Path of the Vampire forum

It never bodes well for a clown to be bored, that was Myk’s opinion. Worse than boredom, however, was depression. The irony of the sad clown was bordering on cliché. Clichés were bad. So bad. Like falling for someone who isn’t into you. Like loving someone just because they can’t be yours. Like being in a relationship you’re not sure you have the effort to end. Hell, in the grand scheme of things, he’s almost sure he would have faked a pregnancy by now if he was capable of such a thing! His entire existence seemed to revolve around bad romance, and no tribute to Lady Gaga should ever be without an inspired costume. Myk’s wardrobe, however, was tired and wishy-washy – shades of red and black and white blending like road-kill skunk. He sighed at the sight, shutting the very white doors that melted into the very white room. If his hair wasn’t quite an off-shade of cream and his skin – unpainted for now – was not its shade of ivory, he might very well have melted into the very white room too. In contrast, his mood could have had him disappear into the Dark Place. It didn’t do a clown well to dwell on stillness and sadness – no. Things had to change and if the wardrobe before him wouldn’t share but one glint of an answer, he would make the whole world provide it instead.

Resigned to believe himself to be an intelligent creature, it seemed perfectly inconceivable for him to behave like such a fool. If he should want something, or not want something, he should remember his philosophy of simply choosing whether or not he wanted to do it – none of this ******** wading around. But of course, Myk’s mind settled on what was tangible and what was easy. If his wardrobe was boring him, well, he would have to go shopping. But first, he would have to get dressed. The sad clown reopened his wardrobe and took out a pair of orange tartan shorts which came part way down the thighs. They were ruffled and flared out toward the edges under a ribbon of black lace. He smiled at the sight because he had just the right outfit in mind. Beneath these shorts he would wear fishnet tights because he had the legs to carry them off. He could also pull out a pair of platform heels, but since he didn’t want to bend the gender lines too far tonight, he settled on a pair of ballerina pumps. They were black with an oversized orange tartan bow. On top of his extravagant outfit, Myk would wear one of his loose white dress shirts, drawn tight at the waist under a black and white striped corset. Women weren’t the only ones to wear longline corsets after all. A strip of orange tartan to match the shorts was drawn around his neck and tied into a bow; his muscular arms left bare beyond the soft, lacy frills of his capped-sleeve shirt. Certain to look amazing, Myk addressed his make-up counter.

Of course the clown look was on his mind, but the mirror he was facing wasn’t able to show a fragment of that. In fact, it showed nothing. It was such a shame to no longer be able to see what he looked like in a mirror, but then, he could improvise. Since Vampires could be caught on camera, he’d bought a phone with a good front-facing one. He smiled at the smiling face looking back at him – unsure which one of his faces was smiling first. It was then that he got to work. Myk went a little extreme with the make-up, but since he’d done worse in his past, it seemed fairly meek to him. His bone-white hair was as long as his elbows now, but it had been much longer, much heavier. He wasn’t able to do much more than brush the locks straight and have them run down him like spilt cream, so now that his hair was lighter, he could push it up into one of his trademark hairstyles. Volume was key, and the mist of hairspray and spray gel hung heavy in the air like thunderstorms by the time he was done. He’d teased and back-combed until a cloud of frizzy white hair surrounded his head; a few long strands left to fall from the mass at varying levels to add a bit of texture and interest. Satisfied with his look, Myk left the Ivory Tower and walked south toward the Metronome Club.

On his walk, pewter eyes narrowed as if the street lights and the cold air were painful. He hummed a song that was swirling in his head – nothing particularly too well known, he was sure. He was so lost in his own senses that he barely realised that he was walking into a crowd until he’d drifted into its centre. The most strange thing, however, as far as Myk was concerned was that the humming of his obscure song had been adulterated by a more familiar tune. Well, it was familiar and strange at the same time, as acoustic versions of songs tend to be. The white-haired clown stopped where he was, frowning his grey eyebrows to the preeminent, penultimate chords of Linkin Park’s Breaking the Habit. Myk found the source of the music easily enough as well, and as pewter eyes fell upon the blonde Allurist, his frown sunk toward sadness. He appreciated the fact that the girl had talent and charisma in spades – the broodiness of this song actually appealed to him and he was a Linkin Park fan – it was just that this whole scene rather reminded him of someone else, someone he’d liked and, by now, had probably lost to the shadows. Myk watched the last of the Allurist’s fans applaud, pausing a moment to ask questions, but inevitably leave. As the crowds thinned, his lingering presence became obvious. It was like a trip back in time; he was gazing at this girl who stood under the streetlamp’s spotlight, some five feet away, and wondered what to do. She would spot him in return, unless she was blind, and he wanted to be nice and approach, only once again he was struck with the paralysis of indecision. What would he do or even say to her? Myk smiled his least threatening smile and stayed precisely where he was.

