Animal Behavior: [Pi]

[Courtney]

After Jesse imprinted a rabbit into his skin? Embedded a little piece of himself, without knowing, deep under one of a human's most important borders, boundaries -- in fact the most important boundary any person can have, the very thing that calls them into existence, separates their meat and bones from the rest of the known universe? Courtney spent three weeks listening to the dull thrum of the heater, the rhythm of it clicking on and off, like some prolonged, misanthropic heartbeat, emphasized by the disconcerted theories of lonely housewives.

The tattoo itched, but he slapped it, instead of scratching. Medicated it, like a good kid, instead of letting it rot up like he let Rachel rot up.

He rubbed the tattoo, instead of scratching.

He -- sort of lost his job -- was supposed to be developing personality profiles for the endless list of victims that came across his desk. He was supposed to be looking through snapshots of mutilated women and men, through all those dizzying images of ripped-open throats, of dead animals, of bloated and fetid, rotting corpses, but employment didn't last long for the un-enthused.

He still had a few of the files. He was supposed to be returning them, soon, to the precinct.

The psychologist said he needed a holiday.

The psychiatrist said he needed fifty milligrams of Paxil, two milligrams of Abilify, and to develop some very firm boundaries.

And, there he was, working.

He hadn't written his dissertation. He wasn't a Ph. D., just some counselor who caught it lucky and landed a job in a police department down in America, before he moved to Canada, after the Scarlet incident. After Scarlet.

His legs were crossed European style, because he was lost in himself, because he was uncomfortable. His face was numb, mouth slack.

His patient said, "Are you listening, Mr. Apple?"

That isn't something that you're supposed to have to ask your counselor, probably, but this patient did. She said, 'Are you listening, Mr. Apple?"

But all Courtney thought about was red hair falling in waves over some guy's fingers, some girl getting drained dry right in front of him, and this man -- this vampire -- looking at him, before he walked off.

He'd seen it two more times, since then.

Some girl got bitten, downtown, near the art museum.

A guy in a flat bill cap got bitten, downtown, too.

Courtney avoided going places, lately, if he could help it. He conceded that this was out of a reasonable sense of apprehension, but he wondered if he was nuts, if he was imagining all of this, if it had something to do with Scarlet, and watching her bloodless body wither up like Rachel, his house plant, who'd been wilting, shrinking, browning beside his bed at that backpacking place that Elliot owned -- Bunk.

He wondered if he should be there, at all, but it was the closest to home he had, at the moment, and that was where he ended up, after his appointment -- money that he recorded in his ledger, then pocketted, so he could afford the place he was saving up to stay in, so he could afford to get out of debt, so he could afford...

He'd taken up drinking, again, a month ago.

And, when he walked into Lancaster's, instead of going and watering and feeding Rachel -- the plant -- he sat at the bar, ordered a White Russian, and scrubbed his fingers through his hair, preparing to drink away another night of his life, secretly hoping half of his issues would dissipate by the morning.

[Pi dArtois]

The girls thought he was cute. And for the first weeks of him staying at bunk they would rush into a huddle and sigh as he walked through the pub. His slow amble a veritable cat walk on show for the female staff who preened at the sight of him.

Pi wasn’t a preener. Pi was also neither deaf or dumb, nor was she so obtuse she wasn’t aware of their long term resident upstairs. She’d just never spoken to him.

The girls though, they talked enough for a hoard of people. Little stalkers who had secreted out juicy tidbits of information about the poor man to feed their current obsession. What he smelled like. His accent. His dimples? Or lack of them. Ridiculous details piling in on one another until their fantasy of him was as vivid as the reality.

She rather wondered if the fantasy was a little more animated than the rather dejected chap who sat down at the bar and ordered a White Russian. A White Russian? Who drank those anymore? Certainly wasn’t a popular beverage for the itinerant traveler who tended to favour less pricey options. Beer. Wine. Pre-mix Stoli’s.

Backpackers were normally transient places. The favourite hole for wandering travelers intent of a mutually beneficial and brief affairs with the local area before flitting off to places unknown. Bunk was the home of the chronic mover, a fleeting one night stand in a person’s intrepid journey to see the world, one shitty under furnished budget accommodation at a time. Bunk was furnished a bit better because vampires with nothing better to do with their money owned it and could splurge. But barely.

