MATTHEW VERNON- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Telekinesis & Binding
#d48848 | Outfit 
ADAM LAUREN- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Pain Suppression & Empathy
#967575 | Outfit 
SADIE ROSETTE- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Mimicry & Camouflage
#319345 | Outfit
The rust bucket sputters to a stop just as he pulls into the parking lot. Promoting a quick string of curses followed by the rapid banging of his hand against the wheel. Thanking the car gods ‘or whatever’ that he didn’t die on the road. Adam gets out and tries his best on foot to get the car pushed into a parking spot. He’s crooked as hell, taking up at least a quarter of the parking space to his left as well, but that isn’t his problem.
Adam slams the door, it won’t close otherwise and heads towards apartment 2C. He tries to ignore the sweat at his temples, more from nerves than any heat, and winces at the throb of dull pain in his feet. He’s been on the road for too damn long. But when he knocks on the door all he can really think is about how he’s going to manage a conversation.
It’s been at least a year and a half since he last saw her but Sadie looks the same as ever. He’s known her since he was fifteen years old and hooked on poppers, too out of his mind to consider her helpful – but she was. She’s shocked, to say the least, a distantly pleased smile lighting up her face.
“Now that’s a face I haven’t seen yet,” Her lips part on a laugh. Adam realizes belatedly she’s talking about the fuzzy scruff that’s taken up residence on his face. He hadn’t even thought about cleaning up and recognizes what he must look like. She doesn’t look like she’s assuming anything, not that he would blame her.
“Come on in,” She opens the door wider, waits for him to step over the threshold before shutting it again.
Adam shrugs his shoes off when he sees a pile formed by the door, he can’t be too embarrassed about his holey socks when the rest of him is in a pretty similar state of disrepair. Sadie leads the way, comfortable already in an outfit that screams ‘I blur the lines between work and home.’ Typical of her.
“Go on and sit,” She motions towards a small square of a table in the center of the kitchen. She’s lucky enough to have a rather large apartment. It’s almost more of a townhome.
“You know, I almost didn’t believe it when you called,” She spoke lightly. Tip-toeing across the reason why she couldn’t believe it. Adam understood just as well.
“So, to what do I owe this visit, I’m not exactly in business anymore.” She’s on the verge of putting her two weeks in really, but Adam wouldn’t care about that.
She busies herself with the coffee maker. Adam chews his bottom lip, perceivably swallowing. The truth is he had no actual reason, his road trip was meant to get him out of his parents’ house and ‘find’ himself or whatever that meant. A selfish gamble at self-control more like. He had only put Mullen on the list of stops because of Sadie because he needed to thank her for all she did.
The disquieting way in which his life had suddenly turned from bad to good left impressions of a coming storm. And, to be quite honest he’d rather have a dozen bridges at his back than a bunch of burnt husks of wood. He takes small victory in the fact that he can make peace and leave after this, back on the road to god knows where.
“Nothing business related, I guess you could say nostalgia,” He smiled at that,
“I’m on one of those soul seeking journeys.” While her back is turned to him she rolls her eyes, watching the carafe fill to a satisfactory level. It takes a few minutes before she pours two mugs full. “Soul seeking huh?” She smiles into her mug, one delicate eyebrow raised. Adam sighs and rolls his shoulders, he is thankful for the warmth of the mug in his cupped hands.
“I mean it’s not a bad thing, but is it wise to be going far from home?” Concern furrows in her brow. No, it really
isn’t[i], but something about the way she phrases it sparks the memories of an adolescent punk in him. He doesn’t trust himself with this either but it would be nice if somebody else did.
“It’s not my smartest decision,” He agrees, “but I never claimed to be smart.” He sighs, sips the coffee and tries to ignore the bitter bite of it. “You helped me out a lot, I mean, I know I didn’t act like it at the time,” He had been a gigantic asshole to her really, especially when she started telling him the truth of his situation. “I guess you can say this is like one of those 12-step things, except I’m just following my gut.”
