Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp]
05-22-2011, 06:32 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.
”I still don’t really get it,” he said. Somehow, he had allowed himself to be led inside where the doctor, Galatea, calmed him down a little. Now, all of a sudden, he was patiently waiting to go through a check-up.
“All you really have to know is that I look different to everybody and my appearance changes about every day or so.”
Algernon frowned and contemplated his feet for a while. “So how does anybody ever recognize you?”
Galatea finished cleaning her hands. “Mostly I tell everybody to look for a female they recognize. Did you get any recent injuries?”
“Not that I remember. I feel pretty fine, I guess.” They went through the whole charade anyways, hammering knees and checking eyes and crap. “…That probably gets really weird sometimes, right? I mean, you could look like…uh…someone’s wife.”
“Take off your shirt,” she said in reply. He did so, trying to decide whether this situation was supposed to be awkward or not. Before he could argue that it wasn’t quite as awkward as he probably was making it out to be, Galatea said, “What’s that?”
He glanced down. There was some slightly smudged writing on his arm. “I don’t really know,” he admitted. “I guess I wrote it myself. I don’t remember.”
“You don’t really seem to remember a lot of things,” the doctor replied before trying to read his arm, twisting it at an angle while moving closer. He tried to read it as well, but Galatea’s head happened to be in the way. So instead he waited as she read. Her lips thinned.
“So, what do you remember?” she asked suddenly. “What happened before you got here?”
Algernon thought for a moment. “I don’t really know how I got here in the first place. I guess the last thing I really remember doing was walking around some metal building looking for a machine. And cooking dinner. That last one probably happened a while back.
“So you don’t know how those engineers got hurt.”
“No, I—hey!” Algernon, feeling a wet piece of cloth slap against his arm, tried to wrench himself away but found Galatea’s grip too strong. Either that or he really was that much of a weakling. “Don’t wash it away! It might be important!”
“Trust me, it’s not.” She started rubbing it out. Algernon, realizing that struggling wasn’t really doing much, went a different route and grabbed Galatea’s arm instead.
Staring at her intently, he said, “Look. I don’t know where I am or how I got here. I’m trying to find my sister. I really need to find my sister. If there was something so important that I had to write it down in case I forgot, then it’s probably at least part of an answer to any of the above. Even if it’s not, I think I would have wanted me to read what I wrote. So just let me read it.”
Okay, lesson learned. It’s pretty awkward to talk about your sister with someone who looks like your sister. Algernon continued staring at Galatea-not-his-sister, though he was quite obviously wavering already. Galatea sighed. “Your message from the past didn’t have to do with any of that. And you probably can’t read it now anyways,” she added, lifting the cloth to reveal a mess of ink before just scrubbing the rest away.
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“I could probably tell you how you got here.”
Algernon made a muffled sound to signify that he was listening as he was pulling his shirt and vest on again.
“You were teleported here in some manner by accident. A one-way deal only.”
Algernon made another muffled sound and pulled his head through his shirt. “Oh come on, if you can get here, then you can get out.”
“No. You can’t. If you could, everybody here would go home. In fact, I wouldn’t be here to help your engineer friends out. First things first, you probably need new clothes.”
“What’s wrong with my clothes?”
“For starters, you were wallowing around in the swamp with them. I have no idea what else they’ve went through. You’re also going to need a place to stay and you’re going to need a job. If you’d rather be in a place with a more—“ here, Galatea made a vague hand gesture that Algernon was sure had no meaning in any situation, “—human population, I could probably point you in the right direction. If you want to stay, well, I’ll point out a place with an open room. Either way, two rules you need to know: don’t stray off our boardwalks and if you find yourself in a lot of mist, get out of there as fast as you can.”
Algernon’s eyes flickered towards the window. Yes, the people were sort of odd here, but really, they couldn’t be that bad, right? “I should probably stay. For my, uh, engineer friends.”
Galatea nodded and the two headed out and walked briefly to the center of the ramshackle town. From there, they ducked into the largest building, which honestly wasn’t saying much as most buildings had one floor and, only judging by the size, two rooms and maybe one smaller one.