He was a curiosity, an anomaly breaking from backpacker norms and making himself an objet of fascination. A week was the usual term. A week in a back packers and then flit. Gone. Unless your name was Courtney Apple. Courtney Apple who had been here months and who they knew no more about than his name.

He’d never sat at the bar though. Not when she was manning it. Early evening, but it was cold as winter was wont to be and the sun had slipped below cloud cover hours ago, surrendering its insipid light to the heavy snow clouds. Early evening in Harper Rock meant bitter cold outside, temperatures plummeting at an exponential rate, determined solely by the fading sun and its loose grip on the day.

Elliot wouldn’t be around for another hour. He woke up later then Pi, day needing to surrender completely to the night before he would be around. Pulling a short glass she threw ice in it, then vodka, splashing the kahlua into the glass before pushing it forward.

“Bonjour Courtney.” Pi greeted, jumping straight into the fact she knew him and his face even if he had no earthy idea who she was. “Je suis Pi.” She said, introducing herself.

Pi was French in a way Canadians hadn’t been in a hundred years. The level of French only the French with their disdainful sneers and narrowed eyed suspicions could muster at the temerity of an outpost such as this could dare to maintain a language they speak so horrendously. Her accent was soft, without the lisping affectation of the disenchanted Parisians who refuse to adjust their vowel sounds to its English counterpart. Pi was not so uppity, but she was definitely Parisian and definitely not Canadian. In either affectation. “I am the other owner of Lancaster’s and Bunk.”

“I see you are settled in at Bunk. How is work?” she asked, part curiosity and part general ******** you say because as owner she was required as a publican to ask stuff like that. But mainly curiosity, for this one man who had been a part of this building for months, but who had managed so far … to be elusive as he had also become weirdly fixtured to the place.

He came, he went, he came back again. They could learn his rhythms, his hours. When he went to work (which wasn’t a lot lately) when he woke up. When he came out to the shared kitchen to get food and when he hung the sign outside his door ‘not to disturb’ when the cleaners made their rounds. She even knew when he’d brought in his cat and his Orchid and had discussed with the cleaners how they weren’t to water it. Either cat or plant since she wasn’t entirely certain they should.

Probably she wouldn’t let the cat starve, but she had no such tender mercy for the plant. That, was on its own. Which, given what the staff said, might be a near death experience about now.

But to know so much about a person, but to have never met them. That was what made Pi curious… curious and interested.

[Courtney]

There are no accidents or coincidences in this universe.

It was not an accident, or a coincidence, that he'd sat down in front of Pi and ordered a White Russian. It was a choice, like every breath you take, every beat of your heart. Even if those are automatic functions -- controlled by the Medula Oblongata -- you have the choice to continue firing, or stop firing by way of life or death.

Courtney had chosen another day of life.

There is no such thing as a chance-meeting.

All meetings have a lesson-based predestination, in some sense, not that Courtney was aware of what he was going to learn by being the subject of yet another human -- undead -- interaction.

He rubbed his hand across the rabbit tattoo peeking over his shirt's collar, barely noticed that she was talking to him. To.

He pretended, when she said, 'Pi,' that introductions didn't hold the firm promise of future sorrows, regrets, that all human interaction didn't, inevitably, change a person's boundaries, that the subjects of change weren't consistently and constantly letting go of the people they use to be.

He wasn't as good at pretending he didn't hear an accusation, in her tone. You've settled in. How's work? Courtney heard, 'You should leave. You've been here, too long.'

Maybe she was being amiable, trying to make conversation.

She set the White Russian on the bar, and...

He wasn't aware that the girls thought he was cute. If he had been aware? His amble would've been a cat-sprint, duck, and weave.

She set the White Russian on the bar and Courtney didn't drink it. He didn't pick it up. Instead, he stared at it, for a moment, as he processed what she was saying to him, as he ran words around in his mouth, behind his teeth.

When he looked at her, he focused on her ear, on her hair, never really looked in the eyes, but around them -- that place between her eyebrows. Work. Work. Work. How's work?

"Uh. Work's... good. I'll be gone, soon. I'm just situating for a more... permanent place."

