in debt to others, head full of secrets
and knowledge that has been protected from humankind for many a century.
"I
don't--," she started, but then stopped and scowled hard. Lifted her
pint to drink deep until it drained to 1/3 full, and finally stood as
well. "Look, I had no idea what I was getting into with you, but here
we are now. You're..." She glanced to the table again-- they had taken
a keen interest in what looked like a possible dispute between lovers,
and Molly didn't appreciate the attention, didn't want to be overheard.
"Should we walk?"
Abe
"You're not dipping your toes in shark-infested waters. You're diving in. You're chum," insistent.
And you're full of shit,"
Abraham says next, shaking his head, and he says it louder than all the
rest. Louder than the music playing through the bar and out those front
windows onto the patio.
"No. We shouldn't. Not if all you want is
to be safe," he answers. "Definitely not if you want to be safe," and
with that he turns away and toward the door, walking off, leaving his
chair overturned and where he had been standing empty.
Molly
Accused
of being chum and full of shit both, Molly stood with a flat scowl on
her face and watched Abraham turn and head for the bar door, to go
inside the establishment rather than spend more time out on the patio
with her. With Molly, the Liar, She Who Is Full Of Shit and maybe or
maybe doesn't want to be safe.
The four at the table-- three men
and a woman-- watched with mingled interest and sympathy while what they
assumed to be the boyfriend stood and left this red-haired girl to tend
to the tipped chair and the fact that she was walked away from. One of
the men raised eyebrows and asked if she was alright. Molly ignored
him, righted Abe's chair, and walked inside a half a minute after him.
Wherever
Abraham may have drifted once inside the building, Molly made her way
to the bar first with her half-finished pint glass. She leaned against
the counter and smiled tight and closed-lipped at the tender when she
approached. There was a brief exchange between the red-haired nurse and
the black-haired, multi-tattoo'd bartender, and by the end of it Molly
had returned her glass and paid off a tab that she'd opened because she
didn't know how long she'd be here.
This gives Abraham a good two
to three minutes before Molly came to stand a few feet from his side,
looking down through the glass of the pinball machine that had grabbed
his attention. Her hands were tucked into the back pockets of those
bright white shorts, and a brown satchel purse was strapped over one
shoulder instead ofa cross the chest, and tucked against the curve of
her waist.
She'd stand quietly nearby, gauging to see if he'd move
away again, and when she found that he didn't she spoke in a tone of
voice that came renewed from taking time to gather your thoughts and
straighten your points.
"I've left you without context, Abe. I
can't go back to pretending I don't know anything because I'm too
wrapped up in the affairs around here." As she spoke, she kept her eyes
down on wherever that little silver ball was being propelled by bumpers
and triggers and brightly flashing ramps.
"You're far from the
first of your kind that I know. They're the 'horrible' I was telling
you about. If I try to pretend I know nothing, then I lose what
defenses I have and turn myself into a sacrificial lamb for when They
eventually come to collect. I sought knowledge to keep myself safe--
not as a defense, but as a weapon and a currency. To keep myself as
ahead of the curve as I can be."
Abe
"Lambs can
grow horns. Sounds like that has been going well for you," pressing the
left, then the right, then the left button again in furious succession.
He plays the pinball game as well.
"So, you find out what you can
about me, what I am and what I can do, and then you parlay that shit out
the next time you have a close call with Horrible & Co? I'm not a
fucking Cliff Notes," Abraham continues.
Abraham sighs, though, as the ball makes its way past his defenses and waits to again be flung into the field of battle.
"I
saw you when I showed you. Relentless. You want to know. You can tell
yourself you're doing it to keep yourself safe, that I made you watch
the show, but you're a bloodhound. It's the hunt. The thrill, so don't
pretend at innocence," he says, punctuating it with another pull at the
pin that springs forward to start the game again.
"Wild dogs get shot, though. Trust me, I know," he says as he starts trigger-fingering the flippers on the game.
Molly
"I'm
not going to sell you out, if that's what you're worried about." Her
tone of voice was closed and quieter than it had been when they were out
on the patio. Before she had been even and calm in tone so that the
public ear wouldn't pay mind to them. Now she was quiet not because she
was afraid of being overheard, but because she was thoughtful. Maybe
she felt a bit scolded, too, but mostly she was introspective as he
called her out on being a bloodhound.
She's quiet long enough for
him to play his way through much of another round of pinball. Then,
finally, Molly broke her silence with a small burst of frustration in
her vocals and heart both.
"Fine, so maybe I have to be a fucking
know-it-all. It doesn't matter, the situation I'm in doesn't change
any. It just makes it that much more my own goddamn fault that I'm here
in the first place. I know that, don't make me fucking admit it out loud."
The
frustration fizzled and faded. She took her hands from her pockets and
put them on the edge of the pinball machine instead, no place that they
would obstruct his view, but holding onto the machine as though it
could help support her, or prove to be something solid enough to keep
her present and focused.
"I know of the War. I know of the
worries, the recent goings on in your World. I know what the Beast
Below does and that so many more people than just myself know about it
too, and that it scares the shit out of people more mighty than I could
be.
For the first time since they'd switched from patio to bar
interior, Molly's eyes sought out Abe's own. "I don't want to be put
out of my misery, Abe."
[[ SCENE CURRENTLY UNFINISHED -- May retroactively wrap another time ]]
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