Something from the Nightside [OPEN]

[Adam Milligan]

[adam]Of everything that he'd stolen in the past six days, Adam had to admit that the Nook Tablet was his favorite. He could have sold it for fifteen bucks but had kept it and spent a long night with his equally-stolen laptop and the free WiFi that a shit-hole motel around the back end of the airport had offered in the optimistic but ultimately doomed hope that it would attract tourists, loading the tablet with several gigabytes worth of illegally downloaded ePubs. He'd always turned to fiction for both comfort and stability in his life. Sitting on the couch with the TV going but a book in his hands, living the long nights without his Mom by diving into other, better worlds that they gave away for free at the library.

And so even as he took most of what he gleaned from his runs on the poorly-monitored lost luggage storage building at the RDU annex and turned it into quick cash at the shitty pawn shops in southeast Raleigh, he kept the Nook and the sleek Zenbook he'd scored from a Gucci bag that the handlers hadn't managed to raid before he got to it. And now the Nook went everywhere with him, tucked into the deep pocket of his thrift store jacket, the best escape he had when the hallucinations got too bad for the drugs to help.

Tonight he was sitting on the patio outside a burger joint in one of the nicer parts of Raleigh, waiting for his food to reach him while he read one of the Simon R. Green Nightside novels that he'd missed by being dead.

There's a small pile of severed hands and feet in the gutter. The Little Sisters of the Immaculate Chainsaw have apparently been busy tonight. One shop window boasts a new edition of the infamous book 'The King in Yellow', whose perusal drives men mad, together with a special pair of rose-tinted spectacles to read it through. Somewhere music is playing, harsh and tempting, and somewhere else someone is screaming, and begging for the pain to never stop. One man barges sullenly through the crowds, his sandwich board reading The End Is Bloody Well Nigh.

On second thought, Adam decided as he set down the reader and lit a smoke, maybe that hadn't been a good choice of reading material for tonight. There were hallucinations clinging to the edges of his eyes, he tried to rub them free and got a little too involved in the scrubbing, not stopping until his eyes were red and stinging, teary with the abrasion. Looking up, he saw that someone sitting at the next table had noticed his weird, seemingly compulsive behavior and offered them a weak smile. "Allergies," he lied easily. "Never thought I'd see the day when a smoker had to sit outside in North Carolina. Seems sort of ironical, if you ask me."[/adam]

[Sidney Vincent]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=valign,top][atrb=style, background: url(http://i1058.photobucket.com/albums/t417/dustinthewindspn/Sidney/SidPostTemp2.jpg) center bottom no-repeat; outline: 1px solid #384214; width: 500px; height: 601px; padding: 0px;, bTable][style=border: 2px solid #384214; background: #fdf1f3; opacity: 0.55; filter:alpha(opacity=55); font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Grande", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #0c1000; text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #f8e8eb; margin: 11px; padding: 5px 20px; width: 280px; height: 525px; overflow-y: auto;] Who orders a salad at a burger joint? A tourist. Which is exactly what Sidney was at the moment. With all the high school and college graduations over with things had slowed down at the bakery. It wasn't as if she really needed to keep the place running anyway, not with the insurance and life insurance settlements that came after the terrible ordeal that changed her life forever. It was a dark time, one that she still, in many ways, was running from. Even now as she sat at the little outdoor patio table and sipped the straw of her milkshake. She'd left Belinda in charge of the bakery while she took a little down time. An airplane to Virginia, a rental car, and she was set to drive the coast down to the Florida Keys. Raleigh was simply a stop along the way. A convertible, the wind in her hair, it should have been a great vacation but all she could think of was the past. The terrible nightmares that woke her up in the middle of the night in a panic and sweating followed her even here. Sid pushed a cherry tomato around on her plate, through the ranch dressing, wishing she'd thought to being a book with her. But she'd been out all day seeing the attractions. This was the last stop before heading back to the hotel. She'd hoped that wearing herself out enough would work to make her too tired to have nightmares. Hotel services had broken into her room back in Kitty Hawk after one particularly horrible nightmare. The way she'd been screaming they thought someone was killing her. It was humiliating. Lost in though she didn't even realize she was staring at the boy across from her that was rubbing his eyes compulsively until he looked up and made eye contact with her, making her blink. She returned his smile and nodded. "Everything seems to be in bloom right now. It's a beautiful city but terrible for the allergies I'd think." She assumed he was a local, especially after he spoke. Giving up at picking at her salad she set her fork down and smiled to him. "I wouldn't know. I'm not from around here." she replied softly and then added "And I don't smoke." [style=padding: 0px 10px; font-size: smaller;] Location: Burger Joint, Raleigh, NC Outfit:HERE Music: Notes:

