ArchivedLogs:We're Going for a Ride

We're Going for a Ride
Lock the doors and close the blinds...
Dramatis Personae Goblin, Parley
In Absentia	2013-04-15 Warning: cronch cronch
Location the road
Dim twilight makes every road in New York drab and isolated. A fine sprinkle of moisture is too weak to be rain, too thick to be fog, and immune to umbrellas. Parley endures in a dark gray turtleneck, black slacks, brown belt, brown loafers, with an added flannel button-up in dark green, copper and black plaid. And wet hair. Hands in pockets, kind of stooped posture at the sideways rain. He looks /mostly/ fine with the weather, bemusedly at peace. Except for when cars send up roostertails of /water/ at his pant-legs. That, he shakes out a foot at. Like a cat. Shakeshake. There are few sounds so at home here as the sound of cars. Like a heart, constantly sending wheeled, metal beasts to and fro. It's enough to even occasionally make people forget there are people within those vehicles. Take, for instance, the shining black car that's been inconspicuously tailing Parley for a while now, it too is filled with people who have their own goals and desires and plans. Plans which, in this case, seem to involve waiting until Parley is almost /exactly/ next to another large rainpuddle hugging the sidewalk before speeding up and plummeting its front tire down into it. A TORRENT of drabgrey water splashes up at Parley, amidst the sound of breaks and that same car sliding a few inches further over wet asphalt and halfway onto the sidewalk itself. Yet it never quite stops; Even as one of the back seat doors opens to let a hand - a claw? - LUNGE outward past tinted windows and straight for Parley's chest for any sort of purchase, the car continues forward, wheel turned sharply to force it back on the street again. Should the claws find clothing, limb or simply flesh? Which ever of the three will be pulled /into the car/. For Parley, it's a moment where it all happens at once; the wall of puddle water thrown up in a rather /pretty/ fan, edged in fat shimmery droplets, rapidly spinning where they hang suspended a curtain. He looks down at the hand - claw? - that's now connected to his shirt, sunk into skin too, possibly, he doesn't seem to /feel/ any of it. In slowed-down time, he has time to /look down/, to contemplate the snarled knuckles and all the complicated tendons pulled taut between them. His feet leave the ground, his arm pulled away from bag of books he's been carrying, leaving it hanging for a moment in the air like some /stood-up date/. Then the bag hits the ground, and Parley suddenly finds himself - well. Out of the rain anyway. He /thrashes/. It's ever so nice where Parley is now, though! There's no wetness (save from that which now drips off of Parley and onto some /very/ nice leather seats) and no more noises of a bustling city after the door SLAMS shut. There's even some nice, calm swing music emanating from a speaker installed just behind the driver's seat. Which, coincidentally, has been separated from the rest of the car with yet /more/ tinted windows. The interior- well, it's an interior made for thrashing, really. It's spacious, the seats and ceiling some nice shades of grey, literal silver linings around some of it all. Not that Parley is supposed to /see/ much of it, which is made all the more clear by the fact that the moment he gets pulled in between two rows of three seats each, another weight joins that first, unrelenting claw. Another one just like it, green, almost /animal/ in nature, aims to clasp itself tightly over Parley's FACE. Attached to that arm... is the Goblin. He's scarcely dressed at all, purple cloth draped across his torso in a /bit/ of a strange outfit, but it doesn't look like he terribly minds. He's... pretty monstrous as the moment, to say the least. Muscles wrong and tight and twisted under green skin. He doesn't necessarily have more /mass/ than a fit human could feasibly have still there but the humanity itself is hard to find on him. The proportions are just very, very off. His face - pointy ears, pale yellow eyes and a grin with way too many razorsharp canine-looking teeth - sits above incredibly tense and bulky shoulders, supported by a spine that sticks out just slightly too far and a his limbs stick out awkwardly for the humanoid body that they are attached to. Almost as if he'd rather be on all fours. Maybe that's what he's attempting to accomplish. "DOWN, BOY!" He /sing-songs/ and screeches all at once, in a voice that does not