it's been a long october.

[afterdrop]

Who: Charles Rowland and YOU
What: Monthy catch-all
When: Throughout October
Where: Around Milton

Content Warnings: Specifics TBD; general warnings available here.


𝒊. 𝒚𝒂𝒓𝒅 𝒔𝒂𝒓𝒅

[A short jaunt up from the town center, where the road gets rougher and the sparse trees begin to climb towards Milton House, there's an overgrown, decrepit cottage tucked back in the trees. Blue once, maybe, but faded into a mildewy grey, its windows utterly piled with what hasn't been worth scavenging.

At least, until today.

It's been almost six weeks of squatting in the near-hoard, stuck between pretending that he wouldn't be here long and feeling overwhelmed by the monumental task of making this place livable, when Charles finally wakes up, opens the front door, and starts dragging shit outside.]

Sorry, mate. [He gives a sideways little wave, plunking down a plastic cat carrier.] Just trying to clean up a bit, yeah?

[If it looks like it might have belonged to a 70-year-old woman prior to the apocalypse, it's sitting in the front yard now. Several ceramic horse figurines. A needlepoint pillow with a Bible verse on it. An ornate mirror, slightly scuffed. Use your imagination liberally. Surrounding it all, however, are items in much worse shape. The mattress looks like someone may have died on it, judging from the stains, and there's plenty of busted, broken furniture that's ripe to be chopped into firewood.]

Nick whatever you want. Don't think Gladys'll miss it much, will she?

𝒊𝒊. 𝒈𝒆𝒕 𝒊𝒏 𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒆

[There's one thing he won't part with from the old lady's house - an old, crumbling stick of black eyeliner he found in a bathroom drawer. With a tragic lack of sufficient inside light, however, he's toted a compact mirror down to the lessening hours of the town's unfiltered sun, and sat down against the back of the hunting supply store.

After thirty years of spiritually manifesting his eyeliner, it's harder than he remembers, especially with the scavenged pencil.]

Fuck. [Someone's having a hard time.] Bloody piece of shit.

[If you approach, he'll have one of a couple of reactions. Older men, particularly those broad or bearded, or otherwise classically masculine, will have him scrambling to conceal the pencil behind his leg, quickly barking out a, ] What're you looking at?

[If you have the good fortune not to remind him of one Paul Rowland, however, his reaction will be much less hostile. Instead, he'll give the pencil a little wave and offer a crooked smile.] Bit harder than back home, innit?

𝒊𝒊𝒊. 𝒐𝒐𝒄

[Contact me at ghoulsonfilm or pantsghost @ discord to plot a custom starter. Brackets are prose are both fine!]

Comments

[afterdrop]

[Charles closes his eyes and lifts his brows, trying to make it easier for her. It's an action that used to be muscle memory, and it takes him a moment to remember what position works best.]

Proper tragedy, innit? Had to raid an old woman's vanity just to find this.

[If he was still dressed in the clothes he showed up in, their color pallets would match perfectly; Charles hadn't worn anything but red and black for decades, until the day he awoke outside Milton. Unfortunately, most of what he's been able to scavenge here has been in shades of brown and grey, save for the ratty jeans he's wearing right now.]

Rest of her stuff was a bit flowery for me.

[guidemyway]

[Ruby gives him the time to get into position. Look it's been awhile since she's had the opportunity to do this on anyone other than herself, and there a serious lack of make up here to even do that.]

At least she left something behind that you could use.

[Ruby could relate. Red and black were pretty much her thing, save for the odd bits of brown and white that she threw in. Most of the stuff she had wound up here with had ended up torn and faded in colour. They were going to have to find some dye at some point if this kept up.

She frowns in a more joking manner.]

Just once I'd love to end up in an abandoned town filled with people who had fashion sense. wouldn't that be a treat?

[afterdrop]

[He nods, then quickly stops himself, remembering to hold his head still.]

Yeah, all the other creepy, frozen, abandoned towns usually have a mint secondhand shop right on the high street, don't they?

[guidemyway]

[It's a good thing he stops himself because Ruby comes close to stabbing him in the eye when he starts.

She gives a light pause before she continues.]

Gosh, I wish. The last when I wound up in before getting here basically just had beans and booze.

Well and monsters locked up in the water system-

But that was less fun.

[afterdrop]

[One half of that reply is not like the other.]

Beans and booze sounds about like living in England.

[His voice remains lighthearted, but of course, he can't ignore the much more troubling thing Ruby has just said.]

There are other places like this, though?

[guidemyway]

[Ruby gives a little shrug and smile. She certainly didn't know anything about any England.]

Uh- I mean kind of. Not around here there. Back where I'm from ruined and abandoned towns are a dime a dozen.

Kind of comes with the huge infestation territory.

[afterdrop]

[Well, he'd sort of meant "places that pull you in from your real life and trap you", but "ruined and abandoned towns" will do.]

Almost afraid to ask, but infestation of what?

[guidemyway]

[She's kind of done that too. But she more "fell into fairy tale world that turned out to be true.

She manages to finish one eye and then moves onto the next.]

They're Grimm. They come in a lot of different shapes and sizes. Some look like bears or wolves, while others can be dragons or stuff.

