O, Prodigious Youth: [Open]

[valiant (DELETED 8792)]

The following transcript is from live chat roleplay:

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In the doorway of ‘Club Argent’: That was what the sign read. The floor was something he knew. He knew the floor and the sky. He knew the sky like it was a far away, black, spangled ceiling. He knew the floor like he was a rug.

He bled everywhere. It wasn't so much puddled on the floor. It was more on him than anywhere else. But it was there, seeping and oozing. There was hardly any left. Maybe a pint in his entire ******* body. What happens, when an art project comes to life? When your wax mask starts breathing and screaming? Was he supposed to be alive? [color=

In the dark of the night, blood isn't something most people would notice. In the strobe of booming nightclubs, it's less likely to be seen.

Silas knew a few things. He knew a few things like his name. He knew his name, because his skin told him it was, 'Silas,' when his brain asked his skin, 'What am I?'

It was one of those things he remembered to know, for future reference.

He knew his name because his skin told him so. He knew the words 'Club Argent' because his skin knew them, too.

He was clutching some Bible that a man on the street gave him. It was a book he recognized, a thing that he could cement himself to and with, when he was rushing through the world, trying to find some sense of quiet dark, some soft hiding place far and away from things like headlights and people who yelled for bumping them, and people who yelled, when he couldn't help himself, and let his mouth control him, let his throbbing gums lead him to necks that weren't for chewing or biting or draining

or

having

in

him.

Hush.

He'd been shot. Somebody with a gun. It was all a blur of blood and the smell of castor oil and voodoo hexing spray and come-on-boy and take-you-away and you-a-real-looker-ain't-you.

But there he was, still alive, and bleeding everywhere. The stitches that threaded him together were busted.

Silas knew what blood was.

He remembered to know it.

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Puck glided through the club. He loved the frivolities that went on in such places but the spirit wasn’t here to have fun and dance with the crowd of people.

He was here for information: Information his mistress needed badly and he was just the person to get it for her. He wove in and out and even thorough the crowd, listening carefully to the conversations. Then he saw him. He was bloody and looked as if he were about to become a spirit himself. Puck hurried away. Mistress Mortll would want to know about this a vampire bleeding all over Club Argent. It was not a common thing.

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Silas was not abandoned by his Maker.

He didn't know his Maker by name. He hardly knew him by face, though he’d half seen him from the corner of his eye when he’d ripped through what may have been a laboratory or a hospital room or some place where things like Silas were made to live and be alive and be brought into the world, or maybe taken from the world, or what-was-this-and-do-you-know-but maybe where things like people were brought into the world, where things like not-people were drawn from under the water and dragged to the top to lap against the shore of society and, "Silas."

He didn't even know he had a Maker, not yet: But he was full of the panic and desperation associated with needing to know where he came from , even if he couldn’t put it into perfect words, yet. His mind wasn’t fully there, yet. His thought came in and out like those same crashing waves, that dark, strange ocean, so big and intimidating, the type of thing that makes you think about how inferior you actually are.

When he was re-born -- that was how he thought of the entire thing, a rebirth, a baptism into blood -- he had run from his Maker, the prodigal monster. He had sprinted into the world, fumbled away and tried to break free on wings not yet made for such things as flying, coasting, catching wind.

Not yet.

Not now.

The bird fallen from the nest.

Unsought, for all he knew.

Was he sought? He left a trail of destruction in his path -- four dead humans, a line of blood, Blood Thieves who stuck him and drained him of pints, then shoved money he didn’t understand into his trembling hands. But he knew money. He did know money. What is this? "Money." His skin could talk. It talked, a lot. It talked a lot. It talked a --

A true travesty, "Silas."

A true dumb thing with shaking fingers that gripped and squeezed and needed and pryed. A fangless, contorted beast, trying to feed itself (itself? Himself?). He'd gotten himself into this trouble. It wasn't his Maker's fault.

He was reading the Bible, and he was bleeding all over the place. He knew what blood was. He knew, because he remembered to know, and his mouth couldn't tell you these words he thought, these words he knew, these definitions he remembered from his past life, the life, his life before.

[Mortll]

Mortll arrived at the club. Secrecy was blown totally out of the water. But only an Idiot fledgling would be in a public place bleeding from a serious wound. She found the young man easily enough. He was close to turning into a pile of ash from Mortll’s quick assessment of him.

She laid her hand on him and let the blood healing start, “Come with me."

She got him to a secluded booth out of prying eyes and opened her bag.

"What the hell are you thinking?" She practically growled at him. She pulled the cap off the super glue and started pouring it on the open wound and pinching it shut, "This will hold it until your healing starts kicking in."

Then she bandaged him she looked at his clothes and pulled a black t-hirt out of her purse. "Put that on and your not grand but your better and not going to combust in front of a whole crowd of people. Didn’t your sire teach you anything?"