[Adam Milligan]

[ADAM]"I'm not from around here either." Though, okay, maybe technically he was? After all, he'd been born here, in a sense. But in the larger scheme he was a stranger in Raleigh. He would be a stranger anywhere right now, even in Windom. Especially in Windom.

It occurred to Adam that he was being unnecessarily angsty right now. Also that he should probably actually continue the conversation with the pretty girl at the next table and not drift into staring vaguely off into space the way he did a lot of times. You know, act like a person. It was something he was working on.

So he laughed quietly and admitted, "I think mostly I'm just bitter because here we are in the middle of Marlboro Country and I'm having to mainline Claritin just because my vice-of-choice gives people cancer. Is that the spirit of the Confederacy?" A flash of the sly, cheery grin that was the old him, the sane him. "Stonewall Jackson would be ashamed of them." A beat. "Okay, no. Stonewall Jackson wouldn't give a damn. He'd just, I don't know, eat a lemon and win another Battle of Bull Run. Plus I think he was from Virginia. But my original point remains." A beat, he took a drag of his cigarette and blew the smoke away from the girl at the next table because crazy or not his Momma had raised him right. "Whatever that point was." [/adam]

[Sidney Vincent]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=valign,top][atrb=style, background: url(http://i1058.photobucket.com/albums/t417/dustinthewindspn/Sidney/SidPostTemp2.jpg) center bottom no-repeat; outline: 1px solid #384214; width: 500px; height: 601px; padding: 0px;, bTable][style=border: 2px solid #384214; background: #fdf1f3; opacity: 0.55; filter:alpha(opacity=55); font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Grande", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #0c1000; text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #f8e8eb; margin: 11px; padding: 5px 20px; width: 280px; height: 525px; overflow-y: auto;] Sidney listened to the small tirade and the babbling of obscure historical facts with a bemused look on her face, her hand still busy pushing that damned cherry tomato around on her plate. Realizing her actions she set the fork down and picked up her milkshake, sipping and nodding as she listened and tried to keep her smile sympathetic. It was difficult when all she wanted to do was to chuckle out loud at the poor young man's irritation. Once he finished though she raised her eyebrows and looked at him, setting the milkshake down and folding her hands in front of her on the table, leaning toward him. It was clear from the expression of amusement that she wore and the gentle, sympathetic tone used that she was just teasing him now but she couldn't resist. "Well..." she began and glanced around for effect before going on and dropping her tone to a conspiratorial stage whisper, "You do know that the Confederacy lost the War, right? I mean there's a lot of people around here that I've met that might disagree with me there but....the fact remains. So maybe the whole spirit of the Confederacy thing isn't your best argument here, in hindsight." She nodded oh-so solemnly and kept a straight face....for all of about thirty seconds before she chuckled and smiled brightly. "I'm Sidney by the way...pleasure to meet you." she introduced herself. She glimpsed his red eyes again and offered. "You know, a little hot tea with lemon and honey helps the symptoms of allergies and brushing the back of your tongue before bed can help reduce the amount of pollen that clings to the mucus membranes and travel into your throat. It always helped me when I was a kid. And the last resort?" She grimaced a bit and made a face. "Vick's VapoRub on the chest and under the nose....if you don't mind going around smelling like a nursing home that is." [style=padding: 0px 10px; font-size: smaller;] Location: Burger Joint, Raleigh, NC Outfit:HERE Music: Notes:

