[well. that's not good. she trudges home from having to move a boy's body to the road, and then turns the knob and finds the door locked.
her aunt is going to blame her for this, certainly. if she'd come home right away, not followed bev and the others to play, maybe it would have been possible to get back inside before she left? her aunt encourages her to go to school and do her schoolwork, but it's exactly encouraging of her making friends with the other children around here. she's not certain, though. sometimes the rules in this place feel too arbitrary to predict. all she knows is that she did something wrong, and now she's trapped outside, on a night when she wants nothing more than to be inside and curl up in bed. even if nothing about the house is exactly comforting, it's better than this.
a neighbor... she considers it, briefly. they might be concerned, about a child being out, enough to let her wait there even if they don't think much of her family. it might be more of the sort of place she had, when she still lived with her parents - more of a child-oriented place, comforting, snacks, perhaps even a television. and that would be much nicer, and would take her mind off these worries for a little while, but...
viconia would want her doing that, she's certain of it.
she's accepting that she'll need to wait outside when she hears whatever is up the road.
[Nothing unusual actually. The hum grows stronger, and you feel a little like a dummy for worrying. It's a car.
But that's a good thing. Someone's coming home and someone ought to see you, and they would be concerned about a sodden and scared little girl outside after the curfew. They'd hop right out and ask for your name, where do you live honey, oh we should get you cleaned up right away.
It's not a car you recognize though. Much too nice, rather new. A red and white Plymouth Fury — if you were in the know, you'd realize it came out only this year and boasted a V8 engine under the hood. Nobody on this block had a motor vehicle this fine. Maybe nobody in Derry did, period, though some of the folks on Broadway had a pretty penny to their name.
It cruises around the corner at a crawl. The headlights are on, though it's not very late yet. A little like eyes, aren't they?
It carries on up the street, just-a-crawling. Kind of a waste of an engine like that.]
[she does feel that relief for a second - it won't change the reaction, but the fact that she won't have broken the rules, won't have done anything she was directly not supposed to do, just let something happen without protesting too hard, helps.
but then there isn't anyone to see her. it's odd enough to make her curious, especially since she has nothing else she's meant to be doing. she'll approach it.]
[She may step forward. The car pauses about three houses down from hers. Not a very long distance, as these houses are built more closely together and rather taller than they are wide. Sort of like witches hats, all pointed up in a row with flat brims of patchy grass and no shrubs or flowers. Each has an alley between it that leads to a stubby backyard where the next block immediately starts. Wide enough for three men to pass through, shoulder to shoulder, but any more than that and you'd knock up against someone's porch.
The car waits. The lights are harsh on your eyes, and it takes a second to blink enough to clear your vision.
well she's seen enough things today that shouldn't be happening. she doesn't want to get run over by a ghost car as well. fuck this shit.
she will start to back away, back into the yard of the house, and then start to run. maybe there's a house with lights on she can get to? she'll have to admit why she's out past curfew and afraid, why she's imagining things, but it's better than being here and staying in what feels very real and dangerous.]
The car's engine revs a second time. Fat plumes of noxious gas belch out the back end of it, three times thicker than the pollutant on a regular car.
There's a whole block full of houses. Maybe two have their lights on. It's not so dark yet, but it's also so much quieter than you expect the street to be at this hour. Where is everyone?
Jen can run for the first porch with the lights on she sees. It's the next door over, thankfully, and she can see the shadow of someone moving, crossing the entry to the kitchen no doubt.
The car revs a third time.
And it takes off, barrelling towards her as she makes a break for the safety of elevated decks and the only homebody awake right now.]
[The man inside carries his plate from the kitchen to the couch, looking straight outside while taking a bite of a dinner roll. He doesn't react to the knocking.