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Truth: He was burned to a crisp. His skin was peeling back and away, like he was some stitched up hand that had been holding a firecracker, had just thrown it before it exploded at his fingertips and singed him black.

He was browned, crisp, flaking, and he smelled awful: He had to. He may as well have been a fresh wound, totally, rolled around in mud and grass. Creation is such an ugly process.

He went, when he was told, did what he was told. For all intents and purposes, he was perfectly obedient. When she tried to speak to him, he could process it in his mind, but what came out, as he shook, drooled, and gagged for breath was, "Nngh-nn-nn-nn." The shirt was shoved at him, and it was almost lost in the blur, until he realized she was telling him things. Then there were the bandages she wrapped him in and the superglue she used to try and pinch his wounds together.

Some of the flowing blood kept them from closing with ease. His fingers weren’t as pretty as hers, or as efficient as hers. His were dotted like ‘cut here’ lines, fresh and full of stitches, like his neck and collarbones. And when she ripped back piece of his shirt to glue him, he was the same.

He tremored while he dressed himself, obediently, one shirt on top of the other shirt, damping up with his sweat, spit, blood. He wheezed, shook, mouth clenched, wincing.


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Mortll watched him, taking in the makeshift stitching that he had all over his wounds. “Jesus. Don’t you have anywhere to go ? Does Keara know you even exist? You’re in her line. She wouldn’t like it if she knew you were in this shape.”


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Everything he did was so painstakingly slow.

He was like an old man from a geriatric ward. He tried to speak, again, and gave Mortll the full brunt of another slow groan that started out like he was trying to form a word, and finished up in ache.

The Bible he had was less being read, in the past few, painful days, and more being clutched like some type of teddy bear: His tie to the Real World.

The skin of his cheeks puffed, chest concaved. The boom of the bass in the room confused him. He could hardly make out what she said or meant.


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Who the **** would let something like this out on the street?

Mortll gritted her teeth. ******* hell .

Obviously the sire didn’t have a clue. It seemed like his Grandsire was Peter Parkman...

Mortll knew of him and had met him a few times. She pulled out a note pad and wrote a quick notee on it.

Dear Mr Parkman,
This is your mess deal with, now.

She stuffed it into the fledglings shirt pocket, located the whereabouts of Mr. Parkman, and reached over to the young man. Her hand started to glow a slight blueish hue .

"Say Goodnight to all the nice folks." She touched his arm and he disappeared in a flash.

[Peter Parkman]

The fireplace sat empty and cold. It wasn’t yet cool enough to have a fire going, and though Peter longed for the comfort of the flames, his common sense and reason often took precedence over comfort and nostalgia. Peter knew exactly how much wood would be needed to have the fires running near consistently – running down to hot coals during the day to keep them warm while they slept (and the dogs, too) and to build them up again once night came around. All the equations had been done, of course. How many nights was the cabin empty, for example? Variables were added for Jersey’s spontaneity. He knew how long different types of wood took to burn down. The numbers all played together nicely in his head.

That’s where he was when the dogs decided to begin a chaotic, riotous cacophony of barking, paws scrabbling at the earth to scamper and scoot around the side of the cabin.

Peter was out back, chopping wood. A fire crackled nearby in a drum so Peter could dispose of the chips and leftovers. That was the only light he needed to work by. He wore a pair of plain denim jeans and some heavy boots, a plain white t-shirt, now dirty, covering his torso. He should have been sweating, large pools of tepid moisture gathered at the arms of the t-shirt, but there was no sweat in sight. Just dirt.

A few nights had been scheduled in, just for this. Just for wood chopping. He would have to do none in the Winter; it would all be ready to go once the colder months trickled in.

The steady swing and thwump the axe came to a sudden halt when the dogs disappeared, though. Peter expected the barking to cease, to turn instead into excited whimpering. Who else would be here but Jersey? But the barking did not stop. A stranger was at the door.

Peter froze. He wasn’t prepared for company. Company was not scheduled in. He waited several minutes, hoping said company would just go away. But the lights were on in the cabin. There was a record on the record player, the blues music tapering out into the backyard. It was obvious someone was home.

With a heavy sigh, Peter left the axe where it protruded from the wood and shed his gloved. Warily, he walked around the edge of the cabin, whistling to the dogs to heel. They did so, reluctantly. What welcomed him at the front door was a horrific sight. A scarred and bloodied body, more broken than not. Or so it seemed from this angle. A strangled cry ceased in Peter’s throat as he slowly approached.

A person.

Really no different to an animal, in the end. Right? Or like a baby left on a doorstep. Peter immediately assumed the Fae must have had something to do with this. He immediately stepped up to the door and opened it, warm light flooding the landing. He flinched at the sight and scent of charred flesh. Should he trust this sudden appearance? Maybe, maybe not. But the body held a book in its hands, clutched to its chest. The book was like a sign.

