WONDERLAND
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OOC: Backdated to November 6th
--The following transcript was a live chat roleplay--
<Clover> He still hadn’t texted. He still hadn’t called. And she hadn’t put forth any effort to bridge the gap between them. If he wasn’t back in an hour, she’d vowed, then she would go and find him. If he wasn’t back in two hours, she’d sworn, then she would go and find him. He wasn’t back. Clover traded out her pajama shorts for a plain pair of black leggings and pulled her messy hair up into an equally messy bun. She wasn’t worried. She had a secret sort of determination that he would come home, that he would text her if he needed her. Hadn’t she already checked her phone seventeen times? Yes, and she’d kept count. Her lack of messages meant he was fine. Jesse was okay.As she collected her phone and searched for the tome to Circle, she began to wonder if she should simply summon him. But he hadn’t called. How many times had she reminded herself of the fact? She wasn’t worried, except she was worried. She’d put off her panic and paranoia by latching onto a promise she wasn’t even sure he could keep, one she wasn’t even sure he wanted to keep. When she finally used her tome, she arrived in a place filled with silence. Her sock-clad feet made dull sounds against the wood floors, despite the fact that she wanted to preserve the quiet. It was her focus on the absence of sound that really ruined her. Her right foot connected with the floor, but she slipped. She managed to let out a harsh gasp before her butt connected with the hard floor. Blood. The floor was wet with blood. As she looked up from the blood that coated her palms, she saw Jesse, or what was left of Jesse.
The smell of the blood mixed with an earthy undertone made her stomach churn. She crawled toward him, the knees of her leggings stained with his blood, and placed her hands - no, she didn’t place her hands anywhere. She let her hands hover over his body. “Jesse,” she spoke clearly, trying to push aside the overwhelming need to vomit, “you have to open your eyes now. Just l-let me know you’re there, okay?” She gagged then. She turned her head away from him and buried her nose into the crook of her arm.
<Jesse Fforde> The dreams came and went. Drifting dreams that could have been consciousness but could have been just that – dreams. Nightmares. Visions. Like when someone wakes up to their alarm but turns it off and goes back to sleep, only to dream that they got out of bed and made their way to work. Those were the kind of dreams Jesse had – of going for a shower. Of patching himself up. Of hiding away somewhere – of trying, at least, to hide his wounds. Impossible, but anything is possible in a dream, isn’t it? Anything but lay there in the middle of the floor for anyone to stumble over, like some kind of display.
It was the last thing he wanted. He didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that he had done a stupid thing. He didn’t want anyone to feel any guilt because they’d left a grown man to his own devices. So many people had told him to call them if he needed them. To call if he needed help. To call if he was about to do something stupid. But who the **** ever thinks of calling someone before they do something stupid? Especially if they think that someone was better off without them, anyway.
At one point he dreamed they were celebrating Christmas. He felt their movements through the floor and heard their laughter from a distance, but he wasn’t with them. He dreamed of Jormun, wrapped around his throat with her fangs stuck into his temple. He dreamed that he was falling. He was falling, and at any second he was going to hit the ground and shatter into a million pieces. He twisted in mid-air – he saw the ground rising up. When he landed he didn’t shatter, though. It was just a dull shove and his eyes flew open.
Clover was there. He wasn’t in bed. He wasn’t bandaged up. He wasn’t hiding his wounds. He wasn’t in the bathtub. He didn’t know whether he was still dreaming, until he opened his mouth to apologise. To immediately tell her it wasn’t her fault. But he coughed instead, fresh blood bubbling in his throat. He remembered, too late, that his voice was non-existent, voice-box ripped out, or damaged too much for use. His skin was pallid and grey. There was nearly no blood left to spill. He tried to move, to comfort her, but with what hand? It was gruesome. It was nightmarish. He had to close his eyes again. Squeeze them shut as he willed himself to try harder.
<Clover> She just couldn’t look at him. Every time her eyes wandered back to him, to his mess of a body, she felt as if she were being crushed; she felt as if all of his injuries were magnified and slammed in front of her over and over again. Once the gagging had stopped, she couldn’t avoid looking at him. There was no other reason for her to look away. Although his injuries were almost horrific in nature, she’d seen worse. Hadn’t she spent hour upon hour dissecting her victims? It was different when she knew the person. It was different when she hadn’t been the one to cause the damage.