The owner of the building seemed to be something like a giant rattlesnake that someone decided would look better with a few guns stuck on any old way. Could it even use the guns? Well, they seemed to be attached to his body in some way. Algernon stared into its unblinking eyes. He found himself feeling a little bit unsafe. “Uh,” he said, glancing at Galatea, hoping that she was showing at least a little bit of discomfort so that he would know that this snake wasn’t actually—
“Greetingsssss. Isssss thisssss a newcomer I ssssssee?”
“Yeah. Algernon, meet Chambers. He lets people stay here ‘til they get used to things. Or ‘til they get around to building a house.”
Algernon laughed nervously at the name as Chambers continued to stare him down. “Sorry, uh, do you actually talk like that?”
“No, but you types seem to expect that.” Chambers offered him the end of his tail to shake. It also was a gun. Algernon tried to shake it carefully. “C’mon, boy, be a little relaxed. You’ve escaped, haven’t—ah, I mean,” Chambers quickly added, catching sight of Galatea carefully signaling him to stop. “You don’t mind a small room, do you?”
It took quick reflexes for Algernon to not repeat ‘escaped’ in a questioning manner. Instead he said, “Sure.”
Galatea left them as Chambers led Algernon to the stairs, which seemed to be several different staircases meshed together. Stairs for regular people, stairs for slightly larger or smaller people, stairs for people who happened to not have legs…it took up quite a bit of room.
“Been a while since anybody’s come,” Chambers said amiably while slithering upwards. “You’ll have to clean your room yourself, by the way. Try not to disturb the other guests…though I suppose there’s really only one other. He’s much larger than you, though so really, don’t disturb him unless you dearly want to see Galatea again. Unless you’ve got something else up your sleeve…?” Chambers was eyeing him again. “That thing on your head’s pretty interesting, kid. What’s the story behind that?”
“Yes. I mean, uh, nothing. There’s no story. It’s nothing. It’s a pain in the neck.” Oh shut up, you are being such a moron shut up shut up.
Chambers eyed him even more, possibly keeping score of something, before pushing open a door. “By the way, do you need new clothes?”
Algernon had been planning on doing some other stuff but he supposed if two people in a row commented on his clothes, maybe he should get some new ones after all.
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The new clothes were loose, sort of itchy, and very brown. Also, now he had to pay them off. He would have to get to that eventually.
“Hey,” he said, poking his head through the door. Galatea still looked like an older version of his sister. “I need to talk with my engineer…friends. Um, can I?” The doctor just nodded and waved him over to the next room over. The five engineers were silent until they noticed him and started chattering when he closed the door behind him.
“It’s the craziest thing! That doctor looks like my mom! But younger!”
“I hope you can tell us what the hell’s going on here.”
“Well, you know, not that my mom’s not young in the first place.”
“Excuse us, we may be a tad on the crazy side at the moment.”
“I hate swamps I hate monsters I hate this job.”
“I think she looks more like my elementary school teacher.”
“Alright everybody, shut up, you are all morons including me. What the hell’re you here for?”
The last remark surprised Algernon and so it took a while for him to respond. “Well, I was going to ask you what was going on, but, uh, I guess you don’t know?”
The engineer, who was apparently taking lead, scowled at him. “No. We don’t. I’m pretty sure it’s your fault, though.”
Before Algernon could decide whether or not to feel hurt, another engineer piped up, “Sorry, he’s tactless because we’re all a tad crazy right now.”
“Oh, stop saying that.” The other engineer sulked in his bed. “When you and that machine—“
“Yes, machine, right, I wanted to ask about that,” Algernon cut in. “I mean, I’m trying to find it right now but I don’t really remember what it’s like or even what it exactly does so I was hoping maybe you could tell me or something?”
“I’m not the one who built it,” the lead engineer said in such a meaningfully scathing way that Algernon completely missed. Apparently, he had also forgotten sarcasm.
“Okay, but what does it look like?”
There was silence for a few moments. “It looked really stupid,” offered the engineer with the nametag that said Chris. Algernon decided to give up again.
After exchanging good-byes with Galatea again, Algernon headed out towards the swamp. Whatever was going on, he had to get home and he was fairly certain that the machine, whatever it was, could help. I mean, it had to do something besides light things up, right?