Sadie ponders for a moment, then nods, slowly. “I think it’s brave of you,” She notes, but then frowns. “But I also think that it’s incredibly stupid.” He winces a bit. “You should be home, soul seeking where people can help you.” She had always stressed the important of family and having a network to stand with. Isolation never helped. “But, that being said I won’t [i]tell you to go home.” She’s standing now.
“Thank you,” He didn’t know what else to say. He had actually planned on her being more or less supportive, not this middle ground no man’s land. He watches her cross to the window across the way. She’s frowning, pulling back the curtains. But it’s in the tense way she stands and the hard set to her shoulders that alerts him that something might be wrong. For a few silent moments, he wonders what changed in the span of a few seconds. Sadie curses under her breath.
“Adam toss me the phone,” She motions to the wall, but doesn’t break eye contact with the window. He almost makes a joke about the landline but figured it wouldn’t be appreciated. The second it’s in her hands she starts dialing at a frantic pace. He finally catches sight of what she’s looking at, over her shoulder. It looks like someone fighting on the back lawn of the building. The apartments here don’t have backyards but instead walkways from the porch that adjoin at a central park area.
Its empty besides a pair of men who seem to be more interested in beating each other – only, that isn’t the case when he looks again. Sadie is quicker to catch the fact that only one of them is doing the tackling. The other kicking up a fuss and screaming, but it’s when one man bites the other that things get really weird. Without prompting Adam rushed out the door, is halfway there when he hears Sadie’s outraged cries. She drops the phone to follow him, fist catching in his shirt but it just tears without stopping him.
They race around the side of the building to the spot where the men are, out of breath but Adam doesn’t think twice before barreling into the other man. He notices something is off but the adrenaline is already there, pumping through his blood. Sadie is at the injured man’s side instantly, talking to him in quick fire mumbles. Her hands are getting bloody as she tries to staunch the flow coming from the wound. He was bitten just below his eye, where the fleshy part of his cheek now hung loosely from bleeding skin. She could see his back teeth, clear as day through the fleshy mess.
“Adam!” Sadie screamed as the ragged boy and his assailant flew past, Adam falling flat on his back with the man above him. Snapping wildly at him, rage coiled tightly in every inch of his being.
“Get the fuck off me!” Adam punched the man, but it only served to enrage him further. Bloodied teeth visible as his lips pull back into a snarl, before digging deep into Adams forearm where it had formerly been barred across the man’s throat.
“Goddamit!” Adams scream followed with curse after curse. Sadie left the bleeding man, digging in her back pockets for the stupidly small switchblade that should be there. She always carried it in case a sketchy situation arose, it wasn’t as effective as the mace that she usually kept in her purse – but it would work.
She flicked open the pink handled blade and mustered all the anger she could manage. She had never thought about stabbing somebody before. Had never thought she would need to. But that man wasn’t stopping, and Adam was bleeding now too. She knew logically, that this man was wrong. But it didn’t make sense in her head until she had the knife lodged between his shoulders, wincing at the force it took to even manage that.
He turned on her then, with Adam cradling his arm beneath him and kicking wildly. He couldn’t stop the man from lunging at Sadie until the last second. But tripping him up only brought him closer, she had to shove her hand out to get his face away from her. The noises he made were inhuman. Adam is quick when he swept the legs out from underneath the man, gripped the pink blade to dislodge it from thick flesh and sink it deep into the man’s eye socket.
It bought them time – Sadie was quick to usher Adam away from the two men. They didn’t head back towards the apartment, however. No, she didn’t want those maniacs following them there. It's Adam who leads them towards his car, she shoves him into the passenger seat, knowing he couldn’t drive while bleeding like that. Turns out, she couldn’t either. The car turned over but never started, its sputtering engine dying seconds after turning on. She cursed as she noticed throbbing pain in her hand from where it gripped the wheel hard. Perfect teeth mark circling the meat of her thumb and back of hand.
