Prayers for Rain
May. 10th, 2014 05:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brian_campo in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
birthright_rpgTruth be told, he wanted to know what it looked like.
In the days since blood fell from the sky – in an event that was scandalously under-reported for the sake of tourism dollars – the tiny town of Searchlight had done its best to clean up and look respectable. The sidewalks and streets had been hosed down, the buildings power washed, the cars scrubbed. It was a monumental task but people pitched in because the blood was drying flies. It also stank to high heaven.
But the outskirts, the dirt lots, and even the cemetery remained rust-red. It was like driving through an alien terrain. Brian made the trip around sunset when there was enough light to illuminate the area but not so much that he sweltered in his car. Air conditioning wasn’t powerful enough to combat that much direct sunlight. The thick, iron-sweet scent came through his air vents. He resisted the urge to cover his nose; it wouldn’t be any better when he got out of the car.
Brian parked in a neglected lot near a motel no longer in use.
He got out and shoved his keys into his pants pocket. Blood had collected and congealed in potholes around his feet, and the scrub grass was stained too. Brian squatted and pinked some of the sand, pink as coral, between his fingers. A warm wind blew his hair into his eyes so he looked up. As the sun slipped behind the hills, it lit up the ridge like liquid fire and then it was gone.
Dark would be quick and complete. There was no such thing as dark in Las Vegas, no real night to speak of. He remembered the desert with its inky sky and stars from his teenage years in his dad’s RV, which he parked wherever was cheap. The desert made Brian feel okay. A lot less frantic.
He left his door ajar and sat on the front seat, feet sticking out while he lit up a smoke.
In the days since blood fell from the sky – in an event that was scandalously under-reported for the sake of tourism dollars – the tiny town of Searchlight had done its best to clean up and look respectable. The sidewalks and streets had been hosed down, the buildings power washed, the cars scrubbed. It was a monumental task but people pitched in because the blood was drying flies. It also stank to high heaven.
But the outskirts, the dirt lots, and even the cemetery remained rust-red. It was like driving through an alien terrain. Brian made the trip around sunset when there was enough light to illuminate the area but not so much that he sweltered in his car. Air conditioning wasn’t powerful enough to combat that much direct sunlight. The thick, iron-sweet scent came through his air vents. He resisted the urge to cover his nose; it wouldn’t be any better when he got out of the car.
Brian parked in a neglected lot near a motel no longer in use.
He got out and shoved his keys into his pants pocket. Blood had collected and congealed in potholes around his feet, and the scrub grass was stained too. Brian squatted and pinked some of the sand, pink as coral, between his fingers. A warm wind blew his hair into his eyes so he looked up. As the sun slipped behind the hills, it lit up the ridge like liquid fire and then it was gone.
Dark would be quick and complete. There was no such thing as dark in Las Vegas, no real night to speak of. He remembered the desert with its inky sky and stars from his teenage years in his dad’s RV, which he parked wherever was cheap. The desert made Brian feel okay. A lot less frantic.
He left his door ajar and sat on the front seat, feet sticking out while he lit up a smoke.
no subject
on 2014-05-18 01:30 am (UTC)He should be feeling free, save for her. But the very air, itself, seemed to be pressing in around him from every conceivable angle, like a bubble of air sticking to one's skin in a lake of oil.
"I want..."
Head tilted, but there for all the erstwhile seductiveness about their entwined position, it was like being looked at under a microscope. Studied.
And there was a very literal purr. Not like some friendly kitten's. More like a dragon's. A very hungry dragon, indeed.
"I want you to unleash... I want you to become."
no subject
on 2014-05-18 02:25 am (UTC)He saw it in his head: one, two, three, and he’d shove with the force of his power, an accompanying, “Get off me!” that shattered the relative calm of the parking lot and bounced off the battened doors of that cheap motel. Elfleda would skid away from him. She’d shriek, hiss maybe, and then disappear in a puff of swirling, black smoke, leaving him breathless and sweat-drenched but okay. He’d have to squat down or a second to get his bearings, and then he’d grab his keys, stick them in the ignition, and get the hell out of Searchlight. He’d spend the length of the trip glancing in his rearview and checking his back seat.
But he did none of it.
When his hands clenched, they sunk into flesh as pliable as putty. She wasn’t solid, not like his physical world. Brian turned his face to avoid her mouth and eyes. She was a viper in a pretty disguise and all the muscles in him had knotted up in reaction to her.
Yet something in his mind and heart was shifting. Yielding. The more he tapped into that hidden well of telekinetic strength and prepared himself to use it, the harder it seemed to be to filter her out. As if the two were connected, her power and his power, and he still didn’t know what her power was. Brian gritted his teeth and screamed a noise of frustration.
A peculiar voice in his head whispered that he could try her on, wrap himself in that ephemeral haze like a cloak.
no subject
on 2014-05-19 11:16 pm (UTC)Such an aggressive act, yet caressed in gentle affection. Perhaps her very appearance, of whites and blacks, echoed the contradictions she seemed to represent.
Yet, the force of will he exerted seemed just enough to wash her away, like shadows not quite able to survive against an onslaught of light. Nevertheless, the figure remained. Anchored to his form.
"You could bring such thunder," she cooed with a trail of icy finger to mortal jaw. "Even now, in your resistance, you become something beautiful, Mister Campo... Something wanted. Something which deserves better."
Expression hardened.
"Do not be content to squirm in this bucket of rotting fish you find yourself... You settle for less when you could have more."
It was like being in an oven of somehow freezing heat. A viscous cloud of toxicity which sought to imprint itself, contaminate and pollute. Yet... Yet, its own held purpose. She didn't want just another victim. She was after something else.
"Promise me..." She spoke into ear with a voice of burning honey. "Promise me a vengeance of my choosing... Promise this and I will grant you freedom. What say you?"
Would he accept? Or would he attempt to unleash against her?
no subject
on 2014-05-22 12:08 am (UTC)He gave way.
“Fine! Just.. get the fuck off me,” he growled. This time, he did push with hands and mind.
no subject
on 2014-05-30 02:35 am (UTC)"William Basterson," spoke the devil-woman in his midst. A gentle, if sudden, pressing of finger to his forehead in a communication of the man's face. Flashes of an act he had engaged in: An elderly citizen beaten to near-concussion for the sake of meagre funds to supply a drug habit. A habit now starting to turn into pushing those same narcotics onto others.
"His end nears... You have the power to decide if it should drag others down with him or not."