birthright_rpg | Science Fiction/Double Feature

Theresa loved the movies.

As a human, before she discovered the wonders of cocaine, she used to go there with her parents. It was one of the few good memories of what was generally a shitty home life. As a vampire, she'd gone to see films with her sire, at least when she could get him off his ass to go with her. Now that Dane wasn't around anymore, it was nostalgic for her.

She'd gotten the biggest bucket of popcorn they offered, and the largest soda. Not that refreshments mattered when she couldn't really taste them, but she liked the crunch and the fizz. It was the principle of the thing.

Clarence's orange paint job made the Beetle stand out from the other vehicles in the lot, so it was easy to make her way back to the car. She'd parked next to another old beater, an Impala. There was an older dude sitting on the hood of the car. Theresa arranged her purchases on the hood of the Volkswagen, plucked a few kernels of popcorn out of the bag. She hadn't seen The Blob in ages.

Edited 2013-11-07 02:59 (UTC)

"Let's all go to the lobby, let's all go to the lobby; let's all go to the lobby, and get ourselves some beer." Whistler sang along to the dancing hot dog, adding his own take on what he felt was more appropriate fare for the evening.

He was most happy with the classics; they took pains to get the physics right. Not like that movie he'd seen two months ago, Fright Night. A late-night TV horror host as vampire slayer? Seriously? The Agent wished more people shared a passion for good old fashioned scares.

Like the girl sitting atop the pumpkin to his right. Maybe there was hope for the latest generation? Whistler tipped his beer towards the brunette, a sign of respect.

Theresa lifted her cup of Mountain Dew in an answering toast. The straw made a squeaking noise in the center of the plastic lid as she twisted it towards her mouth. The feel of bubbles on her tongue made her nose wrinkle.

"You can't have gotten those here," she said, indicating the cooler with its load of extra beers. "Domestic or imported?"

He turned the stubby bottle so the label faced the girl. A glaring mash-up of green, white and red screamed out. "I know a pawn broker who knows a guy, who knows a guy who makes runs from Canada. Six percent alcohol. Surprised the Labatt's 50 hasn't picked up down here."

The agent took a gulp, and nearly choked. It taste as good either way. After a good ten second coughing fit, he held out another to his movie partner. "Gotta see some ID first though. Make sure you're twenty-one."

"Turned twenty-four on my last birthday."

The vampire fumbled out her wallet, showed her fake ID to the guy. Her short arm made it a stretch from one vehicle to the other. Then she tucked it back out of sight again.

"I like your hat," she said randomly as the drive-in's screen stopped showing animated refreshments and started featuring a cartoon. Tom and Jerry chased each other around a one-dimensional living room. Their theme music sounded tinny coming through the speaker attached to the Beetle's window. "Somebody I used to know had a hat like that."

"Thanks, I'm test driving a new look."

Whistler leaned over the car, stretching out his right hand with the bottle of beer. "And it sounds like our friend had rood taste."

On the other side of the Impala, a beat-up blue sedan was parked with its windows down, but the driver stayed inside. He had reclined the seat a little so his foot could be propped on the dashboard, and his left arm dangled out of the window. The acrid scent of marijuana drifted on the breeze. Brian hadn’t turned on his movie speaker. Instead, he was listening to a cassette recording of The Clash’s album London Calling.

He looked over at the Impala when he heard the hiss of a cap. Man, he would kill for a beer. Actually, he would kill for a bottle of glue to sniff, if it took the edge off his gloomy state. Brian tipped a box of candy into his mouth. His passenger seat looked like he suffered from some kind of binge disorder: an empty hot dog carton, a wad of napkins, a half-eaten basket of French fries, an unopened container of jujubes.

Theresa snagged the beer, used her shirt tail to cover the cap so she could twist it off. She'd have preferred a margarita, but drive-ins were too comfortably lowbrow for that.
Still, booze was booze.

"I didn't realize they had an outdoor theater here until I saw a teeny little ad in the Vegas paper," she told the man in the hat. "I guess now that fall's here, they probably do a lot more business. It's hard to concentrate on the movie when it's, like, a thousand degrees outside."

"If they play the classics, the people would come. It--"

A familiar odor reached his olfactory senses. Whistler turned to his left. The man inside the car looked like he'd lived in it. Somebody was hungry.

"Trade you," the Agent waved a bottle towards the unshaven man.

Then back to the girl. "Why not combine resources, yeah?"

“Yeah?” Brian lifted his eyebrows. He wasn’t going to say no. “Alright.”