As soon as she got the damned car running they were set on a course for the nearest hospital. Progress impeded by the sudden, heavy nausea in her gut. She pulled over to expel her guts and noticed that Adams silence had been due to him passing out. She worried only for a few seconds before her own eyes blinked, black dots flickering in and out of her vision. She only had time to groan before falling out of the driver’s side, slumped in the grass.
She wakes with the taste of copper in her mouth and a smear of blood across her brow. Courtesy of a hand covered in both dried and fresh blood being dragged across dark skin. She looks up, licking her dried lips and letting out a pained grunt. Her hand throbbed like hell, but she managed to push herself out of the grass – and a pile of retch to look up at the car beside her. She realizes she must have fallen out of it. There’s a passenger as well, passed out against the window with his mouth lolled open. Looks too young to be as ragged as he is. She leans in across the seat and steels herself before slapping him awake, no mercy to be had in her confusion.
“Hey kid, kid wake up!” She doesn’t want to scream but she’s getting real anxious. There are holes in her thoughts, memories completely gone and its setting her teeth to a nervous grind. Why can't she remember anything?
Nothing makes sense, she doesn’t know where she is or who she’s with or why there’s so much blood. Why did she puke? None of it makes sense at all. But the matching bite on the kid’s forearm must at least be half a clue. When he finally opens his eyes he looks twice as startled, a rabid animal backed into a corner. She ducks as he swipes out, unseeing with one hand. There’s a short scuffle as he flings himself out of the car.
“Who are you?” He’s asking, feeling too much all at once.
“No, wait.” A look of glazed confusion crosses his face for a moment after that.
“Who am I?” He mumbles, but she hears him just fine. He frowns, digging through his pockets as if that holds all the answers. When his hands come back into sight with a Wallet she realizes that’s a good idea in figuring out what the hell is going on. Looks around for something but only finds a cell phone with a childish green decal on the case reading S-A-D-I-E in cutesy looping cursive.
“Adam Lauren,” the boy mumbles. As if testing out the name. He shrugs, and looks at her, clearly pained by not knowing this already. She understands because she has no fucking clue either. No matter how hard she tries there are no memories to go on. She scrolls the phone a bit till she’s managed to place the last name to a first.
“Sadie Rosette.” She purses her lips as the phone ticks town to 2%, why would she carry an almost dead cell phone on her. This wasn’t getting them anywhere. She'd rifle through it more if she thought she could get any real information out of it before it died. Besides they need to figure out what the hell’s going.
“Well, Adam, I don’t know what’s going on here but I’m also not inclined to stick around and find out – “She motions towards the road.
“Yeah,” He groans, utterly lost,
“Let's head up the road and figure it out.” Sadie for her part lets a small, dry laugh escape.
“Yes, lets...”
“Oh come on Hana!” Matthew pounds his fist against the door, feeling anger spark deep in his gut.
“I know you’re in there, your cars in the fucking drive!” He practically punches the door with as much force as he puts behind the knocks. He lets up, only for a moment when the lock clicks. But the chain slid into place didn’t allow it to open more than a crack. A face peered through – but it wasn’t
Hana.
“She doesn’t want to see you, Matthew, go away,” Threatens the face, some girl he barely remembers or knows the name of, but figures is one of Hana’s idiotic friends. He looks at the chain for all of two seconds worth of thinking about breaking it and entering anyway
. “I will call the cops.” The girl says as if sensing his train of thoughts.
Matthew sneers, but he gets the fucking point. He won’t be seeing her today, but he would be back as many times as it took to get her attention. He wasn’t letting her go so easily, wouldn’t let what they had slip through his fingers as if it were nothing at all. He is the one that’s supposed to be nothing – she’s meant to be everything. The only thing that really kept him ticking.