Nor does he react when the front grill of the Plymouth crunches five feet into his deck. Wood shoots up in a shock of chips and severed lengths. A foot and a half of a stain-treated cedar plank slaps into Jen, catching the side of her head and the round of her shoulder. The nails had been pointing outwards, towards the car. The sharpest she gets is the professionally trimmed, flat head. Too broad and blunted to do more than crack her good on the noggin and leave a scraping bruise.
The car is undaunted. It hits reverse, wheels spinning before it catches enough traction to lumber back through the shrapnel its made of the porch, slow going as the wheels bump and bounce over the felled lumber. There's a punched in look to the fender and the hood of the car, like a limp accordion waiting to be pressed back into shape.
There is the door, and this man sitting down to his TV dinner who will not answer it. Or there is the space between the houses. A backyard to dart into and the blocks of houses beyond. Too thin for any car to get through, and quite easy for any little girl.
[she thinks she’s going to die, when the door remains closed and the car drives at her. she doesn’t, she’s only scraped and torn at by wooden planks, but the noise and the sensation of something large and powerful determined to get at her is enough to send a jolt of adrenaline through her.
this man won’t help her. she’d imagined safety behind these walls. she’d imagined a world where a child running in terror will be met by adults who will protect her, drive away the danger. but it’s almost like remembering something she already knew but had forgotten somehow. the world is not filled with people like that. safety, protection, all of that is an illusion, a comforting lie told to children. either you have people who love you and will fight for you or you don’t. no use pretending otherwise.
she hates him for it. but there isn’t time to do more than note that hatred. she wants to live, even if no one else happens to care about that. she will try to run through the space between houses, looking for anything else she could use to escape or stop this thing.]
[Through the sidebar of grass and stepping stone pathway she goes.
The car tires squeal as it rams into the sides of both houses, clipping the back of her heel as she kicks it up in a run and knocks her over, a fumble of inertia and imbalance more than a true strike. But a hard fall it is, her cheek smacking on the smooth stone of the path and her arm catching sideways on the ground. Not enough to break or dislodge, but god does it smart.
It's a surefire trap (and a bewildering one — why does no one notice their houses are being demolished? The noise alone should have drawn someone into the street), the Plymouth revving its engine in fury as it gains nothing but three scant inches on its prey. Try as it might to spin its wheels, it can't get any further between the two domiciles playing sentry.
If Jen gropes around the ground, her hand will land on a something thin and flat. A sheet of paper.
Even in her blind panic, something about the way its surface brushes her skin and rends it numb draws her attention.]
[Wonderful! She may look at it, while the car hits reverse and rams again. It gains another scant hand-span. Closer, but just shy of enough.
The paper is ruled, choc-full of dense notes in cursive that is, quite frankly, neat but hard to decipher on the fly. Nothing she'd recognize, though the name Derry sticks out.
The numbness it gives her hand starts to pulse in her head. Over her skin. Like the embrace of loneliness, cold air in empty space.
(Swear on all our pinkies.)
Then quite suddenly, there's no sound at all. A dim ringing in her ears perhaps, just from the suddenness of the switch. The motor is gone, the squeal of tires.
And if she turns around, the houses look just as they always have. Whole. Undamaged, and not a single splinter amiss. But her head is pounding with pain where the plank had struck her sharply and scraped a line over her temple, cutting through the swelling mound of a bruise. Her shoulder smarts too, battered and wrenched aside, and her cheek is pounding with pain where it connected with stone and wells with blood on shallow scrapes.
There is a silhouetted figure standing on the far side of the street.]
that does feel familiar, somehow. she can’t place it, but she’s used to there being things she can’t place, things that don’t fit, pieces that don’t make sense. normally she tries to push those down, aside, because there’s enough wrong with her anyway. always getting it wrong, never obedient enough, never good enough, always a disappointment to viconia for reasons that aren’t ever explained, never the girl she expected or intended to take in. and because if she doesn’t push it away, it starts to hurt.
it hurts, her sore and battered body, the fear and terror of headlights and the sound of crunching metal ringing still in her ears.
but she does feel that this memory sticks with her someplace between her bruises ribs. the pinky swear, the seriousness of that to a child, even if she didn’t always know. something about… something like… well, there are no adults ever coming, no one who will defend you only because you’re helpless and small and frightened, and she must have known better than to ever promise otherwise. but it’s so unfair. why should it be that way? why doesn’t anyone with the ability to do it differently ever choose to?
she can’t read this, not right now, but despite the coldness and numbness of it, she places it in the pocket of her blouse.
she gets to her feet, pushing down the way the fading of the adrenaline is leaving her exhausted and sick and sore, and looks to the figure.