The sound that alerted her to his consciousness wasn’t the sound that she craved. It wasn’t his voice. Clover stared down at him as he tried to talk. She finally let her eyes take in the rest of his body. He looked as if he’d been in a fight, but had he actually fought? Had he actually done anything to try and prevent the injuries? And what happened to his assailants? Would she ever know? The more she looked at him, the more she wanted to get up and walk away. She wanted to leave him to bleed out on the floor; she wanted to leave him for someone else to stumble across. Because he hadn’t called. Because he hadn’t tried. Because she had to look at him in such a state and he didn’t seem like he gave a damn. He didn’t care. That was it. He just didn’t care. He was giving up.
Clo shifted around to sit next to him, but she didn’t touch him. She rested her head in her hands and tried to think about anything but the blood that had soaked into her clothing and dried upon her hands. Something inside of her told her to cry. A familiar voice in the back of her mind asked her why she wasn’t sobbing her eyes out. She’d seen Jesse close his eyes, after all. She’d seen him slip into his own little moment.
“What the **** were you thinking? Why didn’t you call?” Clover didn’t know when she’d started screaming, but she knew when her voice cracked. Even though it hurt, even though the sound of her screaming made her even angrier, she pressed on. “Why didn’t you ******* call me? Why didn’t you call?” She shoved her hands against his side, trying to jar him enough to force him to look at her and listen to her. The multiple questions could have been condensed and simplified into a single question, but efficiency wasn’t on her mind.
“Look at yourself!” Clo sat up on her knees and gripped at his shirt. She tangled her fingers in the bloody fabric and held on as if she needed him as an anchor. “Jesse,” she stopped there because she’d felt the tears welling in her eyes, tears that trailed down her cheeks and cleared lines through the blood smudged on her face. She’d wanted to yell at him for being so incredibly reckless and so unbelievably thoughtless, but she couldn’t speak when she’d dissolved into quiet sobs. Her anger slowly faded to the background.
<Jesse Fforde> This was it. This was what he had feared. Whether he had stayed out in the wilderness or whether he had come home, the result was the same. He’d let someone down. He’d let Clover down. When his eyes closed he imagined himself again on the stops above ground, above where they lay now. He imagined that he’d stood up and, instead of walking out into the fog, he turned around and walked back inside. Instead of letting her end their conversation with just an ‘okay’, he should have sent her another selfie. He should have changed the subject. He should have called her, for the sound of her voice. Instead, he’d done something stupid.
And he couldn’t tell her that he had done something stupid, and that he was truly sorry that he hadn’t called. Because he had no voice to tell her. All he had was a slip-shod consciousness that threatened to take him out of service at any moment; a wary realisation that he wasn’t dreaming. He could hear Clover screaming. Opening his eyes, he could see her sobbing, and he wanted to sob with her. He wanted to desperately soothe her. A gargled breath of air escaped him when she shoved at him, his dim eyes turned to her.
This was not what he wanted. This was not the outcome he had been searching for. This only made things worse. And he was determined, then, to make it better. Somehow, to try to be stronger than he had been. To not give in to random whims. His nostrils flared as his good hand reached for Clover; as his fingers found her shoulder so that he could pull himself up. They’ll heal, these wounds. They aren’t the end of the world. Although he couldn’t think straight, he knew that he couldn’t stand to see Clover cry. He couldn’t stand that he had caused it.
She was angry. And then she was in despair. Both showed him without any kind of doubt that she cared beyond what he deserved and he wanted to cry for her. On her behalf. He didn’t drape himself over her, but he did try to push himself to his feet. He didn’t know what he was doing or where he was going. He didn’t know how to make her feel better, except to get up and take care of himself. To show her that he had slipped, but he was here and he wasn’t dead. And he was going to take care of himself, because he wanted to live. There was a sliver of something – even if he himself thought death might be more comfortable, he had to do this for Clover. He had to live, for her. It became his new mantra. For Clover.
<Clover> Eventually, he would get worse. Those were the thoughts that kept her crying. Eventually, he wouldn’t find any tie to bring him back. He would disappear in a way that was both familiar and unwelcoming--he would die somewhere away from his family and no one would ever really know the truth. Her miniature breakdown became tainted with the stench of dried blood. She just couldn’t take the smell anymore. Fresh blood. Old blood. Clover rubbed her palms against the sides of her thighs, but the blood wouldn’t come off; the red had found a home within the tiny crevices in her skin. Some part of her wondered if she’d ever wash the moment from her mind.
