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 Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2016 2:53 pm
Alois inwardly thanked Vale for following legal tradition so closely; a call to his prior landlord and a lengthy explanation of amnesia (plus a stop in at the office) obtained his current address. He found it particularly bothersome that he was put through so much explanation for something that was, by default, public record, but he tried not to complain too loudly upon exiting the office. He had what he needed, and he would find his way home. Somehow.
A flip phone, however, did not provide him Google Maps. Alois executed another stop at the Ashdown public library to access one of their free computers, looked up the address given, and spent a fair minute penning down the directions on the back of a discarded flyer (for he found the ten-cents-per-page rule tacky). After picking up a rental copy of The Waste Land, alois departed from the library and into a steady downpour. Initially it raised his spirits, gave him promise that he might yet find his Father around the next corner, that he may simply walk his way back into the Court, but such gimcrack hopes dashed quickly upon sighting a crowd on the next corner. He walked the long mile to his destination in silence and consternation.
He reached the location in the late evening and found it little more than a warehouse. The moon peered back at him from long, vertical windows which offered little insight into the building itself. Curtains or frost paper of some kind prevented him from looking inward, and the darkness thwarted him in attempts to find the proper key. A patient trial of each key commenced before he opened the paint-flecked door to its vast innards.
Out of tradition, Alois felt along the right behind him for a lightswitch. He caught it on the backswinig, and soon the empty downstairs was illuminated with naked bulbs. Sodium light yellowed demolition detritus that mapped the room like small islands on a continental map. Dust, drywall, and broken dremel bits scattered around the floor. Walls and ceiling spoke of dead neutrality with contractor white sprayed over their surfaces. He found very little furniture - only his bed in the far corner of the complex, and a repurposed door and cinderblocks to create a desk. Vale, it seemed, was a minimalist.
in a spark of curiosity, Alois ascended the long steps to the second floor. Was there a roommate? He hoped so; this place looked expensive to maintain solo.
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Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 12:33 am
On the day Alois finally decided to come to his new residence, Thorne was in the middle of building a model city of Ashdown on the floor of Coalsmoke's second story. This was in part due to the fact that when one was granted (or bought) a great deal of space, oftentimes there was a call to action inherently packaged with it to do something to fill it. Thorne had already shoved a bed into one room, designating it as an adequate living quarter for now. The bathroom was furnished enough for two (Chris was out - buying groceries or visiting the grandpas, or maybe both) and the rest was devoured by plants or easels in disuse.
The creaking floorboards did nothing to rouse Thorne from his contemplation. Even the footsteps didn't quite reach. He was standing over a strangely accurate miniature cardboard Ashdown. Half of the districts were missing, and plenty of blank puzzle pieces remained to be filled. Scissors and scraps littered the floor - Millie had gotten bored playing with them and decided a nap was better than this. Now she was wrapped like a furry cocoon around Bergie under one of the hulking windows, shafts of light cutting across the hardwood floor, in between stacks of books and toppling piles of sketchbooks in disuse.
If Vale had been a minimalist, Corr had been a DIY junkie half-crazed with drugs. Thorne had tried to clean his influence away from the warehouse as best he could - but it was a work in progress. At least none of his plants had died.
Finally, he turned, culling himself away from his own mind to the present.
And stopped short.
"Oh," Thorne started, and there was a flare of distrust and suspicion lancing through his voice. His eyes were dangerously calm, but his hands fluttered, nerves wrecking him with ease. "Which one are you?"
He had seen one of the two go up in flames in the Court. But his mind stuttered over the details. For all he knew, this was a fetch. And he was not the most welcoming host anymore.
"I wasn't aware," Thorne added, slowly, "that anyone else was here."
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Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 7:17 pm
Blood quickened and colors grew lurid as eyes settled upon the taller figure present. He recalled, instantly, the eerie similarities between a cocked head and cocky stance. A jingling rabbit’s mask stood in for the sole shred of anonymity the other entity commanded, but a name spoken by his b***h of a patron imparted an identity. Alexander, she commanded. Alexander, break his hand.
Alexander, break his will.
