The Sunshine Girl*
Aug. 16th, 2013 12:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
whistlersmum in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
birthright_rpgDecember, 1916
As musicals went, it... was a musical. In the dirtiest sense of the word.
Not in the 'it's a bawdy farce with nekkid ladies! dear gentlefolk,' kind of way. Certainly not in the double-endendre 'quick, through the back door... if you get my meaning' style restoration comedy.
It was dirty because everyone who visited the theater dragged dust its doors, and no amount of sweeping kept it at bay. The actors coughed between notes; the audience coughed when there were supposed to be a laugh.
Then again, it wasn't the brightest idea to bring in a show that revolves around a factory girl who falls in love to the heir of a soap factory, to a town whose inhabitants didn't fully care for the concept of cleanliness.
"When you want a cake of soap to finish off your toilet, we're the folks who boil it."
The offending lyrics forced Whistler out of his seat and through the back curtains. He stormed across the small entrance way, and into the chill December air. He sat on the wooden stoop, produced a small bag of tobacco and rolling paper.
He loved the invention of cigarettes. Wished he could have been there when it was explained to the British. Such a stuffy lot, the Brits. And full of themselves. He suspected they were still sore over losing America. Which is where he was now. Rolling a cigarette under the starry sky above Searchlight, Nevada.
Without the first clue as to why.
He'd been drawn to this town six years ago. It spoke to his blood, seemed to reach out and touch him. A siren call that he couldn't ignore. It wasn't unfamiliar to him, to be drawn to a person or place. To nudge destiny, as he liked to think of it.
Push one domino, and the others would fall.
Or stamp a boot in the middle to make sure they don't.
That was his job; no, his penance. Because mom and dad were from warring families (you're welcome for that story, Bill), and he was the bastard little offspring everyone wanted dead until someone got the bright idea to make him work for his existence. And by work, keep the balance. Don't let the scales tip too far in one direction. Whether that means pulling a pram away from a stampeding horse, or pushing it into its path.
He was drawn here. Whistler just couldn't figure out why. He was on his way to California to check on a rumor of a dormant Hellmouth. But, he reasoned, as long as no one built anything over top of it, it should remain inactive.
The troubling bit was, every time he thought about leaving, he didn't.
And there were others. Whistler had seen them, just on the edge of shadows. Not just the occasional vampire, but other things. All unsure of what attracted them to this mining town on the verge of decline.
The man saw futures. Not all at once, that would drive anyone suicidal (and they weren't big on that, not on either side of the fence). He could focus on someone, and see their potential. He could read rudimentary magic and feel the aura of magical objects (but not their design).
(He also had a few extra tricks up his sleeve, but those weren't important now.)
The thing about Searchlight was, once he'd stepped inside the city limits, it all went blank. More of a white noise, actually. It proved almost impossible to pierce through the veil. After a year, he'd managed to block out the scritching behind his ears. By the third year, he could properly cheat at cards and convince the person who lost to buy him a shot of whiskey.
Today he could foretell old Sam Maxwell was going to die. And it was going to be bloody. From the hazy visions, it was to be a chupacabra attack. Sam would, as he always did, get red in the face with cheap whiskey, wander to the Potter homestead (with whom he had a running feud), and piss on the property line. Before Maxwell got a chance to shake it off, he'd be dragged into nearby scruff and torn apart.
It'd be blamed on wolves, just like the others.
This was the hard part, deciding whether or not he should act. One one hand, Maxwell was a stinking drunk who'd eventually kill himself with alcohol. He didn't contribute much to the town aside from the occasional laughter. It would free up a room above the saloon, and fuck knows Whistler was cramped in his current living quarters.
But it'd be another death, adding to the rumors of a curse that threatened the town. It would add to the eventual critical mass of building hysteria, with townsfolk taking up a lynch mob mentality if the sheriff refused to intervene. They would blame <i>someone</i> and wouldn't stop until they hung by the end of a noose.
And that neck could be his, just as much as another. He couldn't see the domino effect of either outcome.
"Fuck me."
Whistler pushed up the brim of his bowler hat and trotted over to the bar, in time to intercept Maxwell as he stumbled out the door.
"Not tonight, Sam. Better you take to your bed, ya?"