When he touched her, she flinched. It was an automatic reaction, just like a default setting ingrained into her muscles. But it took only a beat for her to reach out to him, to try and stamp her own anger and sadness down all over again. He'd reached out to her, she told herself. Not that long ago, Clo had no concern where she touched him or where she hit him, but her concern had crept into the equation. Even as the last of her tears mixed with the stains on her blue top, she tried helping him to his feet. She grabbed his left forearm and tugged; she wrapped an arm around him and tugged. Clo did everything she could to help. And she knew, as much as she'd wanted to abandon him, she wanted to stay.
As hard as it was for her to admit, she'd also had darker thoughts, thoughts she'd reserved for the worst of situations. Vulnerable people were her favorite kind of people. Vulnerable people ignited the desire to pounce. She'd considered hurting him even more. No one would have noticed. Those dark thoughts brought on the sweetest feeling and produced the most delightful images. But it was Jesse. She only had to remind herself. It wasn't a human; it wasn't just some meaningless vampire. It was Jesse. And so those horrible urges were eclipsed by other more appropriate impulses.
"Let me help you," Clo requested, her own voice raw. Her throat still burned from where she'd screamed at him. She had to turn her head away and cough a few times. She tried to clear some of the pain left behind from her shouts, from the repetition of questions and her lone exclamation. He couldn't even answer for himself. "I'll help you get cleaned up." Despite her disgust with him, despite the varying emotions his state evoked, she hadn't abandoned him. She'd stayed. She cared. Then again, hadn't she already told him that?
<Jesse Fforde> Why would he have expected that Clover wouldn’t help him? That he would stand on his own and she would stay there kneeling on the floor next to a pool of blood? Of course she was going to help him. The urge was there to push her away, to shake his head and indicate, somehow, that he would do it himself. He had got himself into this mess and it was his responsibility to fix it. As soon as he was standing upright, however, he swayed. Dark stars danced at the outer edges of his eyes and his knees almost buckled. There were times that he had felt this weak, but it was a sensation he had forgotten.
The emotions were there, running rampant in Jesse’s mind. The black thoughts that wouldn’t go away. That Clover was only helping out of obligation. And he hated to think that. He hated to think that he was a burden to her, but whose fault was that? Only his own. He should have let them finish the job, or he shouldn’t have walked out there to begin with. Now he had to suffer the consequences, and if his punishment was to feel like a ****, then so be it.
He nodded, his eyes closing momentarily as he tried to keep his own balance; as he tried to keep from letting his whole weight fall against Clover. He tried to pretend that he hadn’t done this on purpose; that there was no shame in accepting help. He imagined what it would be like to climb into a bed, clean, with clean sheets and the weight of a feather quilt covering him. That was his motivation. He assumed that they would go downstairs; when he looked toward the elevator, it felt as if it were a mile away. But his lips were set. And he was determined to stay awake. To be some kind of help to himself. Air rushed from his nostrils, but his whole body shuddered to keep from coughing. The airways were riddled with blood. He had to remind himself not to breathe.
One foot in front of the other – but he hoped, at least, that Clover would take the lead. He couldn’t make decisions when all he wanted to do was pass out.
<Clover> The elevator shone like a beacon. They had a short distance between them and its welcoming doors, but the distance doubled when factoring in their situation. She would have had to make sure the elevator’s movements didn’t bother him; she would have had to help him to the secret room. The numbers and responsibilities increased. With each passing second, she doubted the plan. The elevator no longer seemed like a temporary sanctuary.
“Let’s go to my apartment, okay?” The intonation suggested that he had some sort of choice, but he had no choice at all. With her arm around him, she steered him toward her apartment. She’d spent a few nights there, but that had been weeks ago. She’d only installed a security system and then she’d gone back to lingering in other places, like Larch. Her apartment wasn’t as lovely as it could have been, but she had the basics: She had furniture and linens and clothing. She had items that she’d needed.
What about first aid? What about his clothes? Clo gritted her teeth in an effort to silence her own thoughts, as if cutting off her own ability to speak had some influence on her mind. What about the mess Jesse had left behind? What about the smell? Oh, the smell. As if her thoughts had beckoned the stale smell of dried blood, she had to turn her head away from him.