Reactions to the clown were always mixed. Some found him scary; either because they were afraid of clowns, anything not normal, or of psychopaths in general. Others found Myk to be quite striking; he had this gothic, Victorian, circus-inspired, crazy thing going on that could be attractive to the right audience. And then there were the people who ignored him because they were so absorbed in their own world that they weren’t able to see beyond it, or they ignored him because they simply didn’t know how to deal with him and couldn’t establish the effort. Myk didn’t need these people to deal with him, however, and while he was always entertained by the many reactions he found in people, he wasn’t strung like a puppet to their whims. Myk dressed as he wanted to, to express whatever he was feeling. Tonight’s outfit expressed his whimsy, but the co-ordination of the various pieces expressed a discipline of sorts too. Most people rarely saw past the surface of things, however, and rarer still was the ability to see past what one wanted to see. If people were used to seeing anything abnormal as terrifying, then their reaction was avoidance or hostility. Myk had no time for these people at all and if they chose to start a battle, he wasn’t opposed to finishing them. It wasn’t his first instinct – to annoy people into fights, or to even start a fight at all – but he was compelled by his emotions. It was simple really; if he was angered enough, even this apathetic weirdo could snap and cut your throat.

While some people in the crowd had given him a wide birth, some rude gestures, some looks of disgust, Myk had only watched them with a smile. The smile, twisted into a disturbed grin by the precise application of make-up and the glint of awareness in his eyes, probably didn’t help matters though. One woman was actually visibly shaken by his appearance, ducking her head under her arm as if he was some bright light. He frowned, but not because he was sad or disappointed, but because he was intrigued. The human psyche was one of his deepest fascinations after all – a product of his father’s nurturing. Myk might have gone to the same university as his father, completed the same degrees and followed in the man’s footsteps had things turned out a little differently. It wasn’t that he lacked intelligence and the ability to hold information, but he wasn’t given the opportunity to try. Myk barely made it through high school as a result of his unique perspective of the world and the people within it. He didn’t leave the institute out of choice, he was pulled out, remanded into his father’s care because his father was the sort to control every tiny detail of everyone’s life. No one had pressed charges luckily, so the school had allowed it. But then it didn’t take long before even Myk’s father had trouble suffering the clown.

When the crowd around Myk dispersed entirely, so too did his focus on them. He looked at the Allurist who was looking at him, unaware of whatever expression he was pulling. She talked to him though, in a fairly narcissist manner and this caused the Telepath to chuckle.

“Flavour?” he repeated after her. “You’re quite vanilla, I would think.”

It wasn’t his intention to sound insulting at all because he was thinking of ice cream. Her blonde hair reminded him of the artificial yellow stuff he used to get back home. They would always serve them in those foul waffle cones that he would never eat. He liked the ice cream though and would even eat it in winter, which is what it generally felt like here in Canada.

“But, yes. I do like your music,” he added, as just to be sure he addressed everything she’d said to him. “I wonder what Chester would think of your rendition. You might be lucky not to strain your voice… if, such thing is possible these nights…”

Myk seemed to drift into a world of his own at that point, his pewter eyes dulling like he was staring into space. Then he blinked, bringing himself back around. He held out a hand to her and smiled.

“I’m Myk, by the way,” he offered.

For once, he wasn’t sizing her up or afraid that she might be some kind of threat. He was living in the moment, being himself, alert and aware of people for who they were rather than what affect they could have on him.

To some, the tirade of words that unfurled out of the blonde’s mouth might have been intimidating, or in the very least, off-putting. Myk, had he been in a different mood, might have responded as such as well and maybe even have walked off. As it happened, he withdrew his hand, quirked a brow at her narcissism and stared at her while, internally, he giggled to himself. My, oh my, weren’t people fascinating when they lived in bubbles. She obviously felt she was the best thing since sliced bread and who was he to tell her otherwise? He hadn’t told her otherwise, not intentionally, but apparently calling someone Vanilla is something of an insult to music ability or someone’s hair colour or the level of one’s intellect. She wasn’t making a whole lot of sense to the Telepath. Myk didn’t understand the reference to Vanilla at all, not that he’d understood what she meant by flavour. Had he missed some profound cultural tendency and stumbled into an Olympic-level faux pas? As far as he was aware, Vanilla was the world’s most expensive spice after Saffron, and is so widely appreciated that the flavour is incorporated into damn near everything. Maybe that made it normal and ordinary by some standards – apparently to this Allurist, as she explained – but not to the Telepath. He might have explained himself, but as she was calming down anyway, there didn’t seem to be any point in it. Frankly, he doubted she would be able to hear another person’s opinion over her own.