fit the body. A man, twisted. Curiously, Parley makes no sound during any of this; oh, he /twists/, disorganized animal thrashes that try for a moment to /eel/ loose, under a seat? up the wall? Through the floor like a spilled liquid? The second claw-hand adding to the first effectively locks down these efforts, and after a last slam of elbow thumping against the ground, he goes still. His knees are frozen half-drawn up, his hands splayed out against the ground, and suddenly his entire structure of weaselish-spare muscles and sharp bones twist up /attune/. Feverishly /attentive/ to the hands on him. There's a visible trash-fluttering pulse in the sides of his neck and the vein swelled visible in one temple, a shudder to every muffled breath. But, through some odd brutal discipline, his body is... softening. Slowly. Experimentally. One unknotted muscle at a time. And his mind? It was never built for offense. It opens. Absorbs. And the feeling is an expanded /invasion/ of 'Goblin', swallowing up his own presence. It would be so subtle - if his hands were not immediately /on/ him to keep his existence confirmed. The Goblin's mind was also never built for offense, but what it WAS built for... is absorbing. Uusually gradually and sneakily, bit by bit, but now that it is faced with an open invitation? Something topples into Parley's mind without the slightest hesitation; That same thing keeping him /him/ finding itself snaking in thick tendrils down into the empath's mind, barbed and eager to hook and anchor itself down. Whispering and pushing at that mind at the first sign of touch-down. Yet it remains confusing for the monster now crouched down onto Parley's body, and his pupil-less eyes narrow in a flash. Those claws, they twist and tighten on chest and face, seemingly disinterested in exactly how deeply. As long as they hold on as he lowers himself down further, Parley blanketed by shadow in the dim light. "WHAT'S /THIS/." Not a rhetorical question. He /snaps/ his teeth, in frustration. Or amusement. It's hard to tell. "OH NO YOU DON'T. DO YOU have any ideeeaaa WHO YOU ARE UP AGAINST?!" The car speeds on, meanwhile. It takes a bit of a sharp turn, but slows to a more respectable pace afterward. Cheerful trumpet noises drone outward from the speakers overhead. The inward side of Parley's mind is curiously soft, and numbing, with no more resistance than breaking a hand through a pond's surface and through into room temperature water, accommodating the invasion with the anonymous sense of a hotel room. Worn smooth and threadbare and tatty - 'fhhh!' he sucks in a sharp snip of air through nose. His awareness hovers near these sharp barbs, oddly... curious. And, watching entranced, he concedes further. Territory given over. In the flesh, his spine is briefly spasm-arching away from the (nice! clean!) floor of the car, eyelids twitch against Goblin's palm, a thin trickle of red trailing merrily bright down to his hairline when claws sink in, vanishing behind his ear. Visible beneath Goblin's hand, his mouth twitches, twists, and slowly forms a strange, unkind smile. And, his throat bulging around a thick swallow, his hands creep up, touching feather-light over the sides of the Goblin's arm's neck. With his eyes covered, he looks with his fingers, touching higher towards his face, "--I think." His voice couldn't raise above a whisper if he /tried/, "I could guess." Whatever Parley is doing, it does not seem to strike the Goblin as a threat. His skin is rough and /thin/, underlying muscles in a permanent state of uncomfortable flexing, like they do not belong. His mind, however. Oh, it very much belongs. It's doing what it does best with the portal is has been provided, spreading in a wave of hungry blackness, violently wrapping itself around anything and everything that it can find, attempting to obscure that which is already there in larger and larger strokes. Now is probably a bad time for that hand to head toward his face, though. As soon as the strange hands reach his neck, his head SNAPS towards one of the wrists in reflex, aiming to sink teeth in and /rip/. Parley's chest is released, now, but only so the /other/ wrist can be grabbed for. The Goblin is no longer grinning. He does not other people's games quite as much as he does his own. "AH-!" Parley emits a sandy-dry coyote squeal when his arm's bitten through, his back convulsing, twisting, cording up hard in every little length of sinew and tendon down the wrist the Goblin's grabbed. The struggle -- isn't reflected