He pulled the key from his ignition to save the battery and got out of the car, brushing salt and crumbs off his jeans. Jeez, he looked like shit and he knew it. His black tee shirt had come straight of the laundry basket, wrinkles and all. His hair, usually gelled into a messy thatch, drooped on his forehead and kept getting stuck in his eyelashes.

He shut the door and started walking around the fender. Underneath his doc martens, the ground was hard and dry. Tiny clouds of dust puffed up and made sure everyone’s pants turned beige by the end of the night. As he reached the Impala, Brian held out the joint. He wasn’t worried about running out; he had a baggie full of weed and rolling papers in the dashboard of the Dodge.

“Brian,” he said, thinking it was generally good practice to trade names with someone you were about to smoke with. He looked at the short brunette, whose height and stature reminded him a little of Maddy, whom he hadn’t seen since the show at the Dive the other night. Brian had skipped this afternoon’s practice, and ignored the chorus of shouts on his answering machine telling him to grow a new pair of nuts and get in the car.

"Theresa."

Whoa, that dude looked like he'd been yanked backwards through a knothole. Theresa frowned when she realized she recognized him. He'd been at the show the other night, playing with the Frayed Nerves. It was ironically apt, because he seemed really frayed.

The offer of pot sometimes meant that stronger drugs might be available. The vampire knew the difference between a recreational user and someone who was hooked through the bag. She looked at the burning spliff, watched the thin trail of smoke drifting upwards. If the man in the hat would pass that over here, she was willing to share.

"Whistler. Nice to meet ya both."

The demon passed two bottles of beer before accepting the blunt. This was part of the 'new' him; less an Agent of Balance and more a person looking for balance in his life. And the first rule was finding ways to relax.

He took two puffs and held the smoke in his lungs, then passed the joint to Theresa.

Brian wrapped his shirttail around the beer cap and twisted. The resulting sigh of air mimicked his gratitude. He polished off half the bottle of dry ale in his first few sips. He kept the cap in his palm, its ragged edges making an impression. As much as he thought he wanted to be alone, Brian now realized his subconscious knew better, or else he wouldn’t have parked in a crowded lot and rolled down his windows. What he wanted was a controlled amount of strangers. No expectations, no way to disappoint.

’Indescribable… Indestructible! Nothing can stop it!’

“I haven’t seen this since I was a kid,” he said as the opening credits began. He was hyper-focused on the screen, forgetting for a moment to blink, or that his mouth was hanging open. Brian yanked himself out of the reverie. “My dad watched all this sci fi stuff. One time he took me meteor hunting.” He smiled and looked at Theresa and Whistler. “Turns out he planted the meteor beforehand. It was pretty cool.”

Theresa took a conservative drag off of the joint, held the smoke in, then let it out through her nostrils. She'd been a social pot smoker before coke became her drug of choice, and although the effects of it might be psychosomatic, it was a way to fit in with the nearby sources of body heat.

"Steve McQueen was my first crush," she said in a hoarse voice as she passed the doobie back to Whistler. "My dad used to make fun of me because I thought he was so handsome in The Getaway. The good ones always die too young."

The toke had made her mouth dry, and she took a quenching swig of beer. Then a drink of Mountain, to see how that tasted in comparison. Blech. Separately they tasted just a little more than bland. Together? Gross.

Whistler remembered that movie. The Getaway came out in 1972. That would make Theresa's first crush at around age five, or...

'Well. DUH.'

For a demon who lived thousands of years, sometimes he acted like he just fell off the back of the dung wagon.

Whistler puff-puffed and passed to Brian. He gave Theresa a sly look.

"That's amazing skin cream you use," he chortled to the girl, the smoke curling at the corners of his lips.

He wondered if Brian was more than he seemed as well.

Edited 2013-11-08 02:00 (UTC)

Leaning against the fender of the Impala, Brian thought back to childhood and tried to pinpoint who his first crush had been. When it came to him, he smiled. “Jane Fonda,” he admitted, thinking back to that poster of Barbarella that hung next to his closet for years. He took a hit and blew the smoke into the space behind him. “What about you?” he asked Whistler. The man was older than him by maybe two decades, he figured, judging by the slight graying of hair around his ears.

‘Lauren Bacall’, he thought. ‘I’m calling it.’

"Mary Pickford," came the Agent's response. It required no thought. If he could, he'd have had her poster on his wall in Berlin.

"That girl could emote. And those eyelashes. Hoo boy."

Theresa had had a tiny moment of panic when Whistler gave her that look, but when Brian didn't react she drank another mouthful of beer. The last thing she need was him running off and telling Maddy that she was older than she acted.

"Who's Mary Pickford? " she asked with mild interest. Her knowledge of movies was limited to modern cinema, although she was a moderate fan of Sam Peckinpah's westerns. The final gun battle in The Wild Bunch could even make her undead heart threaten to beat.