When the woman explained, finally, what she had meant by flavour, Myk found himself frowning. There was no reason that he was aware of that could account for her logic of naming the paths flavours. Confusion reigned over his features and he retained his silent-as-the-grave quality as she kept up her talking-like-she-was-going-to-die-in-the-next-five-minutes approach. Myk found that whenever he was with people who talked a lot, he would go uncharacteristically quiet. It was almost as if he found himself competing for the microphone in such a circumstance and if the other party had a fiercer grip on it than he did, he would simply let them carry on and forfeited his right to be heard. She asked him what he was again, but she didn’t pause long enough to give him the sufficient space within which he could answer before she enlightened him as to what she was. He found it a little strange for people to reveal that kind of thing immediately, but then, he did have to remind himself that not everyone was capable of reading people like open books as he was. That seemed purely to be a Telepath’s tendency, and at that, a nosy Telepath’s tendency because he generally Appraised everyone that he came across. The only thing he didn’t do readily was read minds…

Myk waited a while before he finally decided to speak, just in case it was a ruse that she was finally done. Although, just to be safe, it was worth – in Myk’s mind – communicating in a less vocal manner.

“I’m a Telepath,” he spoke into her mind before opening his mouth. “And, I didn’t mean to insult you, Skylar…” Pewter eyes looked left and then right before he nodded to her. “Well… Nice meeting you,” he said and turned to walk back the way he’d come. There were some nice clothes shops along this route and he hadn’t forgotten his plan entirely.

This was a turn of events that was particularly unusual to the Telepath; someone was actually following after him and not even in a foreboding way. Well, that he could tell at any rate. She seemed to have calmed down and wasn’t looking to shove something large and pointy down his throat for any insults or interference on his part, so Myk relaxed somewhat. He might have developed the gag reflex to accommodate such large, pointy things, but that didn’t mean he would just welcome them. Skylar was talking when she caught up to his pace – he wasn’t about to slow down at any rate – but he did give her a sideways glance as she did so to acknowledge that she was there and he didn’t mind. Myk didn’t know what to make of the woman, however, and it was entirely possible that she didn’t know what to make of him either. It wasn’t every day that you would be approached by a circus clown that unintentionally insults you and then buggers off into the shadows. Quite right she had a lot of questions, which she suggested to rather than asked about before she began reeling off additional words. She seemed to talk a lot and yet say very little at the same time – a talent to behold, but not exactly a unique talent he'd learned.

Myk kept silent for a while until he was sure there was a pause in the sound of her voice that lasted more than a couple of seconds. He was heading toward the cluster of shops he was aware of that catered for customers with unique tastes like his. Often he would find materials or supplies over the internet, but he preferred to actually visit a store and feel the garments for himself. Since he was pretty handy with a sewing machine though, Myk often customised the items he got his hands on anyway. He could probably sell the stuff he made, but Myk didn’t really have the business head on his shoulders like others. He was too charitable to actually sell things and would prefer to donate whatever he made to anyone he came across – whether they needed/wanted it or not. Fortunately, he often made useful items like traps and guns, and occasionally he put his jester hat on and made something completely aesthetic; a balloon animal, some kind of zombified stuffed animal, custom garments, just to name a few. He also loved to buy gifts for people – if he could remember. If he saw something that reminded him of someone, he would buy it without hesitation and gift it right away. His parents never did manage to teach him the value of money – they tried, he just didn’t listen. Making money wasn’t something that came hard for him anyway and since he never really needed anything, he had no problem with being so charitable.

As the pair rounded a corner, leading into a quieter portion of high street that was framed with dark buildings, but lit up windows, Myk finally decided to talk to Skylar.

“Ok… Skylar,” he began, glancing to her and the road they were on periodically to ensure he was heading in the right direction. The Goth Garb store was somewhere around here. “Do you like to go shopping?” he asked, though he wasn’t quite finished. “Because that’s where I am going. Shopping. For clothes. Or materials to make clothes. It depends what I can find…” He stopped then, turned to face her and he added. “Though, I could do it later if you’d prefer to talk instead.”

