RE: Inexorable Altercation [Round V - Saint Arthelais' Hospital]
02-16-2014, 02:26 AM
Not much for mattresses in this here hospital. Bone-cold and hard as liquor about the pillow-region. Whosoever used to practice their wares here had the bedside manner of the Royal Amputeer, for clearly. Of course, mused Parset, that didn’t mean they didn’t know from opiates. Whether or not you care for the comfort of your patients, good dope’s always needed for up-shutting the whiners. Whiskey, at least. Parset rat-a-tat-tatted a prayer to the world for at the very minimum some cheap whiskey, such as is used for cleaning out a wound.
But everything seemed to be pretty well cleared out except the sharp implements. Sharp implements on the floor, sticking out of the mattresses, cooking in the sunshine coming in through the windowsill. Sharp implements of purpose damn well unknown to Parset. Nothing in this hospice to put him under, then, save fear and resentment, and plenty of that to go around.
”He’s only a wee boy,” offered Annaliese. “Careful’s one thing. But hiding here in the dark over fear of a little boy is bound to drive us mad--” and don’t think Parset didn’t see the glance at Loran, though whether Loran saw it, none could say, “--Faster than looking for him will do us harm.”
”Think this way,” said Will. “Either there’s nothing out there, or there’s something out there. Either way…” he shrugged. “We need a rest. We have beds. We can stay up in shifts.” Finally a course of action borne of some sense. “Parset, you haven’t been doing this so long, you can take the first watch.” Ach! Too much sense.
”I’ll watch,” said Loran. “I don’t sleep.”
Annaliese shook her head. “Nooooope. No. Nuh-unh. I’d rather have the silly tiny man watching over me while I sleep, thank you, than the… than Loran. That’s if I can sleep in this place.”
”You don’t sleep, physiologically?” asked Will. “Or, you’re just opposed to it. In the latter case, I’d suggest you get over your qualms, because we’re going to need you alert. I’m sorry to put that on you, but you’re our first line of defense against whatever’s out there.”
Loran ran his finger along the flat of a sharp instrument that seemed to have caught his eye. Charming figure, that one. “My alertness is not a problem,” he declared. “My consciousness… I acknowledge,” he restarted, tactful as he could, “Your limitation: this lack of alertness brought on by weariness. I will respect it by remaining here and keeping watch until you all have satisfactorily slept.” His eyes always darting to the corners of the room seemed to corroborate his self-assurance, but his expression was not one that Parset would classify as alert. The gnome remained uncertain.
Will shrugged. “I’m putting a lot of trust in you,” he said, lying down on the bed. “If you start to get tired, or go crazy and feel like wandering off or killing us or anything, wake Parset or me up and you’re relieved. Got that?”
”My going crazy,” spat Loran, “Is not a concern. But I’ll see to it your trust is merited.”
Parset needed whiskey. He was unused to sleeping sober. But of late he’d been put in contact with much to which he was unused. Cold and headachey and sleeping on a bed might as well be a slab of stone, the gnome lay his head to rest. And once he closed his eyes he could sense the vastness of the hospice spreading out spider-like in all directions. All the halls. All the rooms. All the keyholes. Big day tomorrow. But after some half an hour of tossing and turning even this anxiety, the shaking anticipation and crushing sobriety, these too became anaesthetic as they rolled over the rest of his thoughts and took on the familiar shape of nightmare.
Loran could sense the exact moment when the gnome’s uncomfortable shifts turned to the spasmodic twitches one associates with dogs dreaming of chasing horses. By then Will had been out like a light as soon as he’d hit the pillow, and not so long after Annaliese, in spite of her earlier protestations, began to snore.
Loran thought of a hundred bedrooms, a hundred sleeping bodies, a hundred scenes, and in all of them he, the Creeper in the night, standing, watching.
