applesaucedream | The Shavings Off Your Mind are the Only Rent [Open to All]

The Shavings Off Your Mind are the Only Rent [Open to All]

photo JulyDreamPartyImage01_zps8d9e51ff.jpg

Picture a house. Actually, picture two houses. They're (almost) identical structures that share an uneasy coexistence, tangled together on a quantum level. One of the houses is Good: bright, cheerful, full of comfortable furniture and a pervasive feeling of safety. The other house is Evil: dingy, dilapidated, and haunted by the dreamers' greatest fears.

The good news - and bad news - is that travel from one house to the other is as simple as passing through a door. All a dreamer has to do is walk through a doorway, any doorway, and they'll find themselves in whichever house they weren't in before they crossed the threshold. Perhaps they'll step out of a beautiful library and find themselves in a threatening hallway - or perhaps they'll flee a menacing kitchen and find themselves in a perfectly safe dining room. That is the nature of the houses' entanglement: every door is a portal between the two.

There are, of course, complications. Dreamers in one house can't perceive the other; if you're in the Good house and looking through a doorway, the space beyond will look as nice and inviting as the space you're in now (until you step through that doorway, of course). Dreamers also can't really perceive one another if they're in the same room, but in different houses, though they might see a flash of movement out of the corner of their eye, or think they heard something.

Perhaps the greatest complications are the houses themselves. They have rather strong personalities, and they aren't very fond of one another. Each house will want to keep you if it can (keep you safe, in the case of the Good house, or keep you for itself, in the case of the Evil one). Dreamers may attempt to cross a hall and find the door that looked open and inviting a moment ago is now barred shut, leaving them trapped in the hall - or have doors suddenly close in their faces before they can end up anywhere unpleasant. Still, there's only so much either house can do, and even a locked door can be jimmied open or busted down.

Escape from the houses is possible, but the formal gardens beyond are similarly entangled, with neatly trimmed lawns and expertly plotted flower beds becoming overgrown tangles of nettles and algae-choked reflecting pools. An archway is as good as a door, as far as the gardens are concerned, and there are plenty of arbors and arches over the paths. Of course, dreamers may find that a sound arbor in the Good garden has collapsed in the Evil one… and heaven help anyone who dares to explore the hedge maze.

[ooc: y'all know the drill. ALL characters are welcome, regardless of whether they're in the game. Characters can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion.

Also, this dream party marks the aforementioned calendar freeze. For the next three weeks, the IG date will sit on July 3rd. Posts dated July 3rd or earlier are allowed and encouraged. The calendar will resume forward motion at a 4:1 ratio on Saturday, July 26th.]

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'Wicked,' murmurs Unthank appreciatively, a little growl behind the word. The boy is beautifully on edge; really, it's practically an invitation for someone to take him in hand.

'And do tell, what d'you think that'll accomplish? Other than burning you to a crisp along with it.'

Doctor Unthank, of course, won't allow that. It may not be the physical manuscript-- and perhaps that's a good thing, given the rumours he's heard-- but both it and Johnny contain valuable information; it'd be a shame to let all that go up in flame when he's only just found it.

Johnny's lip curls at the counter, and he turns away, angry at having been called out. Who the hell does he think he is? He doesn't know. He couldn't.

"It's only a dream," he mutters, somewhat petulantly, and without heart. He's died enough in dreams to know how much it still hurts, how much it still fucks with you, crawls into your head and sits there, reminding you in the night when your body trips over nothing and you jerk awake.

He looks at his hands, hesitant, for lack of another action. "I'm bleeding," he says, almost surprised by it.

Unthank's lip curls in a mirror of Johnny's, whiskers bristling, but his eyes above his bifocals glitter.

'Mm,' he agrees. 'You were rather... enthusiastic in attacking the walls. Nasty business. But you never answered my question: do you want to get out? Assuming you'd rather not stay in here until you happen to wake up. I suspect,' he casts a speculative look at the ceiling, also plastered with countless, overlapping pages, 'these won't go away no-matter how many you rip down. Might start snowing them next. And that would be... unpleasant.'

"You never told me who you are," Johnny argues, because two can play at that game. But he can't avoid it, not for very long, the obvious answer to the repeated question. Of course he wants out, that's all he ever wants. Who is this man to know that, and to ask like it's an offer?

"I know. I fuckin know." Johnny crouches down and wipes the blood from his fingers onto the pages. Highlighting the word unheimlich, there it is, his awkward dissertation on the subject. He looks up without standing. "So? What are you really asking?"

'Of course.' He laughs a little, an easy social mistake anyone might make; forgetting to introduce himself, how silly! 'Niall Mortimer. Doctor.' An easy lie; he's not in the habit of using his real name outside his home time and place, where it has considerable influence. 'I'd offer to shake your hand, but I suspect you wouldn't take it. I've not got anything up my sleeves, I promise.'