[Adam Milligan]

[adam]"Adam." He smiled at her, eyes barely flickering when her eyes bled out to pure black and blood started pouring down one side of her milkshake glass. He was feeling solid enough right now that he just pulled a brown pill bottle out of his pocket and popped a black-market aripiprazole, counting on it to beat the hallucinations back for a while. Thank god for trendy diseases, doctors were prescribing Abilify like candy because the TV told patients that it was an antidepressant-booster. "And it's cool, I'm just bitching to bitch. The pill will clear it up in half an hour." Nothing but the truth, as Adam didn't have any allergies but the hallucinatory episodes were giving him the runny eyes and compulsive rubbing behaviors.

He took a sip of beer to chase the antipsychotic and said, "Did you really do the Vick's VapoRub thing? The one time my Mom ever tried to put that on me I screamed that it was poison acid like on Star Trek and hid under the far back part of her bed where she couldn't reach me." At least, he thought he had. Unless that was an implanted memory. But he couldn't think too much about that kind of thing, it just made everything worse. Stick to smiling and chatting with the pretty girl. Practice acting normal.[/adam]

[Sidney Vincent]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=valign,top][atrb=style, background: url(http://i1058.photobucket.com/albums/t417/dustinthewindspn/Sidney/SidPostTemp2.jpg) center bottom no-repeat; outline: 1px solid #384214; width: 500px; height: 601px; padding: 0px;, bTable][style=border: 2px solid #384214; background: #fdf1f3; opacity: 0.55; filter:alpha(opacity=55); font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Grande", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #0c1000; text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #f8e8eb; margin: 11px; padding: 5px 20px; width: 280px; height: 525px; overflow-y: auto;] She couldn't help but to chuckle at his words, hearing the story and envisioning it. Her smile grew as she nodded. "Oh yeah. Every winter." she said wrinkling her nose a bit. "I got called Sickney a lot in school because of it. Until High School that is.But the Kansas winters can be pretty brutal. It's a guarantee that you'll get sick at least four times in any given winter.Mom meant well though and I can't argue that it didn't work." She shrugged a bit and played with the straw in her milkshake, her mood dampening a bit for no apparent reason as her smile faded from that big radiant one to something softer and somehow, sad. She never talked about her childhood or her parents back home. Never. People knew not to try back there. After the firs few months after she'd woken from her coma people tried consoling her and comforting her but it only lead to hysterical crying fits. A few times it had made her temper flare and screaming and breaking of things would ensue. She didn't really blame them for what they were doing. She wasn't even mad at them really. Mad at herself more than anything, possessing that infamous survivor's guilt. This was the first time she'd been able to even mention them and not burst into tears. Maybe she was healing after all. Realizing she'd fallen into silence and was likely being rude she looked up and forced her smile back on her face as she gestured to him. "I noticed you reading on one of those Kindle things. I was thinking about getting one for my trip but.." she shrugged and couldn't really think of a valid excuse. "I was wondering, what kind of visibility do they have in the direct sun? I'm heading beachward after I leave here and well, it'd be great to have something to read on the sand." Sure it was small talk but she was genuinely curious about the gadget. That was something she'd never been able to really get into, all the new high tech stuff. Usually she just went by the old ways of doing things. Even her internet back home was still on dial-up. [style=padding: 0px 10px; font-size: smaller;] Location: Burger Joint, Raleigh, NC Outfit:HERE Music: Notes:

[Adam Milligan]

[adam]Adam nodded, grinning ruefully and, not that he knew it, looking much more like the too-smart-to-be-happy teenager that he'd been before his first death than the bitter, broken thing he thought he was now. "Yeah, I grew up in Minnesota. People think they understand what winter means? Try fourteen inches of snow overnight and they don't even call a snow day because everybody's a good Lutheran and doesn't believe that you should let a little weather get in your way."