[Pi dArtois]

She’d been here before. Behind the bar, watching emotions play across the face of the person in front of her, wondering to herself which face she would wear for this person. Does he need to comforting face, the curious but not ‘too’ curious face, or the nearly flirting face that promised nothing but hinted at everything. She wasn’t so good at this face, failed miserably at flirting in general (even fake flirt) but she knew it was a thing. Even if it wasn’t hers.

Pi didn’t really have a well developed sensitivity chip, although, from all accounts she was getting there slowly. Even she could see she’d come a long way since she was first turned. And despite recent glitches in her attempts to redress this failing, it was coming along. Mostly. Her humanity… was coming along nicely. Bit by little bit.

Even if there were moments she wanted to rip off the face of every woman who looked in Elliot’s direction, peeling the flesh away until all that was left was bone and cartilage. Smiling she tried to redirect her thoughts away from the human in Corvidae, her lips pursing, using words to cover her momentary lapse in her mask.

“I understand. But you are welcome to stay as long as you would like… if you are still looking. Here is a good place to make a base for yourself yes?” They were normal words, a mundane reply, paired easily with the swish of her cloth as it moved across the pristine shellacked wood grain to remove the nonexistent drip from the invisible glass. Bartenders wiped bars right? Yes they did. So Pi wiped. Once. Then again.

Being a vampire hadn’t created a scenario where she had suddenly morphed into an insatiable killing machine intent on extant destruction of all humanity, one blood donation at a time. Nor had she taken on immortality with this skewed assumption (gained after vampiric-ness) that by virtue of being bitten she’d suddenly been presented with a divine right to kill every ***********. (like others she could name). Although, that human in Corvidae was testing her sorely, and Elliot with his ‘help the stray’ mentality. It was driving her spare.

Unfortunately for her, that blood thirsty part of her personality had been well and truly developed long before becoming a vampire. World governments really did have a lot to answer for and it is little wonder there is a state of constant warfare in the world, if she was an example of what one government’s military training produced.

What had happened afterwards (post-eternal-bite) was a mellowing. She’d become less, but more. Less violent, more regulated. And regulation (aka chilling the hell out) was a good thing. She was no less talented at killing things, but rarely (surprisingly to herself) had she used it to do much more than to rid the streets of the overwhelming prolific monsters littering every single damn inch of this city.

It felt like a calling. A rather good one. (for ex-military killing machine). It also felt like she was playing some pseudo Clark Kent persona behind a bar listening to the sorrows of humanity, one cold drink at a time. The publican with the benediction smile and soothing words who turns into a sword wielding, gun toting zombie/berserker/hunter killer from hell. There was a movie here, she was sure of it. Something with a cheesy soundtrack, worse screenplay and unlikely life threatening scenarios and her a just as unlikely anti-hero. The anti-hero with the over developed sense of ‘get your eyeballs off my man before I rip them off your face’. God she was a mess.

Yes, that’s what Pi lived in. A fantasy world, created by some cosmic comedian staring down at them from the heavens, pointing and laughing, pressing rewind to rewatch the good bits again and again. It felt unreal and foolish at times. Repetitive in the way real life was, but with a toxic twist.

It wasn’t hard to guess that Courtney was a private fellow. Maybe even had secrets of his own that he preferred not to air out in public like the Italians and their washing strung between buildings with flapping thongs and tighty whiteys swishing in the hot sun to dry. But his words triggered something in her brain, something connecting the dots between her current issue with Elliot’s current human stray and the rather sad bloke sitting in front of her.

Courtney, for all intents and purposes, was a stray too. He could be … her stray.

Someone had abandoned this man. (Pi rather thought it was himself given the air of self neglect that lurked around him like a fog). He floated here at Bunk, no roots, none planted, not even after a few months. He still paid for his room in cash, which meant, no bank account yet. Which meant no permanent address. Just him, this room and .. that job he seemed inclined not to speak about. He needed a place that was more permanent and if Elliot could give shelter to strays. Then so could she! (Pi thought this rather stridently in her head – a strident revelation borne in no little part by rebellion).

The words that tumbled from her lips felt rebellious, flung at the man in front of her as if it were no big deal and flung (metaphorically – cause Elliot so wasn’t here to witness this little gem) in the face of the other man who liked to take in strays and not tell the woman he loved that he was taking in said strays and shacking them up in little apartments in Corvidae as if it was all right as rain (********). Yes, it was rebellion alright. And Elliot could get a taste of his own medicine. The little goody two shoes puritan.