Only then he hadn’t watched for long. And yes, he still felt it. That yearning. That ocean of adrenalin that starts at the gut and floods the leg, then starts over at the heart and animates the hands. The motions so autonomous he may as well be a puppet. Pull back the hair. Cover the mouth. Lacerate. The slighest smile. He still felt it. He still wanted it. Only now he had so much company.
His new companion, as he suspected, arrived only when the last of them had fallen asleep. Shimmering. “Well, I suppose this makes me a memory of a memory,” it said, smiling.
“Not so loud!” hissed Loran. Daddy Ham laughed.
“Am I that convincing an hallucination?” it asked. “Your delusions are progressing nicely, Loran. Or is it that your consciousness is expanding? Maybe you don’t sleep because you haven’t woken up yet.”
“Every time someone dies, another voice,” mused Loran.
“Is that the formula? Well, then,” said Daddy, crouching behind Annaliese’s bed and smoothing her hair. “You have a unique opportunity to get positively polyphonic. Enlightenment is at the tip of your blade.”
Loran twitched. “Other opportunities will arise, if that is my-- our decision,” he mumbled. “I don’t need them to be asleep.”
“Good.” The memory beast smiled. “Quite a social butterly you’re becoming. I guess it gets lonely in here with us.”
“The implication being that you’re just me.” Loran placed the scalpel back down on the ground, gently.
“Just you?” Daddy Ham laughed again. “Oh, Loran, there’s no just you. There’s so much more to you! And to me.” He moved over to Parset’s bed. “I bring a gift of wisdom. What did you learn from the last round? What did you learn from me?”
“If you’re not me,” riposted Loran, “And you feel the need to tell, then clearly whatever it was I’m meant to have learned, I didn’t.”
“Or maybe it’s been such a long time since you’ve really learned anything,” offered the memory beast, “That you’ve forgotten how to process new ideas. You’ve been so contentedly Loran for so long. Loran Twight, the Creeper.” Daddy Ham laughed. “Which is as good a place to start as any.”
“You had my interest, don’t sully it with your scorn.” Annaliese flailed a little in her sleep, hopelessly scratching empty air. Loran dropped his voice down to a whisper. “What am I to have learned from y--from the entity whose form you now take?”
“You learned from me--” Daddy smirked. “--That memories hold all the power. But you also learned that memories can be manipulated, fooled. All endgames start at the beginning.”
“Cryptic,” groaned Loran. “Any practical advice? The sort that can’t be mimicked by hallucinations stringing portents together?”
“Hmmm.” The memory beast glanced down at the sleeping Parset. “I think I might be able to oblige. Come here.” Loran stepped over hesitantly. “I have a memory to show you.”
Daddy touched one hand to Loran’s forehead (warm to the touch) and one to Parset’s. And then
Dunhow worked the pipes like it was his job--not like it wasn’t but he seemed not to be in the spirit of the thing. No soul to his song. Still, it had its charms--specifically a deverminization charm. Over twenty thousand rats in the castle, compared with six hundred gnomestaff and three hundred-odd humans and His Majesty, whose humanness Parset vaguely understood to be the subject of some debate.
Maybe if he’d worked the charm with a little more soul the little buggers mightn’t have shat all over the floor. But if your actions in life have not left behind a foul smell than can one truly be said to have lived?
Parset pounded a little waltz on the floor to make the dust and excrement up and dance and go the way of their rat progenitors. Charm or no there’s a certain appeal to the idea of an entire race walking into the sea en masse. The manner of countercultural expression that even his gnomekin might get behind. Nice and clean and poetical and such that nobody knows it. A whole caste of diarists is what we are. Artists first and performers last.
As though maybe gnomekin could talk and only nobody knew it because if they could what would they say and would anyone listen?
The sort of thoughts that appealed to the svelte adolescent Parset while sober. And stone sober he was in that week before the wedding. Such the picture of gnomish sobriety that the overseer had outfitted him in a little best and set him to some middle administration. A position in which obedience felt like power--all the castle marching to the beat of his drum, though the drummer sits in front and the steersman in back.