[A hard lesson to learn, to be sure. But a good one to know. Tuck it in your pocket and keep it close always, remember that the next time you're feeling low.
The shape of the figure strikes her as odd at first, until she realizes that's a bunch of balloons in his hand. The billowing pants make sense then, as do the twin tufts of orange hair poking out the sides of his head.
He waves at her, and the dimming light catches on his silver eyes. Reflective, like new coins.]
Howyadoin, Shadowheart?
[The word cuts into her with fear of a different sort. As if she's been peeled back and exposed, but as what she cannot say.]
How ya like it here, Shady Lady? You enjoying summer vacation? Me too, baby, me too.
Come and play again sometime. Yves says hi! We all float down here. And you will too.
[He pipes off with a high pitched giggle and releases the balloons. They drift into the air, a flock of red and blue and yellow bubbles. Ones that pop with bangs like a backfiring car, a rattling machine gun fire as they self destruct mid-air.
The clown is gone.
Further up the block, her aunt's stately Ford Consul turns a corner. Book club has ended early.]
[it does feel like that. there's some other truth she doesn't want to know about, some life she should be having other than this.
there are parts of it that she knows are awful and parts of it that may not be. maybe they're even better than this, here, now.
but whatever this thing is, it doesn't want to show her those parts. it only wants to tear her open, show her all of the ugly things, make them spill out, taunt them with the things that she wants to hold onto just to make her feel ashamed of how small they are.
they're just words, and meaningless ones at that, but she's shaken by it, she knows she won't be able to get it out of her mind.
but there is no part of her that believes her aunt will understand this. she'll just run back to the door of the house and say nothing about what happened to her. she expects to be asked about the injuries, about the shape she's in, but when the questions don't come, when her aunt is only upset that she stayed out past curfew, that she didn't get home earlier, that she didn't figure out a way to let herself in, it's a relief, honestly.
she won't find any sympathy here. she's going to have to rely on herself.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
holyspirits) wrote2025-03-09 04:46 pm
no subject
her aunt is going to blame her for this, certainly. if she'd come home right away, not followed bev and the others to play, maybe it would have been possible to get back inside before she left? her aunt encourages her to go to school and do her schoolwork, but it's exactly encouraging of her making friends with the other children around here. she's not certain, though. sometimes the rules in this place feel too arbitrary to predict. all she knows is that she did something wrong, and now she's trapped outside, on a night when she wants nothing more than to be inside and curl up in bed. even if nothing about the house is exactly comforting, it's better than this.
a neighbor... she considers it, briefly. they might be concerned, about a child being out, enough to let her wait there even if they don't think much of her family. it might be more of the sort of place she had, when she still lived with her parents - more of a child-oriented place, comforting, snacks, perhaps even a television. and that would be much nicer, and would take her mind off these worries for a little while, but...
viconia would want her doing that, she's certain of it.
she's accepting that she'll need to wait outside when she hears whatever is up the road.
what is it...?]
no subject
But that's a good thing. Someone's coming home and someone ought to see you, and they would be concerned about a sodden and scared little girl outside after the curfew. They'd hop right out and ask for your name, where do you live honey, oh we should get you cleaned up right away.
It's not a car you recognize though. Much too nice, rather new. A red and white Plymouth Fury — if you were in the know, you'd realize it came out only this year and boasted a V8 engine under the hood. Nobody on this block had a motor vehicle this fine. Maybe nobody in Derry did, period, though some of the folks on Broadway had a pretty penny to their name.