He wasn’t the only one who could take in strays and shack them up somewhere and not tell anyone (namely her).

“I have a place.. if you are looking.” Her eyes smiled, the cloth in her hand had stopped moving.

[Courtney]

And there it was, shining beacon, spark of an idea, seed -- an idea that Court didn't take to, immediately. An offer that he might not be able to pay for, yet. He was, after all, paying off accumulated school loans, a few debts, but...

His mind let the seed sink in, where it could be nourished, where the gray matter could grasp down the little piece of information.

He was so far in the mire of overwhelm-ment with the entirety of Harper Rock and its murders and its dead bodies and its child abuse cases and its ravenous, criminal appetite, that he'd become completely underwhelmed by the prospect of sitting down with those flimsy file folders that packed up like so many small sticks to create something unbreakable, unpenetrable.

He still hadn't taken a drink from the White Russian. Instead, he stared at it, stuck his finger in it, like that would be enough, like he was a kid, dipping his toe into a swimming pool's edge. Like he didn't have to drink it to feel its effects.

He'd gotten lost, on the way 'home', ended up somewhere called Swansdale Station and had to wander around until he found where he was going. Not a taxi driver, in sight.

The dissociative lapses happened more and more recently, lately, but never -- thank you, whatever God exists -- in public. He'd found himself wandering in alleys, in woods, found himself on the cusp of the city's edge, with a head full of smoke and bad feelings.

He was still riding the wave of his last lapse, trying to decide if alcohol would help him feel better. Deciding that it would, he took a drink from the white cocktail. He didn't pride himself on being able to drink 'strong'. Sweet was all right, with him.

"I'm looking. Yeah. What's your price?" Price, because that was, really, all that mattered to Courtney. He needed to know how much he'd be paying, when he'd be paying it, if side-couseling sessions would cover the cost.

Your name is Courtney Apple. You move to Harper Rock and some woman thinks you're a dog, a skinny dog with its shivering tail tucked between its gangly legs, like an abandoned greyhound. You use to be a racing dog. You use to chase the rabbits.

[Pi dArtois]

The more she thought about it the better the idea seemed, growing from the germ of a potential into something more, something altrustic and burgeoning. It wasn't that she was a miserly person, far from it. She was forever trying to come up with ways she could help her lineage. When she found something she thought would be beneficial for the family, she would talk about it with Elliot, or just jump into the potential and try to make it happen.

It wasn't always appreciated or noted in any appreciable way, but she did it anyway because as unlikely as it may seem from her childhood, she was geared to value and take care of family. To protect and to nurture. In her way. Or maybe that was a natural outcome of her childhood. Who knows.

Sadly, sometimes her way came with too little subtlety and she had a way of alienating people because she wasn't very good with delivery, or discussion or... well, all of it really. She was learning but she suspected too late for many in the lineage who had absented themselves from the daily life of their little group.

Pi sighed but retrieved the moment with a smile. "$200 a month? So not much more than what you're spending here, and no room service. It's not much." Pi said, continuing on, trying to think of what it was you told someone who was looking for a place to live. What did you list about a place to make it attractive? Location. Well, there was nothing about the location of her trailer. It was stuck at the edge of the city, beside the Hunting Grounds on the *** end of the city where those with any sort of money didn't have to lay eyes on the decrepit trailer park with its housing on wheels.

What else did you talk about. Local amenities, grocery stores, parks, transits. Newborough was close enough, so cheap transport was available. She wouldn't know about grocery stores, having not needing it.

"It's only a single wide trailer out at Trailer Oaks Trailer park. Quiet out there.. close to Newborough transit to help you get around. And the Methodist Church, if you're that way inclined." Pi threw in there. The Methodist Church just came to her, like a strike of lightening. She knew the church was close because she used the portal from the Den, to the Trailer and walked up to the church to deliver baked goods to the soup kitchen. It also came with the added benefit of making her sound normal. Normal in a human way, even if she was anything but. A bartender who knew where the Methodist Church was, that smacked of normalcy didn't it? Surely.

"If you want.. we can head over there now and have a look, it's about two blocks away and is empty. It's always empty since I never use it."