He laughed and hit his smoke, "My Mom was a nurse, and a Lutheran. Meaning that I had to be bleeding out the eyeballs to get her to decide that I was too sick for school. She'd just spoon Triamenic into my mouth, give me a B12 tablet, and tell me to stop whining." It occurred to him, later than he would have liked, just how easy it was to refer to his mother in the past tense. It seemed like it should be harder. Though, and his chest hurt with the thought, she'd been dead for years. Maybe it wasn't too soon.

That thought had him reaching for his beer, draining half of what was left and then hitting his cigarette again. Being human was bullshit.

He seized the next topic eagerly. "It's a Nook, but yeah, I like it. It's not great in direct sun, but I don't read it in full sunlight often. But even in just the shade of being under a tree, or if I get the brim of my hat shading it it's fine." He held the tablet out for her to take a look at if she liked. "If you want something simpler, the Nook Simple Touch is really good. Cheap, easy to use, works great. I got, uh, a discount on this one but I played with the Simple Touch and I liked it a lot.[/adam]

[Sidney Vincent]

[sidney]She knew that rueful smile all too well. She'd worn it herself in what seemed like another life. But it was warming to hear someone else talk about their past, their family. It gave hope that not all was lost. The story of his mother actually made her give a genuine chuckle and she rested her head on her hand, her elbow propped up on the table as her fingers went into her hair a bit.

Her eyes crinkled just a bit as she smiled at him and when the gadget was offered she took it and just....looked at it before tentatively touching the screen with a fingertip and then just looking utterly lost. She just stared a few moments and then tried to navigate it but got utterly and hopelessly lost. Another laugh left her lips and she looked up at Adam. "I swear I feel like a total idiot. I'm so bad with new technology." Glancing back to the Nook she tried to drag her finger to make it change pages but apparently was doing it too lightly and nothing was happening.

"Maybe this is a sign that I just need to stick with the old cheapie paperbacks section. Ya think?" her grin was nearly contagious as she started to hand the Nook back to him. "Knowing me I'd touch it and get shocked or fry the thing anyway. Technology doesn't really like me I think."

She nodded and grinned, "I think I'll just stick to baking cakes and pies. It's what I'm good at." She looked at the Nook one more time and shook her head, smiling. "I'm guessing you're one of those tech savvy people that know all about all this new stuff coming out aren't you? I promise, I'm not as stupid as I seem. Don't let the blonde hair fool you. Me and electronic just don't seem to get along much." [/sidney]

[Adam Milligan]

[adam]He laughed and leaned over closer, wiping his fingertip on the knee of his jeans so that he could show her how to navigate across the screens. Once he was in close enough he could smell her soap and shampoo, some mix of perfumes and fake-fruit and clean female skin that hit him like a punch to the gut. If there was a way for being hit in the solar plexus to be kind of pleasant. There probably wasn't a way like that, but it was still how it felt. A hot weight in the pit of his stomach that he didn't even recognize as attraction, not properly. He didn't think he could feel it any more, he assumed that part of him was broken permanently.

And so he showed her how to navigate across the pages with all the shy pride of a six year old boy offering his mother a fist full of wilting dandelions. "It's really easy, honestly. Way easier than baking." A beat as he reached over and stubbed out his cigarette so that he wouldn't keep hurting his arm holding it away from her. "Well. Maybe harder than baking shortbread, which is the only thing I ever learned how to bake. I can't even do cake mixes or chocolate chip cookies. Only shortbread."

He glanced sidelong at Sidney, noticing the way her hair curled against the side of her throat and for once not waiting for something hideous to come out of the pretty sight. "And I'm not that great with tech. But even I figured this stuff out, promise." [/adam]

[Sidney Vincent]

[sidney]Seeing that shy nature made Sidney smile. It was adorable really and it lightened the weary, kicked puppy look he had had when she first noticed him. "Oh I don't know. Baking is pretty easy." she said with a little shurg of her shoulders that made her hair slide a little off her shoulder and let the scents of shampoo and sunshine that clung to her from the days travels out a little more. "At least it is if you've been doing it this long. It's kinda instinctual really. You just have to have a nose for it and the tastebuds for it. But it doesn't require any crazy tech skills." She chuckled softly. "You should see the dust that's grown on my computer back home."