Brian frowned. He probably wouldn’t have made the connection, if he weren’t stoned and thereby capable of some serious free association. His memory scratched up an image of a moon-faced Hollywood starlet in a massive string of pearls, wavy hair and a tutu-looking dress.

“What a minute… Mary Pickford. Oscar winner Mary Pickford from that black and white movie?”

Forehead wrinkled in true confusion.

“Dude, how old are you?” He thumped Theresa’s arm and gave her the weed, washing down the taste of it with his beer.

Whistler gulped down his 50 and popped open a second. The chronic would hit him soon enough; he wished he'd planned for the inevitable munchies.

'Shit, what happens when a vampire gets the munchies?'

Like Daniel, Theresa seemed happy to just be and not live up to the stereotype. The Agent needed to do the same.

"Old enough," Whistler responded. "Ever been to New York? Second-run theaters. Retrospectives. The Great Dictator is one of the best." Which was true. There were theaters dedicated to running silent films, with musicians on the piano to accompany them.

But he had seen 'Coquette' when it was first released.

Theresa held the joint in one hand while scooping popcorn out of the bucket and stuffing it into her mouth with the other. She should have gotten more food. If the effects of grass still worked the way they had when she was human, she'd get cravings. She wondered if anyone had ever written a thesis on the subject.

"I'm strictly a West Coast girl," she said as she took another puff before passing the joint back to Whistler. "The only reason I moved this far inland is because some personal issues came up. Maybe one day I'll get to the Big Apple, though. Broadway's supposed to be a really big deal."

Her mind was beginning to wander a little, and she focused on the flickering movie screen. This must be some really strong dope. She would have to ask Brian who his connection was.

"I'm from Jersey," Brian said, fresh off a gulp of beer that emptied the bottle. "When I was a kid, my mom took me to see Hair. At that part where the actors take off their clothes, she made me duck under the chair. I saw her panties. That was worse."

He reached into his shirt sleeve and scratched idly at his upper arm.

'I'm three dimensions to the right of this one.'

Nope, that wouldn't work.

"Canada." Close enough.

Edited 2013-11-13 03:50 (UTC)

"Ew, mom panties."

Theresa laughed a little when she said it, looked up beyond the film where it played out on the screen to try and see some stars as they peeked out. She'd finished half of her first beer. She'd never really cared for the stuff, and now that she couldn't even truly taste it knocking back a cold brew seemed even more pointless.

"Hey, Brian, when's your band's next show?"

"Saturday." Brian tossed the empty bottle through the open window of his car. It struck him belatedly that he hadn't mentioned playing an instrument. "Wait, how'd you know I was in a band?" He peered a little more purposefully at Theresa and tried to figure out if he'd seen her hanging around the Dive or somewhere else.

Whistler crossed his legs and cracked open a second beer. This had the potential to be better than The Blob.

"I saw you guys play the other night," Theresa replied. "And Mike's giving me a trial run as the club's new promoter. I'm not, like, stalking you or anything."

If Whistler outed her as a vampire, would Brian even notice? The undead usually hung around in clubs because they were looking for an easy meal, so it was doubtful that someone who knew what she was would believe her intentions were harmless. The strong urge to bite Maddy had been an anomaly. But the man in the hat probably wouldn't but that if she tried to explain.

"So it looks like we're going to be working together and stuff."

"Ohhh, right, Maddy told me about you. She said you were gonna get us a better spot in the New Year's line-up."

Brian braced his shoe against his car tire and kicked away from it, just running off a little restless energy. His hands were deep in his pockets now.

If Theresa caught their last show, then she was at the Dive the night that Valerie saw him play.

"That was a rough night," he said. "I mean the set was good, and I was pumped because my girlfriend was there, but then we got in a fight. Now I don't know where we are. Figuratively speaking," he added, looking around the parking lot. "I know where we are. It's not that bad."

Brian looked like a puppy somebody had just kicked, and even someone with Theresa's amoral nature couldn't help but feel sorry for him. Maybe if they got the chance to hang out after a show later on, she could suggest finding a place to score some drugs. It always used to make her feel better, at least for a little while.

"I'm sure the fight wasn't that bad," she remarked. "Women get aggravated about the least little thing, but then they calm down and forget about it. She probably already has."

"I dunno." His smile was a little sad. "She's got--" Hmm. How did he put it without sounding like a jerk? "Trust issues," he concluded, falling back on a cliche that made him sound like a jerk anyway, but it was true. It wasn't easy for Valerie to trust people and she had already alerted him to the fact that she didn't trust him.

"And I'm kind of an idiot when it comes to girls."

