ph_logs | [OPEN] The world is spinning endlessly

[OPEN] The world is spinning endlessly

Who: Siebren and friends
What: October Shenanigans
When:...October? Possibly also November
Where: Siebren's home, the
Warning(s): Potential cannibalism mentions, unreality, mental unwellness, memory manipulation (self-inflicted), more in comment titles

1. This is the sound of energy [Gala Aftermath]
You can't believe how easy it is. You just have to go... a little crazy. And then, suddenly, it all makes sense, and everything you do turns to gold.
He calls into work the morning after the gala. And a couple more days beyond that. In that time, he is
~~metamorphosing~~
~~assimilating~~
~~unpacking~~
~~digesting~~ everything that occurred that night. He stays at home, alone, trying to avoid everyone and everything.

much. It's too
The fragments of past that he's avoided for their sharpness rotate in him mind, turning their points toward him, crystal shards of time that threaten him. And yet, some part of him reaches out with Pandoran curiosity, like Sleeping Beauty toward the spindle. What he pricks isn't a finger, but he feels the pain just as instantly. And yet, and yet...

too much. It's
There it is, the multiple choice past solidifying in fractals, like frost spidering across a windowpane. Siebren has no way of knowing whether this is a correct past, but it is now his, memories feeling more stable than they have in years. Some things are lost, others are fake, but the end result is more real than anything he's been able to grasp before.

For three days, anyone approaching Siebren's home for any reason may hear, even from outside the building, the sounds of someone having a Bad Time™, with pained screams or furniture being thrown against walls as his gravitational powers pulse and fluctuate. For three days, he struggles.

And then, there is silence.

Traveling through the galaxy [The Library; CW vertigo]
Siebren returns to work. Nothing is wrong. He is fine. Can't you see how fine he is?

Somewhere, a book falls off a table and he flinches. And then, to anyone within a certain distance of him, the floor seems to fall away, in a dizzying cloud of galactic light, just for a moment, before he regains control, glancing around to see if anyone noticed.

Into eternity [Stargazing Night]
A notice goes up on the bulletin board, and letters are issued to penpals with explicit invitations: Crane's Ridge, 9pm on a given night. Bring snacks, drinks, something to sit on. Siebren will have his telescope and star charts.

He's brought some cheese and crackers and apple butter himself, as well, and is floating beside his big brass telescope, dressed in a comfortable sweater. For the moment, he is completely at ease. For the moment, nothing could possibly bother him.

Right?

A One Note Symphony [Wildcard]
Find me on Discord to plot, PM me, or just throw a thing!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Slowly, she comes closer. Something's happened. He's unresponsive. Did the demons get in his head?

"Siebren. We need to take you home."

If that's even possible. Her hand is extended towards him, not yet touching, but hovering. She's watching for a sign that it'd be wrong to touch, that he'd take it the wrong way.

"Where are you?"

"I ^don't _{know_.}" His voice quivers, in a way that's dissonant and tight. He doesn't seem to realize she's reaching out to him at all.

Gently, so gently, her hand wraps around his own.

"Talk to me, if you can. I'll keep you safe."

If she can take his hand, they'll start walking. Away from the manor, away from the crowd.

She touches his hand and _{the world _{falls _away...}}

It is a sudden and intense sense of vertigo, as bad as anything that Mendel or his attendant demons threw earlier in the night, though it has a much shorter duration. Pretty lights, too, and a whimsical music that is so loud Fever can almost taste it, a phantom sweetness that makes her molars ache.

She yelps, but she holds onto him - disoriented, he's the point to stay with, and everything is so much chaos. Is this where he is? It's a place to get lost in.

"I'm with you. I think."

Her head wants to split open, but she can't tend to it yet.

How kind of her, to fall with him. Untethered, they somersault and cartwheel in the cacophonous light show for what might be an eternity. Or just a couple minutes. Time isn’t sticking to Siebren very well, right now.

“I think I did something bad.”

"What do you remember?"

That's a pretty big category, something bad. Hard to narrow it down when they're falling, falling in the unnatural discordance and dizzying lights. Hard to organize here.

“The white clown was laughing at me.” He means Blanche, one of Mendel’s ~~ministering angels~~ attendant demons. “Mocking me.”

