"Hush, now. I've got you." (oh how the turn tables, old skellybones ;P)
𝐒𝐞𝐧𝐝 “𝐈’𝐯𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮” 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩 𝐦𝐲 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐬𝐡 𝐨𝐟𝐟 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐲
(with @winterfollows !)
Long, bony fingers are plucked with the utmost care from within their blood-soaked gloves-- once a pristine white-- the material catching stubbornly. Coat long since discarded, the sleeves no doubt ruined-- he stands rather despondently by the guest-room's bathroom sink, Haleir at his side. Determined for some reason or another to help in ridding him of the ghastly crimson that spattered most of his arms and upper body. A creature. A mindless abomination roamed the streets, causing chaos among the area and striking fear into its inhabitants. It could not be allowed to live and infect the city. So he killed it. It was.. perhaps a tad more difficult than he'd anticipated, and as such, he may have gotten a little frustrated by it. But in all fairness... in all his time, he had never encountered one of these.
He did not know they exploded upon death.
He does now.
Had he the key components of doing so, surely he'd have retched when the half-digested blood of the creature's victims sprung from it's swollen belly and spattered his attire. Hot and rancid in feel, even upon his tar.
And now he was here. Had it been that the other had already been at the shop, wondering where Artemis had been-- only to be shocked at the sight of the poor, reeking sap walking through the door? Perhaps so. But now... He takes Artemis' bare hand in his and sponges clean the stickiness from the bones and tar as gently as one would for a Living. And for a long moment as he stares down at their hands, he finds himself... confused. Why was he so gentle with a creature such as he? Yellow eyes languidly wander up to meet Hal's gaze in the mirror before glancing back down at the mess upon his button-up shirt; red and black alike soaked through the material. Audibly, he tuts; silently admonishing himself for ruining so much of his tailor's fine work. And when Hal looks at him, for the first time in.. perhaps a little too long, he speaks again.
"Truly," he tries one more time, not nearly as convincing as he'd been the first couple tries. "you needn't... I can clean myself." A long pause, and he sighs quietly, eyes falling back to Hal's hands, pale as porcelain compared to his own.
"You'll... dirty yourself with tar--" he tries, pushing once more, voice barely but a croak. "It's... difficult to wash off."
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Many years ago, I was wandering around downtown Ottawa with my best friend. We ran into a friend of his who offered us some hash (it sucked), then said there was a really good house party nearby if we wanted to go. We were like, yeah, sure. So that's how we ended up at some completely fucking random person's house.
I look around to ask if my friend knows anyone here and he's simply gone, as is his friend. And this isn't some red solo cup hangout; this is a party. There's people counting out pills on the kitchen counter. I am clearly neither as cool nor as drug-savvy as the kitchen people, so I back away and instead wander aimlessly into the living room, which seems to give off more of a chill vibe.
A bunch of people are seated in a circle on the floor. One of them is fiddling with a big wad of newspaper or something. A really cute grunge girl with piercings and tattoos scoots aside to make room for me, so I sit down.
"What's that," I ask her, gesturing at the newspaper wad.
She gets a really big smile on her face. You know the smile. It's the I'm About To Watch This Innocent Soul Get High As Fuck smile. "You've never smoked a tulip?"
"What's a tulip?" I ask.
"It's like if a joint was also a bong," she replies. "You gotta try it."
"Alright," I reply, a little uncertainly. This will not be my first encounter with weed. I am more comfortable with the janky newspaper bong than I am with whatever the fuck is going on in the kitchen. Besides, this girl is really cute and I would like to have a friend here now that my existing friend has turned into vapor or been transported to the Upside-Down or whatever the hell happened to him.
I watch as one person holds the newspaper joint-bong upright and holds a lighter over the top while another gets beneath it, tilting their head back to take a puff. Apparently smoking this Cheech & Chong monstrosity is a two-person job.