She nodded as if thinking about something and managed to keep a straight face as she said, trying to sound oh so serious, "I think it's well beyond dust bunnies at this stage. It's more like,...a full blown dust bunny hutch." But that straight face only lasted so long as her smile appeared and her eyes crinkled in amusement, chuckling again and following his instruction on how to manuever through the screens, doing better this time at least.

She seemed a little surprised as it worked and smiled wide. "Wow...okay.. I have to admit, that's pretty neat Adam. And coming from a Ludite like me that's something." She played with it a little more and bit her bottom lip slightly as she concentrated. It was a habit of hers.

"You know, if you're ever up in Lawrence, Kansas you should stop in the bakery. It's called Sweet Revenge. But I'm sort of thinking of changing the name. Something less...." she talked with her free hand as she handed the Nook back to Adam, searching for the words. "....dark. Maybe something inspiring or uplifting like Sweet Dreams or Sweet Temptations." She glanced to him for his opinion as she played with the bracelets on her wrist a bit.
[/sidney]

[Adam Milligan]

[adam]"Maybe it's easy for you, but I don't have the instinct Or the nose. Or the tastebuds. You know those cookies that come refrigerated in little pre-cut dough squares and all you have to do is put them on the cookie sheet and bake them? No. Doesn't work. Bad things happen."

He was beginning to remember how to do this. The rhythm of it, the pattern of easy speech that was how you flirted with a smart girl. Flirting with stupid girls, he seemed to recall, was something very different. But for smart girls, interesting girls, it was banter and smiles. He'd been good at it, once upon a time. Adam didn't think of it this way, but he'd inherited the same easy charm his father and half-brothers had. He used it differently, or had back when he was a person, but he knew how to do this.

And so he picked up his beer and took a sip, watching her over to top of it. "You're gonna want to be careful about letting highly-evolved dust bunnies have access to the internet. Who knows what dangerous ideas they might encounter? You might want to get Net Nanny."

He might have gone in in that same vein but then she mentioned where she was from and he let out a coughing, pained laugh. "Lawrence? Yeah, uh, I don't think I'll be visiting you there. My family doesn't do so well with Lawrence, Kansas. It's unlucky for us." If he even had the right to say 'us', which Adam was never sure he did. It was one of several dozen reasons he hadn't tried to find his half-brothers, even though he was flat out desperate to talk to Sam. Well, that and the fact that they'd inevitably be together and then he'd have to talk to Dean and he didn't remotely trust himself to be around his oldest half-brother. Better to just steer clear, like he steered clear of eastern Kansas.[/adam]

[Sidney Vincent]

[sidney]There was an easy laugh as he spoke of wild dust bunnies and their terrible exploits in the internet, her eyes sparkling with the amusement of it. It felt so good just to laugh again, even if it was over something so small. When he sort of coughed when he laughed she patted him on the back a bit and grinned.

Until she heard what he said about her hometown. At the mention of how 'unlucky' it was for his family her eyes dropped from his and her smile falter, even if briefly as she looked away. Recovering was something she was used to by now and her smile, though forced, reappeared soon enough. "Maybe the place is cursed or something." she said only half joking.

There was a little roll of her shoulders as if shaking off the tension of the conversation, trying to get back on track to something more easy and light hearted. Her mind was working overtime trying to grasp at something, anything beyond the darkness of the night that haunted her every waking moment and most of her dreaming ones as well. But, she was shooting blanks.

Clearing her throat a little she opened her purse and pulled out a little notepad of paper and a pen, writing her name, the word Nook, and her cell phone number on it before she tore it off and handed it to Adam. "I'm in town for a few more days. If you get bored or something you should call me. I'd love to have some company going to these historic places and stuff. Or just someone to share a meal with. Since we're both travelers through here I thought maybe it might be good to have a person to talk to?"[/sidney]

[Adam Milligan]

[adam]"Maybe it is." Wait, had she actually said that? It was such a random thing to say, maybe he'd imagined it. Fuck, was he hallucinating again?

