@prankmasterz sent: She honks her clown nose, once, twice, thrice. Her big, sad, clown nose. Yeah, no, Polly wasn't kidding about the sad clown look. It's all there. Never doubt Polly's commitment to a bit. Or her love of dressing up in silly outfits.
"Is this, uh. Is this proof enough that I'm sorry? About… yeah."
Vera is agonizingly quiet. She's so still, in fact, that one might mistake her to have been replaced with one of the many statues she's so fond of making. Polly is, arguably, her first proper friend. One of the few people she'd actually say is a real friend.
It's been some time since it happened, of course, but.. it was still agonizingly quieter than it used to be all the time.
"Polly," she begins, voice level as she can make it. "You being sorry was never in question. I can't pretend to understand, of course, but I'm well-aware something was amiss. You don't have to apologize. I just... I needed time to decompress."
That was the word for it, right. Decompress and.. deal with things. The spot where Hissy had once been is gone, of course, and it's rather evident that, unlike hair or the heads of a Hydra, Vera's snakes don't appear to grow back.
Finally, as if she had forgotten to, Vera manages a slight quirk of lips into a smile.
''Really, you don't have to worry about it. We're friends. Just because a mishap happened doesn't change that."
They were friends, yes, and now that she's had time to process such, her scorn has dulled some. It would be a lie to say she wasn't angry or distraught in some regard, so she doesn't bring it up. She's still happy to see Polly, after all. None of that has changed in the slightest.
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@prankmasterz terrorized:
The lights died.
This was not an unusual occurrence, not by a long shot. The lights at Spooky High died regularly, what with the arson, and the sabotage, and the property damage, and other some such things. Hell, they died regularly all on their own — faulty wiring and all that, from the repeated damage and age and poor funding.
Nor was it unusual that the room that Vera was in, nestled deep in the bowels of the school, held no windows. It was a big place. Not every room had access to an outside wall, so that was not suspicious in the slightest. It was the pitch black of a cavern in there, nothing to guide her way, darkness swallowing her like an open throat, but that was to be expected. It was an annoyance, a distraction. It was not worrying.
It wasn't even worrying when the door wouldn't open. Jammed lock — most doors had been broken so often that their knobs would often catch, and sometimes all that could be done was call for Martin and get an excuse for your next class, if you decided to go to it. That wasn't even speaking of the rust, or the hinges that long needed greasing, or the heavy doors themselves, or any other number of things. Plenty could go wrong. Usually it was mere minor setback. But something wasn't right.
It couldn't be known what exactly it was, when the feeling first arose. Maybe the air was just a little more oppressive. Maybe the triple happenstance was just a little too suspicious. Maybe it was just a little too quiet, locked in there with a door that wasn't budging, with unyielding concrete walls around her, with no windows to break, with no one else around. Maybe it was just a bit too cold, for an ancient AC that turned the inside of the building into a freezer in summer and walls that offered no warmth no comfort.
It wasn't clear what. Really, it might have been nothing at all. It was, of course, entirely possible that it might have simply been Vera's mind. People did poorly when locked into dark rooms like caverns. When they could scratch and claw down to the nailbed, cutting pale strips into layers of paint over thick walls, until they bent bloody stubs against the concrete and rubbed them down to the bone, seeking an escape that never came. When the silence wrapped around her. It was so loud, so vibrant. There were people laughing, she used to be able to see their smiles, their frowns, the faint etch of worry into the lines of their foreheads, glancing back at her and then back, forward again, aware something was about to happen but unable to tell what, then swallowed up into silence. Into nothing. Into not even the beating of her own heart. Until she couldn't feel herself think, until she couldn't feel at all. But maybe that was Vera too. Who knew where these thoughts came from. Her mind could have created them too. Her mind could have drawn up all the images of what happens when someone can't drop speed fast enough. What happens when they hit a railing. When several tons of steel and metal at breakneck speeds flips over and into itself, what happens when family watches other members of itself shoot through a windshield like a bullet, shredded skin and flesh trailing behind like ribbons, what happens when flesh meets asphalt and skids against it, swaths of skin laying down a red carpet grated so finely from the body. Not enough left for a casket. Not enough to remember them by. Not enough to remember. Not enough.
She knew how to kill someone. She knew what death looked like.
So where did it matter that these things were pouring through from? They knew what happened. They knew what grief looked like. They knew how to utterly destroy someone. They knew how to break someone so wholly that they could not pull themselves back together, no more memories to become anything else.
The room was getting colder. It might have been. Vera's breath might have been curling in front of her face in a fine mist. Hard to tell in this darkness. Hard to tell when it all came so slowly, when everything seemed so normal.
The shadows rippled.
The shadows stretched.
Where once there had been no one there, suddenly there was someone.
Or something.
It didn't feel like a person. Not anymore.
It was pressing down. Down, down, down. Oppressive. Choking not in the sense of wrapping around the throat, but seeming to fill it. Like earth being packed in over a grave, tighter and tighter, no room to breathe, no breath to give, only dirt and worms and insects and things that crawled inside the lungs and were hungry and alive and feasting while she could not, while she had nothing else to be, nothing else to become, gone and missing but not gone, a between-thing, trapped, unable to be who she was, unable to reach back and grab onto herself and remember who she was, but unable to be dissembled, unable to let go.
Something was reaching out towards Vera in the darkness.
