villagelogs | 059-061 » the place where you stop the story

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059-061 » the place where you stop the story

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central/Southern Mathias
WHEN: Day 059-061
WHAT: Time returns to "normal" and Mathias grants a reprieve.
WARNINGS: (PM this account to have a warning added!)
NOTES: Plotting post over here! The next log will be posted the weekend of ~~May 15th~~ May 22nd.

RECOMMENDED ♫ Nathan Johnson "Foul Play"

DAY 059-061
A BRIEF REPRIEVE
“There is no real ending. It’s just
the place where you stop the story.”
— Frank Herbert
Residents awake to a peaceful morning with the sun shining and earth remaining still. There is no unsettling shaking to rouse them at dawn, and time has continued moving onward as they slept. Whatever state they were in the night before, they remain that way now, for good or for bad.

On the surface, there seems to be little lasting effect on the tiny town from that strange series of days, save for the memories of any traumatic experiences residents may have faced — but there are always consequences within Mathias. The perpetrators of acts against the town are tormented by nightmares of those acts being used against them, and those who did not raise a hand to stop those acts of destruction may yet face consequences of their own. For now, however, the unwilling townspeople should do their best to rest and recover from the disturbing ordeals of late, for this reprieve from the madness shall surely be shortlived.

THE NEW ARRIVALS
The newest arrivals to Mathias will wake up on the beach near The Grey Gull. It's a bit chilly out with their wet clothes, but surely there's something to help warm them inside the restaurant. They may even find some alcohol within — and not just the cowboys' homemade moonshine.

CONDITIONS UPDATE

— THE HISTORY MUSEUM has not fared well with the return of "normal" time. The once esteemed wooden building is now a charred ruin, the recent fire leaving behind little of the contents within for study. The structure is unstable and it is not wise to venture into the ruins for long.

— THE WEATHER conditions remain fairly typical for early fall: warm days and cool nights. It feels almost like spring arriving except that there fewer red and orange leaves on the ground and more of them oddly returning to the trees and slowly fading to green. It's like watching one of those nature documentaries that have a timelapse of the seasons, only it's going in reverse.

— THE FOG has retreated from some areas!
— Residents may now wander the southern stretch of the forest surrounding Mathias Township — it is possible to leave the paths but potentially unwise to do so.
— The fog has also retreated farther into the western section of town, now stretching across town between Stine Road and Shelley Drive. This has revealed the Chasm in the earth that stretches from one side of town to the other between Stine and Hill Lane.
— Access to the northern section of the forest is still blocked beginning a few dozen yards past the treeline; this section of fog will urge residents to stay huddled within the town proper by inducing a physical reaction of panic and fear.

— DEATHS & DISAPPEARANCES continue! Max Guevara has vanished into the fog. Claire Novak's body can be spotted on Day 059 facedown at the bottom of the Chasm between Hill and Stine, near Phillips Drive; by the morning of Day 060, her body will be gone. (Attempts may be made to reach her body but will likely not end well for those involved. Such attempts should be reported under Exploration.)

— ALCOHOL is still in Mathias! Just barely. (Supply is running very low after recent town events.) A small stock of beer and cheap wine may be found at the General Store, and some homes may have a small store of alcohol in the fridge or pantry. The Grey Gull was also restocked with its lower-end offerings of a variety of alcohol types. (Alcohol does not replenish as food does.)

OOC NOTES

— PROJECT HELP Your mod needs help with some projects!

— FUTURE PLANNING If you haven't, please answer the questions here for future log planning. I will almost definitely need some of these answers for the log going up the weekend of May 15, so act quickly! Late submissions will not be considered for that log.

— UPDATES Don't forget to report updates as they come up! Changes to locations (like toppling a few bookshelves in the library), big plots you have coming up that will affect the game (parties, major property destruction, etc), or exciting discoveries that may tie into the game's mythology (even the things provided by the mod) are very helpful to have in one place so relevant page updates can be made.

— MOD STATUS The usual reminder that it's just Amy steering this ship, so things will are going to be pretty slow for a while. Apologies in advance, and please don't feel shy about pestering me if you're stuck waiting for something.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Athena leads him straight to the library tunnel, picking up a lantern and lighting it up before she starts down the stairs.