in his mind; there's a tremor, a single muscle-twitch in the loose unresistant mental tissue nesting pliant around the deep spears spreading through his mind, a ripple of breathless proto-thoughts throbbing in livid red 'pain. pain. pain.' And, with them, eclipsing, something darker. An incinerating, careless curiosity tanged in ash and something... excited? Amused? Flippant? '-harder.' The thrashing slows, his arms caught, blood trickling lazily down to make a wild spiral around his upper arm, looping around his elbow like a candy cane. And Parley is making rough, dry-grass-rustling laugh sounds, with each spasmy breath, easing back into a forced relaxation. Of all the questions he could ask, what he seems most interested in is: "Is this what you do, then?" And his mind coils intentionally /tighter/ around the Goblin's. It's the sense of being tucked in cozily. Made at home. "--/amazing/." The car takes another turn-- again, brief, again, sharp. The Goblin braces himself against the momentum, pressing further down onto Parley's bloodied form. This involves pressing Parley's grabbed wrist toward him and downward, not a movement the arm's socket should allow easily, if at all. His teeth /clamp/ down on torn flesh. Not to hold, but to /chew/. These movements are not calculated, they are what needs to be DONE. Even if the curious mind invasion has left him a little... distracted. But the taste of that wrist, fresh as it is, prompts a maniacal giggle, layering over Parley's own laughter. Inside Parley's mind, the connection between thoughtspaces continues to cement itself with tendrils of pathways and little prods and pokes that search and HUNT. Until... that giggle manages to push through. What is there, some of it blanketing quite gently, pulls tight like muscles suddenly subjected to a strong electrical current. At once, a noise starts to well up in both of their heads. Inhuman screaming, almost child-like, before a plethora of other, but yet similar screams follow. Without warning the blackness relaxes once more but only to /spread/, rapidly, in greedy hungry DEMANDING pulses. The further it reaches, the louder the screams get. Through it all, a clearer message manages to pass through-- ENOUGH TALKING. Suddenly, the teeth slide out of the wrist's flesh. This may not be entirely good news, however, seeing as how his weight shifts /forward/ suddenly, in order to plummet his teeth straight into the empath's throat. The increase of screams and sound and invasion spreads deeper, deeper into this pliant mind, like a black infection. Parley's eyes roll back under the hand covering them, the line between the physical and the metaphysical /softening/ as he begins to be eaten, inside and out. The passage through his channels is a purifying process, /sharpening/ individual voices, giving them single exquisite moments of clarity, like fingers banging on piano keys against a white rush of murmuring voices, and amidst his animal sounds of pain comes a fractured-/stark/ reflection of keening laughs -- And a sudden simple /ferocity/; Parley's arm is released, and thus free to throw itself between the Goblin's teeth and his throat, that they'd have to sink into his /bicep/ instead, and his head turns to blindly bite BACK, with simple human teeth and the small spike of canines, sinking them anywhere they might reach, cheek, eyebrow, ear, EYE... That swing music? It's still playing. It makes for a strange background noise to this scuffle of blood and torn flesh and outwardly quiet mind infiltration. But something else has joined it-- the patter of rain, coming on strong now, not at all like before. A flash of lightning, brightening the interior of the car just as Parley manages to /bite back/, catching hold of cheek and, indeed, scraping past eye. The sound of thunder follows shortly afterward, sending vibrations through the car and those within it. Pain doesn't seem to hit the Goblin as easily as it should-- it is registered, definitely, but the comfort of knowing that what damage is done will be undone very soon mitigates it without conscious thought. The shared sounds - some memories, perhaps, even if not his own - explore every corner and crevice of Parley's mind that they can find, gruesomely pulling back toward their source. That blackness settling, aiming to stay. Forever. Or at least until the lights go out. Another flash, and this time both of the Goblin's clawed, crimson-dripping hands move to GRAB Parley's head by its sides, nails and all, his bloodied lips pulling