He lifts his hands, wiggling his fingers to demonstrate. Really, he's so harmless.

'As for what I'm asking; precisely what I say, dear boy. No deals with the devil here. Merely that it might be more pleasant to talk in a room slightly less nightmarish than this one.'

"Doctor Mort." Johnny laughs, dry like kindling. "Doctor Death?"

He's no stranger to false names and clever little linguistic jokes, especially when surrounded by it as he is now. That literary forte has escaped him in recent months, but not so much in this room, not with it adhering to him like it never fucking left.

"If you can get the door open," says Johnny, "then be my guest. I have work to do."

He grabs another handful of pages and tears them down their centers, as if to prove his point.

Edited 2014-07-08 05:28 (UTC)

He chuckles at that, eyebrows lifting. 'Tch, what am I, a comic book supervillain? The opposite, if anything. Not that you're one to talk, Mr. Truant.'

He may deal in the occasional death, when it profits him, but he makes sure to keep it on the other side of the knife, as it were. Accepting Johnny's brusque invitation, he fishes in the pocket of his corduroy blazer (with patches on the elbows, natch) and produces a pocketknife (he said he didn't have anything up his sleeves), ambling over to a door on the far wall.

It's papered over, like the rest of the room, but the outline is still clear, and he lifts the knife to begin cutting through when his eye is caught by one of the pages. A tangle of illegible words at the bottom, but the top: Sweet, sweet Johnny. Intrigued, like a curator digging something fragile out of storage, he strokes his fingertips over the paper. One of Johnny's contributions to the book. Fascinating, really, the way it seems almost a living thing, taking and assimilating. The book, the house. Where does the power come from?

But Johnny's not talking now, so he raises the knife to score a line through the letter, down through a dozen more, some signed, some not, until he's sliced all the way around the door and cleared the paper away from the knob. He lays his hand on the smooth metal, half expecting a shock, some repulsion from the house, but there's nothing. He smiles to himself. Good. It must know he's not without his own power.

With a wrench, he tugs the door open. Keeping his hand on the knob, lest it shut again, he turns to Johnny, cocking an eyebrow. 'There we go. Easily enough done.'

Johnny scowls at the little nod to his own name - almost no one notices that, or they don't comment on it at least - but he says nothing, focusing his attention on the task beneath his hands. At the edge of his gaze he notes Niall touching the pages on the door - noticing. Reading. He bristles quietly, keeping it inside for now.

When the door is opened, Johnny looks up, eyeing the production with droll, affected disinterest. Inwardly he's screaming, railing at himself for even considering leaving - leaving this room behind, where anyone could stumble across it - but what choice does he have, really? If he stays here it'll kill him, for real this time. Probably. Doesn't want to wait around to find out.

He stands on shaky deerlike legs and steps toward the door, eyes on the Doctor for now, then, just as he nears, darting to the broken pages on the door itself.

No.

The letters. The fucking Whalestoe Letters. Her letters. Pelafina fucking Truant née who-gives-a-good-goddamn. All over the door, for some reason, probably beautifully allegorical if he gave it a moment's due consideration. He pushes past Niall into the next room, the master bedroom, and he pivots back immediately and seizes the taller man by the lapels of his pretentious fucking jacket. It's ridiculous - Niall is immensely tall compared to him, there's no way he can impose himself at all, but he's angry, and he's stupid.

"You had no right to read those," he snarls. "I saw you. They weren't yours."

He's not expecting the attack, and it's that more than anything which drives his back against the doorjamb with a thump that resonates in his belly. Beside them, the door clicks to, and after a moment, Doctor Unthank starts to laugh. He is impressed. Desperate, jagged Johnny Truant, a head shorter than him if he's an inch, and here he is snarling up at him like a rat terrier. What fun.

Presently, he swallows back his laughter, tipping his chin down to look at the boy as if he were a student he was particularly disappointed by. 'Tch, come now,' he murmurs, rolling his shoulders against the wall, 'there's no need for violence.'

Casually, he brings a hand up to hover over Johnny's throat, tipping his own head to the side to study the shadow it casts, before catching-- hooking his thumb up under the hinge of Johnny's jaw, no longer casual at all but quite, quite purposeful.

'Now, didn't I say I'd get you out?' His voice and face are still mild, and he forcefully turns Johnny's head to look. The room they're in is not simply ordinary, it's downright welcoming. Everything about it seems warm, somehow, from the beautifully polished wainscoting to the luxuriant fabric to the lazy sunlight picking dust motes out of the air. He smiles, only a little sardonic, and lets go his hand.

'I like to think I'm a man of my word.'

