dccaying

[dccaying]

He didn’t laugh, not really, but something in him went a little sharp — a muscle pulled too tight. “Sure,” he said, dragging smoke between his teeth. “That’s the thing about ‘meaning well.’ Doesn’t cost much. Looks real good in the mirror.” He wasn’t looking for a fight. He didn’t think. Just needed something solid under his feet. A little friction to remind him he was still standing. “You set all this up?” he asked, though it didn’t sound like he needed the answer. “Lotta folding chairs. Lotta candles. Not much else.” There wasn’t any bite to it — just tired words, said flat. His gaze drifted toward the windows, where the church glow spilled out in flickers. Warm, soft. Hollow as hell. Then, eyes cutting back to her, one brow hitching — like he couldn’t tell if this counted as making conversation or lighting a match in a powder keg. “You always duck out like this, or am I just the lucky asshole tonight?”

A dark shadow of a chuckle is all that he earns at first, more than a little annoyed at being discovered and joined, at that. "I shouldn't." And yet she does, graciously accepting what he offers up, thankful for the distraction—something to do with her hands, something that'll stop her from picking at her cuticles 'til they bleed.

Here she was, thinking nobody would miss her or find her out here, tucked in along the stone walls, mere inches from a drab little garbage can. How very classy. It's the best alternative at the moment, given the atmosphere back inside the church. A young woman has disappeared, it's serious, she knows all of this—but god, is all the moping and praying and hand wringing really going to do anything to bring her back? To find her? Do they really want that as the outcome?

It's not like Josie can voice any of this. No, she's been here for hours on end now, before the vigil even began, helping to set up and forming part of the Somber Welcome Committee as people started to arrive. The joys of it being a civil-servant-adjacent, half the work and none of the thanks. Her husband is surely wondering where she is by now, his smile tight and controlled, but she can't bring herself to give a shit about him at the moment.

"They all mean well, I think." Not even a little bit of conviction behind it, unable (or simply not wanting) to fake any sense of belief in her own words.

[dccaying]

The kick landed firm against his boot. He didn’t jerk or joke about it — just shifted slightly, enough to brush his knee against the underside of the table. Like he understood whatever she meant by it. Like maybe he needed it, too. She kept talking, and he let her. He liked the way she said things plain. No ribbons, no apology. Just sharp truths and spitfire teeth. Guilt. If they were all choking on it now, what the hell did that make him? His eyes drifted past her again — to the scorched flyer, the rust-bit corkboard. Nothing in particular. Just that grainy static his brain kicked up when it didn’t wanna land anywhere. She’d come to him that night. Eliza. Barefoot. Wild-eyed. Talking too fast, too loud, like fear was trying to claw its way out through her teeth. And he’d barely let her in. Just told her to rest. Told her to go home. Told her— His jaw clicked. He dragged hard on the cigarette, the exhale slow and sour in his throat. “Not sure I’m goin’ either,” he said finally, voice low. “Figure I should. But hell, I don’t know what good it’ll do.” He glanced at her then, finally. Not for answers, just to see if she was still with him. Still here. That was more than most. “You?”