Although she didn’t seem overly enthused about his idea to go shopping, she gave him the green light to get on with whatever he wanted. Ordinarily he might make a fuss about wanting to compromise, to make them both happy, but as they seemed to be getting nowhere in terms of communicating effectively, Myk decided not to bother. If she got fed up he was sure she wouldn’t be too shy about speaking her mind and letting him know. That, or she would be on her merry way to a land more interesting. Myk was fine with that logic because he was used to a solitary existence. As much as he liked people and enjoyed watching them tick, he didn’t feel he necessarily needed them in his life. People – more often than not – were either massive distractions or massive obstacles. That was nothing against Skylar, even if she did make his head ache with the volume of unhelpful words that came tumbling out of her. Unhelpful being by definition unique to Myk in meaning that he didn’t know what to say in response. Apparently Skylar had never taken up the philosophy of less is more and he wondered, if he asked her to tell him anything about her, would she unveil her life story right before his eyes in exquisite detail? He had mixed feelings about that…

Determined at least to get on with his trip to the shop, Myk took up walking again. Pewter eyes watched the path ahead, glancing along the row of black brick and yellow glass. He nodded his head at intervals and smiled as Skylar continued to talk at length, but it wasn’t like he had much more to say than Fine or Sure or Ok. He wasn’t even going to touch the comment about women because that was basically a trap. Women could **** on their gender all they liked but he’d learned that it was a trend unique to females and a party he wasn’t invited to. People might mistake Myk for female frequently enough, but that still didn’t give him the right to comment on them because he didn’t belong, he didn’t understand. Being the pansexual that he was, gender had never really mattered to Myk and he barely understood the lines that the sexes drew between one another. He could talk at length at how it never made any sense, point out the hypocrisy as he saw it, but anything he had to say would never be taken as provided. It was rare that people took an opinion that they didn’t agree with to be anything other than attack on their character. People were often so sensitive, so volatile, that he barely felt like opening his mouth and having an opinion. It just wasn’t worth the headache.

With his focus on making it to that particular store and his head somewhat in the clouds yet grounded by Skylar, he didn’t register the people who crossed the streets to avoid them. It really wasn’t an unusual thing, but it was better that they cross the street away than to cross the street toward them and begin harassing them. That wasn’t an uncommon reaction either, Myk had learned, but at least he was better capable of defending himself these nights. For instance, weapons were a lot more accessible and tolerated here than back home in Britain. Pull a switch blade on the streets of London and you make the news as being some extremist, or terrorist, or psychopath. Perhaps he was all of those things, but the point was… Well, don’t start a fight with people on the basis that they’re weird... or something…

When they reached the store, Myk pressed his palm against the glass door and walked in, stepping back to hold the space for Skylar to walk through. He suspected that she hadn’t been to a store quite like this before. It wasn’t nice to assume, sure, but it was perfectly rational to. Assumptions were just quick ways for the brain to take in information it was being fed and make sense of it based on what it understood to be truth. Skylar was busking on the streets, singing the songs of well-known artists, dressed in perfectly ordinary clothing and wasn’t in the least bit fake; she didn’t seem to be wearing make-up and her hair colour was perfectly natural. Myk didn’t know a lot about the girl and while he didn’t think she was some dumb blonde, he would hardly consider her an intellectual. It wasn’t an insult exactly, it was just the assumption he was working with based off knowing her for a full three minutes. The point was, she was too normal to be entering stores such as this, stores that catered for those with darker tastes and a flavour for the occult.

The walls of the seemingly cramped room were painted a deep maroon as a standard with white ceilings and black stained wooden floors. Still, the walls were just a backdrop to what was on display, of which there was abundance. There was a spiral clothes rack in the centre of the room, filled to the brim with various articles of clothing – mostly Gothic in style, Steampunk, Victorian, etc. It might have been the focus point of the room given its height, which was closing in on Myk’s, but the Victorian styled, wrought iron swirl of fabric that was the clothes rack, was just one of many unique pieces huddled together. There were antique bookcases stacked against the wall, their wooden bodies, some large and some tall, standing side by side like an unusual police line-up. Each bookcase had something different on it as well. There was a mix of candles, incense, dried herbs, fake flowers, bags of runes, tarot cards, gems, statues of dragons and of all things, Buddha, and then of course there were pieces of jewellery; watches, rings, bracelets, necklaces and broaches in a multitude of styles and tastes. The store was practically heaving with little trinkets and decorative pieces too – features being quite important it seemed as there were dreamcatchers, feather boas and even a stuffed crow. In amongst all these treasures was the store’s proprietor.

She was sat in a long crimson gown, black hair unravelling around her shoulders in messy waves. With knees close to her chest, she was perched on the steps that led to her apartment on the floor above. The cat with luminescent green eyes purred as she stroked its jet black fur, too content with its massage to leave the cushion of her thighs as it watched these new intruders. Myk gave the woman and her cat a smile in greeting before he looked back to Skylar.

“Last chance to back out,” he purred with a wide grin. “Step beyond the threshold and you might be cursed after all…”

Of course he was joking. It was a bitter comment on how the world saw people like him and people like the girl in red. He wouldn’t be offended if Skylar decided not to go in, but, he was here now and he did have shopping to take care of. He was curious what the Allurist’s reaction would be to all she saw, after all, he hadn’t really gotten much of an idea of what she thought of him yet. He was willing to explore that, to see what type of a person she was, to see why she was the way she was.