He could wait for now. Would take a drive to clear his mind, maybe stop to buy some junk. Hell, maybe he’d hit the range. Get his aggressions out that way. Then again, he couldn’t exactly trust himself with a gun when all he wanted was to fight someone. Wanted that rush of adrenaline that kept him alive. All he wanted was to fight that goddamn bastard that called himself Hana’s new beau. For Christ sakes, they’d only been broken up a for a few weeks.
Clearing his mind was never easy, but it got better as he drove. Fingers gripping the steering wheel till they turned white with rage. He almost stopped at home but knew if he did he would just brood there all day. Instead, he turned towards the nearest general store. Where he could buy useless shit and blow money until the urge to actually murder left his veins. He felt worse than usual, cold in all the ways that signaled an oncoming fit. He’d be prepared for It.
As he entered the oddly quiet store he noticed that most of the shelves had been left in a state of disarray. There were a few shoppers there, but what stood out was the strange looks on their faces. As if something was going down, something he had not been privy to. He didn’t follow current events or trends much, but if something really is going down he’d like to know. Matt swiped open his phone, scrolling through his social media feeds for a few seconds before heading towards the back of the store. He opted to check through some news websites, nothing particularly exciting to him. No mass murders, no riots, nothing that usually got his attention in terms of violence, only – no – there
was an article. Vague as it was.
Interestingly enough the article didn’t much pique his interest, it could explain however why the store had thinned more than usual. People in towns like this were fear mongers and gossips, he had his doubts as to the truth of what was going on. News or not, there were always lies in the papers. And he would believe it faster if he saw it in action. Comments of varying degrees of absurdity were popping up just below the article, linked to social media accounts and while he wanted to ignore them he read a few as he browsed shelves, adding an unnecessary number of items to his cart. He’s sifting through a stack of odds and ends when a text comes in from Allison.
“There’s some freaky shit on the streets right now, are you home?” It reads. He rolls his eyes and decides to stuff it in his pocket, choosing not to reply in favor of adding one of those heat massage pillows to his basket. Did he need it? No. Did he want to spend money on junk just to spite the world? Yes. That’s exactly what he wanted. He strolled his way to the front of the store a good twenty minutes later, bogged down with junk that he’d probably just leave at the register anyway. Typical of him to do and no doubt a major headache for the employee that’s going to have to put it all back.
Speaking of employee’s…the store had thinned out much more. In fact, if he weren’t convinced otherwise he’d have assumed it completely deserted. That made no sense, though, it wasn’t possible that, and surely nobody would leave the cash registers unmanned and yet – he only saw one person in the middle of the junk mess that the store had become. Maybe he hadn’t been looking hard enough on his way in, self-absorbed as some would say, but he had his own head wrapped up in thoughts far more important. Mostly about a certain woman whom he is almost desperate to get back in the good graces of.
If she could only see how hard he’d been trying. How his temper had been kept mostly in check, sure, today had been a spectacular failure in showcasing that… But that didn’t mean he hadn’t curbed it some. All he wanted was a chance to talk it through, and she couldn’t even give him that. Well, fuck her right, he could live without her? Only, no, he really couldn’t. He really is as messed up as Allison always says, too stuck up his ex-girlfriend’s ass to see what a mess he’s become and damn it all if he’s going to let people think he’s gone soft.
The only store employee still left is facing away from him, shoulders slumped in poor posture. Making a strange gurgling noise that he doesn’t think he should be hearing. Who the hell had hired this poor excuse? This place was a pig sty. Products were scattered everywhere and it looked like maybe some sort of a scuffle had happened. But this store was small enough that he surely would have heard right? Unless it had happened while he was at the very back.
He tapped the man’s shoulder, peeved by the lack of attention.
“Excuse me,” his tone reflects his frustrations, though his general aura was always quite frustrated. Or angry. Or, really, any number of lackluster emotions. As much as he played at not caring he cared a hell of a lot when it came to himself.