He's so calm. Johnny doesn't know what he expected. This man is not afraid of him, has no reason to be, has no reason to defer to his wishes, and this he makes expressly clear when his hand curls around Johnny's throat.

Instantly Johnny goes very, extremely still. His hands drop at once, as though burned, and his breath hitches hard when Niall forcibly turns his head. His hands hang limp at his sides, useless, not an impulse left even to fight back against the unwelcome grip; it's true, the room is better, gentler, calmer, and Johnny feels an unnatural burst of shame at having ignored it.

"I," he stammers, stops and swallows. He is not going to apologize. He will not. Instead he casts his eyes downward, feeling small and pathetic, which is almost as bad. "They're private, is all."

Ohhh, he likes Johnny more and more the more he learns of him. The immediate, thoughtless, helpless stillness at the hand to his throat is-- well. He feels like a connoisseur having unintentionally stumbled upon a lost Da Vinci. His usual modus operandi is to be genial and kindly until he's coaxed a person into his trust (although obviously he's already somewhat eschewed that), but this gives him a whole new level to play with.

'Of course they are,' he says soothingly. 'Nor are they my interest. Every man has the right to his own... personal business. But I admit, Johnny,' he pushes himself off the wall with another roll of his shoulders, straightening and taking half a step forward-- Johnny will have to retreat or allow the distance between them to close-- 'I am curious about, oh, a great many things. I hope you might be able to help me.'

Edited 2014-07-08 07:08 (UTC)

Johnny does retreat, stepping back slightly, just moment behind the casual advance. He keeps his eyes averted, gazing dully at the floor, and at Niall's shoes. "How," he murmurs flatly, not uttered like a question at all, though the wonder is genuine. Johnny can't help anyone, hasn't that always been the case? Doesn't he know?

Edited 2014-07-08 07:17 (UTC)

'Ohh, let's not sulk.'

He offers another one of those genial smiles, and tips Johnny's chin up with two fingers. It's an innocent enough gesture, the touch light and not lingering, but it does come rather soon after that chokehold.

'You,' he says, sounding quite genuinely interested, 'know about the house, and I am quite, quite curious. I've heard rumours, you see, and your name does keep cropping up. One wonders what you've been getting yourself into, Mr. Truant. So I thought I'd go straight to the source, as it were.'

Johnny blinks up at him, wary, lips parted slightly and unconsciously. These are dangerous questions, questions he does not want to answer. Questions he doesn't even know how to answer.

He smiles, weak and bewildered, his broken tooth too visible, only for a second. "You've got the wrong guy, man," he says. "I don't know anything. I'm the go-between. I wouldn't even know where to start."

He hadn't known where to start before. It's not like he really knows anything. This is good; maybe Niall will see he's not worth it, let him be.

'Oh, you needn't worry; I hardly expect you to be an expert.'

He peers down at Johnny, a tweedy shark in bifocals and a small, falsely mild smile. Caressingly, his gaze takes in the chipped tooth, the ill-looking cast to his smile, and he imagines for a moment taking him by the throat again. But no, no, not yet.

'Like I say, I know nothing at all, really; I am merely a... student.'

'Come now!' he says with sudden briskness, stepping around Johnny in such a way that his hand ends up at his lower back; gentle, encouraging pressure for Johnny to follow as he makes his way to the bed. 'Let's have a talk, hmm? Just a talk. Why don't you tell me about how you found the manuscript?'

Bewildered enough to be swept up, Johnny allows himself to be drawn, caught between reluctance and indecision. At the unworded invitation he sits on only the very edge of the bed, hands gripping tightly at his knees (his fingers have healed now, now that he's free of the room, that's something at least).

"It was..." The words boil up in his throat, hard to keep down. He'd resisted so well not so long ago, the last time someone had demanded his story, but now it seems so difficult to resist, or difficult to conjure up a reason. He swallows. It's all fresh, if jumbled, in his mind.

"Lude called me," he murmurs. "My friend Lude. I wish he hadn't. God I wish he hadn't."

That's not enough of a beginning but he needs to pause anyway, steadying his breathing, it's okay, it's going to be okay. "His neighbor had died. A man called Zampanò. He wanted me to come take a look at what he'd found, because he knew..."

Miserably, he sighs, letting the rest out on a defeated breath: "He knew I'd be interested."

He guides Johnny to the edge of the bed with a last, lingering press of his fingertips, before relinquishing the contact to go sit in an armchair by the bedside. Lifting his glasses off his nose to slide them over the crown of his head, he fixes sharp eyes on Johnny, sitting casually slumped, one ankle balanced on the opposite knee.

'And you were,' he murmurs. 'Interested.' It sounds like that fact pleases him; he likes people with an irrisistable compulsion to poke their noses where they shouldn't. 'Tell me why. What about the manuscript... drew you in?'