She didn't go into why it was empty, or why a successful bar owner would own real estate so obviously inferior. There were reasons for why Pi had bought it, mostly to torture herself, to remind her of where she had begun and the road she had travelled, about how much worse it could have been for her and how much better it was. (when she doubted and needed those reminders). It wasn't a healthy purchase decision, not really, to buy something for the sole purpose of torturing yourself with it. But there it was. Maybe it was good she had this moment of clarity with Courtney, maybe it was good that someone else moved in there and she couldn't visit it, standing alone in the barely furnished living room staring at the faux wood panel walls as if they could tell her the secrets to her shitty childhood.

"If you want to... I'll tell staff I'm taking an hour and we can go right away."

[Courtney]

Courtney Apple, the prospective pet project of Pi dArtois. Some potential -- not necessarily for the embetterment of her family -- she was about to jump into and try to 'make happen'.

People should look, before they leap.

'No room service,' sounded great to Courtney. He always felt invaded, when people went through, organizing his things, picking up after him. He felt like a child, somebody that had to be kept up after, somebody who had no responsibility for themselves.

'Quiet' sounded like 'private', but he didn't make too many assumptions about a trailer park. Thin walls, and all.

He had a car, so the station didn't mean much to him. Single wide for a single person. And, hot damn, a church that he wouldn't be attending. It wasn't that he didn't believe in God, he just couldn't get the flavor of church out of his mouth, the way some people can never eat garlic, after the puke up a load of garlic fries.
"That sounds fine." It sounded better than fine, actually. Because two-hundred wasn't four-hundred and he would have been happy -- not even a hint of reluctance -- with four.

Maybe he should have been more curious about the low price, about the living conditions he was about to subject himself to, but something 'private' was better than nothing.

"If you want. I'm not in a rush. Whenever you'd like is fine." He didn't need to look at the trailer to know he wanted to be in it. It could've had holes in the floor. It could've been leaking and stinking. It could've been haunted. It didn't matter. Wherever was fine, with him. Somewhere his files wouldn't get touched. Somewhere he could get quiet for his budding empathy.

[Pi dArtois]

He was an odd duck, no doubt about it. But who was she to judge. Pi wasn’t exactly your run of the mill sort either, not before she’d been turned into a vampire and certainly not afterwards, although she was as normal now as she’d ever been as a human. And if Elliot were to be believed, she was as human now as she was ever human as a human. A rather convoluted logic, but she was beginning to believe the truth of it. Why was it that so many thought their humanity gone when they were turned? It couldn’t be true really. Pi suspected that Elliot had the right of it, but what vampirism did was loose the shackles of societal norms and allowed people the freedom to indulge their darker nature.

It seemed to her, the more she lived the life of a vampire, that this was proved more true than not. Many (herself included in the beginning) held to the belief that their very existence was held in a precarious balance of humans not knowing what they were, however, so many humans did know. Paladins, Hunters, some government agencies. Hell, even the recent Mayoral elections were steeped in vampiric intrigue. She could barely give credence that any human in this city didn’t know, on some level, even the visceral hind brain.

No, Courtney was no more an odd duck as anyone else she had met in Harper Rock. His only claim to fame as far as she could see was the rather unwanted attention he seemed to draw from the staff at her pub and backpackers. But even that was natural in its way. A lone man, living in their building for months with no more known about him than what he wanted them to know. Which was precious little.

“Tonight works I think… let you see what you’re getting and then you can make your decision, so if you’re free we can go. Just let me go talk to my staff.”

Pi wasn’t one to waste time. She gave Courtney a small smile and shifted over to the other side of the bar where the duty manager was pulling a pint for a patron. Her name was Jessica and worked for Bunk too, doing much the same thing as Pi did for Lancaster’s which was Manage, and serve and clean up and close up and whatever it was that needed doing, she did. A multi-tasking doer who was given the rather ambiguous title of ‘craftperson’. Probably Elliot’s form of amusement but it fit, in its way.

“Hi Jess. I’m going to show Courtney a place I have to rent. Looks like he’s ready to move into his own place… can you hold down the fort while I’m gone?”

To her credit Jessica’s face didn’t fall into abject misery at the idea of Courtney leaving their fine establishment, but she was hardly enthused at the idea. Instead she threw the poor wretch warming the bar stool a wishful look and nodded at Pi, her Scots brogue lilting her words a taste of the Highlands. “Sure I can… Canna convince him to stay then?” she asked, finishing the pull and pushing it across the bar to the man waiting.

