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 Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 2:28 pm
The house was empty besides herself. That wasn't unusual. The small two-story townhouse often stood vacant, for its two occupants were rarely home, and even more rarely at the same time. For now, the daughter owned the house, at least until 8:30pm, when the mother would return and they'd squabble, ending with door slamming and Elle occassionally leaving for a few hours to blow off steam. In the meanwhile, Elle fully intended to take advantage of the small reprieve after school and before she had to do anything. It wasn't every day that she had the afternoon to chill.
The dark-haired girl was sprawled on the couch in the semi-dark with the fan on and a glade plugin secured in a nearby outlet, up to her usual tricks, making sure her jay wasn't running as she sucked on it idly. She only wanted to get buzzed so that the next few hours weren't totally painful. It was heading on towards 4pm, the time she'd invited Ignacio Araya over to her house to work on their project for Brit Lit. They had to make a diorama of a scene from Beowulf and do a presentation for it. The hell was with these childish projects? She suspected they'd have to run to some lame arts and crafts store to get the supplies they needed, but hopefully they could get most of it done today. Considering it was due soon. Unlikely.
Honestly, Elle was glad that Nacio was her partner. She'd wanted to get him alone since the time she'd figured out they were in the same class, but this was the first opportunity she'd had an excuse to invite him over to her house. No, not for the reason you're thinking. The fact of the matter was that they were both veterans of Barren Pines and the organ trafficking scandal, and a series of events that Elle still couldn't quite recall. She was planning on kneading him for information, hoping he remembered more than she did, which was pretty much nothing. It had been nagging at her, even though her mother seemed intent on forgetting any of it had happened at all. Elle wanted to know.
Ugh, it was almost 4. Time to get her a** up.
Elle stood from the couch, opening the sliding door a few inches to circulate the air, used eyedrops before she headed down the front hall in stockinged feet to peek out and see if Araya was at least on the street, feeling a little heady. Perfect.
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Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 7:50 pm
This school sucked.
When Barren Pines was supposedly real, he liked it there. They let him be as creative as he wanted with his projects, and gave him the necessary time to work on them! (That was, several weeks.) Ignacio dazed out in all of his lectures and he never got bad marks. Most of the time he was doodling, or watching the clock, or wishing he could go do something else like go to the arcade or read a new Whodunnit or watch Melody in her practices and he had never gotten yelled at.
Now the teachers were calling him all the time to do stuff and he was getting yelled at when he wasn't and he got a F on a pop quiz that his father had scolded him mercilessly on. And then there were these stupid projects. Who the hell made dioramas anymore if they were above the age of six? And why would he make them for British Literature? Who cared about Beowulf! The book was too long and it had distinctly bored him within the first few pages.
In fact, he had never gotten past the first twenty pages. He had decided he would rather go listen to some new music, tossed the book aside, and started being a dancing fool in his room. Still, he had to do this project, and he had to do this project with the familiar Elle.
He was happy to be partnered with Elle. Not only did she seem to care about as much as he did (that was, she didn't), but she was also from Barren Pines. It was nice to talk to the people from Barren Pines. While the conversations usually ended up depressing or bittersweet, there were so few people he could talk to about his experiences with.
So when Elle peaked outside, she saw Ignacio walking down the street with earbuds in his ears, actively looking for the house number that he had been invited to. It was time to get this project started...
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 6:59 am
Elle spotted Nacio, and leaned over to unlock the front door, opening it and leaning outside, spotting the earbuds. "Hey, Araya!" she called, waving at him to catch his attention. She didn't step outside, avoiding ripping the feet of her stockings, though the knees were honestly pretty blown.
There was something nice about being able to just call him by his last name-- to some, it lacked intimacy; to Elle, it meant she could tease you. And though she'd never known Ignacio well, she had known of him, at least, and that tenuous Barren Pines connection she felt gave her the license to be a little more at ease with him than the strangers at school.
Although, if there was one thing Elle did care about, it was getting all of her s**t done. She might grumble and gripe while she was doing it, but Elle hadn't blown off an assignment yet. Getting good grades meant she could graduate. And graduating meant she could go to college and live somewhere far, far away from her mother and smoke weed whenever she damn well felt like it, not just when her mother wasn't home.