But they're attracted to negative emotions and pretty much exclusively hunt humans. There are only a few spots that are protected and more less defended against them. But leave those and things can get kind of dicey.

[afterdrop]

[Charles frowns the best he can without disrupting Ruby's work.]

Seems a bit unfair for something that tracks negative emotions to be, like, fucking terrifying, don't it? Are you just supposed to pretend you're having a blast getting hunted?

[guidemyway]

[She shifts back just a little bit when the frown comes in, then presses in to finish.]

It definitely stacks the odds against regular people that's for sure.

I think a lot of people try to do that, but eventually it spills over you know? Can't go letting that stuff build up forever.

[Jeez, did she know that one for real now.]

But that's why they have people like me there. The main part of my job is to fight those things off, but making people feel safe is just as important.

[And with another little shift of her finger she finishes and steps back.]

Okay- We should find a mirror and you can tell me what you think.

[afterdrop]

[He lifts up the compact mirror from Gladys' house, but after a moment of consideration sticks the useless thing back in his pocket. You could barely see a grizzly bear in that thing, much less the thin line of eyeliner. With a white puff of cold air, he starts to stand up against the wall of the building.]

My job's a lot of fighting shit too, most of the time. [Giant snakes, World War One soldiers, actual demons from actual Hell.] Not that it's always meant to go that way, mind you. One moment you think you're just finding a bloke's missing ring, and next thing you're in the thick of it, being chased by a basilisk.

[guidemyway]

[Ruby gives him a reassuring smile as she backs off a touch. She's confident she did a pretty good job with what they've got.

But the next bit catches her by surprise.]

Woah, for real? You've fought basilisks? That's so cool? So are you like some sort of private investigator or something? Who fights monsters too?

[afterdrop]

[Charles practically preens.]

Supernatural detective. [It's said the same way one might say "movie star" or "astronaut".] We solve all the cases no one else can. Monsters, demons, hauntings - shit like that.

[guidemyway]

[Allow Ruby to gasp in utter amazement.]

For realsies!?

That's so cool!

Okay. We need to set aside some time and you have to tell me more about the cases you've solved.

[Look. Ruby was a monster hunter in her own world, that didn't mean she wasn't interested in all the cool monsters in other peoples worlds as well.]

[afterdrop]

Yeah, for realsies.

[Fully charmed. He may have to adopt that one.]

Might want to pencil in a few hours for that. Been at it longer than you've probably been alive, mate.

[guidemyway]

Woah- Okay wait. How old are you exactly?

Not that it's a big deal- My old Professor at school was like an ancient wizard who reincarnated into a new person every time he died.

[afterdrop]

Sixteen.

[Answering this question always makes him think of that silly vampire movie he watched once.]

Just been sixteen awhile, is all. Going on about thirty-five years. Been a detective thirty-three of them.

[guidemyway]

[The gears in her head start to turn a little, but the answer ends up getting a snort out of her.]

Jeez. Talk about the longest year ever, you must really be gunning for seventeen at this point.

But- I have a friend back home who could probably relate to that. He's only fifteen but he managed to his soul entangled with ancient reincarnating wizard. So he's kind of been every age like a bajillion times.

[afterdrop]

[He kept up with the years at first - seventeen, eighteen, up to about twenty. But after awhile, once he could no longer pass as older, it just got depressing, and he and Edwin started only marking the milestones.]

Must be a lot of birthday candles.

[It's really the only thing he can say at the thought. Sure, he talks about existing indefinitely, but thinking about it sort of makes him feel funny in the back of his head.]

Does he remember all of them? The reincarnations?

[guidemyway]

Yeah. We haven't had to cross the bridge yet. But I guess I'll owe him one by the time I get back home.

[Something she hoped she could do, but it felt like her chances of doing that were getting slimmer the more time went by.

But she'll push those thoughts away for now.]

Kind of? It's complicated. There's like him- And the soul of his past life that has all those memories occupying the same body.

And the line between them keeps getting blurrier as they merge into single person. So one of them knows right now, and the other doesn't.

But eventually he will, and they'll be one person.

[There's a pause and she shrugs.]

It's kind of terrifying to think about- and I imagine actually go through.

[afterdrop]

[Getting back home does feel less and less like a possibility with each day, but Charles hasn't been here long enough yet to count it out. He's still holding the words in his head like a mantra, hanging onto when instead of if.]

Makes the shit we're going through here seem a bit easy, don't it? Can't go complaining about starting a fire to someone whose past lives are merging, or something.

[guidemyway]

[Okay that gets a grin out of her, along with a little laugh.]

Look. I don't go saying this to anyone else because I think it would end up being pretty rude of the actual situation we're in.

But in some ways this place is kind of like a vacation compared to things that I've got going on back at home.

Except without all of the actual fun things you'd do on a vacation.

[afterdrop]

What, doing a stranger's makeup isn't your idea of fun?

[A cheeky little grin, fully joking.]

[guidemyway]

[And that gets a snort out of her.]

I mean- It's not the worst thing in the world. But it's no video game or fighting the monsters back where I'm from either.

But I guess it's okay.

[She's willing to rib him on a little too.]