It doesn’t take too long to get to the gate in question. There’s nothing on their side of it—-no blood splatter, no footprints, nothing. But beyond the gate the footprints keep going without lightening, until they disappear into the dark.

Athena shivers. “What the fuck, right?”

The last is said very quietly to Malcolm.

Malcolm’s gaze is decidedly analytical as he examines the footprints, crouching and pulling out his phone to shine the flashlight through the gate and then back behind them.

“I’d say - under normal circumstances - that they’re maybe a week old. They come from here, but here...” He gets up and paces back towards the stairs a bit. “Here has been cleaned up.” He tilts his light towards the gate. “For that kind of coverage, the blood pool had to be substantial. If we’re talking about a single victim here, they certainly can’t have survived that degree of exsanguination.”

He turned off the flashlight and pocketed the phone, starting at the gate and pacing backwards. “Based on the stride, I’d suggest whoever walked through the blood pool was at least six feet tall.”

Athena watches with morbid fascination, goosebumps prickling along her scalp. Her aunt is good, but she’s not this good. She shivers when he says whoever it was couldn’t have survived.

“Why would they only clean up out here?” Her voice stays soft. “Are they making fun of us or something?”

“It’s possible they’re messing with our heads,” he allows. “It’s also possible that whoever cleaned up out here isn’t the killer and isn’t even with the killer. Maybe only the killer has keys to the gate,” he suggests, trailing off slightly as he recalls a steam tunnel, a turnstile, John Watkins hits him in the face and pushes him into the mechanism....

He seems to shake it off and looks at her.

“There’s not enough evidence to know for sure and we have no way to do anything useful with a blood sample. But I’ll tell you one thing: you don’t get a blood pool like that, generally, from strangulation or blunt force trauma. While it’s possible from the exit wound of a projectile, I’d put my money on a blade.”

She shivers, looking at the footprints where the light from her lantern touches them, then back at Malcolm.

"How do you know all this shit? You're not even as old as Raylan."

Malcolm huffs a laugh.

“Raylan’s not that old,” he chides lightly. Possible he’s biased by how ridiculously in love he is but nevermind. Nothing to see here. “He also specializes in a completely different sort of investigation. I’m one of the top experts on murder in the country.” He’s not bragging, really. His knowledge was hard come by in some ways and despite his expertise, most law enforcement agencies wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole. “I only investigate murders. I had the highest solve rate in the FBI for violent crime before they fired me.”

Her eyebrows knit.

"Why the fuck did they fire you, then?"

“Creative differences?” he suggests, but he doesn’t even pretend she’ll buy that and drops the charade before she can say so. “On paper? My last case, I tracked down a serial killer named Claude Springer. He butchered his victims like cattle and pickled their faces in mason jars as souvenirs. He was a sick man who did evil things,” Malcolm explains. He’s not making excuses for Claude Springer. “But the local sheriff shot him in the back after I got him to surrender. So, in the heat of the moment, I punched the sheriff right in the face.” He shrugged faintly. “I recognize I could have handled that dispute better. Anyway, they said that incident indicated I was violent and unstable. But. That wasn’t why they fired me. They fired me because it became widely known at the Bureau that my father is one of the most notorious serial killers of the twentieth century and they were looking for an excuse to get rid if me. I lost my temper and gave them one.”

"Holy fuck," Athena says softly.

The look she's giving him--hunted, haunted--isn't the look of someone who doesn't understand, or someone judging, or...

She bites her lip. She's not sure what it says about her that she's glad that killer got shot, talked down or not.

The look he gives her is watchful. Assessing.

“What is it?” he asks. He doesn’t have enough information to guess.

She tries a couple of times to say something before she actually manages more than half-formed syllables.

"Why would you protect someone like that?" She bites her lip again for a second, chewing lightly until she catches a loose bit of skin and winces. "Why would you... be angry that he's dead?"

Eagan's wide-eyed face stares at her from her memories, looking vaguely surprised that there was a hole in his forehead and that a chunk of his skull was gone.

“I wasn’t mourning Claude Springer, but excuse me, killing a killer in cold blood is also murder. What right did that sheriff have to play judge, jury and executioner as he committed the same crime?” Malcolm pointed out.

Athena's chin lifts a little in surprise as she realizes he's right. Does that make what Lenore did wrong?

No. Eagan would have killed Athena. He tried. He would have killed them both.