Adam closed his eyes tight, rubbed them like he could scrub away anything that wasn't real. Slow deep breaths while he sorted through the information that was coming at him. The smell of hot steel, char, and blood was definitely not real. The rushing sound was cars, not distant screams. The headache was just a headache, no one was gripping the back of his skull with cold skinny fingers, there was no crackling sound to come.

But there were no voices that didn't belong there, so she'd probably actually said that thing about it being cursed. And he'd been silent too long, crap.

He raised his head and smiled at Sidney with reddened eyes. "You too, huh? But you're braver than I am, you're still there. I've run away from home." All his homes. Windom, Lawrence, and the Cage.

When she gave him her number he was surprised and looked it, but he smiled even so. "I'll do that. My, uh, cell phone doesn't work here," he hadn't tried to buy or steal one yet, "but let me give you my motel room number. And email, if you can email from your phone?" He should get a phone. Definitely. Next time he stole a good one he'd take it to one of those flashing places and get it set up with a prepaid plan.[/adam]

[Sidney Vincent]

[sidney]Braver. That was laughable. If she'd been more brave then her parents might not have died that night. If she'd been brave she would have insisted on what she saw was the truth instead of letting those 'professionals' convince her that it had just been a combination of the stress of the event and the head injury that cause her to see people with solid black eyes and then black smoke shooting out of their mouths when those other men had come in and killed her attackers.

They had managed to convince her of one thing,of keeping her mouth shut as to what she believed on a basic level. She didn't want to believe what she saw but her nightmares replayed it too often for her to completely disbelieve.

She couldn't help but wonder what happened to him in Lawrence. There was a saddness, an agony in those reddened eyes as he had looked at her and spoke those words but she had no words to say to that. Instead she discretely looked away and down to the phone.

Finding a chance to lighten the mood as he offered her his room number she took it. With raised eyebrows and a teasing grin she looked at him. "Room number? Wow...waist no time there do you?" She tilted her head a bit, but was still smiling as she said, "You might be used to those fast, wild women but let me assure you I'm not that kind of girl." But she handed him her phone and laughed a little. "I don't know if it does email or not, you tell me." She also slid the little notebook over to his side of the table and rested the pen on top of it, her hair blowing as she did and tickling his hand before she leaned back in her own seat.

"I'm staying at a little B&B here in town. It's really cute. But the kitchen only serves breakfast. So lunch and dinner I have to fend for myself and I'd love to have some company when I do." [/sidney]

[Adam Milligan]

[adam]He laughed, sounding sort of lost but then even on such short acquaintance Sidney had to be aware that Adam always sounded lost, sad, or both. "I promise, I wasn't trying to lure you back to my shabby motel room for wild debauchery. I'm not actually much of the debauchery type. More the type who dates the same girl through the entirety of high school and then is the only one surprised when she dumps him as soon as the college acceptance letters come through type." For a miracle there was nothing bitter in his voice as he said it. If anything maybe a bit of fondness in his tone. Really, taken in perspective the whole Jennie thing hadn't been that big a deal. And hey, at least she'd dumped him in time to ask Kristin McGee to prom and that had been...

Focus, Milligan.

"But sure, lunch would be good. Believe it or not, I actually found a really good Mongolian Barbecue place just a couple miles east of here if you're into that? It's right off 540, easy to find." He'd probably want to try and get his hands on a car. Maybe he'd even buy one, he had a couple grand socked away against the moment when he knew he'd be found and have to run for it again. He could hit Craigslist, there were always used cars for sale in a college town. Find a private buyer and he wouldn't have to sweat the whole 'legal identity' thing too badly. The ID he was currently using was an altered Montana drivers license, as Montana and Missouri IDs were notoriously easy to fake up. He was still putting together an order for a website he'd found that honest to Christ sold flat-out fake IDs online. They even had a decent rep, at least in the underground forums he'd checked out. But the faked license would get him past a private seller, he was pretty sure, and it was about time to stop being dependent on the bus. Of course, he had to just hope that he didn't start hallucinating and drive straight off the side of the road. Hrm. Maybe he'd rethink the car thing later.[/adam]