”Inside. We should go inside,” he said without hesitation. Though he did hesitate to reach down and help said body inside. Where could he touch that flesh that wasn’t burnt, that wouldn’t hurt? In the end he just held out a hand and hoped the body would decide.

[valiant (DELETED 8792)]

If Peter thought that Silas would disappear, at all, he'd be wrong. The inkling of an idea that a person had just happened by? Peter would be very wrong. If Peter thought his mistake was leaving the record playing, he'd be wrong. If he thought his mistake was having the lights on in his out-of-the-way habitat, environ-ment. Environ-ment. Environ-ment. Ment. Ment. Ment.

Well, he would be wrong.

The music, though. The music, Silas touched with his ears. There was something in him that understood music, like all people, all beasts. Even cockatoos bob their heads to bass and treble and Silas did the same. He stayed out of the way of the light.

If Peter thought that the sound of chopping wood was an invitation, was a sign he was there, if he thought its absence or its presence effected Silas, at all -- well, he would be ... very, very wrong.

Because Silas would have stood there until the sun raised and crested, spread like smooth, warm butter over his disjointed angles, his funny-strange skin that was different from the dogs and the other men. He would have stood there, regardless of whether or not Peter was home. That was where Silas was put. That was where Silas would stay. The other men. Was he like the other men?

A person?

Was Silas a person?

He'd seen the other man's body: He'd seen his one-skin.

It's a question from a science fiction novel about the robots hiding among the people: Do androids dream of electric sheep?

It's a book Silas would read, eventually, in the quiet dim, with a candle lit, easy on his sensitive eyes.

The dogs freaked Silas out.

No other way to put it.

They were barking and Silas had his hands over his ears, face contorted in ugly terror, when they came as a rabble around him. His hodge-podge mix of clothing he'd taken off a dead man (who wasn't even his size) squeezing him at the wrong parts, loose at the wrong parts, as ugly and misplaced as the skin on his bones.

But he was healing.

He looked better than he had, when he first ripped off the table and filled his hands with glass shards that had healed over in his palms, welts.

His fingers clutched his ears, cheeks, body rocking: For lack of a better understanding, these same attributes can be seen in the over-stimulated autistic child.

His mouth opened and closed.

His skin said, "They're just dogs, Silas."

And Just Saul knew that.

Just Silas didn't know what that meant: To be just a dog. But he saw sharp teeth and he could feel the booms of their barks in his Silas skin. That they were just dogs did not comfort him.

Panic.

The Bible was against one side of his head and tears -- so many ignorant, desperate tears, and they were everywhere, like the blood on the shirt under the shirt, under the shirt. His jeans were undone but belted up. His boots were too big. He spun a slow circle and closed his eyes. When the light spread out across him?

Just the light?

Silas fell on the ground, then shoved his whole body away from the trailer, legs wheeling, the Bible crumpling in his big, dumb hand as he threw it in front of his face to hide his skin from the trailer's light, like it burned him.

It didn't.

But the sunlight had hurt.

The bright light had hurt.

And he didn't much understand, all that, even though the ghost in his skin felt repulsed by his behavior.

Silas didn't know incandescent.

But he understood pain.

He learned quick.

The dogs had gone, and they were replaced by a newer threat: The light.

His body scuffed against the dirt, half-numb to the seering pain of being created. Crusted blood gathered the dirt up like a coating of flour on damp dough.

Silas tried to understand what the other man was saying.

All he heard was a slow buzz and churn of vocal chords and

his

skin

felt

not

so

good.

[Peter Parkman]

As soon as Peter figured out that it was the light causing the panic attack, he lurched inside the doorway and flicked off the light. They weren’t completely doused in darkness; there was still some dim light filtering from other parts of the cabin. Standing there on the porch, Peter twitched, body still as his mind worked too fast to try to figure out what this was, or what he should do.

The man looked like a stray. What did Peter usually do with strays? Strays were generally the result of domestic violence and abandonment. They were skittish and they didn’t trust easily – unless they were inherently drawn to a person, as all animals seemed to be drawn to Peter. But this was not an animal, this was a man. And Peter had to remember what he used to do when he wasn’t some kind of animal pied piper.

He dropped down to his haunches and held out a hand, palm up. It hovered in mid-air, consoling and in surrender. He was not here to harm. He was here to help.

”I don’t know who you are or why you’re here. You don’t look stable…” he said. Perhaps not the best bedside charm, but Peter had always been one for blunt logic and stating the obvious. His gaze scoured the other’s body. Definitely vampire. But whose, and why. Peter practiced patience, and made no sudden movements. He remained right where he was with his palm held out, the other behind him to keep the dogs back. He was half turned toward their warm fur bodies, ready to command them back if they made any movements toward the body on the ground. They liked bodies on the ground. They were easy to climb all over.

”Please, I think you should come inside,” he suggested. Why? Because the boy was freaking out, and the way in which it was done was not unfamiliar to Peter. For this, he could be empathetic.