You Can't Call it Stalking [Closed]

[Jesse Fforde]

--The following transcript was a live chat roleplay--

<Courtney> You can't call it stalking. I mean, you can call it that. Stalking, but that was the nature of Courtney's business. He took appointments, sure, for extra money. He had around fifty thousand in the bank, at the moment. Hopefully, he'd be putting it toward a real house, soon, not the dilapidated trailer he'd been staying in. But, back to the 'stalking', and why you couldn't really call it that. He was involving himself in something he didn't really need -- or desire -- to be involved in. He'd been going through his files. He had no friends to keep him company, had nobody to talk to, except his cat. Rachel was discarded during the move. Orchids were temperamental plants, anyways, he'd told himself. A lie. If he'd wanted her to survive, she would have. If. But you couldn't really call what Courtney was doing stalking, not in the 'I know who I'm tailing' way. He just followed the patterns. He was a blind finger, tracing over things that happened, like they were the lines of a fine mandala, or the nooks and crannies of a maze. He pushed himself along those lines quietly, steadily. Veil Towers, with its shined floors, its fire-eyed elevators, its housed Damned. Courtney stood outside, looking up at the windows, wondering which window housed whatever fucked-off asshole was responsible for arson and homicide. He wasn't supposed to be an investigator. Investigative work wasn't really his job. Mostly, he worked in testimony, but he wasn't really 'working' at the moment, more trying to entertain himself through the mires of his hopeless depressive onslaught. He ashed his cigarette. The ashes caught the light, fluttered, licked up against the asphalt. And Courtney wasn't really stalking anybody. He took another drag from his cigarette, ashed it, again, before pinching of ember. Hand in his pocket, he strode through the door to Veil Towers, where those shined floors butted up against his clean-but-old, hemp loafers. He smelled like a cigarette.


<Jesse Fforde> Jesse is careful in his meanderings. At least, he thinks he's careful, but sometimes passion and desire and addiction all mesh together so that one makes mistakes without realising it. If Jesse has made mistakes, he certainly doesn't recognise them. His life is easy, breezy. There's no reason for doubt or worry that some smartass is going to find him. In Jesse's mind, fire ruins all. Turns everything to ash, so that there are no leads to follow. He always wears his hood, his gloves, his shoes with no prints. But, still--maybe there are ways. Veil Towers is where Jesse can be found most often, if not at Larch Court. Veil Towers is where he and his lover go to ravish each other--no surface in that clean white apartment hasn't been touched by their love or their passion. The apartment exists to save the other members of Fforde from overhearing, or walking in on something they'd prefer not to see. It is a private place, and one that others may know about, but they do not have keys. Grey has gone to work, however, and though the two have been exchanging picture messages, Jesse knows he can't stay at home all night doing nothing. Yeah, he'd been sketching, and the charcoal is stuck under his nails and has dug into the wrinkles of his knuckles, but he'd been distracted, and unable to sketch anything of any use in his line of work. So he has decided to go out--maybe to hunt. Maybe not. Maybe he'll go to the Caverns. Maybe he'll go the Eyrie and see who he can find. Maybe he'll just go to Larch Court and catch up with the other members of his small coterie. He doesn't really know where he's going as he rides the elevator down to the lobby, pulling the leather jacket over the long-sleeved, eroded-looking cardigan. There are boots on his feet and weapons concealed cleverly beneath said clothing; his jeans are denim, but they are dark and tight. Hair is slicked over his head, all to one side. Oiled, like some kind of upper-class hooligan. When the elevator doors open, the keys of his bike jangle in his grasp as he twirls them. His boots clap against the hard floor of the lobby. Sharp, blue eyes glance left and right--only to notice a familiar face. Jesse pauses. His brow arches, and his head cants to the side. Curious.


<Courtney> Regardless of what Jesse thought, he had left a pattern. It goes unknown, to most serial killers. They aren't really introspective creatures -- the homicidal maniac. If they were more introspective, they'd have to deal with all the fucked up **** under that top layer of skin, they'd have to confront their venomous monster, they'd probably run away screaming. Or, maybe, in a more ego-driven murderer's case, they'd start making out with their own reflection. And, regardless of what Jesse thought, fire did not take everything. He should have taken the teeth from the bodies. Courtney had stood over that trailer, when it was time -- that one with the hipsters. He'd seen the teeth, the mottled bones. He'd seen the fat-back stuck to the rib cages and the burned out clothing. He'd inhaled the raw, brutal stench of it all. That was part of his job description. When you find scenes like that, and you're an old woman in stereotypical pink rollers, and you're dialling the handset and you're screaming into it, 'There was a fire; there was a fire. Oh, Jesus, what is this. I think they're dead! I think they're dead,' then you rouse up the police and the fire department and the ambulances and people like Courtney Apple who have to come in and do clean-up with the coroner. He'd put little tags near all the 'evidential' areas. Yellow cards that said things like '1', '2'. Exhibits. Exhibition. Exhibits, like exhibits you see at the local museum. Courtney Apple, museum coordinator. He'd taken photographs. The previous person -- where he'd gotten all the other files from -- was either too weak of stomach for his job, or he'd been eaten by a midnight monstrosity. Neither of which Courtney knew. He hadn't asked, 'What happened to the last guy?' He just went about his job. The guy before him had been somewhat of a hack. The photographs were too sloppy. The evidence wasn't all there. Courtney was more thorough. No stone unturned. Harper Rock was full of villains. Anti-heroes. People who stalked the night. And there was Courtney, stalking the night, too. He couldn't sleep. Something kept itching the back of his throat. Something kept him awake, since... He looked up from his loafers, away from the residents coming off one elevator and toward the resident coming off the next. Something had been itching his throat since Jesse. It was weird, the way the universe worked. His skin burned, when he saw him walking. The hair on his neck stood up. Recognition. Dogged recognition. Maybe Courtney should have trusted his intuition. He broke into a wide smile, was already running the gauntlet of excuses for being in the lobby, just in case the other guy approached.