rabid believes slowly peeling the skin off her body would be more tolerable than whatever’s going on around town — a parade of people who never gave a shit, all wearing sad faces. no different than clowns, really; get close enough and you’ll see the ridiculous makeup smudging. they should at least try a little harder to make their act convincing. a girl they never cared for goes missing — a fellow outcast — and suddenly their sharp tongues start dripping with honey, their clenched fists offering comforting pats. secretly, though, they’re happy … a troublesome weight off their shoulders. it makes girty angry ( what doesn’t, though ? ). elijah’s sorrow is quiet, yes, but it’s real. it lives in the creases of his forehead, the twitch in his lips, the kissing of cigarette after cigarette after cigarette after cigarette. they’ve never been the type to exchange loving words and soft touches  —  their appreciation(?) for one another a quiet creature lurking in the background  —  so she just watches, saying nothing, while devouring the sandwich he brought like it’s the first decent meal she’s had in weeks. it is the first decent meal she’s had in weeks. intense stare leaves him when he mentions the flyer, frizzy head turning toward it. huh … she hadn’t noticed.   " dunno, man. one of those weird fuckin’ church ladies, probably … "   girt spits a choking sound, as if trying to dislodge something stuck in her throat  —  the thought of them invading her territory provoking immediate, physical disgust. doesn’t help that she’s got a flair for the dramatic, too. eyes return to him when he speaks again. unfortunately, she isn’t equipped to say or do the right thing. ever. instead, she kicks his foot with her own — a bit hard. translation: i’m here.   " y’know what it is ? they all feel fuckin’ guilty. that’s why they’re vomitin’ this shit all over town. "   i called her a lost cause during literary circle … look at me hanging up missing person posters now ! aren’t i an exemplary member of this community ?   " they think it’ll spare them from eternal damnation or whatever. "  eternal damnation is accompanied by air quotes and a dip in her voice that makes her sound slightly possessed. real appropriate.   " don’t want their flat asses t’burn in hell. "   she tosses the last piece of food into her mouth, smacks her hands together to shake off any crumbs. the choir of fictional screams dances inside her brain … she smiles.

[dccaying]

He didn’t mean to startle her — just hadn’t figured out how to say hello without making anything worse. But when she turned to him, all small smile and shaky grace, he gave a faint nod. Folded the pamphlet once. Then again. Then one more time, like his hands needed somewhere to put the rest of him. For a moment, he just stood there, letting the quiet settle between them. “Been meanin’ to come by. Or… somethin’. You know.” A pause. “Not sure I do.” He looked past her then. Toward the far wall, where the candlelight trembled in the corners. Where the dark gathered in places the light couldn’t touch. Paul should’ve been here. He would’ve known what to say. How to carry this moment in a way Rory could hold onto. But he wasn’t. And Eli was the one left standing there — shifting his weight, creasing paper like it might make him useful. Like showing up might count for something. Still, he stayed. Uncertain, silent in a way that didn’t press. Told himself it was better than nothing.

open: anyone location: first assembly baptist church during the vigil

she's good at this, putting on a smile when her insides are all twisted up. she's not used to this, though, her daughter missing and the woods calling to her. she doesn't want to do this, doesn't want to be here, wants to prepare for what she feels is coming. she has to prepare, she has to be ready, but first, she has to conquer today.

rory's brushing her hair from her face, and then grasps hold of the candle with both hands. it's gripped hard, like it'll be her saving grace. she's not crying, even though people around her are, and it makes her a little angry. how could these people cry for her daughter? they need to be looking instead of praying, but as a good church goer, she has to pretend like this is okay, that the praying will work. she knows it won't, because it's not the right way of doing things, but she goes through it anyway.

she startles, having been looking at nothing, as someone comes up beside her. her head turns to look at them, and while she doesn't want to, she gives them a small smile. "thank you for coming," she whispers so she's not disturbing the person at the pew talking. she hasn't talked up there, yet, or not at all, she's not sure, but right now, she's feeling grounded, focusing on the person next to her.

[dccaying]

“Would’ve bet good money on it,” he said, eyes skimming over bowed heads and flickering flames. “Smoke, fire, the works.” His voice was low, a little hoarse — like it didn’t quite belong in a place like this. Like he didn’t. Not really. He stuck out, and he knew it. Figured that was half the reason the bulletin had said everyone was welcome — because of people like him. Faces they didn’t expect to show. Loretta, on the other hand, looked like she belonged. Like the candle fit her hand the way it was supposed to. He could swear he’d seen it before. He scratched at the side of his neck, suddenly aware of the heat in the room. How thick the air was with wax, old wood, and dried tears. He didn’t come to church anymore. Hadn’t in years, not unless he had to. The last time had been for Paul’s funeral — all low murmurs and candlelight, the kind of grief that echoed in your bones. But the rest of it — the way the light trembled, the way sorrow seemed baked into the walls — reminded him of something further back. Another vigil. One he’d barely remembered until now. He must’ve been just a kid, but everything about tonight scraped against the edges of that old memory. The same ache. The same silence pretending to be peace. “Didn’t think I’d stay long,” he admitted, finally glancing at her. “Still not sure I will.” He paused, let his eyes flick back toward the altar, the crowd, the careful quiet. “Figure I’ll wait to see if the floor gives out under us first.” A beat. The corner of his mouth twitched. “You hear any creaking, you run. I’ll follow.”