A growl ripped from the employee, Matthew simply quirked a half smirk. Really? And when the man turned rapidly and reached for him he had half a mind to just knock the fool out and call management on him. Who ran this place anyways? Did they not realize what a junk hole it happened to be. He had no actual time to dwell on the thought when the employee, ‘Brad’ his nametag read, grabbed at him again. Matthew saw then that the man was positively filthy. Bloodied from cheek to chin, and eyes filled with so much rage it could have given Matt himself a run for his money.
Hands fisted in his shirt, ripping the black fabric and causing a spark of true anger to stab him. He liked that shirt. Matt said nothing as he hit back, their tussle becoming a full-on fight that he wasn’t exactly winning. Not with how caught off guard he was being attacked out of nowhere. At some point, the man pressed him up to a register. Snapping his teeth far too close to Matt’s face for comfort. Disgusted, he pushed the bloody man away but is winded in the next instant when he’s slammed back again with a head butt to the gut. This time, the mans teeth connecting with the soft skin of his side, where rib meets muscle.
Normal people don’t usually bite hard enough to break skin, but his man managed it twice over. Tearing flesh from bone in a way that had Matt truly screaming. It hurt, worse than anything he had ever felt and he knew then that this fight wouldn’t be won by simple means. This had become a fight to the death, and Matthew wouldn’t let himself lose. He wrenched the mans head away, pushed him back but following to the ground. His eyes scanned the area around him until he found a glass paperweight, not exactly the best weapon but it would work in a pinch.
He brought the glass down on the man’s head in rapid succession, feeling the squelch of flesh and bone giving way. He had caved the man’s nose in but didn’t stop until the man did. Listened closely for the sputtering and gurgling to stop as well. He wondered then if guilt would hit him, he had never done anything like this before. But all he felt was the leftover rage and the vague feeling of needing to throw his guts up the next chance he got. If that’s what guilt felt like, well, then he’s glad that something about him is relatively normal.
He didn’t manage to get to his feet very well. Dizzy from blood loss and the feeling of weightlessness in his entire body. He didn’t make it three steps before collapsing against a cart and sending it careening into the wall. His body laid out on the floor now, blood soaking the ceramic tile around him. He registered distantly that his phone was pinging, slow pops followed by a burst of quick ones, and then ringing.
Matts surroundings are unfamiliar and painfully confusing; he is acutely aware of the throbbing in his side where fresh blood gushes the second he tears himself from the floor. His blood had created a glue effect against the tiles, where he had been laying and fresh agony burst through his skull as he peeled off. A cellphone slips from his hands, and he chases it despite the pressing pain. It clatters to the ground and shatters before he can even manage to save it. So much for that.
He leaves the broken mess on the ground and instead checks his surroundings. He’s in a store, which would be obvious to any average idiot on the face of the earth. He takes his sweet time sweeping the area first, settling finally on the body of a man who, if he were to guess hadn’t died in the most pleasant of ways. In fact, Matt could see the bloody paperweight that had killed him laying beside his concave head.
Gruesome, but not exactly his problem as of that moment. One, he needed to patch himself up. He didn’t know how he had survived this wound but he knew he wouldn’t continue surviving if it got infected. Easily fixed since he happened to be in some sort of general store. He scanned the aisles for any remaining bandages or anything of use and came up with some peroxide as well – score. Two, he really needs to figure out who, where, and what the hell’s going. He can figure himself out easily by following the chain looped to his pants to a wallet in his back pocket. Where a drivers license shows a blonde version of himself and a name,
“Matthew Vernon,” he shrugs.
“Could be worse,” He says aloud, feeling a lot less insane than he thinks he should.
Now to figure out the where and what. To do that he’d need to leave the store and possibly find the car that belongs to the keys at his belt. With the state of the store, he has his doubts as for the state of the streets. But, he leaves anyways, aware of what could be waiting for him out there.
He surely isn’t disappointed by the scene that greets him.