[Courtney]

--The following transcript was a live chat roleplay--



<Jesse Fforde> Jesse's not normally paranoid. Maybe lately he's a bit off, however. Three months since he'd shared his blood with another, and he's starting to feel a little antsy, like a drug addict gone too long without a hit. As if there's something crawling and itching beneath his skin and he can't quite scratch it, or ignore it, or make it go away. Others notice when he gets this way; his temper is more prone to eruption and his humour becomes acerbic rather than silly. It's not humour at all, but veiled insult. Normally, it's insult as a result of self-defence. The walls start building up, and that same old urge to push away every single vulnerability and weakness rises. Which, unfortunately, means pushing away the people who care for him. The only person really exempt, thus far, from Jesse's odd and tempestuous behaviour--not so bad, yet, but a little twitchy--is his fiancé. The poor woman, though. She has to carry the burden of his frustrations. She has to hear his complaints every night; the things that worry him. Anxiety is a weakness, and Jesse is riddled with it. Anxiety about himself and how others perceive him. Anxiety about his bloodline. But will he show this anxiety to anyone? **** no. **** that. They can go straight to the depths of fiery ******* hell before they get a glimpse of Jesse's anxieties. No, they can get his foot rammed solidly up their backsides before he ever gives them any inclination of his weakness. So, when he sees Courtney Apple in the lobby of his apartment building, Jesse feels nothing. It's not such a large city, after all. It's just a coincidence. He considers approaching the guy, but he doesn't. No. Instead, he just nods and gives that small, miniscule smile. There's no reason to stop and chat to a former customer. Is there? No. Of course now. Jesse's not the chatty type. So he puts one foot in front of the other and makes his way across the lobby, and out the front doors. But he's moving slowly. Slowly. Considering the encounter, and trying to figure out whether it's a weird one or not.


<Courtney> It was just an encounter, for all intents and purposes. Like any other encounter. Coincidence. But there's no such thing in the universe. Courtney felt the weight of it, even if Jesse didn't. He knew the weight meant something, but he wasn't really sure what it meant. It sat on his chest. No, there was no reason to stop and chat. No reason to say, 'How's it been? The work holding up?' But society did dictate things like that -- how you're supposed to approach a person. They weren't friends. Neither of them were particularly friendly. But there was that weight. Investigative detectives get these things called 'hunches'. You have to give a certain level of respect to those strange and sordid feelings that drive people to discover treasures, inventions, formulas. Maybe it was God. The Collective Unconscious. Courtney's excuse would've been he was looking for real-estate. He was driving toward some sort of property in order to fit properly into the propriety of society. Or wha... Was he in a rush? Jesse? Was he going somewhere? Courtney pretended he didn't remember the strange taste in the back of his mouth, the night Jesse finished his tattoo. He pretended he didn't remember the energy flux between them, pretended he couldn't feel what the other man had been feeling. After all, you can't turn in hunches. But they did drive him. Where was he going? There was a thread of tension between them. Courtney could feel it. As Jesse moved past him, he felt it explode -- some type of dynamic transference of an entire history, impalpable, but palpitating. According to a few different studies, sociopaths are the type of people who get tattoos. Sociopaths are the type of people who work in places with little advancement, who have jobs that can transfer from one area to another area, with ease. Sociopaths are the type of people who... Some universal force made him turn toward the elevator Jesse had come out of. He timed himself, waited long enough to give himself probable distance, then nudged out after the other man. Curiosity killed the cat. Intuition's there for a reason.