Not predatory, to describe it as such would be to give it something that it did not have. It did not want to eat Vera. It was wanting something more. Needing something more. Reaching out and grasping for something it did not have anymore. Something that was taken from it. Something that it wanted back, that it was going to take back, that it was going to take back if it had to rip it out of her and pour itself into her and wear her like a skin puppet and take her breath and her family and her blood and her body and her mind and her memories and—
And that thing was Polly. But it was not Polly either.
Of course.
Grimacing initially, the Gorgon’s lids fluttered from the sudden shock of bright illumination to inky blackness that swallowed her sense of sight whole. Eyes adjusted quickly, utter blackness giving way to shades of grey while the snakes on her head hissed with shared discomfort. Ignoring their initial warning, Vera continued the task of ensuring everything was tucked to her bag before going to the door.
Once, twice, thrice the knob was twisted. The door wouldn’t budge. Murmuring in annoyance to herself, she crouched herself down to get a feel of the frame. Of course, it was one she couldn’t simply slip a card into and start jimmying it open bit by bit. A huff escaped her, annoyance briefly growing to concern. A secluded room, devoid of other exits or light, was certainly an oversight.
Vera, with as many businesses coiled around her fingers both above and below the board, was no stranger to attempts at her life. The glint of something half a mile away needed to be noted before the bullet that raced past her head turned stone into confetti. The sudden jolt and warmth of a knife sinking into her gut and the blood spilling out after. The tightening of something tight and oppressive, as if trying to squeeze her head clean off through her neck. The burning sensation of water suddenly filling lungs not meant for such.
The laughs of those that were just stronger than her. Sure, Vera could pick up a small car, but she certainly couldn’t throw it. She’d have trouble getting it over her head, even. She didn’t have rows of teeth meant to mangle, a jaw that could crush a steel beam, nor the absurd strength to just cleanly wrench this door from its hinges, reinforced just comfortably enough that it merely thudded with a good kick provided to it. Vera always knew that, compared to most she knew, she was soft. She was something meant to strike first, fast, and not be around for a retaliation.
Venom and stone, those were what nature provided her. Beyond that, the Gorgon may as well be any old person. She worked her way to being as dangerous as she was. Did what she had to in order to ensure even those with such drastic natural advantages would cower at her mere mention. Think twice about fighting the comparatively frailer monster.
Of course, what was happening, she realized, was not natural.
A more determined kick, aiming closer to the knob and lock, was provided. Heart thudded, the cold chill of the room blocked out as blood rushed through her fast enough to burn. Snakes flexed and hissed, defensive and cautionary. They saw what appeared before she had. The sudden slight luminance behind her. Hand drifted to knife at pocket as she turned on her heel, red of gaze turning a brilliant orchid as sclera shifted lavender. Had anyone that could have been affected been behind her, they’d have assuredly been given a stone solid reminder of one of her scant advantages she had.
Had they had blood to course through, perhaps they could have been atrophied from the inside out as fangs jut, popping outward from the oh-so-concealed compartments they rest in. Of course, the presence could have neither of these.
Nothing to petrify. Nothing to atrophy. What had been there had sloughed off and crumbled long, long ago.
“. . . Polly?”
It was in a hushed tone, as if the air so frozen in the room, neither wanted to enter nor leave those burning lungs. Mind raced, wondering what she could have done to her friend to cause this sort of reaction. Hand drifted away from knife, considering it would be useless to her hear. Even her cold iron one, hidden at the nape of her back, would have middling effects at best.
Polly, the one thing she had very little to stop, was approaching.
“Polly, dear, I’m sure this is very funny, but I have an appointment I’m already somewhat late for. Can we-- Can we do the scare tactics some other time?”
A hitch to her voice, so rare, came. Venom, prepped and unused, dripped from fangs left unused. It was so uncommon for them to be out, so unseemly on a usually perfect face, that she had never gotten very fine speech past them.
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"Heyyyyy, Faithy, how are you doing?" Polly's crept in, literally, sliding under the door and only marginally clipping the edges of it. She would've liked this to be a happy visit. Really, honestly. Out of everything, Polly sincerely wished this could have been just another evening to hang out with Faith and stick around as little more than a pest of a spirit.
But her shape is unsteady, body parts slipping through themselves, unable to remember which parts of herself have gone where, unable to sort out a foggy mess of memories that she can't even fully remember which are hers and which are not. Her face takes a turn for the abstract, the hardest part of her to fully recall, and sits as an absurdist painting of herself.
It's been a bad day. Again.
"So, uh. How's it looking, on getting more anti-possession measures put down? Anything new?"
( from prankmasterz :> )
Faith had been reading when she heard Polly’s voice, at first she let out a rehearsed annoyed sigh but then she looked and saw Polly’s current form, right away she set aside the book her focus now on the spirit.
Faith made her way over to a book shelf which held many tomes of knowledge, magical odds and ends and a few potions, keeping half an eye on Polly as she searched for something.
“I haven’t found too much that’s new yet, but some ways of improving already existing measures and some good leads on new measures but I don’t rush to using those until understand them, better to not risk it with that sort of magic.” Faith’s hand hovered over parts of the shelf until it stopped over a potion bottle, inside was a mist like subtense .
“Do you think you can take this right now? It should make you a bit more stable till I can properly fix you up- So it should make you feel a bit more comfortable.” It’d take an hour or two to get Polly back to where she was before, and if she felt up for trying to improve already existing measures it’d take even more time out of the evening, so might as well try and make sure she could be a bit more comfortable till at least the patch up job was done.
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