into a smile, then a grin, then a laugh-- This is more fun than he anticipated. And after this work? Oh, how delicious his little snack will be. But then the thunder follows once more. And a CRACKLE of wood outside, splintering violently. Before what was hit by the thunder even manages to land, the car goes /airborne/. For a moment, everything in the car becomes weightless. In this moment, with a flash of blue lightning streaking through the car interior, Parley can see the Goblin's face clearly before him. His bloody array of teeth, yellow eyes, like egg yokes, lively big band music clattering around them with warm trombone and brassy trumpet, and the /car/ is slowly tilting to one side as it sails off the embankment of the road, but for this one moment, locked arms and bleeding, Parley and Goblin are suspended off the ground like a nucleus, unchanging. And then BAM! CRASH! The world jerks sideways and they're both thrown to the roof of the car, which is now the /floor/, and then the plush leather seats scoop them up! And they're almost comfortable except that they're then thrown forward against the window separating the back of the car with the driver in the front. Glass /explodes/ into the cab. Through the breaking windows, rain pours in, sparkly glittery shards of broken glass pour with it, letting in solid gray light and the flash-vision of a tree fallen across the road. Its base is on fire. Now it is the Goblin's turn to thrash-- in order to try and hold onto Parley, through whatever means available. His claws dig as deeply into that skull as they can manage in the blur of bodies and glass, attempting to pull the body closer to BITE onto it, wherever possible. But whatever his teeth manage to find, the thrashing of the car turns it into a rip and tear rather than a bone-breaking chomp so as to latch on. Another throw against the car's interior later and his grasp on the man begins to slip, though not without several swipes of his limbs to try and regain it, or at the very least /rend/ what is within his reach. The haphazard collection of horrors presented to Parley's mind suddenly comes together in harmony, giving one last horrendous orchestra's worth of auditory lashing. But these are not memories. The abhorrent collection of noises spewed out into Parley's mind, now, are the Goblin's own. Desperation, utter fury, and... perhaps a pinch of panic thrown in there. From the cacophony rises all that darkness, all at once and at an alarming rate, in a last attempt to engulf. On both the inside of their minds and the inside of the actual /car/, those yellow eyes open wide as they can, glowing doubly for a moment as a flash of light reflects from within them. Before they are suddenly and simply /pressed shut/ as he is hurled through shattering glass and into the passenger seat. There, he lies in a bed of shards. Face down and sprawled halfway across a torn dashboard, halfway across a weakly writhing driver suspended in his seat belt. Smoke wells up from the wrought mess that was once the hood of the car, swirling in between rain drops. The music has ceased. For a moment, there is only the pouring of rain over the slow crackling of fire. Then, softly: the pretty bell-like tinkling of glass. The slow movement of a knee dragging itself a few inches and then going still again, in a bloody tangle of limbs somewhere in what had once been the backseat. Parley’s mind is a low, fallow mess of shreds trying to pull (he closes bloody fingers around the bent frame of the broken window... and pulls) -- itself -- together, whole portions shut down, blacked out under the deep tar-tread Goblinprints left behind in long grooves. “Ngh.” Slashed skin shifts, red wounds opening and closing like toothless mouths, muscles spasm-twitching within; a tight flexing down back and shoulders muscles and a lurched hauling of bodyweight. A palm is then /slapping/ down on the wet ground outside the car. Like a birth, Parley emerges slow and stiff into the rainy world wet, bloody and gasping, trailing shreds of clothing and skin and /mind/, and then lies there. The car is turned over in a ditch, dead winter grass sheltering small poking tongues of bright green; above is a turbulent iron sky, cracking another gunshot of thunder, followed almost instantly by funhouse lightning. The rain pours sideways, adding an electrical smell to the smoke that continues to rise up from under the car’s hood. The city, tall silhouettes partly hidden behind low clouds, looms in the distance, beyond a rows of trees. