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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It's fascinating, the way the house shifts, somewhere beyond the perception of vision. The door opens onto a brightly-lit, perfectly pleasant-seeming corridor... until they step through it, and it doesn't. It's not even a matter of blinking and missing it; it's as if one had simply seen it wrong the first time, and this was the eyes correcting themselves.

The true image-- the room they're in now-- is decrepit, certainly, everything dirtied and rotting, wood crumbling and all begrimed with dust and the leavings of insects and mice, but there's no immediate, personal horror that he can see. Certainly nothing as obvious as the room he'd found Johnny in, nor some he'd passed through before, designed to prey on his own, well-buried fears. Until-- ahh. There, in the corner. Shadows, such as he'd seen himself, roiling like the darkness behind the stars, heaving sick and predatory, creeping delicately through cracks in the floorboards.

But not, he thinks, for him.

Unthank's shoes barely make a sound in the dust as he paces up to join Johnny, looming close enough behind him that even a deep inhalation might have his chest brushing Johnny's shoulderblades. 'Dare you choose another?' he murmurs, leaning down to speak in Johnny's ear.

Johnny can feel the doctor hovering close behind him, the electromagnetic field crackling palpably between them, the proximity and suggestion making his shoulder itch and ache with the anticipation of touch. The sudden closeness of Niall's voice startles him, and he shivers involuntarily before forcing himself to step away.

"Well, the next one will be fine, right?" he says doggedly. "Isn't that what you said?"

Still, though. The doors frighten him. He doesn't want to approach a single one of them. What waits for him on the other side? He stands in paralyzed hesitation again, and this time when he feels a presence creeping toward him, he first assumes it is the doctor, come again to whisper and needle at him.

But it's not. There are artifacts here, a cold, coiling sensation rooted down deep in his memory. The sharp tang of metal on the air, wrapping thick around his tongue. He squeezes his eyes shut. Don't look. Don't look, but really this time, don't do it, don't do it, don't-

The creak of a floorboard beneath his own foot as he shifts his weight jolts him enough to disobey his own directive, but he only makes it halfway around before something tangles itself around his neck and heaves him roughly off balance.

His terrified yell is cut short when he crashes to the floor, the air forced from his lungs. Oh no, oh no, it's here, it followed him, nesting here in this house just like all the others. He can't see it against the dark of the unlit hallway, but he can hear it, can feel it against his skin, pressing down on his throat, his mouth so full of the iron taste that for a minute he thinks he's going to hurl. Claws creeping down over his shoulder, threatening, suggesting. Cut him up, take him apart. Remake him into something wrong.

The petrified silence breaks. He screams and screams, frantic and devoid of reason, lost and, for the moment, alone.

Doctor Unthank feels the change in the air before the thing moves, a prickle of hairs, a shiver of damp darkness curling around his neck. It's as well that he can, because it can't be seen, amongst the shadows; part of them, made of them, the worm in the heart of all houses. But even if he couldn't feel it, a moment later, it's jerked Johnny to the floor and the boy is writhing and screaming and jerking, and Unthank stands immersed in the pools of shadow, watching him, eyes a little too wide and intrigued to be sane.

There is a part of him that's afraid. It is not, he's sure, coincidence, that this shadow-beast looks so like the things that lurk in peripheral vision when he walks between times, hungry for the death he's denied for long years. But that part is easily quelled, and after a moment of simply watching, rapt, he steps forward and speaks, drawing on old words, powerful words.

'Forþfēre!'

This is, after all, but a dream. Any mind of sufficient strength may bend a dream to its will, and so he turns to the shadow and intones into the darkness, a priest at a black mass.

'Ic i hæfe gewald cwealmen; wiþhabbest nā ānweald hēr. Forþfēre, oþþe ic willan ābrēote þū. Ic willan bregde þū geond deorcest heolstorhof and macian þū giernan feorhbealu.'

The shadow seethes, claws extending out of nothing, stretching for him, but all dissipate into nothing, and a moment later, there is only Johnny, splayed out in the dust, and Unthank bends to catch his wrist in long fingers. The pulse hammers beneath the thin skin, and his grip, for a moment, convulsively tightens as he jerks him close and up.

'Come on,' he growls, 'unless you'd like another go against that thing.'