Not that he’d ever been to sea.
Not that he’d ever left the grounds.
But the sea was visible. Within an arm’s reach from up on the battlements. Well, one hundred ninety two arms’ reaches by his guesstimate. But it was there and he could go up and see it on his off days.
Lucky rats.
Cool summer surf and the sound of pipes and a heaping shit on the way out wouldn’t be such a bad way to go. But anyway work to be done.
From across sea and land came visitors, diplomats, well-wishers, freeloaders, and (most pertinently) gift-givers. Word had apparently spread quite right that the princess-to-be had already taken up the project of expanding the menagerie, so a lot of exotica were being wheeled in in cages. Fainting elephants, weeping hyena, juggling roosters, pygmy everything. Always the pygmies in their pygmy cages. Parset’s duties included directing each gift to the menagerie or the wine cellar or the princess’s closets or the stables or wherever else.
In walked a human in a black veil, skin completely covered in black, holding a black box with black gloves. Some sort of weird clergyfolk? He went right to Parset. “Where” in a voice that wasn’t like music at all “Might one present such an item as this to Her Highness”
It was just a box. Box isn’t much to go on and there’s a system in place here, buddy. Parset didn’t have much time for religious types, human or no. He drummed an interrogative march.
And the human smiled. Its face was covered but Parset could tell that it was smiling from the sudden decrease in temperature. Actually, belay that designation of “human.”
The figure in black opened the box
And there was the key
Parset awoke some hours later, feeling a little funny. Stone sober but comfortably lightheaded.
And come to think of it light-necked.
And come to think of it Loran had gone and no one was on watch.
Parset sat bolt upright. The key was gone Loran was gone the key was gone
The key the key the key was gone gone gone
Parset’s hands were almost too shaky to get a drumroll going. And even that was only enough to wake Will.
”Parset, wha--oh.” Say what you will about Will, he catches on quick. “Do you know--”
Parset pointed at his chest. At the empty spot over his heart. The absence of that familiar coolness.
”What about you?”
Parset kept pointing. He outlined the shape of the key in the place where it used to live. And he gestured out the door.
”Parset, I don’t understand you. We’ll figure it out later, okay? We need to find Loran.”
But the gnome just kept pointing, helplessly.
But everything seemed to be pretty well cleared out except the sharp implements. Sharp implements on the floor, sticking out of the mattresses, cooking in the sunshine coming in through the windowsill. Sharp implements of purpose damn well unknown to Parset. Nothing in this hospice to put him under, then, save fear and resentment, and plenty of that to go around.
”He’s only a wee boy,” offered Annaliese. “Careful’s one thing. But hiding here in the dark over fear of a little boy is bound to drive us mad--” and don’t think Parset didn’t see the glance at Loran, though whether Loran saw it, none could say, “--Faster than looking for him will do us harm.”
”Think this way,” said Will. “Either there’s nothing out there, or there’s something out there. Either way…” he shrugged. “We need a rest. We have beds. We can stay up in shifts.” Finally a course of action borne of some sense. “Parset, you haven’t been doing this so long, you can take the first watch.” Ach! Too much sense.
”I’ll watch,” said Loran. “I don’t sleep.”
Annaliese shook her head. “Nooooope. No. Nuh-unh. I’d rather have the silly tiny man watching over me while I sleep, thank you, than the… than Loran. That’s if I can sleep in this place.”
”You don’t sleep, physiologically?” asked Will. “Or, you’re just opposed to it. In the latter case, I’d suggest you get over your qualms, because we’re going to need you alert. I’m sorry to put that on you, but you’re our first line of defense against whatever’s out there.”
Loran ran his finger along the flat of a sharp instrument that seemed to have caught his eye. Charming figure, that one. “My alertness is not a problem,” he declared. “My consciousness… I acknowledge,” he restarted, tactful as he could, “Your limitation: this lack of alertness brought on by weariness. I will respect it by remaining here and keeping watch until you all have satisfactorily slept.” His eyes always darting to the corners of the room seemed to corroborate his self-assurance, but his expression was not one that Parset would classify as alert. The gnome remained uncertain.
