[ well. camille is already categorized as "not age inappropriate but i ain't messing with that" in todomatsu's mental registry after reviewing the profiles, so he's not going to go out of his way to try to be charming, but he'll still try to make some polite conversation when he encounters her out somewhere between the shitty buildings for the sake of appearances. ]

Ah— we didn't meet last night, did we?

[:C was it the weak piss quote]

Don't think so. You're the uh... [rolling her pointer finger through the air as she scoops the correct info from her mental data bank.] The skincare guy? Todo—

[She pulls off with a smile, lightly bashful.]

Sorry, I think you'd best tell me how it's pronounced. I'm likely to make an ass of myself.

[ while setting up his shitty clown bedding ]

Well, I guess we'll be seeing each other a lot for the next two months!

So you're sticking around?

[She knows they could shuffle. It's not like the placards dictate their lives, nebulous building tether or not. Camille just doesn't see the point in it. Every option is equally shitty and piled in with strangers. Why fight it?]

I'm glad. At least you and Alfyn seem to have level heads. The other two are shit-disturbers.

[For all the good her useless ass was today, she still feels like she pulled a triathlon. Camille sits outside of the theater, in the dirt, hands itching. Throat dry and wishing for many manner of vices.

She lifts a hand to Todomatsu as he passes.]

You're not coming back home, are you?

[Please distract her.]

Absolutely not.

[ he stayed the night there a grand total of one night and never again after the leeches. ]

[Who hurt my little man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]

Totty? [Speaking soft when she finally finds him, wan in the face.] Jesus Christ, what happened to you all?

[ he's out at the beach for a little bit before curfew, cleaned up and now in blood-free clothes. he's still very pale and greyish, though the perpetual sunset might make it a little harder to notice that.

he looks at her for a moment, then back out at the water, and shrugs. ]

One minute we were here and the next we weren't.

[ ...sighs. ]

There was this woman behind everything who was like, using the corpses of people we knew against us, and... I don't know, messed with our memories or something, and made us live out these shitty alternate timelines to try to convince us we needed her.

[ outside the theater sometime after investigation... he still looks vaguely undead, and perhaps surprisingly upset, though she can probably guess that it's not because of karma. ]

Hey.

Hey, stranger.

[What's a gal like you doing in a gin joint like this?

Camille offers a weak smile, taking up a spot at his side. He looks rough. Grey at the gills still. Maybe he's warming up a bit, it's hard to tell in the dim of night and the thick misery painted on the both of them.]

This week really came for your ass.

[ here we are at the pyre sometime after execution... he sits down next to her with a pear he brought over from AC island and just. sighs. ]

Damn.

[What a coincidence, she brought herself a peach.]

I'll fucking say.

[She holds her fruit up to him. Can't clink glasses, maybe the next best thing will have to do.]

To the lost and the screwed.

I drove back past my mother's house, then east out toward the hog farm, and pulled up to Heelah's, that comforting, windowless block of a bar where anyone who recognized the boss' daughter would wisely leave her to her thoughts.

The place stank of pig blood and urine; even the popcorn in the bowls along the bar smelled of flesh. A couple of men in baseball caps and leather jackets, handlebar mustaches and scowls, looked up, then back down to their beers. The bartender poured me my bourbon without a word. A Carole King song droned from the speakers. On my second round, the bartender motioned behind me and asked, "You lookin' for him?"

John Keene sat slumped over a drink in the bar's only booth, picking at the splintered edge of the table.His white skin was mottled pink with liquor, and from his wet lips and the way he smacked his tongue, I guessed he'd vomited once already. I grabbed my drink and sat across from him, said nothing. He smiled at me, reached his hand to mine across the table.

"Hi Camille. How're you doing? You look so nice and clean." He looked around. "It's...it's so dirty here."

"I'm doing okay I guess, John. You okay?"

"Oh sure, I'm great. My sister's murdered, I'm about to be arrested, and my girlfriend who's stuck to me like glue since I moved to this rotten town is starting to realize I'm not the prize anymore. Not that I care that much. She's nice but not..."

"Not surprising," I offered.

"Yeah. Yeah. I was about to break up with her before Natalie. Now I can't."

Such a move would be dissected by the whole town—Richard, too. What does it mean? How does it prove his guilt?

"I will not go back to my parents' house," he muttered. "I will go to the fucking woods and kill myself before I go back to all of Natalie's things staring at me."

"I don't blame you."

He picked up the salt shaker, began twirling it around the table.

"You're the only person who understands, I think," he said. "What it's like to lose a sister and be expected to just deal. Just move on. Have you gotten over it?" He said the words so bitterly I expected his tongue to turn yellow.

"You'll never get over it," I said. "It infects you. It ruined me." It felt good to say it out loud.