* The Sunshine Girl made its premiere at the Gaiety Theatre in London, on February 24, 1912.
As musicals went, it... was a musical. In the dirtiest sense of the word.
Not in the 'it's a bawdy farce with nekkid ladies! dear gentlefolk,' kind of way. Certainly not in the double-endendre 'quick, through the back door... if you get my meaning' style restoration comedy.
It was dirty because everyone who visited the theater dragged dust its doors, and no amount of sweeping kept it at bay. The actors coughed between notes; the audience coughed when there were supposed to be a laugh.
Then again, it wasn't the brightest idea to bring in a show that revolves around a factory girl who falls in love to the heir of a soap factory, to a town whose inhabitants didn't fully care for the concept of cleanliness.
"When you want a cake of soap to finish off your toilet, we're the folks who boil it."
The offending lyrics forced Whistler out of his seat and through the back curtains. He stormed across the small entrance way, and into the chill December air. He sat on the wooden stoop, produced a small bag of tobacco and rolling paper.
He loved the invention of cigarettes. Wished he could have been there when it was explained to the British. Such a stuffy lot, the Brits. And full of themselves. He suspected they were still sore over losing America. Which is where he was now. Rolling a cigarette under the starry sky above Searchlight, Nevada.
Without the first clue as to why.
He'd been drawn to this town six years ago. It spoke to his blood, seemed to reach out and touch him. A siren call that he couldn't ignore. It wasn't unfamiliar to him, to be drawn to a person or place. To nudge destiny, as he liked to think of it.
Push one domino, and the others would fall.
Or stamp a boot in the middle to make sure they don't.
That was his job; no, his penance. Because mom and dad were from warring families (you're welcome for that story, Bill), and he was the bastard little offspring everyone wanted dead until someone got the bright idea to make him work for his existence. And by work, keep the balance. Don't let the scales tip too far in one direction. Whether that means pulling a pram away from a stampeding horse, or pushing it into its path.
He was drawn here. Whistler just couldn't figure out why. He was on his way to California to check on a rumor of a dormant Hellmouth. But, he reasoned, as long as no one built anything over top of it, it should remain inactive.
The troubling bit was, every time he thought about leaving, he didn't.
And there were others. Whistler had seen them, just on the edge of shadows. Not just the occasional vampire, but other things. All unsure of what attracted them to this mining town on the verge of decline.
The man saw futures. Not all at once, that would drive anyone suicidal (and they weren't big on that, not on either side of the fence). He could focus on someone, and see their potential. He could read rudimentary magic and feel the aura of magical objects (but not their design).
(He also had a few extra tricks up his sleeve, but those weren't important now.)
The thing about Searchlight was, once he'd stepped inside the city limits, it all went blank. More of a white noise, actually. It proved almost impossible to pierce through the veil. After a year, he'd managed to block out the scritching behind his ears. By the third year, he could properly cheat at cards and convince the person who lost to buy him a shot of whiskey.
Today he could foretell old Sam Maxwell was going to die. And it was going to be bloody. From the hazy visions, it was to be a chupacabra attack. Sam would, as he always did, get red in the face with cheap whiskey, wander to the Potter homestead (with whom he had a running feud), and piss on the property line. Before Maxwell got a chance to shake it off, he'd be dragged into nearby scruff and torn apart.
It'd be blamed on wolves, just like the others.
This was the hard part, deciding whether or not he should act. One one hand, Maxwell was a stinking drunk who'd eventually kill himself with alcohol. He didn't contribute much to the town aside from the occasional laughter. It would free up a room above the saloon, and fuck knows Whistler was cramped in his current living quarters.
But it'd be another death, adding to the rumors of a curse that threatened the town. It would add to the eventual critical mass of building hysteria, with townsfolk taking up a lynch mob mentality if the sheriff refused to intervene. They would blame <i>someone</i> and wouldn't stop until they hung by the end of a noose.
And that neck could be his, just as much as another. He couldn't see the domino effect of either outcome.
"Fuck me."
Whistler pushed up the brim of his bowler hat and trotted over to the bar, in time to intercept Maxwell as he stumbled out the door.
"Not tonight, Sam. Better you take to your bed, ya?"
* The Sunshine Girl made its premiere at the Gaiety Theatre in London, on February 24, 1912.