Will shrugged. “I’m putting a lot of trust in you,” he said, lying down on the bed. “If you start to get tired, or go crazy and feel like wandering off or killing us or anything, wake Parset or me up and you’re relieved. Got that?”
”My going crazy,” spat Loran, “Is not a concern. But I’ll see to it your trust is merited.”
Parset needed whiskey. He was unused to sleeping sober. But of late he’d been put in contact with much to which he was unused. Cold and headachey and sleeping on a bed might as well be a slab of stone, the gnome lay his head to rest. And once he closed his eyes he could sense the vastness of the hospice spreading out spider-like in all directions. All the halls. All the rooms. All the keyholes. Big day tomorrow. But after some half an hour of tossing and turning even this anxiety, the shaking anticipation and crushing sobriety, these too became anaesthetic as they rolled over the rest of his thoughts and took on the familiar shape of nightmare.
Loran could sense the exact moment when the gnome’s uncomfortable shifts turned to the spasmodic twitches one associates with dogs dreaming of chasing horses. By then Will had been out like a light as soon as he’d hit the pillow, and not so long after Annaliese, in spite of her earlier protestations, began to snore.
Loran thought of a hundred bedrooms, a hundred sleeping bodies, a hundred scenes, and in all of them he, the Creeper in the night, standing, watching.
Only then he hadn’t watched for long. And yes, he still felt it. That yearning. That ocean of adrenalin that starts at the gut and floods the leg, then starts over at the heart and animates the hands. The motions so autonomous he may as well be a puppet. Pull back the hair. Cover the mouth. Lacerate. The slighest smile. He still felt it. He still wanted it. Only now he had so much company.
His new companion, as he suspected, arrived only when the last of them had fallen asleep. Shimmering. “Well, I suppose this makes me a memory of a memory,” it said, smiling.
“Not so loud!” hissed Loran. Daddy Ham laughed.
“Am I that convincing an hallucination?” it asked. “Your delusions are progressing nicely, Loran. Or is it that your consciousness is expanding? Maybe you don’t sleep because you haven’t woken up yet.”
“Every time someone dies, another voice,” mused Loran.
“Is that the formula? Well, then,” said Daddy, crouching behind Annaliese’s bed and smoothing her hair. “You have a unique opportunity to get positively polyphonic. Enlightenment is at the tip of your blade.”
Loran twitched. “Other opportunities will arise, if that is my-- our decision,” he mumbled. “I don’t need them to be asleep.”
“Good.” The memory beast smiled. “Quite a social butterly you’re becoming. I guess it gets lonely in here with us.”
“The implication being that you’re just me.” Loran placed the scalpel back down on the ground, gently.
“Just you?” Daddy Ham laughed again. “Oh, Loran, there’s no just you. There’s so much more to you! And to me.” He moved over to Parset’s bed. “I bring a gift of wisdom. What did you learn from the last round? What did you learn from me?”
“If you’re not me,” riposted Loran, “And you feel the need to tell, then clearly whatever it was I’m meant to have learned, I didn’t.”
“Or maybe it’s been such a long time since you’ve really learned anything,” offered the memory beast, “That you’ve forgotten how to process new ideas. You’ve been so contentedly Loran for so long. Loran Twight, the Creeper.” Daddy Ham laughed. “Which is as good a place to start as any.”
“You had my interest, don’t sully it with your scorn.” Annaliese flailed a little in her sleep, hopelessly scratching empty air. Loran dropped his voice down to a whisper. “What am I to have learned from y--from the entity whose form you now take?”
“You learned from me--” Daddy smirked. “--That memories hold all the power. But you also learned that memories can be manipulated, fooled. All endgames start at the beginning.”