So Elle had read the stupid book-- well, half of it. Slowly, painfully, but she'd gotten as far as she could without wanting to kill herself. Literature wasn't her strong point, and poetry, oh jesus. The rest? She'd wiki'd that s**t. Honestly, that was what the Internet was for.
Still, she was buzzed and happy, loving life, and frankly she did not care if Ignacio had read a goddamn book, she didn't even care if the furthest they got was making stick figures out of pipe cleaners and supergluing them to a shoebox. She'd MacGuyver'd projects in less time.
It was far more important to her, today, to get answers and connect some dots. She pulled the door open wide and stood to let him in, grinning at him. "Sup mang, you ready to make a sweet a** diorama?"
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Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 12:36 pm
Ignacio would eventually get this s**t done. His methods annoyed the teachers, and admittedly, he probably wouldn't get such bad marks if he got things done sooner and cleaner. He tested horribly because under pressure he could only think of other things. But still, in the end, he had a C in most classes. Ignacio planned to keep it that way. Baldomero did not approve, but his father never approved of much Ignacio did.
If anything, the way that Ignacio and his father argued over schoolwork made him care even less. His lack of care showed on his face as he looked to Elle, honestly, "I like that sweet a** part. Did we really have to add the diorama?" And with that, Ignacio offered a typical, though annoyed grin as he strolled into her house.
Talking to Elle about Barren Pines would be much more welcome than this. Still, he wasn't about to assume that Elle actually remembered. Melody hadn't remembered. Calintha hadn't remembered. This was a time to get some, dare he think it, work done. If Elle remembered, she'd bring it up. ...Right? It was certainly hopeful. Ignacio welcomed distraction. He thrived off distraction. Schoolwork came secondary to whatever he felt like doing at the time.
At this time, he felt like talking to Barren Pines with one of the few people he could talk about it with. But he resisted the temptation to bring it up himself... for the moment. It was hard to tell when Araya would change his mind.
Visually, it seemed like Ignacio was ready to go. "It's on Beowulf, right?" In his other hand he was holding papers, which on closer examination had obviously been printed from the internet. He set them on the nearest table to display them. "It's got some of the important scenes on it; we can choose from this. Let's not choose anything too complicated... the less time we have to spend on this idiocy the better."
There were very few things that could make Ignacio bitter like stupid school projects.
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 1:00 pm
Elle laughed at the bored look he gave her. She liked him already. "Can't have one without the other!" she said by way of apology, shrugging and smiling with false brightness, closing the door after him and locking it again. She followed him down the hall, brushing past and leading him into the kitchen where she'd cobbled together random arts and crafts s**t from around the house, modeling play and paints and whatnot. All of it was spread across the kitchen counter in the humble but clean setup. It smelled faintly of marijuana, in spite of the Glade plugin's best efforts, but that was the only thing off about the place.
The dark-haired teen decided it would be rude to bring up Barren Pines right away, as he hadn't brought it up, and neither of them had actually spoken about it at all. And besides, he'd already brought up the project, so she allowed it to take precedence for the moment. It was difficult to talk business at the moment, but she put in her best effort.
"Yeah man, I think we should do the part at the beginning where like... the monster comes into the mead hall and rips off a guy's arm," she gestured. "We can make the monster and little people out of clay. We will have the coolest project," Elle went over to stand by the table, glacing at the lists of scenes. "See, it's on there," she pointed at a mention of the scene during another scene summary.
She grinned at him; it was difficult to tell if she was serious, and only slightly less so to tell that she was a little buzzed. Elle waited for the right moment to bring up Barren Pines, not changing the subject just yet. He looked irritated, he might not want to talk about it. Then again if she weren't chopped, she wouldn't be having fun either.
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Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 1:31 pm
She seemed oddly cheerful about this whole thing, though when he caught the faint scent of marijuana in the room, he realized why. Ignacio didn't mind. Other people's habits were something he simply didn't care about, like the way that he didn't seem to particularly care about most things.
After all, nothing bothered Tony Romo Ignacio Araya.
Her first suggestion sounded good to him. That might have been just because he wanted to get the project done as quickly as possible. "Alright, sounds good. Where's the clay?" Ignacio was thinking of other fun things to make out of clay, admittedly. He could sculpt a lion, or maybe he could sculpt a pig giving someone the dreaded piggy flu. Aha! That could be the monster. A giant pig. And some of the people who were running away could have little curly q pig tails...