“I’m sorry. It’s the blood,” she managed to explain, her words coming out in one run-on sentence. By the time they reached the door to her apartment, she felt as if she’d run a marathon. The door was unlocked; she had no need for keys. She guided him inside, which was more like a gentle nudge to the small of his back. There was a quiet click and then the lights came on. Her security camera had snapped a picture and sent the image directly to her phone, alerting her that someone had tripped the sensor.
“We’ll clean you up first. I don’t want you passing out in the bath, so we’ll...I guess we’ll see how it goes, okay?” Again, she had a subtle rise in her voice, a rise that suggested she’d left her words open for a response. She led him through the front area of her apartment to the bathroom. Since it was her own place, she’d turned the second bedroom into a bathroom.
<Jesse Fforde> Jesse nodded. It was the only thing that he could do, even if it aggravated the wound at his neck. He’d forgotten about the apartments; he’d forgotten that one of them belonged to Clover. The rest remained unclaimed, as far as he was aware. One was for Marian, but he didn’t think it had even been touched. It was a miracle that Third Circle hadn’t suffered the same fate as Gresse’s; there was still time, but he didn’t want it to come to that. He clung to that tiny hope still beating somewhere within him, that one night this place would be thriving. If it were how he wanted it to be, Clover wouldn’t have been the first one to find him. He’d have landed and been inundated. But he knew if he tomed back there was a high chance that no one would be there.
Passing out in the bathtub sounded like a good idea, too. Jesse had done that, once. Often, he’d filled the bathtub and sunk below the surface of the water. The silence was a calming mechanism. It was meditative. He hadn’t tried it this time around, but maybe he would, a little more. Maybe it would help. It had helped last time.
His phone made the pocket of his jacket heavy. His journal was still tucked into the back of his pants. Things that Clover may or may not find as he shuffled with her into the bathroom. As soon as they were far enough inside he let go of Clover. He stumbled toward the toilet, falling heavily onto the close seat. He might have told her that he’d do his best not to pass out in the bathtub, but he didn’t try to speak. He kept blinking, holding his eyes open, forcing them to stay open. He reached for the corners of his jacket to pull it off, forgetting again about the missing hand. There was another gargle in place of a snort. It wasn’t really funny. But it was, at the same time.
After the moment had passed he gathered his wits and grabbed at one corner, doing his best to undress himself one-handed. Trying to help. Trying not to be entirely, utterly useless. He knew the blood bothered Clover. It bothered her just as it bothered him, and the sooner he could get cleaned up, the sooner she’d stop turning away from him as if he were a piece of meat swarming with maggots.
<Clover> He looked drowsy. She should have gone forward immediately and helped him, but she watched him first. She watched the way he stumbled and fell onto the closed lid of the toilet. And even though she knew he had trouble removing his clothing, she made no more to help him.
They’d left a trail of blood behind them, a trail of prints made by her socks and his shoes, one dotted with droplets and painted with thin ribbons. The grey stone floor looked like the beginnings of a painting. No one wanted that painting; at least, she didn’t want that painting. Frustrated, she bent down to rip the blood-soaked socks from her feet. The white and teal stripes had turned shades of red and brown, like the beginnings of rust. Clo clenched her fists around the fabric and then threw them to the side. Of course the socks collided with the only real decoration she had in her bathroom--her socks had tangled them atop her small potted plant.
Clover turned her back to Jesse and leaned down to turn the knobs on the bathtub. She didn’t have anything remotely masculine to add to the tepid water, so she didn’t add anything. No bubbles. No bath salts. While the water collected in the tub, Clo turned back toward Jesse. He’d made a sound that had her wrinkling her nose, mostly from some sick fascination. Had he been trying to speak again? When she went toward him, she kneeled down in front of him and helped him out of his shoes. She didn’t say anything as she continued helping. In the back of her mind, she wondered if he’d ever help her do the same.
“I wanted you with me. I needed you and you weren’t there. I didn’t call you or text you, and I should have. None of this would have happened if I had just reached out. I missed you,” she sighed, listening to the steady sound of the temporary waterfall. “I wanted you. I want you. I don’t want you to just...to just go. You’re working really hard at leaving me, aren’t you?”