The words - the words Niall Mortimer utters, ancient to the point of feeling inhuman, cut through the dark and into Johnny's head; his eyes snap open, he stares up, frightened and still, at the man standing over him. For a moment, a quivering, transient moment between heartbeats, he can feel the overwhelming profundity of his odd companion, multitudinous experience and capability. The feeling shatters and dissipates as quickly as his attacker when Niall grips his wrist, dragging him up off the floor.

"What," he says, breathless, "what was that? How did you do that?"

Without waiting for an answer he struggles to his feet and propels himself toward the nearest door, his legs shaking. He grips the door's knob, rattles it violently, swearing through gritted teeth. "I - I can't - Help me!"

The boy doesn't wait for an answer, stumbling coltlike on unsteady legs as he all but throws himself into the door, rattling the knob with furious panic. It's locked, of course, but Unthank wonders if, just perhaps-- and he has to restrain a laugh even to think of it. How delightful, if the dream-house did let him, just imagine poor pathetic Johnny's face then.

Worth a try.

He comes up behind Johnny again, bent over him like a shadow himself, and lays his hand atop Johnny's on the doorknob. His fingers curl around flesh and bone and the rusting metal beneath it, and he closes his eyes, willing the power, willing the dream to obey.

'Onspanne,' he murmurs, and in that one word, in this dream-space, divorced from the constraints of mundane reality, his voice seems almost to crackle.

The door opens on a shriek of unoiled hinges.

The effort-- both of banishing the shadow-creature and even this little magic-- has tired him more than he'd care to admit, but he's still composed enough to wait, to bend down to murmur ironically into Johnny's ear. 'At your service.'

Johnny's breath catches in his throat when Niall's fingers wrap around his hand, and again when another word comes, a command to what, the door, the house, the dream itself? He jumps when the door bursts open, thudding back against the doctor's chest, and shivers when the whisper comes against his ear.

He pulls away with some effort, moving forward into the new room, which reshapes itself around him like the others - another bedroom, a little smaller but no less pleasant - and he turns to face Niall, breathing sharp and heavy.

"What are you?" he demands, his voice coming apart at the seams, raw and afraid.

There is a part of him that very much wishes to advance on Johnny, perhaps catch that lurching breath under his hand, feel it stutter and catch, make it come faster yet when he releases him. But things are sweeter when they've been made to wait, and instead he merely leans back against the closed door, letting the singing unease stretch in the air as he fishes for his glasses, sliding them down onto his nose again.

'Just a man,' he says mildly, once again simply, apparently that, harmless and professorial. 'I have... made a study of many arts, but I remain a man.' His whiskers bristle around a smile. 'No eldritch horror come to haunt your dreams, I promise.' He finds Johnny's eyes with his. 'For which you should be thankful.'

Johnny's not sure he buys that. He knows enough monsters that look just like men to leave him doubting the claim. But he can't argue. Shouldn't, and cannot. He stands there a moment, held firmly by Niall's unflinching gaze. He swallows with a dry throat, and his breathing slows gradually.

"I am," he says, distantly, because it seems required.

'Are you?'

The words come out slow and intrigued, vowels dragging lazily against the back of his throat in what is nearly a purr. 'Good, good. You've, mm, horrors enough, it seems.'

This room is pleasantly lit with a fire in a grate in the far wall, and the light of it sparks like embers in his eyes, flashing off his spectacles. His head drops a little to one side, idle smile at his lips.

'Come here, hmm?'

Johnny shifts his weight. He feels the draw of that voice, soft and almost growling, coaxing him in. He resists it with a kneejerk display of reluctance, sullen and uneasy.

"Why?" he says, not quite petulant.

'Why?' he echoes, like he's not entirely clear on the meaning of the word.

'Why, a man might begin to feel insulted, you all the way over there like I were some kind of monster.' He pauses for a little huff of laughter, amusement at a private joke. 'I shan't bite.'

One corner of his mouth twitches up briefly to bare a canine.

Not exactly comforting. Johnny frowns tightly and averts his eyes just a little, gazing, unfocused, at the doctor's right shoulder instead of meeting his stare.

Still, though. He finds himself moving, stepping forward, just inching really. He comes just barely within the length of Niall's arm and no closer, standing there, expectant - though of what, he is reluctant to guess.

'You want to know what that was.'

It's not a question, just an observation, and he jerks his head faintly back towards the room on the other side of the door he's leaning against to indicate what he means by that. His banishment of the shadow-creature. He can still taste something faintly ashy in the back of his throat, like saying the words had scorched him from the inside.