closed starter for @dccaying, at first assembly baptist (during eliza's vigil)

Loretta arrives at the vigil later than intended, lights her candle, offers silent support. She tries not to think about the last vigil held at First Assembly Baptist, which also happened to be the last time she stepped foot in this place. A revolving door of tragedy and loss and empty hope, that's all the church would ever be.

But this isn't about her, and Loretta strives not to be the self pitying sort.

When she sees Elijah tucked away in the corner, looking like a boy who wandered into the wrong room, she's struck by the familiarity. He looks like he did all those years ago, lost and helpless. A question of whether he remembers or not slips in unbidden, but Loretta knows better. Questions like those aren’t worth the asking. Or the aching.

“Surprised you made it over the threshold,” a wry smile as she approaches. Loretta knows (maybe better than anyone) that Eli finds more comfort in hard plastic booths than church pews. That makes two of them.

“Half expected we’d both go up in smoke. What with the whole unrepentant sinners thing and all.”

[dccaying]

Preventable deaths. He didn’t snort, not exactly, more like a quiet huff through the nose. A sound that said you don’t know the half of it. Cigarettes, vehicular crashes, falling off a roof with a bottle in your hand — he’d danced close enough to death to know the line was blurrier than most liked to admit. You either went or you didn’t. Everything else was just borrowed time. “Of course I’m goin’ in,” he said, brow raised. But the words landed thin. Not disbelief, exactly. More like a man trying to convince himself as much as the person he was talking to. A gust kicked up. A folded pamphlet skittered across the gravel, flitting past his boots. He stepped on it, bent to pick it up, and held it out to her. “Here,” he said, dry. “Figured you’d want it for your collection, or whatever.” Inside, the voices had dipped to a hush. A new one had just taken the pulpit. Eli squinted toward the doorway, trying to place it, flicking the butt of his cigarette to the gravel without watching it land. Didn’t crush it. Didn’t step forward. Not yet.

She smelt him before she saw him. That familiar acrid scent of burning tobacco and dried alcohol-tinged sweat. She lifted her head from the ground, eyes darting toward the voice and narrowing in on his face before lowering to re-focus on the ground again. Eli. The boy who was going to bring glory to this town. She was older than him by almost a decade but she still remembered the billboards with his smug smiling face on them. His name plastered over every available marquee sign "BRING HOME THE GOLD, ELI" As if he was a one-man baseball team. "Cigarettes kill almost five hundred thousand Americans every year," She said, continuing her walk to the church. Her sparkly K-Mart sandals crunching the gravel beneath each step. "Leading cause of preventable deaths." She added, stopping near the entrance. Murmurs spilled out from inside, a real reminder that there were hoards of people in there. "You aren't?" She countered, eyes still focused intently on the door as if trying to assess just how many people she would have to dodge just to get to a seat inside.