She notices to her intense annoyance that her vision is wavering a little as her eyes fill with tears. She exhales, looking away from him and dragging her sleeve quickly over her face. "Do you think you can find anything else down here, or can we get the fuck out?"

That’s unexpected. He watches her for a moment.

“This place isn’t upsetting you. What’s wrong?”

Lenore might not have been wrong to shoot Eagan. But what Athena did after--

She can't look at Malcolm now, and she can't keep the stupid tears out of her eyes, and she can't stop thinking of Eagan's startled, dead face, and her own furious screaming as she hit it over and over again with the broken gambrel he'd almost shoved through Lenore's stomach. His startled, dead face cratering inward, the feel of it running up her arms through her makeshift weapon. The satisfaction of knowing no one would be able to make him look good for a funeral.

Athena closes her eyes, even though that doesn't do anything to get the memories to go away.

"Nothing," she says quietly. She shakes her head. "I fucking... know you know it's not nothing, okay, so you don't need to point out how shitty a lie that was."

Edited 2021-05-20 04:04 (UTC)

He gestures around them.

“This... reminds you of something,” he notes, watching her face carefully. “Something you think I won’t understand because I said a police officer shooting an unarmed suspect was wrong.”

He’s not going to stop pressing her. Even if he is doing it gently. Athena looks toward the ceiling of the tunnel, swallowing, trying to keep it together.

She wants to just bolt, just fucking run, but somewhere along the way she stopped being that person.

“I beat a guy’s face in, okay?” God, that sounds even worse than it was. “He was… dead already, but I wanted… I just wanted to fucking hurt him anyway.”

Malcolm nods.

“What did he do to you?” he asks grimly.

Fuck, she’s crying for real now. She really, really can’t look at Malcolm.

“He… He was going to kill me. Me and my aunt. He grabbed me so she’d come looking, and she didn’t find me right away, and he made me think…”

She lets that trail off. None of what Eagan said was true. That’s the important thing.

“He killed a bunch of people, women with the Gift, my aunt was investigating him. But I—-”

She wipes her eyes again. “I didn’t even fucking think about them. I just—-he was going to take it all away from me again, and I…”

Lenore’s arms around her, dragging her back from the corpse. Curling around her, whispering You’re okay, you’re okay, and Athena wondering for a wild moment if that would ever be true.

“…I just wanted to hurt him.”

Malcolm doesn’t know what degree of physical comfort she’s okay with, so he just reaches out and squeezes her shoulder. He doesn’t try to make her face him.

“That’s the most normal reaction you could have possibly had,” he assures her.

She glances at his hand, but doesn’t pull away. Wipes her eyes (again), tries to clear her tight throat.

“I’m sorry I was an asshole to you. The first time we met. I…”

She closes her eyes. “I don’t want to be here. I want to be home. It’s like I’m not allowed to have that or something.”

She sniffs, drawing herself up a little and looking him in the eye. “Tell anybody about this and I’ll kick your ass though. Just. PSA.”

He shakes his head at the apology, keeping his hand on her shoulder just to maintain the connection. “I know,” he tells her. “It’s... not easy; it’s okay.”

At her next remark, he raises an eyebrow, just the hint of a smirk.

“Do... you think you could?”

She bites her lip, a tiny smile fighting its way onto her face in spite of everything. “Maybe.”

Then a short, abortive laugh. “I mean, I thought I could until I heard you punched Negan anyway.”

Athena rubs her eyes again, forcing herself to breathe steadily, the way her aunt taught her. She looks at the bloody footprints, expression going grim and hard. “We need to tell Raylan and Tim about this.”

“Negan forgives me,” Malcolm says. He gives her shoulder one more squeeze before letting go. “We all lose our temper. Apparently, I get punchy.”

His gaze follows hers to the footprints. “Yes, we do.” Raylan is exactly who they need to tell. She clearly has some attachment to Tim. He won’t say anything about that.

“I’m glad. That you’re okay, you and him I mean.”

For all his toughness, she likes Negan. And the fact that Malcolm isn’t paste confirms for her that he’s kinder than he’d readily admit.

Something occurs to her as Malcolm answers her, and her eyebrows knit a little as she looks at Malcolm. “Or we could tell Raylan and he can tell Tim?”

She’s trying to be nice!

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