Ignacio's mind was wandering. He didn't even need the marijuana to give him flights of happy imagination: he did it himself, with his lack of ability to focus on anything. It took a few moments before he snapped back to attention. "Let's make a pig monster. It can be snacking on the arm it ripped off, and the person can be turning into a pig."
Okay, so now he was making up things that had never happened in the book. This was partially because he had never read it. At the same time, the best way to have the coolest project ever was to be totally creative about it, right? And social commentary was totally creative.
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 2:28 pm
"Riiiight there," Elle pointed at the little packets of colored clay spread out on the table, and fetched a piece of cardboard to make all of it on top of. She furrowed her brow at Ignacio's suggestion, giving him a blank look. "Man, do you get contact highs?" she asked cautiously. "I'm not trying to be rude here, man, but let's do it like the book, it's easier that way." She patted his shoulder, unwrapping some of the clay. "It's like a hairy thing, I think. You know, it could be a big mutant pig..."
The dark-haired girl was distracted, though. She didn't really care about the project. He seemed at ease, and the curiosity was killing her. Elle worked some clay between her fingers, shaping a vaguely humanoid figure for one of the viking dudes and glancing at him sidelong.
"So like, I don't want to bring up a sore subject or anything... but I was wondering if you remembered anything. About uh. Barren Pines," she said, not entirely smooth about the whole thing. She thought she was slick though. Elle didn't volunteer anything further than that, waiting to see how he reacted and if she should press the matter. She was dying to know how much he knew, if he could fill the blanks in her memory.
It always went in a cycle ending with her wondering if she really did want to know. Would she regret finding out when all was said and done? She hoped not...
"I mean we don't. Have to talk about it if it's not cool," Elle added before he had a chance to say anything, giving him a chance to escape if he wasn't comfortable, waving one arm in a somewhat exaggerated gesture.
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Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 10:05 pm
Doing by the book was boring, though. Ignacio hated being bored. His aversion to being bored was so strong that he would do anything to avoid it. He sighed with a small pout, but brightened when she suggested that it could be a big mutant pig. "Kickass!" exclaimed the freckled one, as he reached for the pink clay.
He opened it and went to crafting the pig as she was talking, completely missing that she was talking to him until he heard the words 'Barren Pines.' A look of relief entered his eyes, and for the moment, the pig-monster was ignored in favor of turning around and looking Elle right in the eyes. "I'd much rather talk about that then do this project. I was hoping you'd bring it up," commented Ignacio, honestly.
So she did remember. If anything, she remembered more than Melody had. Than Calintha did. Right? The inattentive man hadn't really been paying attention to the fact that she asked if he had remembered anything, just the last two words. "I can't believe that we were missing for a year. All I remember is the last two months? Three months? Whatever amount of time it was." He waved his hand dismissively, not realizing that he had answered her question.
Ignacio did remember. "So what 'gift,'" obligatory quotation marks around his head, "did they let you in for? They said I was a Jack of all Trades and that my multi-talented nature would bloom at Barren Pines." Not that being a Jack of all Trades was false. Ignacio totally bought that he was good at everything and anything... well, used to buy. His ego had taken a hit since being, well, dead.
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 7:39 am
Elle did not complain as Ignacio started working on his pig, putting together the viking dude slowly. Whatever, as long as they had something to turn in, she did not care. She was surprised when he turned to look at her like that, blinking at him and smiling tentatively. "Oh, great," she answered, relieved that he was as eager to discuss it as she. God, she didn't think she could spend the whole time talking about this lameass diorama. Social pleasantries were such a waste of time.
The dark-haired girl nodded her agreement to his next remark, excited to learn that he did remember, far more than she did, if he recalled months' worth of memories. She had a billion questions but didn't even know where to begin. "I know! When they first told me I'd been gone a year I couldn't believe it. At most a few months, I thought. I don't really remember much of it," she admitted, putting down the viking guy and picking up more clay, though she didn't do anything besides knead it between her fingers.
His question startled her a little. It hadn't hit her until now but, that was the basis for entering Barren Pines, wasn't it? The whole 'gift' bit... had that been a lie, too?