"Why does everyone think it's so strange that I should mourn Natalie?" John topped the shaker and it clattered to the floor. The bartender sent over a disgruntled look. I picked it up, set it on my side of the table, threw a pinch of salt over my shoulder for the both of us.

"I guess when you're young, people expect you to accept things more easily," I said. "And you're a guy. Guys don't have soft feelings."

He snorted. "My parents got me this book on dealing with death: Male in Mourning. It said that sometimes you need to drop out, to just deny. That denial can be good for men. So I tried to take an hour and pretend like I didn't care. And for a little bit, I really didn't. I sat in my room at Meredith's and I thought about...bullshit. I just stared out the window at this little square of blue sky and kept saying, It's okay, it's okay, it's okay. Like I was a kid again. And when I was done, I knew for sure nothing would ever be okay again. Even if they caught who did it, it wouldn't be okay. I don't know why everyone keeps saying we'll feel better once someone's arrested. Now it looks like the someone who's going to be arrested is me." He laughed in a grunt and shook his head. "It's just fucking insane." And then, abruptly: "You want another drink? Will you have another drink with me?"

He was smashed, swaying heavily, but I would never steer a fellow sufferer from the relief of a blackout. Sometimes that's the most logical route. I've always believed clear-eyed sobriety was for the harder hearted. I had a shot at the bar to catch up, then came back with two bourbons. Mine a double.

"It's like the picked the two girls in Wind Gap who had minds of their own and killed them off," John said. He took a sip of bourbon. "Do you think your sister and my sister would have been friends?"

In that imaginary place where they were both alive, where Marian had never aged.

"No," I said, and laughed suddenly. He laughed, too.

"So your dead sister is too good for my dead sister?" he blurted. We both laughed again, and then quickly soured and turned back to our drinks. I was already feeling dazed.

"I didn't kill Natalie," he whispered.

"I know."

He picked up my hand, wrapped it around his.

"Her fingernails were painted. When they found her. Someone painted her fingernails."

"Maybe she did."

"Natalie hated that kind of thing. Barely even allowed a brush through her hair."

Silence for several minutes. Carole King had given way to Carly Simon. Feminine folksy voices in a bar for slaughterers.

"You're so beautiful," John said.

"So are you."

[ he's probably still kind of coughing from the smoke. ugh. ]

God. At this rate they're hardly going to have anyone left for the big finale.

We can't keep going like this.

[Also coughs, smokey as hell.]

With any luck it's only two killers, max.

[ it didn't register with me until i looked up at the previous thread just now that we had them smoking while coughing from smoke inhalation... brilliant

anyway. comes over here to the barrier. does she look like herself right now. ]

Hey.

[it's fine we did what we could.]

[Also no she doesn't.]

I'm so sorry, my daughter is a troubled woman.

[ exploring the new area, currently somewhere near that fucked up tree ]

Oh, Camille-san.

[ waves... how's she looking today ]

The scenery's better than in the last place, at least.

[ ...looks at the tree and frowns ]

Well. Mostly.

[Not great, but at least she's slept and stopped crying. Mostly.]

I don't know what to expect, honestly. Every place we go to has some secret hidden horror. [Camille pulls a face as she takes a slow walk up, too lethargic to get a good hiking pace going. Just look at this fucking monstrosity, though.] Think this is the guy we're dying for?

[Wow this is

a miracle?

They're in the theatre again for old time's sake. Camille has her head in her hands, sat on the edge of the stage again.]

I don't get it...

[ lmao well. i'm assuming this is before the confession. christ. also alfyn's been really working on the theater's clinic transformation the past few days so benches are probably all moved around. ]

Haha, it's pretty crazy. Congrats, though.

Do you remember anything from in between?

Edited (my capitalization...) 2024-07-09 07:34 pm (UTC)

[ hopefully she's either at the infirmary or the clown clinic, but he'll come over a little while after things have settled down wherever she is. ]

Hey. How are you feeling? I've got lots of painkillers if you need them.

[She can be at the clown clinic, home sweet murderous home. The swamp has worked wonders for her eye socket but she is still looking groggy as hell. The mention of painkillers is met with a drowzy but immediate gratitude.]

I ever tell you you're my angel, Totty.

[Hand out. Pills please.]

[ ah... he comes and stands against the wall nearby. his emotions are pretty subdued, but they're tired and sad and anxious and tinged with self loathing. ]

...Rough day.

[post refectory madness....they cross paths.]

Oh...hey.

[ ah ]

Haha, that was a pretty big mess back there, huh?

[ he'll come find her wherever she is after a while. ]

Well... congrats on finally getting your turn, I guess...

[ ...

maybe joking about this right now isn't in the best taste. ]

...How are you doing?

[Prone at the haunted house for now, dreading the walk over to the market. Glowing like a hot coal. She is probably swaddled in blanket here too, hiding the damage.]