"At least you didn't accidentally run her down with your car," Whistler piped in.

It took him a full five seconds before he realized he'd said that out loud.

"Right there with ya, Brian."

"Wow. This car?"

He looked at the grill, searching for blood or hair. He couldn't help it. When he was satisfied he wasn't standing next to human remains, Brian retrieved the joint and puffed on it.

There was a thing. Should he ask it? It might be rude not to ask, considering the severity of what Whistler was implying. He opened his mouth to talk, shut it, then opened it again.

"Did she... did she live?"

"She beat the snot out of me."

He was puzzled. Either she was a really tough girl, or Whistler was driving 10 miles per hour.

"Huh."

To make conversation, he asked, "What's her name?"

Whistler lit up a cigarette from his soft pack. The mary jane brought his defenses down.

"Rhiannon," he offered. "Tough as nails, that girl. Gonna save the world. Or end it. Too early to tell."

Theresa had only been half-listening, directing her attention back towards the movie in an effort to keep her thoughts from wandering too far afield, but when Whistler said Rhiannon's name she looked back at the man in the hat, her head tipping to the left. What exactly was he?

"She must take lots of vitamins," she remarked, offering both Whistler and Brian a cheeky smile. "Remind me never to run across her in a dark alley."

A light bulb went on above Brian's head. "Oh. Yeah I heard about her."

Oops.

"I mean, sort-of," he corrected, wanting to slap himself on the head for blurting that out. Man, he was high. All he really knew was that a girl named Rhiannon lived in the area, and that she was a vampire slayer, like Valerie, and that Holly knew her. And Julianna. And all of those people had a connection to supernatural things.

He frowned as his mind drew out a concept map, names floating in space, dotted lines connecting them. There were way too many intersections for a city with a population as large as Las Vegas had. He was missing something. Brian felt it floating just beyond his reach.

Valerie would warn him against this kind of thing, but he'd rather put it out there than stand here in ignorance.

"Are you two--" He pointed back and forth between them. "Are you weird in any way? Because lately everyone I meet is weird, or not weird, but..." He made a motion beside his ear, as if twisting gears in his head.

'Oh, thank gods.' Whistler worried Brian thought he and Theresa were involved.

Not that he wouldn't. She was attractive. And like him, wouldn't age. Though that could be a problem, given she looked like jail bait, and in certain cities, they still threw rocks at you if they thought you were robbing the cradle.

Then his mind circled back to the first part of Brian's comment. He'd heard about Rhiannon. Which meant she was getting noticed. And when a Slayer got noticed by a human, it meant demons were probably aware.

"I collect stamps, does that count?" The Agent wanted to have a more... frank conversation with him, but didn't want to 'out' Theresa. But how to find him again...?

He figuratively smacked his brain. Brian was in a band, and he was playing in the same club Theresa was managing.

'Please, please, please mention the club by name. If I have to poke your brain to find it, you might notice. And then weird takes on a whole new meaning."

Edited 2013-11-22 03:01 (UTC)

For a hot second, Theresa's brain had been on the same track as Whistler's, and given his apparent age he would have fit in with her usual client base. But then Brian asked his real question, and her expression narrowed thoughtfully. Even her non-diabolical brain could put the pieces together.

Brian had heard of Rhiannon, as if the Slayer was a celebrity of sorts. Whistler had run her down with his car. She still wanted to know how the fuck that had happened. If two tons of Detroit steel hadn't put the brunette out of commission, what hope did a garden variety vampire have?

The inter-connecting points were beginning to make her head spin.

"I don't collect stamps," she announced. "But I do have a fixation on crossword puzzles. Is that weird?"

He shook it off, a mental and physical tick of his head that dismissed the topic out of hand. "Forget it. Paranoia." Brian dropped the spent joint on the ground and stamped out the smoldering end. "Well." He scratched behind his ear. "I'm fried. I'm gonna," he jerked a thumb at his car. "Whistler, it was nice to meet you. Theresa, I'll see you at the Dive. Don't forget about New Year's."

He shuffled around the front end of his car and climbed back inside.

'The Dive!' Whistler made mental note.

"Just 'cuz yer paranoid, doesn't mean yer wrong," he added with a wink, the visual directed to Theresa.

"The movie's about to get good. There's more beer here if anyone wants. Don't be shy."

Whew. That was a bullet dodged. If anybody was going to tell Maddy that she was a vampire, Theresa wanted it to be her.

She climbed off of the Beetle and snagged another beer from Whistler's cooler, then returned to her own vehicle. The bottle cap was twisted off, then tossed to the ground to join the cigarette butts and other trash that already littered the area. Unlife was good.

Science Fiction/Double Feature

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