"They said that ... well, I guess I'm good in chemistry," she furrowed her brow, trying to rationalize it. "I was a member of the science club and everything. Wow, was that all really a lie? I can't even remember how well I knew people, or what happened that led up to us ending up in the hospital, or how many of us made it." She didn't remember being shot. She didn't remember being dead. Ignacio seemed to be perjorative about the whole thing, his bitterness begging the question that she'd wanted to ask since the beginning.
"What happened there, Araya? It's been killing me, man. I can't remember..."
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Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 12:11 pm
"I remember moving in something like two and a half months ago and getting ready for... a new year? As if I had been there before." Ignacio chuckled at his own stupidity; it was obvious now that he had never been there before. He had been at Meadowview before, taking his stupid standardized tests and--never mind. For once, he was able to stop his distraction and focus his mind on something more important.
That was probably because it was Barren Pines. "Chemistry? I've taken a chemistry class or two, but I don't know much about it other than some chemicals can explode if they're mixed together." Not that he knew that from experience. Of course not. ...Okay, it was lucky that Baldomero Araya had forced his son to go outside when he was playing with the chemicals, and it was a good thing the mixture wasn't very volatile.
...And there it went, she didn't remember either. Damn. Melody didn't quite remember, Calintha didn't quite remember, and now Elle didn't quite remember. What was he going to say? "Something horrible, Elle. Did you ever get your hands on a list of people who ended up at that hospital ward?"
As if trying to distract himself now, Ignacio went back to work on his big mutant pig. Well, he could give it a human-esque head, with a giant, inhuman snout. Yes, yes... and it could be extraordinarily large. Maybe it could resemble a lightbulb. Ha! And maybe he could ask the chemist if he could get some electrical currents running through it. Maybe he could stick a pair of underwear on it's head, too, to make it look like it came from a party gone terribly wrong.
...Yes, Ignacio had managed to suitably distract himself. Not that it was all that hard.
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 12:22 pm
Elle stared at Ignacio, because she had felt the exact same thing at the beginning. God, how was that possible? How had that ever felt right or made sense? His laugh was humorless, but it still made her shiver a little at events that suddenly seemed ironic and out of place, squeezing the clay between her fingers. He was so... nonchalant about it, but it seemed like it bothered him more than he was willing to let on. She wanted to know. He knew. That was obvious. He was stalling with that talk about chemistry, she didn't want to talk about chemistry. She couldn't even stand on that as a certainty, something she always taken for granted now called into question. Maybe once, she hadn't been able to take it for granted.
She noticed his hesitation as it sank in that she didn't remember. He knew!! It was so clear to her, and yet he wouldn't tell her. He tried to gloss over it, brush away the hunger for knowledge that had plagued her since she woke up in the hospital. And then she realized she was still staring at him and hurriedly glanced down, starting to work with the clay again, her yellow eyes distracted.
"No, I didn't. And the only one I ran into was O'Connell," she told him, feeling a slight amount of bitterness at how their reuniting had gone. She still didn't remember how close they had been. Instead she was left confused as to why Mack pushed her away.
Elle watched him sidelong as he went back to working on his monster, not even caring that it looked nothing like the monstrous creature that had stalked the meadhall until Beowulf chopped its arm off. He was avoiding the subject. How could he leave it at that? 'Something horrible.' He said he'd wanted to talk about it, but now he shut her out? She frowned. There were times for tapdancing and a time for forwardness. And Elle was in a no bullshit mood.
"What do you mean, 'something horrible'? 'Something horrible' like a real organ trafficking ring, waking up in a bathtub full of ice with no kidneys?" Elle prodded. "Or 'something horrible' like 'I'm not going to tell you because I'm a jerk'? You don't even know how much this has been bothering me, man. Don't play games, Araya. Be straight with me here. What the ******** happened up there?"
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Posted: Sat Jan 02, 2010 11:44 am
(( Okay, so Ignacio has to not remember now? I'm going to go from he's basing it off nightmares that have been following him and the fact that he's met someone (Calintha) with similar nightmares that don't match up with the story x: ))
Ignacio did know, somewhere within him, what happened. He kept trying to dig it out, kept trying to find ways to dig it out. Ignacio was bitter about what had happened there, whatever it was, whatever it was that was haunting him. His dreams were weird and disjointed, but they were frequent, and they certainly weren't hauntings about organ rings.