”I still don’t really get it,” he said. Somehow, he had allowed himself to be led inside where the doctor, Galatea, calmed him down a little. Now, all of a sudden, he was patiently waiting to go through a check-up.
“All you really have to know is that I look different to everybody and my appearance changes about every day or so.”
Algernon frowned and contemplated his feet for a while. “So how does anybody ever recognize you?”
Galatea finished cleaning her hands. “Mostly I tell everybody to look for a female they recognize. Did you get any recent injuries?”
“Not that I remember. I feel pretty fine, I guess.” They went through the whole charade anyways, hammering knees and checking eyes and crap. “…That probably gets really weird sometimes, right? I mean, you could look like…uh…someone’s wife.”
“Take off your shirt,” she said in reply. He did so, trying to decide whether this situation was supposed to be awkward or not. Before he could argue that it wasn’t quite as awkward as he probably was making it out to be, Galatea said, “What’s that?”
He glanced down. There was some slightly smudged writing on his arm. “I don’t really know,” he admitted. “I guess I wrote it myself. I don’t remember.”
“You don’t really seem to remember a lot of things,” the doctor replied before trying to read his arm, twisting it at an angle while moving closer. He tried to read it as well, but Galatea’s head happened to be in the way. So instead he waited as she read. Her lips thinned.
“So, what do you remember?” she asked suddenly. “What happened before you got here?”
Algernon thought for a moment. “I don’t really know how I got here in the first place. I guess the last thing I really remember doing was walking around some metal building looking for a machine. And cooking dinner. That last one probably happened a while back.
“So you don’t know how those engineers got hurt.”
“No, I—hey!” Algernon, feeling a wet piece of cloth slap against his arm, tried to wrench himself away but found Galatea’s grip too strong. Either that or he really was that much of a weakling. “Don’t wash it away! It might be important!”
“Trust me, it’s not.” She started rubbing it out. Algernon, realizing that struggling wasn’t really doing much, went a different route and grabbed Galatea’s arm instead.
Staring at her intently, he said, “Look. I don’t know where I am or how I got here. I’m trying to find my sister. I really need to find my sister. If there was something so important that I had to write it down in case I forgot, then it’s probably at least part of an answer to any of the above. Even if it’s not, I think I would have wanted me to read what I wrote. So just let me read it.”
Okay, lesson learned. It’s pretty awkward to talk about your sister with someone who looks like your sister. Algernon continued staring at Galatea-not-his-sister, though he was quite obviously wavering already. Galatea sighed. “Your message from the past didn’t have to do with any of that. And you probably can’t read it now anyways,” she added, lifting the cloth to reveal a mess of ink before just scrubbing the rest away.
------------------------------------------------------------------
“I could probably tell you how you got here.”
Algernon made a muffled sound to signify that he was listening as he was pulling his shirt and vest on again.
“You were teleported here in some manner by accident. A one-way deal only.”
Algernon made another muffled sound and pulled his head through his shirt. “Oh come on, if you can get here, then you can get out.”
“No. You can’t. If you could, everybody here would go home. In fact, I wouldn’t be here to help your engineer friends out. First things first, you probably need new clothes.”
“What’s wrong with my clothes?”
“For starters, you were wallowing around in the swamp with them. I have no idea what else they’ve went through. You’re also going to need a place to stay and you’re going to need a job. If you’d rather be in a place with a more—“ here, Galatea made a vague hand gesture that Algernon was sure had no meaning in any situation, “—human population, I could probably point you in the right direction. If you want to stay, well, I’ll point out a place with an open room. Either way, two rules you need to know: don’t stray off our boardwalks and if you find yourself in a lot of mist, get out of there as fast as you can.”
Algernon’s eyes flickered towards the window. Yes, the people were sort of odd here, but really, they couldn’t be that bad, right? “I should probably stay. For my, uh, engineer friends.”
Galatea nodded and the two headed out and walked briefly to the center of the ramshackle town. From there, they ducked into the largest building, which honestly wasn’t saying much as most buildings had one floor and, only judging by the size, two rooms and maybe one smaller one.