“Time to move on he thinks. I’ll be back soon.” Pi replied, moving away with a small smile retracing the five steps back to Courtney’s side of the bar.

“I’m all ready if you are.”

[Courtney]

His life was a decoupage of 'you should have seen this ****' stacked on 'you should have seen this ****', and, there, in the middle of all that **** people should have seen, was the ultimate 'you should have seen this ****' waiting to happen. It was more strange than all the basement-dwelling mama's-boy serial killers, who kept questionable pictures of children and bestiality saved onto thumb drives they kept behind bricks in dingy gardens. More strange than all the eye-witness accounts he'd had to give of neglected or beaten children. It wasn't that some woman was about to rent him a trailer in a dingy part of town, but that some vampire was going to rent him a trailer in the middle of Harper Rock's less-than-adequate-income district.

Not that Courtney Apple knew anything about her being a vampire.

Not that he'd ever know anything about any of them being vampires. Not Lancaster. Not Jesse. Not Dominique, who he'd meet, some time tomorrow, or the next day, who he'd exchange a handshake with, whose cold skin wouldn't even phase him.

The quiet possibility of death lurked everywhere, in Harper Rock. It generally lurked everywhere, anyway, disengaged by all-those-living -- after all, how could you engage your end at every turn, without being a nervous wreck, unless, of course, you had accepted your own mortality? -- but it was more real, there, where he stood, than it ever had been.

And he did stand. He stood, nudged his empty glass across the counter, then left money for the drink.

He stood in his awkward, inconvenient silence -- the type of quiet that disconnects a person from the rest of the world.

Maybe he'd do the same thing she'd done, in the trailer -- he'd stare at the walls and think about how they mirrored the walls of his childhood, would tick through his life a page at a time, as he sat alone, would sleep away the excess hours, instead of trying to be a part of 'life'.

He overheard the conversation she had with Jess. That was probably his only clue into knowing there was an opportunity, at Bunk, for some type of real, human connection. That was probably his only clue, and he didn't pick up on it, or he pretended he didn't pick up on it. He pretended so well that he believed in his own alone-ness, now. Lied to himself, like some trauma victims do, to keep himself distanced.

Pi said she was ready to leave, and Courtney smiled, mouth tense, nodding, simultaneously shrugging. "I'm set."

[Pi dArtois]

She wasn’t sure how she felt about the turn this night had taken. She wasn’t sure if it felt surreal or apropos, how one ordinary night pulling drinks had changed to something different altogether.

Having a renter in the property seemed a development of sort, maybe for them both, certainly in its way it was for her. A sign she was growing away from a childhood that held only ghosts and phantasmagoria haunting her waking mind with flashes of a past she still tried to forget, but was attempting to assimilate as a necessary part of her growth. A therapist would have a field day. Pi could spend hours on their mythical couch recounting the ways in which she had sabotaged her own life in order to sustain a misguided belief in her inability to connect to people.

Look at how wrong she had been? Her smile was soft, directed at Courtney but came from a place that found a certain irony in what she was about to do.

“If your car is close we can take it? I usually walk but … it’s late and it’s cold and looks like it’s started raining. Walking is out and all I have is my bike.”

Pi didn’t actually walk or bike anywhere near the trailer. No vehicle she’d owned had ever parked outside it, and no person would be able to recall a time the exterior door of the place had opened to reveal the woman who owned the place. As the potential new landlord she was probably obligated to tell her prospective tenant about the portal that connected the trailer to her Den, but it was hardly a topic that could be easily segued into the conversation with a human who by right knew nothing of vampires, nor their fadeportals.

Instead she quite right kept it to herself and revealed again her rather detailed knowledge of him by her question about his car. Of course she knew about it. He’d have to have registered the plate number in order to park it in Bunk parking and at any rate, just by being him, there was no part of his small contained life her staff hadn’t dissected, including his mode of transport.

The poor man. He’d been living in a fish bowl and probably hadn’t even realised it.

“If you like the look of it tonight, I’ll give you a key and you can organise the rest later.”

Pi knew she’d invited herself to ride with him in his car but felt no guilt at her intrusion. It was either that or offer him pinion on her bike and that hardly seemed a sensible transportation solution either.