"Yeah." Johnny fidgets, still looking not quite at the doctor, heart pounding a little more heavily than seems reasonable. The room is emanating a warm, safe feeling, the noise and smell of crackling fire a homey comfort, the light gentle and soothing. But he still feels so very on edge. Nowhere to run - the hallway's the only option here, and it will still be the same dangerous place; nowhere to hide here, Niall's eyes tracing his every move.

'I told you I've made a study of many things,' Unthank says, letting the words fall, one by one, into the fragrant air of the room. 'Many things, many ~secrets. Arts thought lost to man, knowledge from pre-Christian times. I can walk through your dreams and banish your demons, Mr. Truant.'

He pauses, one eyebrow twitching up, lips pursing into a fleeting moue. 'I could teach you to do the same, if you cared. I imagine that might be some comfort, not to have to jump at every shadow in a strange room, lest it be that, ah, beastie of yours.'

He doesn't know enough about Johnny really to guess whether he's the kind of man to be drawn in by such an offer. But the odds seem fair; after all, he'd been intrigued enough to make a study of that manuscript even when he'd known, down in his bones and bowels, that it might kill him.

Johnny blinks and meets his eyes again, startled into it by the unexpected benevolence of the offer. It's tantalizing, the idea that he could protect himself, wouldn't need others (so many others, too many) to look after him all the time, to put themselves in danger and poison their lives with his madness. It's a seductive offer, and a terrifying one, implying so much. He's not so naive as to think it wouldn't alter him, deconstruct and reshape him every bit as much as the book did. And Lude was right, of course, that he couldn't quite turn away. There is always a part of him that can't turn away - or that looks when he shouldn't, which is in some ways the very same thing.

"How?" he murmurs almost without thinking it, like the word formed itself and left him without his consent.

Unthank smiles, a small, secret smile, and pushes himself off the door with a roll of his shoulderblades, moving in the beginnings of a circuit around Johnny where he stands.

'Mm, it would be not be quick, nor easy; and it would require... sacrifice.' His voice drops on the word sacrifice, shadows fleeing across his face as he moves through the firelight. 'But sacrifice is always necessary for power, even of the mundane variety; CEOs, celebrities, politicians. Power of a sort, but scratchings to what I could teach.'

At the apex of his circle, he doesn't continue it, but pivots on his heel instead to walk Johnny slowly back towards the wall. 'I suspect it's been a long time since you've had any power at all. Has it not?'

A deal with a devil, then. Johnny should have guessed as much. He's not sure what he's willing to give - rather, what he even has to give. But he can only step back, staring up at this tall, intimidating man who's so gently insinuated himself into first Johnny's dream, then his trust, and now - what? His story?

He reaches the wall and presses back against it, wishing he could sink through it. "I can - I have a little," he says, his voice breathy and uneven. "I can... do things. Like what the house does."

But he can't do it now, and what's more he doesn't want it.

"It doesn't protect me," he admits. "It keeps me here. Or keeps all this... here, in me." His fingers flex, the beginnings of a possible motion, but it never completes itself. His muscles ache with the hollow feeling of helplessness. He's so, so trapped.

'Ohhhh,' Unthank hums, pleased and surprised. He'd not expected that, but it is fascinating, and his interest shows plainly in his face, no effort made to hide it. 'Can you indeed?'

Johnny's up against the wall, nowhere left for him to retreat, but Unthank takes another step forward that leaves them a scant foot apart, Johnny pressed against the wood with the fire, rather pleasingly, casting Unthank's shadow flickeringly over him. He lifts one hand in a thoughtful, deliberate motion, fingers spread, thumb held out in a delicate gesture as though he were about to conduct an orchestra, or sketch something invisible in midair.

Instead, he lets it fall again to Johnny's neck, fingertips describing a line just above his collarbone, dragging in the hollow of his throat. The pulse there drums wildly.

'What sort of things can you do, pray tell?'

"I - I can-" Johnny swallows heavily, his adam's apple bobbing lightly against Niall's fingertips. His pulse quickens even more, but he's not quite afraid, afraid isn't the word he wants, he's - uneasy, yes, tense, certainly, but also, he realizes with some distant revulsion, he wants. The hand on his throat is not threatening so much as suggesting, and Johnny does not resist it. Not yet.