Peachy keen. [She blinks slowly up at the ceiling.] I don't think I enjoy adventure very much.

[ he's sitting down on the steps at the house after investigation. he gives her a little nod of acknowledgement but then looks back down and sighs. ]

...Man.

Man.

[She's still hobbling, but less cursed than she was at curfew. For the moment. The glow remains, and she won't get close enough to touch him, but she does join him for a sit.]

I was half hoping nothing would happen. We were already less than twenty left. Seemed like a good time to maybe...I don't know. Slow the monster summoning roll.

[Fat lot of good it would do for anyone already possessed.]

[your npc shower privileges...

Camille joins him after a time, coming to sit at the side of his futon with legs crossed. She sets down a glass of water, a bowl of nuts and dried fruits.]

It's not much, but it's what the market has on offer.

[Plus she was a shit cook to begin with, and now she's down a hand.]

Do you want to be alone?

[Yeets memory at you.]



For those who need a name, there's a gift basket of medical terms. All I know is that cutting made me feel safe. It was proof. Thoughts and words, captured where I could see them and track them. The truth, stinging, on my skin, in a freakish shorthand. Tell me you're going to the doctor, and I'll want to cut worrisome on my arm. Say you've fallen in love and I buzz the outlines of tragic over my breast. I hadn't necessarily wanted to be cured. But I was out of places to write, slicing myself between my toes— bad, cry — like a junkie looking for one last vein. Vanish did it for me. I'd saved the neck, such a nice prime spot, for one final good cutting. Then I turned myself in. I stayed at the hospital twelve weeks. It's a special place for people who cut, almost all of them women, most under twenty-five. I went when I was thirty. Just six months out. Delicate times.

Curry came to visit once, brought yellow roses. They chiseled off all the thorns before he was allowed into the reception room, deposited the shards in plastic containers—Curry said they looked like prescription bottles—which they locked way until the trash pickup came. We sat in the dayroom, all rounded edges and plush couches, and as we talked about the paper and his wife and the latest news in Chicago, I scanned his body for anything sharp. A belt buckle, a safety pin, a watch fob.

"I'm so sorry, my girl," he said at the end of his visit, and I could tell he meant it because his voice sounded wet.

When he left I was so sick I vomited in the bathroom, and as I was vomiting, I noticed the rubber-covered screws at the back of the toilet. I pried the cap off one and sanded the palm of my hand—I—until orderlies hauled me out, blood spurting from the wound like stigmata.

My roommate killed herself later that week. Not by cutting, which was, of course, the irony. She swallowed a bottle of Windex a janitor left out. She was sixteen, a former cheerleader who cut herself above the thigh so no one would notice. Her parents glared at me when they came to pick up her things.

They always call depression the blues, but I would have been happy to waken to a periwinkle outlook. Depression to me is urine yellow. Washed out, exhausted miles of weak piss.

The nurses gave us meds to alleviate our tingling skins. And more meds to soothe our burning brains. We were body searched twice weekly for any sharp objects, and sat in groups together purging ourselves, theoretically, of anger and self-hatred. We learned not to turn on ourselves. We learned to blame. After a month of good behaviour, we earned silky baths and massages. We were taught the goodness of touch.

My only other visitor was my mother, who I hadn't seen in half a decade. She smelled of purple flowers and wore a jangling charm bracelet I coveted as a child. When we were alone, she talked about the foliage and some new town rule that required Christmas lights to be taken down by January 15. When my doctors joined us, she cried and petted and fretted at me. She stroked my hair and wondered why I had done this to myself.

Then, inevitably, came the stories of Marian. She'd already lost one child, you see. It had nearly killed her. Why would the older (though necessarily less beloved) deliberately harm herself? I was so different from her lost girl, who—think of it—would be almost thirty had she lived. Marian embraced life, what she had been spared. Lord, she had soaked up the world—remember, Camille, how she laughed even in the hospital?

I hated to point out to my mother that such was the nature of a bewildered, expiring ten-year-old. Why bother? It's impossible to compete with the dead. I wished I could stop trying.

[ well. he's a gag anime character with like, four serious scenes in his entire canon. he is woefully unequipped to react to this and since it's unfortunately also emotionshare right now his emotions probably say as much. ]

Ah...

[ ...well, between this and that tooth memory, he's honestly not sure if getting pulled into stupid murder cult hell is a downgrade from her normal life or not. ]

...Sorry, that was just. A lot for one memory to cover.

[Revisiting their PRECIOUS HAUNTED HOUSE. Unstinked and homey again.]

...You know, there's an upscale boutique in the graveyard I think you'd like. The clothes are nice and not half so dated as Elysiums.

[If he wanted a lil treat for his hard work.]

Oh, really? Huh. Maybe I'll check it out. I've been curious about what's over there, but I'm also kind of paranoid about getting stuck there without being able to come back.