"Oh," I say, looking at the fist-sized knob at the top of the wonky newspaper joint. "Yeah, it does kinda look like a tulip." Grunge girl smiles at me.
I watch as the tulip is passed around the circle, along with the lighter, and hits are cooperatively taken. It reaches grunge girl, who takes a huge puff and holds it for an extended moment before exhaling an impressive blast of smoke. She smiles expectantly and holds the tulip up for me, preparing to spark the gigantic meteor of dank that makes up its tip. By this point I have completely forgotten about my missing friend. I only care about making a good impression on grunge girl. I tilt my head back and hit the tulip like a smokestack.
It is the following morning. I am sleeping between a couch and a wall. I'm not positive that this is the same house I was just in. My memories are gone. Someone is yelling at me: "dude! Dude! Wake up, dude!"
I sit up. My mouth tastes like cigarettes. I do not smoke cigarettes. "Wha," I ask the yelling man, who I am quite confident I have never met before in my life.
"We're going on a quest," he tells me, gravely. "You have to come with us."
I look around. Neither my friend nor his friend are anywhere in sight. I also do not see grunge girl anywhere. I shrug helplessly. "Okay."
We embark from this house. I learn that the destination of this quest is Tim Horton's. This is a relief to me, as coffee and a donut sounds really fucking good right now. Somehow, the route to Tim Horton's takes us past the Governor-General's residence, which everyone else in the group loudly heckles on the way past. I do not know what the Governor-General has done to raise their ire, nor do I particularly care. I trudge along with my hands in my pockets, pleased to note that I still have my wallet, phone, and keys. I fervently wish that I could remember anything about last night. Maybe I talked to grunge girl. Maybe she's why my mouth tastes like cigarettes. The tulip tasted nothing like cigarettes.
I am asked about my politics. I voice my frustrations with corporate corruption, the pay-to-win electoral system, the lack of transparency and accountability. This is met with great approval. The guy who was yelling at me claps me on the back. I get the impression that we became friends last night. I don't recognize his face. I do not know his name and he definitely does not know mine. I behave as though we're friends anyway. We are comrades on a quest.
By the time we make it to Tim Hortons, the gaggle of stoners I'm walking with have all run out of energy and/or attention span. People order snacks and break away in pairs or solo, to call for rides or plan the day's events or just vegetate and wait for the drugs to leave their systems. I look around and find that my nameless friend has also gone to the Upside-Down. As I wash the cigarette taste out of my mouth with coffee, I unsuccessfully try to remember whether I saw grunge girl smoking tobacco at any point. I remember nothing. That tulip was so fucking powerful that it instantly sent me a whole day forward in time.
Alone in the city, I try to call my best friend and get no answer. I walk to the nearest bus stop, catch a bus most of the way home, and call up my parents to ask for a ride back. They ask where my friend is. I tell them that I have no idea; we went to a house party and I don't remember anything else.
When they pick me up from the bus station, they ask me some very safe, nonspecific questions, and seem to relax when I describe what little I can remember. It isn't until years later that I realize they were probably terrified I'd gotten rufied or something, and were so relieved to learn otherwise that they didn't even bother chiding me for smoking myself unconscious in an effort to impress a strange woman. In any case, they were probably happy to find out that I did, in fact, like girls; I suspect they had been privately wondering whether I was gay.
After getting home, I finally manage to get my best friend to answer his phone. I discover that he tried the kitchen pills, spent most of the night crossing the entire city on foot, and crashed at his cousin's house. He sounds like shit. I tell him that he should have tried the tulip, instead. He fervently agrees with me.
I never see grunge girl again.
That's okay, though. She got to see a clueless stranger get fucked the entire way up on some ungodly strain of giga-weed, and I got smiled at by a cute girl, and then I got to go on a quest. Wherever grunge girl is, I hope she's happy. I hope she's smoking the fattest fucking blunt and smiling as some kid passes out behind a couch.
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