The hand linked with Fever’s squeezes tightly, so tightly, threatening to crush.

"Did you silence her?"

That is not so bad a thing. She had been an irritation, an enemy, a guard of Mendel. Fever winces at yet more pain in her body, but she'll make herself endure.

There’s something dreamy, almost childlike in his voice for just a moment, a kid looking at Willy Wonka’s World of OSHA violations.

“She was made out of candy.”

Her eyes widen, and she uses her grip on him to drag him closer, free hand grabbing his face, thumb wiping away the red on his lips and only vaguely considering how bad an idea this is when she already has it in her mouth to check.

(Sweet like the sound, like the lights. In the grips of them being disconnected from reality, no one will notice.)

"You consumed her."

Even for her, that's a lot to consider off the cuff. ~~Old habits, the scent of-~~

"How?"

“Starting with her face so she wouldn’t be able to watch the rest, even though she was already dead.”

The sounds begin to dull and fade. It’s hard to tell if it’s because of her sticking that not-blood in her mouth or despite that.

"Why? What did it give you?"

She'll take the risk of whatever she's just done to herself, glad the sound is easing back some. What will it do for him, with the power in devouring another, raw and vicious, unwavering violence?

“I don’t know.” The ‘yet’ is implied. In time, everything both gains and loses clarity. But for now, he’s just got a bellyache and a mind that won’t tune in to reality.

She can't and won't pretend it's something well and fine, but she can't make a grown man throw up a demon. So for now, she has to get him in a state where they can get him home, and that's going to be difficult without steady ground.

"Even I wouldn't eat someone without reason, doctor." She shakes her head. "We've got to get you to safety, but what's coming..."

If he starts turning into her? She's killing him on the way back.

“‘Even’ you, Fever?” One eyebrow lifts, something about the wording catching like a burr. Still, she’s right. Safety is the priority.

“Whatever’s coming will best be faced at home, I think.”

She's not going to answer the question, instead wobbling as she's trying to lead him step by step in the direction of town, of his home. Her dress is still the night sky, but an unsteady one.

"Okay. Home. And if it's too much, you tell me, okay? I'll help."

She'll do what needs to be done.

"Where is home?"

Out of the lights, hopefully. This is not going to be easy. This is beyond her ability to help anyone with, he's just going to have to endure. See if he's poisoned or not.

"Near to the library."

Near work. He can focus enough on that landmark to point the right direction. Things are going sideways and up-down, gravity playing even more tricks on him than usual. But the grip his newly-acquired power on her has slips, like a rabbit wriggling loose from a snare.

A rabbit with the color pulled from it, save red, red eyes. One that keeps a grasp on him as they walk, or well - she'll walk, he'll float, untethered as he is. Like a large balloon. She's braced for it to hit again, for something else to happen, but the library's a good enough marker to head for.

"Why was she mocking you?"

Is it weird that Blanche's exact words, the cloying, saccharine tone of her voice sticks in his head more than his own address? Perhaps.

"We both thrive in delusion, in delirium. Do we not? Neither of us are at home in reality, are we? Far better here, among whirling songs and flitting falsehoods."

She's quiet for a second, mulling that over in her head. There are things she can say out of her own experience, but will they help? Will they make sense? Perhaps, perhaps not. Step by step, the rabbit guiding him home.

"I thought devils were supposed to have some degree of subtlety about them. I guess not all of them."

"Mendel's court is--was--of misdirection, but not deceit. It's a shell game, a magician's patter, it's..."

He catches himself feeling defensive of the demon clown and his court, and wonders immediately if that's Blanche inside him, affecting how he feels about them.

"You don't need to justify it to me. I keep faith in the myriad forms of madness, after all. The two are not the same in the slightest, though she may have enjoyed pretending they were."

She pauses, thinking it over.

"And a scientist would not go very far if he dwelt in lies."

"Myriad forms of madness..." He almost seem to chew on the words, before a wave of dizziness comes over him again. Just him this time; Fever is still as stable as she ever is.

She pauses when she sees his face from the corner of her eye, letting him right himself before they can continue.

"The point is, I can see the insult in it."

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discussions of cannibalism start here

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