<Jesse Fforde> The door slides open, sensors detecting Jesse's moving body. How? He has no reflection, but the cameras pick him up. The cameras are smart. Yes, the cameras know all. The cameras may have caught him coming home dressed in his hood, dragging muddied melting snow through the lobby. That's the thing he hates about Winter. Fires are harder to start, because the damp gets into everything. A brisk wind invades the warmth of the lobby, but only momentarily. Jesse steps out into the night and pushes his keys into his pocket. The bike is parked on the curb out the front, but he has decided that he is going to walk. Why? Just a feeling. A whim. A spontaneous act that may or may not be a result of his previous itch in paranoia. On the surface, he tells himself he just feels like walking, for once. He doesn't walk as often as he might, with the tomes and the fadeportals that throw him around the city like Harry Potter and his floo powder. Not that Jesse has read Harry Potter, or knows what the **** floo powder is. The cigarette he brings to his lips is menthol; it adds a nice coolness to the burn at the back of his throat. It helps to soothe the constant thirst. No, that's a fuckin' lie. Nothing soothes that thirst. Ever. But mind over matter, right? Jesse walks forward, down the street and out of the small cul-de-sac that Veil Towers sits inside of. Once out, he turns right--and begins heading toward Newborough. Or Stag Heath. The seedier parts of the city, where the seedy clubs are. Though, he does pause on one corner. No. He doesn't want to go anywhere near the Handle Bar, and he knows of a place that's not seedy. It's all class. And he knows a person there, too. Yekaterina. So, instead of heading toward Stag Heath, he instead turns left again, and begins to meander his way toward Wickbridge. As lax as his body might look, with his feet crunching in the fresh snow and the smoke billowing from his lips (a nice cover, for the fact that he, indeed, does not breath steam in this frigid cold), as if he's lost in his thoughts. If he were a cat, however, his ears would be twitching. Listening. Wary.


<Courtney> Courtney tugged the brown, cracked leather of his own jacket up, housed himself in the collar, where the stink of the cigarette he just put out matched the stink of Jesse's cigarette. He kept his weight in his thighs and his knees, when he stood, searching the backs of heads for the back of Jesse's head. Culmination. Build-up. Residue. Courtney veered around a woman with red hair, moved around a blue dress. Everything struck him hot and heavy, all at once, like he was running through the slapping cold, rather than walking. The more he followed Jesse, the less he felt like himself, the more he felt detached from his body, the more he wanted to step out of the husk that kept his soul inside. Disoriented. At some point, Courtney lagged back, and let it go, but unsatisfied. Who aimlessly walked around, at night? Who meandered through the tapestry of existence? There seemed to be no purpose, no rhythm, no rhyme, which meant that Jesse knew he was being followed, felt like he was being followed, or was completely detached from reality. Courtney kept waiting for a sense of direction, in the other man's footsteps. He didn't walk close, Courtney. Walked back and away. Steam did roll from inside his jacket, curled up around his ears and puffed from the 'v' where his zipper sat. His eyebrows furrowed -- face betraying the full range of curiosity and apprehension. He maintained distance. Still lagging. Still following. Jesse's feet crunched through the snow. Courtney tried to avoid too much noise, especially in more quiet areas.


<Jesse Fforde> To anyone who knows the city, Jesse's back-tracking would be obvious. On the surface it is nothing more than a changed mind. He'd passed the bank and the first street. He'd passed Lancaster's, and had reached the street down which Handle Bar lived. It was that street he'd turned down, the bar bypassed, and he'd taken another left a few blocks down. And left again, until he was almost back where he had started. Except he doesn't go back to Veil Towers. He turns right instead. Eighth Dimension Mall is just down the road. Inside is club Kit Kat. There's no reason to think he's being followed, but Jesse has that feeling. That raising of the hairs at the back of his neck. That intuition one gets, that they are being watched but they can't see by who. Jesse slips inside the mall. Some of the shops are still open, but there aren't too many shoppers still around. The people still lingering are those there for the club--dressed up elegantly, unmarred at the beginning of their adventure. At the end of the night the men will be sweaty, their hair lank, and the women will have mascara-ringed eyes, their heels hanging from their fingers. Jesse doesn't head straight for the club, however, where the bouncer knows his face. Instead, he quickly side-steps. Quickly leans up against a wall, down the hall where the bathrooms are, his back against the brick. Waiting. Watching. Waiting to be wrong.

<Courtney> When you're following somebody, if you get seen more than once, it's game over. That's the problem with following somebody who's already seen you, already acknowledged that they've seen you. Because there's no way to talk yourself out of following a person who's ticked their fingers at you, offered up a plaintiff excuse for a smile-of-recognition. Courtney noticed Jesse had veered around, had come back almost full-circle, only to head in another direction. Courtney told himself that Jesse was out for a midnight stroll, the type of man who doesn't like to be stuck at home at... What time was it, now? But Courtney couldn't see that type of break-free-from-constriction-happiness-and-positivity lifestyle written into Jesse's shoulders, or the back of his neck. A man. Alone. Wandering. Smoking. Hunting? Not going for groceries. Not going for a midnight snack. Not meeting somebody. But walking. Courtney kept lagging. He kept hanging back, and he wasn't going to make the mistake of following Jesse all the way into the mall. Instead, Courtney hung around outside, kicked some snow and lit another cigarette. He only lingered a moment, before he headed back the way he'd come.