ArchivedLogs:Vignette - In Darkness

Vignette - In Darkness
Dramatis Personae Dusk
In Absentia	March 10, 2015 (Part of the future past TP.)
Location <NYC> {Geekhaus} - Harbor Commons - Lower East Side
There's an open airy feel to the floorplan of this unit. The door opens up into a wide expanse of common space that is not so much divided up into rooms as it is simply multipurposed. Ash-grey resin flooring underfoot runs up against the paler grey of the exposed stone in the walls; between the stone support there are wide floor-to-ceiling windows looking out at the river on one side of the home and the Commons' central yard on the other. Half of the space has a ceiling at one-floor height, though half of the space is left open with a balcony up on the second floor overlooking the living space below. A slatted stairway heads up to the second floor balcony; on the other side of the room, a fireman's pole running straight down the the basement provides a quicker way /down/. The wide open space here is combination living and dining room; near the windows there are a pair of couches and large armchair around a wide coffeetable; further off a steel-and-glass dining table is surrounded by eight tall black chairs. A full bathroom behind the stairway is done up in dark granite; the glass-doored bathtub/shower is rather expansively large. The kitchen is tucked off in back, beneath the half-height ceiling; in here the appliances and cabinets and shelving recessed into the wall are in brushed steel, wide grey sweeps of granite countertops running around the edge of the room and a large central island holding stoves and oven and deep double sink. Adjacent to the kitchen, beneath the ceiling as well, is a sitting area structured largely around the enormous television against one wall, a wealth of video games for a number of consoles held on the shelves around the television. Crates and beanbags and one low futon folded against the floor are arranged in good viewing distance; opposite the television, a sturdy large pen built out of wood shrines a couch amid a sea of brightly colorful playpen balls. A door in one wall opens up to the apartment next door; a door opposite leads down to the basement. There's a soft flap of wings out on the upstairs balcony, a quiet creak of rubber sealing as the glass door slides open to let Dusk back inside. The weather is mild enough; he's not entirely dressed for cold. A puffy vest over long-sleeved black tee, jeans, boots; the fleece-band earmuffs wrapped around his ears are a mild concession to the fact that it is in fact still nominally winter. He does not bother turning on lights, as he moves through his darkened room; between night-adapted vision and the quiet clicking of echolocation it has been quite some while since the lights in this house were even necessary. Another flap, a thud of boots, and he's dropped down from second floor to first; wings help with skipping the stairs. He slips through the living room on autopilot -- night-vision and echolocation aren't even necessary when nothing down here ever changes. It's been quite some time since any of his furniture moved from where it's been gathering dust. By the time he makes it to the kitchen the refrigerator light when he opens the door stings bright against his eyes. He looks away reflexively, wings tightening against his back at the brighter flash. The fridge is bare, neat-clean-empty save for a number of plastic packets on the top shelf, dark and red. He nabs one, closes the door again quickly. On the return trip he meanders, on his way back towards the stairs. His side of the doors between here and the neighboring apartment have been locked for months; even so, his fingers trace, habitually, across the surface, as though feeling for the life shut out behind it. Opposite, another door leads off to the basement. It's been locked, too, since June. His wing brushes it as well, once more in absent unthinking habit, though this time there are only ghosts to feel behind its wood. He doesn't bother to heat the blood in its packet. His wing tightens hard in its pull away from the basement door. He sinks fangs into the plastic, the cold metallic taste unpleasant on his tongue as he tromps his way back upstairs, returning the way he came to head back out onto the balcony and shut the glass door on the darkness inside. The flutter-flap of powerful wings in the night takes him away as quickly as he came.