[dccaying]

( 𖤐 CLOSED STARTER ) — Elijah x Amelia. Where? Just outside Family Medicine When? Not long before the vigil @drmurder

"Shit, fuck," Eli jumped out of his truck and took three long strides across the road, cigarette dangling from his mouth. He’d figured she was green enough still not to close up shop for the vigil — but there she was, loading up her car. That car. The one half the town already had opinions about. Maybe she was going. And it hit him, then — the vigil wasn’t just for the grieving. It was pulling in the curious, too. Mourning and morbid tourism, hand in hand. He breathed out smoke and tension in the same breath, though neither seemed to leave him fully. He looked worse for wear. Storm-weathered, with something tight behind his eyes like he hadn’t slept right in a decade. Or two. Pain was just background hum now. Static. “Dr. Mercer.” No hello. No pleasantries. Just the kind of greeting that sounded like bad news. “I’ll be out of your hair in two minutes.” A beat. Quieter: “Got somewhere to be. Guess you do too.” He didn’t say vigil. Didn’t need to. It hung in the air like smoke — slow and bitter, curling off the end of his cigarette the same way the whole damn day had been burning down. “You got anythin' for... old pain?” A pause. A shift. “It flares up when —” He shook his head once. Then once more. “Just need somethin' for the flare-ups. The rest is covered.”

[dccaying]

( 𖤐 CLOSED STARTER ) — Elijah x Girty. Where? Fine Parts Auto Shop, Bone Gap When? Past noon, day of the vigil @wolf1sh

Eli wasn’t usually in the habit of bringing lunch to others. Much less unprompted. But he’d been uneasy lately. He didn’t believe in ghosts, but sometimes he swore he saw Eliza, just like she’d appeared that night. Only it couldn’t be her, so it had to be a ghost. Or? Girty had sprung to mind as someone who might appreciate a meal in a crumpled paper bag. So he’d ordered lunch to go and headed to the auto shop. Now, sitting across from her, he heard her but didn’t really listen. Couldn’t have repeated a single word if she’d held a gun to his head. His mind was elsewhere — scattered across town, on every tilted community board and crooked light pole plastered with Eliza’s face. His lighter clicked. He lit hers without a word, without even looking — like it was muscle memory, like it was owed. Then his own. He inhaled deep; the smoke hit rough in his lungs. Eyes drifting to an old corkboard, he nodded toward the familiar flyer. “Who put that up?” he muttered. “One more flyer like it’ll bring her back.” He tapped ash on the floor, then glanced back at her. “Whole fuckin' town’s gonna be plastered with those by nightfall." Another drag.

[dccaying]

( 𖤐 CLOSED STARTER ) — Elijah x Josephine. Where? First Assembly Baptist Church, Bone Gap When? Sometime after the fourth (or fifth, or sixth) hymn @thornburghs

“You know what they say,” he said, offering her a cigarette. “Nothing says civic duty like lighting up next to a ‘No Smoking’ sign.” He’d found her around the side of the church — past the slow-dripping gutters and behind a row of hedges that didn’t hide much, not really. It wasn’t exactly a place to be caught, which made it the perfect place to be alone. Or would’ve, if not for him. She looked polished. Expensive, even in grief — that kind of put-together that came from habit, not effort. He didn’t imagine she wanted to be here any more than he did, but she’d made herself look the part. Candlelight vigil chic. He didn’t have that in his rotation. Smoke curled up between them like a held breath. He didn't ask why she was out here. Just tipped his head toward the church and said, "Place reeks of sanctimony." He wasn’t in the business of asking much tonight — only watching. Listening.

[dccaying]

It felt like a cruel joke — his niece, howling about voices the last time he saw her, and now the voices of a hundred hypocrites roaring inside the church, while a storm grumbled in the distance. Bone Gap was a sleepy town stuck in the middle of nowhere, true. But it was never silent. The cherry of his cigarette flared against the darkening bruise of the sky, a dull ember swallowed by the coming storm. He leaned his shoulder against the weathered siding, like he was holding the church up or maybe letting it hold him. Smoke curling from the corner of his mouth, bitter and steady. He spotted her the second she parked the Buick, curiously watching her until she finally stepped out — like seeing a ghost in broad daylight. It would appear everyone had come out of hiding tonight, drawn by candlelight and communal grief. Grief, the church’s richest currency. “Took me fifteen minutes to get outta the truck,” he said without looking at her. “Lit a smoke, told myself I’d just drive on by. Then lit another.” He lifted the still-burning cigarette between his fingers. “This makes four.” He exhaled slowly, eyes fixed on the stained glass glow spilling through the doors. “You going in?” His voice was low, rough. Not a challenge. Just a question from a man who hadn’t decided himself.