It was... odd.
"I'm not exactly sure myself," admitted Ignacio, with a frown, as he started to fiddle with the pink clay again. What it was shaping into looked a little lumpy at the moment, but considering it was supposed to be a mutant pig monster, perhaps that was intended. "My only clues are the fact that so few people made it out, the fact that something inside me tells me that the organ ring is some kind of lie, and the fact that Calintha... a friend of mine... we have similar nightmares that equal up to something different than an organ ring.
"We both went to Barren Pines." In case that wasn't obvious. But, sometimes, Ignacio talked to make himself feel better. Talked to distract himself. Talked to do anything but think about what haunted him. "One of my best friends died in there." Lucas. "Hendricks. Don't know if you recognize the name. Something tells me his organs weren't... extracted. Like things were different. I don't know why. Might be my mind trying to reassure me."
His laugh was bitter, again. "But I think it's something else." Ignacio's hands were busy making the pig. Perhaps he was trying to distract himself.
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 6:53 am
Elle glanced back down at the clay in his hands when Ignacio told her that he didn't know, watching him mold it between his fingers, and listened to him tell her his evidence. She shuddered at his mention of nightmares. Oh yeah. Those. A chill ran down her spine and she looked away, grimacing. They'd been plaguing her too, all right, and weren't about things she cared to remember. However, she chalked it up to what O'Connell had said in the hospital. Just her stupid zombie joke. Her sensitive, traumatized mind had taken that and run with it, that's all that it was. And you know what? ******** O'Connell.
She pressed her lips together as he mentioned that someone he'd known had died in there. This was freaky, the way he was describing it. It didn't sit well with her, made her uneasy. Then again, so did anything having to do with trying to remember the time she'd been missing. Elle put the clay down, still not saying anything, letting her silence drag on as she digested what he said.
"...do you want something to drink?" she asked, heading over to the fridge, opening the door to see what was left. A few Monsters, a bottle of juice, half of a bottle of vodka (thanks mom) and some bottles of water. "...It's kind of a limited selection."
Elle straightened, still pensive. "...These... nightmares. Did both of you dream about..." she paused, then laughed, waving a hand. That was ridiculous, she couldn't ask him that. "No, sorry. It's stupid."
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Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 6:21 pm
The silence was fine with Ignacio. He turned back to his clay and attempted to immerse himself in the creation of the monster pig, mumbling to himself about details in an attempt to bring his mind out of that bitter place. He couldn't let this death or this school haunt him; if he kept letting it haunt him he would never live a normal life.
Of course, he still may never live a normal life, when he thought about it. But this seriousness didn't become him. A drink sounded good. A drink sounded very good. The bottle of vodka vaguely tempted him somewhere in his brain but he shoved it down in favor of saying, "Just some Monster is fine." He never really drank energy drinks, but perhaps it would stop him from becoming so somber.
Once he had some Monster in his hand, he popped the can open and gulped a bit of it down. He shuddered, before setting the Monster down. This would give him a jolt, so long as he kept his hands busy. The pig-monster was beginning to take shape... "Nothing's stupid. If anything, we can have a good chuckle about it. Don't worry, my nightmare's are pretty outrageous too." He laughed, before continuing to shape the pig-monster.
Yes, they would have the greatest project in the class.
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2010 11:18 am
Elle handed Ignacio the Monster mutely, picking out a bottle of water for herself. She glanced up at Ignacio, watching him from under her lashes. Man, what the hell was he making? Whatever, as long as she could fix it and they didn't fail. The girl sauntered over and picked up the clay again, shrugging at his words, shaping a few more lopsided vikings, giving them each little wounds that the mutant pig monster had inflicted.
"Well, if getting shot and zombies and guns and carnage are the same flavor of outrageous as yours, I'd be pretty damn worried about what might have-- or did-- happen to us up there," she shivered, giving Ignacio a droll look, as if it was stupid to even think that zombies were possible.
"I wonder if we'll never really know," Elle sighed, refocusing on their project, resigned to the fact that there were no clues as of yet. "And...maybe it's better that way."
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