ArchivedLogs:Scary Movies

Scary Movies
Dramatis Personae Alice, Desi
In Absentia	2016-09-07 "Wouldn't want to give you nightmares."
Location <NYC> Alice and Desi's Dorm - The Green House
The apartment is rather small, even by Manhattan standards, a common space with a single bath shared by two double-occupancy bedrooms. The furniture is sturdy but much-abused, though the current residents have done their best to inject some personality into the bland dorm-hall template. Posters -- featuring an even mix of films, bands, and plays -- paper the walls of the common room, and a bright crochet blanket consisting of palm-sized flowers covers most of the sofa's fraying upholstry. A length of green scrollwork brocade is draped over the coffee table. Soft round cusions in bright colors, each bearing a single white capital letter or arabic numeral, are arranged artfully on the sofa and each of the chairs. The two bedroom doors are labelled with large placards reading 'A.D.' and 'B.C.' in immense Papyrus letters above white boards ostensibly meant for leaving messages but perenially covered with doodles. The room labelled A.D. is somewhat less busily decorated than the common, though no less colorfully. There are only a few posters here -- /Les Miserables/, /Oliver!/, and /Pipin/ -- the walls between them covered with dip-dyed and batiked tapestries featuring mythological creatures lurking amidst Celtic knotwork. One of the beds is somewhat neatly made with sheets featuring a medieval woodcut-inspired map of the sky complete with fancifully illustrated zodiac and a moon with a pensive face. The other bed is hardly ever made, its sheets covered with many-colored stripes of seemingly random width like a rainbow barcode. It's late enough that the noise from the city outside has died down to a hollow, muted murmur, though the sugary pop music from the other room in the suite is clearly audible even through two closed doors. Alice is sprawled on her side in bed, head propped in the palm of one hand, long hair spilling down to the mattress in neat twists. She's dressed in an azure blue t-shirt that reads 'Water = Life' in wavy white letters and loose navy blue shorts decorated with a patterned print of smallish white sharks. A laptop sits open on the desk beside the bed, play a stop-motion animation of a blue-haired girl in a garden of fantastical plants. The volume is down and the captions on. "You know what would be great, is watching this while stoned." Despite the relative warmth of the evening, Desi wears a long-sleeve purple raglan shirt--the Cheshire cat print on its chest much-faded with age and wear--and black yoga pants. She sits cross-legged in Alice's bed, leaning on two pillows propped against the walls. A library book lies closed on her thigh: /Sunshine/ by Robin McKinley. "You might change your mind later. The last fifteen minutes of /Coraline/ get a /bit/ scary." "It takes a lot of scary for a movie to harsh my mellow, even when I haven't been smoking." Alice cranes her neck to study her roommate. "My sister's been sneaking us into cinemas since we were little. I /love/ me some gruesome R-rated horror." Her grin is smug and crooked. "You seen /Pan's Labyrinth/? Gave Blink nightmares for weeks, but I slept like a baby." "Oh, I /adore/ that film!" Desi perks up so forcefully that she actually bounces in place. "Though I haven't seen it in...a while." A shadow passes briefly over her delighted smile. Briefly. She fixes her eyes on the film, on the lines of dialogue displayed across the bottom of the screen. "Hey, does your sister /still/ sneak you into theaters?" Alice's dark brown eyes linger on Desi for a moment before returning to the screen, where Coraline's disturbingly perfect button-eyed Other Parents are tucking her into bed. "All the time, though she doesn't always stay and watch it with me anymore. She has to work a lot, you know?" Though she struggles to sound casual, there's a definite wistful note in her voice. "You ever wanna see a movie and don't feel like paying, she'll hook you up." Desi nods, the motion subtle and her expression pensive. "If she doesn't mind. I'm certainly not so broke that I can't indulge every once in a while, and whenever I go with my family, my older brothers insist on paying." Though here she smiles again. "Maybe the next time you're in the mood for a film and Blink has work--I'll go with you, teleportation or no." "Deal!" Alice flops onto her back and stretches luxuriantly before rolling onto her side again and pillowing her head on one arm. "I'll try not to pick anything /too/ scary. Wouldn't want to give you nightmares." Here she turns her head just far enough for the light from the screen to catch her lopsided smile. "/Ouija: Origin of Evil/ is looking pretty dope, though..." Desi is quiet for a moment, looking down at her roommate, bright green eyes steady and pupils dilated. But it passes, and she shakes her head slightly as to clear it or to dismiss Alice's concerns. "It takes a lot of scary to harsh my mellow," she replies equably, at last. "But I won't think any less of you if you want to take a couple of hits before we go."