"I don't know. Nothing about it. In particular." He frowns, gaze fixed on the ambiguous middle distance, not yet able to meet the eyes of his strange companion. "Just the thing itself. Its weight. Like there was more in it than there was outside to hold it. And... I mean, there was."

He almost laughs, almost, the sound doesn't quite resolve into anything particularly amused-sounding, just the faint echo of a remembered reaction. "That was the whole point, I guess. Lude knew I'd want to find out what it was. Maybe. I don't know. But I did. I mean I wanted to find out."

Yes, that he'd known, or suspected at least, from what he's heard. Things like the manuscript, the house, things that resonate through time, they're always larger than their physical forms can possibly contain. Much like people, really. That's what makes them significant.

'Mmm,' he hums, eyes still on Johnny. His fingertips stroke idly over the tense curve of the chair's arm, remembering the feel of the letters pasted to the door.

'And then you started adding to it, mm? Like an academic; we're forever unable to resist throwing in our tuppence.' A self-deprecating smile. 'But... not just that; yourself, your own experiences... those letters of yours. Almost as if you were feeding it. Now there's a macabre thought.'

And he wonders, he does, where that power comes from. Is it drawn from the attentions of poor fools like Johnny, latching on and sucking them dry, or is it intrinsical to the thing itself? Though where the borders of the thing end is unclear.

Johnny may be unwilling to meet his eyes yet, but Doctor Unthank's snap up out of his thoughts to find them regardless, forceful and penetrating; Johnny will look when he's ready. 'Tell me what it did to you.'

He can feel the stare well enough, and he meets it slowly, tugged up by it, matching its intensity as best he can. He's not afraid. He's not afraid.

"You know what," he guesses. "It got inside me, inside my head, made me feel things, see things, all five cardinal senses really. It made me crazy. Just like her. Just like my-"

His voice cracks, oh no, not ready for that yet. Not ready for it ever. Shouldn't have said it, really. Terrible thing to say. To even think. He lets his eyelids slide shut again, briefly, briefly, just to steady himself, before facing the good Doctor again.

"It almost killed me," he says. "Almost."

Johnny meets his eyes in a bold pretense of courage, and Doctor Unthank smiles.

Just like his mother, is how that sentence ought to end, or so he gathers from the oh-so-private letters he'd seen on the door to the other room, but Unthank doesn't especially care what trauma or abuse the boy may have suffered at the hands of a lunatic mother. Obviously it's given him... issues, but those are less interesting than the ones brought about by the manuscript.

'Now that is interesting. And how do you think it did that? What... gives a book that kind of ~power over men's minds?'

If we're going to call that a smile. Johnny finds the effect wholly unnerving.

"Not the book," he says derisively, with an unveiled air of keep up, stupid. "The house. The idea of it. It's not just a house, like... a physical place, a single spot. It's more. It's so much more. It's a concept, a mythology unto itself, a lie, and a monster as old as fuckin time, probably. It cuts right into the earth, just like it cut into me. You can't even fuckin imagine."

He's losing the patience for this now. Getting twitchy. One of his legs jiggles involuntarily under his grip. "We done here?"

He waves a dismissive hand in response to Johnny's correction. The book, the film, the house; they're entangled to such a degree that, as he understands it, it would be pointless to try and separate them. The power is there in all three, even if the house is its origin.

'But you never went to the house, did you? All you had was the book, and yet...'

But oh, does Johnny want to leave? Tch, a man might feel insulted. His eyebrows lift as he purses his lips, pulling his glasses down and wrinkling his nose as he settles them. He uncrosses his legs. 'Oh, I don't know; I think that's up to you. You know what'll happen, don't you, if we leave this room? There's all ~manner of nastiness in this house. Speaking of houses.'

"I never did," confirms Johnny, feeling irritable. He gets up, attempting to be decisive. "But it doesn't matter. I'm more used to fucked up house shit than you realize. I don't want to just sit here, having this conversation with-" He flails an arm in Niall's general direction. "-Doctor Strangelove."

He pulls away from the bed, and the man, looking for an exit. A number of doors to choose from, and for a moment that holds him up.

That's probably supposed to be an insult; Unthank just lifts his eyebrows, amused. He sits still, for a moment, when Johnny gets up, wearing a tolerant expression like a man watching a favoured pet refusing to come to heel, before standing himself, shoving his hands into the pockets of his blazer.

'By all means, put your expertise to use.'

He nods at the doors installed in all three facing walls. Let Johnny make the choice. Doctor Unthank is... more or less confident that, however this house works, it will choose to prey on Johnny before him. And he rather likes the element of choice. Or the illusion of it, at any rate.

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