Alois’ hand hardly left the banister. „Hello, Clarice,“ he hissed in his best Anthony Hopkins rendition. „Going to break my hand again if I pick an answer you don’t like? Wait, let me guess - you’ll only kneecap me if I’m the one you want.“ Derision overtook desolation briefly, commanding that he dispense with guilt and shame and pity to spit vitriol. Alois hated the lack of outward signs, the missing minute mistakes that a shoddy copy might make of the original. He searched Thorne, desperately, for even a fleck of reassurance. He knew nothing of either, however; what little he gleaned of personality came from the one who assaulted him, and Alois could only guess at that malignant b*****d being the fetch.
„Ze partygoers informed me zat my double stabbed your patron and was put to fire by Father himself. Bristling Vale, his name was. His petulant antics are what landed me here, wis’ you. Ze irony is so sick you could choke on it.“ Fingernails drummed impatiently, anxiously on the wood. His gaze searched Thorne for answers even before he began to respond, as if some out-of-place hair or rumpled clothing might confirm him as a copy.
„Your turn,“ he issued with a nod, „which are you?“
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Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2016 2:29 pm
Thorne acknowledged Alois not coldly, but like they were both hounding each other, circling. There was a rather sick amusement inside of him that curled up as he thought of all those nature documentaries, predators crossing one another in a grey territory.
He exhaled sharply and stared at Alois. He let the other speak, let himself get reacquainted with Alois as he was. He had never met the other man, not really. He'd seen him in passing. In Ezra's care and at the ball. But no closer than that. He wasn't sure, just yet, that he wanted to be any closer than that. Thorne crossed his arms at his back and stepped closer. The shadows curled at his feet, soft and whispering. He'd learned days ago to control himself around them. To not dive reckless and headfirst into their depths.
But that did not mean they were any less distraction.
"Alexander Thorne," he responded, easily. "I murdered my double, Corr, to escape that place. The one that broke your hand." It was an admittance of sin. Maybe it was meant to scare Alois, but no - not really. It was a testing ground. A chemical dropped into an unknown solution. Would they explode against one another. Would Alois find the blood on his hands abhorrent? Would he leave?
"For what it's worth," Thorne remarked, slowly, in the silence afterwards, "If you want to stay, you're more than welcome." He spread his hands. "Corr gave Vale reign of the bottom floor. It's yours. I promise I won't kneecap you this time around." He crossed his arms once more behind his back, letting one of his feet bounce against the floor, the only symptom of restlessness.
"But I might subject you to helping me eat dinner. I made too much, and Chris is visiting the grandpas."
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Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2016 2:41 pm
“Well,“ he started, a wry grin chasing away the ire, „zat puts us at a better acquaintance, doesn’t it?“ He did not advance further from the stair, but Alois no longer spread across it as a gate barring Thorne’s path. Instead he stuck to the banister where arms could curl about its metal length without worry. „Good riddance to him.“
His grin faltered, but remained within his eyes. „I’m surprised. Not zat you killed him - he was an a*****e - but because you would want to keep up wis’ ze rehearsal set by our doubles. If we lif’ ze lives zey left behind - ze ones zey half-constructed for zemselfs - does zat make us ze fetches imitating zem? Ze logic of it can chase you in circles.“
Thorne seemed uncommonly kind, he decided. What gain was there in extending niceties toward Alois? He mulled it over momentarily. They shared a peculiar, unique trauma in that they were both tithe to the Court. While they did not share a patron, they endured the same stint of time away from the lives they knew. This one, he remembered, was Batshit - brother to Apeshit. He knew them both only peripherally until he ran into Apeshit himself in the aquamarine atrium. Melany’s affairs had been hers alone, though he was familiar with the damage done by her choices. This one, however, seemed quite put together. Was it a show, then? A farce? Was he lying to himself that the span of months did not affect him, did not occur?
A curious notion, at the least.
The mention of dinner stirred memories that he hadn’t yet eaten, that food took a backseat to the ubiquitous mourning that settled into his life. He blinked, and the hint of grin left him altogether. „Alright,“ he acquiesced to both the bottom floor and to the evening’s culinary surprise. „Vale changed my residence, and wis’ no family, I haf’ nowhere else to go. Here is as good as anywhere.
„Are you a cook, or are you one of zose people who cooks when zey’re nervous?“
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