∞ Open Starter ∞ "The Dread Shakes"

Open To: All 

Location: First Assembly Baptist : Eliza’s Vigil 

She gripped the steering wheel of the 1990 Buick Estate with a white knuckled intensity that even surprised herself. Mingling with people was never her forte. Fake smiling and forced small talk about the weather and professional sports teams was her personal flavor of hell. She listened as the cooling engine clicked in cadence with the cicadas as she slowly peeled her fingers away from the worn-smooth plastic of the steering wheel. She opened and closed her fists in attempts to loosen her stiff joints and peered out the window.  Meredith Barre sits behind the wheel of her mom’s car on the gravel fringe outside of First Assembly Baptist Church. The sycamores above her car sway in a wind that warns the coming of a storm. The late afternoon sun has sunk low in the sky, spilling the last flicker of blood-orange light across her windshield, staining her face in streaks of fire and shadow.  The inside of her car smells of newspaper ink, wintergreen gum, and the faint astringent sting of White Diamonds perfume. Her mother insisted she sneak a spray on the inside of her wrists “If she was going to be around people, you know.” Her parents refused to come. They partially blamed their old age, and partially blamed Eliza for being a girl not worthy of mourning. Meredith's hands shake subtly. "It's just the dread shakes" she always used to tell her worried parents. The doors of the church were already glowing warm with candlelight. She’s late. Why is she here? After a few more seconds of mustering the courage, she opens her door and steps out onto the gravel. She takes a minute to straighten her floral skirt and black turtle neck, heaves one last sigh of bravery, and begins to make her way toward the doors.

[dccaying]

It stole from him — not just what he had, but everything he could’ve been. It reached through time and took his future. Elijah James Grant · 35 · The Decayed · He/Him · Handyman · Bone Gap, Indiana

The Story Goes...

He peaked at seventeen and has been bleeding potential ever since. Eli Grant is what happens when a town builds a future out of a boy and doesn’t plan for what comes next. Once a golden-armed pitcher with a full ride on the horizon, his life veered off course the night of a four-wheeler crash that cracked more than just his spine. It hollowed something out of him. What was supposed to be the beginning became the bitter end. The town never stopped looking at him with disappointment, like he’d fumbled their dreams too. And every job he tried, every relationship he blew, was another reminder that he peaked at 17. He carries their disappointment in the slope of his shoulders and the calluses on his hands. He works odd jobs — handyman, mechanic, the guy you call when something needs patching up and you don’t want to pay real money to fix it. He drinks too much. Smokes too much. Sins too much. But he’s still here. Where else would he go? His hometown might hate him, but at least it knows him. Elsewhere, he’d be nothing.

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full stats > story & chronology > eli & eliza > the accident > musings

Headcanons & Quirks.

He’s a terrible cook but makes a mean grilled cheese. Burned edges, too much butter — it’s his specialty. He always does two quick taps on the steering wheel before turning the ignition. A leftover pre-game ritual. Some days it feels like the only prayer he still knows. He’s got a scar on his chin from a barstool fight he didn’t start. He didn’t exactly stop it either. He talks to his mother in his head sometimes when he’s driving alone. Always starts with, “You’d hate what I did today.“  He shaves with bar soap and a blade older than some of the town’s kids. He lies and says he doesn’t remember the town fair dunk tank incident. He does. He has never forgiven the kid who hit the target on the first try. He eats like someone who forgets to buy groceries. A can of beans, some crackers, a shot of hot sauce — meal accomplished.

[dccaying]

you fucked up

idk what you’re referring to but probably

[dccaying]

[dccaying]

you remind me of a roadside memorial left untended

[dccaying]

callum turner