(no subject)

[regal-vigilante.livejournal.com]

And I hope that you are having
The time of your life
But think twice
That's my only advice

The Dark Hours Before Dawn, Thursday, August 4th - The Streets of Excolo

My boot heels hit the road with a steady rhythm.

    

Quiet. Quietly now.    

Feel each step echo through me. Each step brings me back to myself. Each one drives home the rightness of it all.

    Slip down this alley, be waiting in the shadows at the mouth of the next one.     

Feel my hands open and close. Fingers clenching around the empty air before I notice and shove them into my pockets.

Hands shoot out of the darkness. Faster than he'd have expected, even if he'd known to look for them. Fingers dig into the underside of his arms and drag him back and away from the light. Back where no one can see.

I smile as I make my way through town. Hell, my mood's so good I'd whistle if it wouldn't be too loud.

It's so dark. Can't see anything, but her smile is something you can feel. If a tiger could smile, it'd look like this

Walk by the Miskatonic. Maybe I'll swing back in after I finish my rounds.

At first it sounds like meat being tenderized. It can only get worse from there.

 -------------------------------------------------- 

I decide to just go straight home when I'm done. After all, it has been such a busy night.

And I have so much to plan for now.

Criticism, like pain, calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.

[westin-sagert.livejournal.com]

[Pre-dawn darkness, Thursday, August 4 (day 431)]
[Interrupted when returning from the Whitechapel]

The pain is really quite astounding. I hear a garbled sobbing and persist in reading those words into it. Like wind in the trees, water dribbling onto stone, breath over broken teeth. You could hear anything in it, you could...

The world seems quite gray, for a long moment, and when it passes the surface I am leaning--laying?--upon is beginning to dry, and there is a dull tackiness when I try and move away. I manage, eventually, but it is more of a roll than anything else. It is slightly easier to breathe, now, though. I can see something ahead, the patterned gleam of light on cobbles, and when I try to focus the curves and shadows boil up and break apart and I vomit and the pain--

Pieces, inside, raw and tearing--like fruit in a bag of broken crockery, shaken and split. I think I have had something quite horrible happen to me. The mutter of words, or of something close to them, or only a memory. The sobbing.

I don't remember where I was going. Someone, please...

The pain is really...

[Open]

The bones show through her skin

[syl-thorn.livejournal.com]

[Mid-morning, Thursday, August 4 (day 431)]
(The Carnival Lot)

Summer's us'ally our boom time, and we're sure's hell doin' better now'n we were'n th'winter time. But th'money ain't rollin' in way't us'ally does, an'ere's a lotta grumblin' d'spite Management's promises. More'n more folk're startin' t'wander inta town, takin' jobs 'ere. Store clerk 'ere, a farmhand 'ere, handyman 'ere. Most ovvem swear's jes' temporary, s'jes' 'til we c'n leave'ere, an'en 'ey'll be right back wittus. Some don't bother.

Draw hard on m'cig'n blow smoke out m'nostrils. I can't blame anyone't leaves. S'a scary time, fer allovus, an' I wouldn't trust Management neither, if'n I hadda fam'ly t'feed. Azzit is, 'm onna th'few folks't 're still doin' a reg'lar bizness. Still can't sell nonna th'strong stuff, but charms, poultices, li'l wards...there's always a market ferrat stuff. I ain't rakin't in like I us'ally do, bu's 'nough t'keep me fed, 'n t'set aside some fer'ose 't need't.

But m'skin itches. S'th'longest've been'n one place since I joined up...annat's near t'thirty years back. S'a long time t'be seein' th'same town, same trees, same river. Same fuckin' tower. Oh, yeah, le's not forget'at. Le's not forget th'fuckin' Psycho Monster hangin' like a sword onna string over our heads. Le's not forget Tez, neither, who fer some godawful reason fell in love wittim. Le's not forget th'tree burned inta m'back, th'knife't's tasted m'best friend's blood.

We's been here over a year, but I feel like've aged 'bout twenty.

[OPEN]