What Happens When...?

[maddy_ricks]

Maddy was drunk. So very drunk. She tottered on a pair of ill-advised heels and stared at a yellow concrete wall. It was the side of an E-Z-mart, three blocks off the main drag in Las Vegas where the neighborhood started to get shifty. She had a bottle of booze in a brown paper bag, super classy, and a hot dog with extra relish. She was already dreading throwing it up later.

A few yards away, a bum huddled on the curb next to a phone booth. Maddy lifted her hooch in a respectful salute. “Exes, man,” she said. The bum lifted his drink in solidarity.

Five minutes with Gus had really fucked with her head and put her in full scale rebellion. Be a good girl, Maddy. Play nice. Join up with Team White. Well, what had Team White ever done for her? And since when was he on it?!

She wiped her nose and decided this spot was as good as any. Under her arm pit, Maddy held a can of spray paint. She shook it and a ball rattled in the canister. The paint went on too heavy and wet, but it wasn’t important to be anal-retentive. With three slow lines and a circular dot, the outline of a door was obvious. Maddy dropped the partial can.

“Let’s see… who shall we invite over for drinks?” She whirled on the bum, whose name was actually Sal, and gave him a bright (slightly crazed) smile. “No ideas? Hm? Well… This is Vegas. We’ll let the chips fall where they may.”

With pinched fingers, Maddy retrieved the key and its chain from her neckline. Then she closed her eyes and thought of…

Nothing. The Void. Which was no void at all, because it was full of entities, doorways, chaos. Then, before her brain could pull a Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man Maneuver, she pressed the key to the makeshift door knob. There was a click. A slow creak of hinges. An unusually charged breeze on her face, an otherworldly breeze that smelled faintly of mothballs and ozone.

And that is how Maddy left the wall, with a wide opening into Nowhere, and no clue what waited on the opposite side. She turned in the direction of home. "Later,” she told Sal around a mouthful of hot dog.

Yeah. Let the chips fall where they may.

Comments

[cian_oneill]

Cian had been to Mike's for a beer, Rhiannon doing a shift at the bar she'd been called in to. He'd been walking back to her place, taking the long way to pick up some things from the market, when he passed the end of the alley just next door to the building. He came to a stop a few steps past the alley, his shoulders shifted in his jacket, neck stretching and eyes darting from side to side as the hairs on his body all stood on end. He turned his head and backed up a couple of paces, a deep frown creasing his forehead as he looked down into the alley. His head angled as he sniffed at the air, something about it different, stirring Siofra and making Cian wary.

There was a man huddled next to a phone booth, Cian guessed he was homeless given his clothing and the bag he had between his body and the corner afforded by the phone box and the wall behind him. He sniffed the air again, the smell he'd detected before still there. He was about to turn into the alley when a racket from further up the street drew his attention, a woman yelling, and a man shouting. Throwing one final glance down the alley he started walking again, heading toward the commotion.

When he reached the scene he stopped in his tracks, the sounds having ceased as he'd come closer. Before he'd reached it his nose had already told him what he'd find, and his arm went up across his nose to stop the smells from flooding through him. There on the ground were the two he'd heard, the scent of their bloody having been picked up by his nose before he'd even reached them. What really stuck in his mind though was the sight of the two heads. Or at least the bloodied skulls that were left, skinless, with eyeballs staring up into the night sky, no lids to close over them.

The lights in an apartment over the store behind him came on, a person calling out the window. "Hey, what's going on down there?"

"Call an ambulance!" he called back, "and tell 'em t' hurry!" he added, the jaw of man moving and the eyes looking toward Cian. It made his stomach turn when he realised the man was still alive, and he crouched down next to him, the lipless mouth opening and gargling sounds coming out.

"What happened?" Cian asked, not sure that there was much else he could do. He leaned down, the man clutching at Cian's arm when close enough, and holding him.

"GHOSTS..." he managed to make out, frowning as he looked at the man, the eyeballs staring up at him as Cian repeated. "Ghosts? They did this to you both?"

"Yes." The word trailed off in a slow hiss of air as the man's grip on Cian's arm loosened and the hand fell down limp. Ghosts?

Cian looked across at the woman, then at the man again. The scalps looked like they'd been surgically removed, all except for the fact the two were lying in the street, behind a van, and just a minute ago had been crying out. Even as he thought through that, Cian inhaled and again he caught a whiff of something, the same something he'd detected back in the alley beside the market. It wasn't as clear, given the overpowering scent of the two victims' blood, but it was there.

As he crouched the call came down from the window. "Ambulance is on it's way, so are the cops." Cian slowly stood up. "Good, thanks. And can you bring down a couple of towels, or sheets, or something?" he called back, adding "something you don't want to use again?" He glanced back down toward the alley, the phone box now without it's neighbour. As much as he wanted to go back to the alley, if he left these two here he could easily become a suspect, and that was the last thing he needed and he crouched down again, taking another closer look at the wounds, and memorizing the scent that had awoken Siofra.