The owner of the building seemed to be something like a giant rattlesnake that someone decided would look better with a few guns stuck on any old way. Could it even use the guns? Well, they seemed to be attached to his body in some way. Algernon stared into its unblinking eyes. He found himself feeling a little bit unsafe. “Uh,” he said, glancing at Galatea, hoping that she was showing at least a little bit of discomfort so that he would know that this snake wasn’t actually—
“Greetingsssss. Isssss thisssss a newcomer I ssssssee?”
“Yeah. Algernon, meet Chambers. He lets people stay here ‘til they get used to things. Or ‘til they get around to building a house.”
Algernon laughed nervously at the name as Chambers continued to stare him down. “Sorry, uh, do you actually talk like that?”
“No, but you types seem to expect that.” Chambers offered him the end of his tail to shake. It also was a gun. Algernon tried to shake it carefully. “C’mon, boy, be a little relaxed. You’ve escaped, haven’t—ah, I mean,” Chambers quickly added, catching sight of Galatea carefully signaling him to stop. “You don’t mind a small room, do you?”
It took quick reflexes for Algernon to not repeat ‘escaped’ in a questioning manner. Instead he said, “Sure.”
Galatea left them as Chambers led Algernon to the stairs, which seemed to be several different staircases meshed together. Stairs for regular people, stairs for slightly larger or smaller people, stairs for people who happened to not have legs…it took up quite a bit of room.
“Been a while since anybody’s come,” Chambers said amiably while slithering upwards. “You’ll have to clean your room yourself, by the way. Try not to disturb the other guests…though I suppose there’s really only one other. He’s much larger than you, though so really, don’t disturb him unless you dearly want to see Galatea again. Unless you’ve got something else up your sleeve…?” Chambers was eyeing him again. “That thing on your head’s pretty interesting, kid. What’s the story behind that?”
“Yes. I mean, uh, nothing. There’s no story. It’s nothing. It’s a pain in the neck.” Oh shut up, you are being such a moron shut up shut up.
Chambers eyed him even more, possibly keeping score of something, before pushing open a door. “By the way, do you need new clothes?”
Algernon had been planning on doing some other stuff but he supposed if two people in a row commented on his clothes, maybe he should get some new ones after all.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The new clothes were loose, sort of itchy, and very brown. Also, now he had to pay them off. He would have to get to that eventually.
“Hey,” he said, poking his head through the door. Galatea still looked like an older version of his sister. “I need to talk with my engineer…friends. Um, can I?” The doctor just nodded and waved him over to the next room over. The five engineers were silent until they noticed him and started chattering when he closed the door behind him.
“It’s the craziest thing! That doctor looks like my mom! But younger!”
“I hope you can tell us what the hell’s going on here.”
“Well, you know, not that my mom’s not young in the first place.”
“Excuse us, we may be a tad on the crazy side at the moment.”
“I hate swamps I hate monsters I hate this job.”
“I think she looks more like my elementary school teacher.”
“Alright everybody, shut up, you are all morons including me. What the hell’re you here for?”
The last remark surprised Algernon and so it took a while for him to respond. “Well, I was going to ask you what was going on, but, uh, I guess you don’t know?”
The engineer, who was apparently taking lead, scowled at him. “No. We don’t. I’m pretty sure it’s your fault, though.”
Before Algernon could decide whether or not to feel hurt, another engineer piped up, “Sorry, he’s tactless because we’re all a tad crazy right now.”
“Oh, stop saying that.” The other engineer sulked in his bed. “When you and that machine—“
“Yes, machine, right, I wanted to ask about that,” Algernon cut in. “I mean, I’m trying to find it right now but I don’t really remember what it’s like or even what it exactly does so I was hoping maybe you could tell me or something?”
“I’m not the one who built it,” the lead engineer said in such a meaningfully scathing way that Algernon completely missed. Apparently, he had also forgotten sarcasm.
“Okay, but what does it look like?”
There was silence for a few moments. “It looked really stupid,” offered the engineer with the nametag that said Chris. Algernon decided to give up again.
After exchanging good-byes with Galatea again, Algernon headed out towards the swamp. Whatever was going on, he had to get home and he was fairly certain that the machine, whatever it was, could help. I mean, it had to do something besides light things up, right?