"I can reshape houses," he says, his voice trembling. "Their insides. I can't do it here. The dream won't let me. But out there, it's... The house is still part of me."

He speaks this in monotone, like a recitation, almost, even as wavering and hesitant as it is. He breathes out, and his breath shudders in his body's place.

'Now that is a neat trick.'

It's clear that Johnny hates the power, is afraid of it, thinks of it not as something he can do but something he's afflicted with. But that's merely a problem of mindset, and mindset is so very easily altered. And that is a skill that could be useful to him.

'You know,' he murmurs, low and gravelled, 'you could change that. Go back, stop that friend of yours from ever showing you the book.'

His fingertips are still limning the span of Johnny's throat; now he lets them trail up, index and middle fingers smearing up over his jaw, brushing his earlobe. The shift settles his thumb comfortably in the concavity between Johnny's clavicles, and Unthank presses up. Contemplative, fascinated. Not hard enough to choke, but enough to smooth his thumb up, over the bobbing Adam's apple and to Johnny's chin, tilting his face up.

'You could make yourself someone entirely new, someone who had never even heard of Zampanò, had never been... touched by the house. Or,' he runs his thumb down Johnny's throat again, and chuckles, 'well. That's only one of many options.'

Edited 2014-07-12 04:45 (UTC)

Johnny can barely even mark the words. Niall's fingers are in constant motion, feeling him out, tracing him obsessively like Hamlet over Ophelia, a reference weighted with fearful innuendo, that this might be exactly what it appears to be, and that it will end with Johnny drowned.

He stiffens and gasps softly when the pressure increases; his breath coming quick and shallow, tinged now with faint sounds, little plaintive murmurs.

The option he's been offered terrifies him more than anything, and he'd be hard-pressed to answer why. Most days he'd give anything to have never known about the house or the book or Zampanò. But when presented with the real, tangible possibility, he darts back, recoiling from it. Without the house, without all that torture and fear and loss of time and self, without the nightmares, what would be left? Who would he even be?

"No," he whispers, and falls silent with a strained inhalation as Niall's thumb courses back down the column of his throat.

Edited 2014-07-12 05:16 (UTC)

Unthank feels like a sculptor, and Johnny the most breathtakingly exquisite clay under his fingers. The boy seems almost custom-made for him; catching breaths, the little whines and snagging gasps, swamped between desire and terror. His own breath threatens to catch once-- just once-- when Johnny speaks.

No.

'Oh, good,' he murmurs. 'Not so cowardly, then. I'm pleased to hear it.' His lips curl up just enough to bare a sliver of teeth, and he bends down slightly as if to impart a secret. 'Between you and me, the other option's the better one, anyway.'

It's an invitation for Johnny to ask-- or better yet to imagine.

Johnny can't possibly imagine. He can barely think at all. His palms flatten back against the wall like the ears of a cat; he coils tight at the slight increase in the doctor's proximity, muscles tensed, innards knotted in trepidation. Still the instinct to fight seems strangely quelled; still, his palms cannot imprint the wall behind him, no matter how hard he wishes for a way out.

"What's the other option?" he asks, his voice cracking wherever it climbs above a whisper.

His face is close enough that Johnny will be able to feel the little puff of air when he laughs, a rolling baritone chuckle. 'Power, dear boy,' he says, like it should be obvious. 'What on earth would be the point in having power over the world,' his hand tightens briefly on Johnny's throat in emphasis, 'without power over oneself?'

The words give way to the ambient noise of the room for a moment, and Unthank inhales once, deeply and slowly, before straightening again, drawing himself back to his full height. His bright eyes study Johnny as if he were a bug on a pin.

'You learn enough, and you can take that house that's still a part of you and use or discard it as you please. You'd have no need to fear it. The things in the dark, the crawling, impossible horrors that drive men mad; you've known madness; you could have them cowering at your feet. Or ignore them altogether,' he adds lightly, 'if that's your pleasure.'

Tilting his head to one side, he releases his hold on Johnny's throat, bringing his hands up to lace his fingers together across his chest.

'What do you want, Johnny? Hmm?'

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CW: EXTREME DUB CON AND D/S, FOR THE DURATION OF THE THREAD

Re: CW: EXTREME DUB CON AND D/S, FOR THE DURATION OF THE THREAD

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