Her tone had some humor to it, because she didn’t know what else to add to the conversation. She could have been bitter. She could have chastised him. She’d found his cell phone and eased the journal away from him. Every item went to the side.
<Jesse Fforde> Jesse could tell that Clover was unhappy. That she was even angry. It looked like she was angry. Or fed up. She turned around to help him and Jesse could do nothing but let her; too slow to push her away, and unable to speak to tell her any different. Jesse was no longer snorting. No longer laughing at his self-inflicted misfortune. He stared at Clover as she spoke. The words settled and he couldn’t argue against them. Something clicked; something…
Want. Need. They were words that were applied in reverse. They were words that he had spoken to Clover on so many occasions. But had she ever said them out loud to him? Maybe she had. Maybe she had and he had not listened. He had not heard. Or he had not believed her. The way she said it now, though… it filled him with regret. They now made a beeline for where his heart should be, and they weighed it down. Drowned it. He’d come back because he was terrified of failing Clover but now he realised it was too late. As soon as he stepped out into that fog he had failed her.
When he was mostly undressed he laid his good hand on her shoulder. He squeezed, wanting her to look up at him. His eyes were rimmed red and gleaming, tears that he refused to let fall. He pointed to the door, and made a very large effort to stand on his own two feet without aid. He wouldn’t try to climb into the bathtub until she was gone. If she left him alone, that was. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and hug her, but he was covered in blood. He wanted to reassure her, to tell her that he wouldn’t do it again. Maybe it was a good thing that he couldn’t. But in that moment, he would have meant it. For her.
He would try. He would try as hard as he could to be there. To be strong. To stay where he should stay and not wonder of. To not do anything stupid, ever again.
<Clover> She had every intention of staying with him. The moment she’d offered her help, she’d drawn a path and created a journey. Leaving him alone was absolutely out of the question. For all she knew, he would start crying and thinking of more creative ways to kill himself. No, leaving him alone meant letting the worst thoughts into his head. She knew. She’d been alone. And look at where that had gotten her. She still remembered the bitter feelings evoked by her melancholy thoughts. Loneliness fed the most destructive monsters.
When she felt his hand on her shoulder, she didn’t look up at him. Maybe it was the guilt. Maybe it was the fear. Maybe every emotion she’d ever felt had caught fire. She felt exhausted, as if she’d been extinguished. Clover couldn’t avoid him forever. Her body betrayed her and her eyes rose to meet his. By that point, he’d motioned to the door. He’d motioned for her to leave, the one thing she didn’t want to do. She didn’t want to go. She wanted to stay. Hadn’t he heard that she’d missed him, or that she’d wanted him? She still missed him. She still wanted him.
“No.” Her voice was light and showed her own determination, despite the fact that she sounded like a petulant child. How dare he think she would go. Of course she wasn’t leaving. It was her bathroom. It was her apartment. She could have gone on for hours, but her thoughts came to a screeching halt. Her eyes had fallen to the bathroom floor and the line of red that led to the door and out into her apartment. She had to clean up the mess.
“I have to go,” she panicked, scrambling over to the cabinet beneath the bathroom sink. “Please don’t hurt yourself. Please just clean up. I’ll be back.” She grabbed towel after towel, disregarding the color and the size. When she stood up, she turned on the faucet and soaked the towels in water. The cleaners were in the kitchen, right? She had cleaners? She didn’t know. “I have to clean up the blood. They can’t see the blood.” She disappeared from the bathroom, leaving a trail of water behind her. Had she even been talking to him? Had she simply been talking to herself, reassuring herself?
Outside of the bathroom, she stooped down and ran several of the towels over the blood, circling the wet linen around the smudges of red. She had to crawl her way over to her front door, stopping several times to spend more energy on the more stubborn spots. Every piece of evidence had to be removed.
<Jesse Fforde> No, she said. No, she wasn’t going to leave. She had understood that’s what he had asked, but she wouldn’t. He couldn’t make her. He didn’t have the strength. He’d just have to keep doing what he was doing, as best he could… but then she was gone, all of a sudden; Jesse just stood there while she collected and soaked the towels. In a rush to get rid of evidence, as if they had murdered someone and the cops were going to be here at any moment. Jesse was far too dizzy, far too out of it to understand her motives. He was far too focused on trying to remain upright and standing, so that when she was gone he could, in the silence, try his best to continue.