It cruises around the corner at a crawl. The headlights are on, though it's not very late yet. A little like eyes, aren't they?
It carries on up the street, just-a-crawling. Kind of a waste of an engine like that.]
no subject
but then there isn't anyone to see her. it's odd enough to make her curious, especially since she has nothing else she's meant to be doing. she'll approach it.]
Hello?
no subject
The car waits. The lights are harsh on your eyes, and it takes a second to blink enough to clear your vision.
No one answers, because there is no one to answer. There's no one at the wheel, nor in the passenger seat. The windshield is as blank and calm as lake.
The engine thrums suddenly. Deafening.]
no subject
well she's seen enough things today that shouldn't be happening. she doesn't want to get run over by a ghost car as well. fuck this shit.
she will start to back away, back into the yard of the house, and then start to run. maybe there's a house with lights on she can get to? she'll have to admit why she's out past curfew and afraid, why she's imagining things, but it's better than being here and staying in what feels very real and dangerous.]
no subject
The car's engine revs a second time. Fat plumes of noxious gas belch out the back end of it, three times thicker than the pollutant on a regular car.
There's a whole block full of houses. Maybe two have their lights on. It's not so dark yet, but it's also so much quieter than you expect the street to be at this hour. Where is everyone?
Jen can run for the first porch with the lights on she sees. It's the next door over, thankfully, and she can see the shadow of someone moving, crossing the entry to the kitchen no doubt.
The car revs a third time.
And it takes off, barrelling towards her as she makes a break for the safety of elevated decks and the only homebody awake right now.]
no subject
Help! Help me!
no subject
Nor does he react when the front grill of the Plymouth crunches five feet into his deck. Wood shoots up in a shock of chips and severed lengths. A foot and a half of a stain-treated cedar plank slaps into Jen, catching the side of her head and the round of her shoulder. The nails had been pointing outwards, towards the car. The sharpest she gets is the professionally trimmed, flat head. Too broad and blunted to do more than crack her good on the noggin and leave a scraping bruise.
The car is undaunted. It hits reverse, wheels spinning before it catches enough traction to lumber back through the shrapnel its made of the porch, slow going as the wheels bump and bounce over the felled lumber. There's a punched in look to the fender and the hood of the car, like a limp accordion waiting to be pressed back into shape.
There is the door, and this man sitting down to his TV dinner who will not answer it. Or there is the space between the houses. A backyard to dart into and the blocks of houses beyond. Too thin for any car to get through, and quite easy for any little girl.
The car revs again, lights flickering.]
no subject
this man won’t help her. she’d imagined safety behind these walls. she’d imagined a world where a child running in terror will be met by adults who will protect her, drive away the danger. but it’s almost like remembering something she already knew but had forgotten somehow. the world is not filled with people like that. safety, protection, all of that is an illusion, a comforting lie told to children. either you have people who love you and will fight for you or you don’t. no use pretending otherwise.
she hates him for it. but there isn’t time to do more than note that hatred. she wants to live, even if no one else happens to care about that. she will try to run through the space between houses, looking for anything else she could use to escape or stop this thing.]
no subject
The car tires squeal as it rams into the sides of both houses, clipping the back of her heel as she kicks it up in a run and knocks her over, a fumble of inertia and imbalance more than a true strike. But a hard fall it is, her cheek smacking on the smooth stone of the path and her arm catching sideways on the ground. Not enough to break or dislodge, but god does it smart.
It's a surefire trap (and a bewildering one — why does no one notice their houses are being demolished? The noise alone should have drawn someone into the street), the Plymouth revving its engine in fury as it gains nothing but three scant inches on its prey. Try as it might to spin its wheels, it can't get any further between the two domiciles playing sentry.
If Jen gropes around the ground, her hand will land on a something thin and flat. A sheet of paper.
Even in her blind panic, something about the way its surface brushes her skin and rends it numb draws her attention.]
no subject
no subject
The paper is ruled, choc-full of dense notes in cursive that is, quite frankly, neat but hard to decipher on the fly. Nothing she'd recognize, though the name Derry sticks out.
The numbness it gives her hand starts to pulse in her head. Over her skin. Like the embrace of loneliness, cold air in empty space.
(Swear on all our pinkies.)
Then quite suddenly, there's no sound at all. A dim ringing in her ears perhaps, just from the suddenness of the switch. The motor is gone, the squeal of tires.
And if she turns around, the houses look just as they always have. Whole. Undamaged, and not a single splinter amiss. But her head is pounding with pain where the plank had struck her sharply and scraped a line over her temple, cutting through the swelling mound of a bruise. Her shoulder smarts too, battered and wrenched aside, and her cheek is pounding with pain where it connected with stone and wells with blood on shallow scrapes.
There is a silhouetted figure standing on the far side of the street.]
no subject
that does feel familiar, somehow. she can’t place it, but she’s used to there being things she can’t place, things that don’t fit, pieces that don’t make sense. normally she tries to push those down, aside, because there’s enough wrong with her anyway. always getting it wrong, never obedient enough, never good enough, always a disappointment to viconia for reasons that aren’t ever explained, never the girl she expected or intended to take in. and because if she doesn’t push it away, it starts to hurt.
it hurts, her sore and battered body, the fear and terror of headlights and the sound of crunching metal ringing still in her ears.
but she does feel that this memory sticks with her someplace between her bruises ribs. the pinky swear, the seriousness of that to a child, even if she didn’t always know. something about… something like… well, there are no adults ever coming, no one who will defend you only because you’re helpless and small and frightened, and she must have known better than to ever promise otherwise. but it’s so unfair. why should it be that way? why doesn’t anyone with the ability to do it differently ever choose to?
she can’t read this, not right now, but despite the coldness and numbness of it, she places it in the pocket of her blouse.
she gets to her feet, pushing down the way the fading of the adrenaline is leaving her exhausted and sick and sore, and looks to the figure.
what does she see?]
no subject
The shape of the figure strikes her as odd at first, until she realizes that's a bunch of balloons in his hand. The billowing pants make sense then, as do the twin tufts of orange hair poking out the sides of his head.
He waves at her, and the dimming light catches on his silver eyes. Reflective, like new coins.]
Howyadoin, Shadowheart?
[The word cuts into her with fear of a different sort. As if she's been peeled back and exposed, but as what she cannot say.]
How ya like it here, Shady Lady? You enjoying summer vacation? Me too, baby, me too.
Come and play again sometime. Yves says hi! We all float down here. And you will too.
[He pipes off with a high pitched giggle and releases the balloons. They drift into the air, a flock of red and blue and yellow bubbles. Ones that pop with bangs like a backfiring car, a rattling machine gun fire as they self destruct mid-air.
The clown is gone.
Further up the block, her aunt's stately Ford Consul turns a corner. Book club has ended early.]
no subject
there are parts of it that she knows are awful and parts of it that may not be. maybe they're even better than this, here, now.
but whatever this thing is, it doesn't want to show her those parts. it only wants to tear her open, show her all of the ugly things, make them spill out, taunt them with the things that she wants to hold onto just to make her feel ashamed of how small they are.
they're just words, and meaningless ones at that, but she's shaken by it, she knows she won't be able to get it out of her mind.
but there is no part of her that believes her aunt will understand this. she'll just run back to the door of the house and say nothing about what happened to her. she expects to be asked about the injuries, about the shape she's in, but when the questions don't come, when her aunt is only upset that she stayed out past curfew, that she didn't get home earlier, that she didn't figure out a way to let herself in, it's a relief, honestly.
she won't find any sympathy here. she's going to have to rely on herself.]