“Cryptic,” groaned Loran. “Any practical advice? The sort that can’t be mimicked by hallucinations stringing portents together?”
“Hmmm.” The memory beast glanced down at the sleeping Parset. “I think I might be able to oblige. Come here.” Loran stepped over hesitantly. “I have a memory to show you.”
Daddy touched one hand to Loran’s forehead (warm to the touch) and one to Parset’s. And then
Dunhow worked the pipes like it was his job--not like it wasn’t but he seemed not to be in the spirit of the thing. No soul to his song. Still, it had its charms--specifically a deverminization charm. Over twenty thousand rats in the castle, compared with six hundred gnomestaff and three hundred-odd humans and His Majesty, whose humanness Parset vaguely understood to be the subject of some debate.
Maybe if he’d worked the charm with a little more soul the little buggers mightn’t have shat all over the floor. But if your actions in life have not left behind a foul smell than can one truly be said to have lived?
Parset pounded a little waltz on the floor to make the dust and excrement up and dance and go the way of their rat progenitors. Charm or no there’s a certain appeal to the idea of an entire race walking into the sea en masse. The manner of countercultural expression that even his gnomekin might get behind. Nice and clean and poetical and such that nobody knows it. A whole caste of diarists is what we are. Artists first and performers last.
As though maybe gnomekin could talk and only nobody knew it because if they could what would they say and would anyone listen?
The sort of thoughts that appealed to the svelte adolescent Parset while sober. And stone sober he was in that week before the wedding. Such the picture of gnomish sobriety that the overseer had outfitted him in a little best and set him to some middle administration. A position in which obedience felt like power--all the castle marching to the beat of his drum, though the drummer sits in front and the steersman in back.
Not that he’d ever been to sea.
Not that he’d ever left the grounds.
But the sea was visible. Within an arm’s reach from up on the battlements. Well, one hundred ninety two arms’ reaches by his guesstimate. But it was there and he could go up and see it on his off days.
Lucky rats.
Cool summer surf and the sound of pipes and a heaping shit on the way out wouldn’t be such a bad way to go. But anyway work to be done.
From across sea and land came visitors, diplomats, well-wishers, freeloaders, and (most pertinently) gift-givers. Word had apparently spread quite right that the princess-to-be had already taken up the project of expanding the menagerie, so a lot of exotica were being wheeled in in cages. Fainting elephants, weeping hyena, juggling roosters, pygmy everything. Always the pygmies in their pygmy cages. Parset’s duties included directing each gift to the menagerie or the wine cellar or the princess’s closets or the stables or wherever else.
In walked a human in a black veil, skin completely covered in black, holding a black box with black gloves. Some sort of weird clergyfolk? He went right to Parset. “Where” in a voice that wasn’t like music at all “Might one present such an item as this to Her Highness”
It was just a box. Box isn’t much to go on and there’s a system in place here, buddy. Parset didn’t have much time for religious types, human or no. He drummed an interrogative march.
And the human smiled. Its face was covered but Parset could tell that it was smiling from the sudden decrease in temperature. Actually, belay that designation of “human.”
The figure in black opened the box
And there was the key
Parset awoke some hours later, feeling a little funny. Stone sober but comfortably lightheaded.
And come to think of it light-necked.
And come to think of it Loran had gone and no one was on watch.
Parset sat bolt upright. The key was gone Loran was gone the key was gone
The key the key the key was gone gone gone
Parset’s hands were almost too shaky to get a drumroll going. And even that was only enough to wake Will.
”Parset, wha--oh.” Say what you will about Will, he catches on quick. “Do you know--”
Parset pointed at his chest. At the empty spot over his heart. The absence of that familiar coolness.
”What about you?”
Parset kept pointing. He outlined the shape of the key in the place where it used to live. And he gestured out the door.
”Parset, I don’t understand you. We’ll figure it out later, okay? We need to find Loran.”
But the gnome just kept pointing, helplessly.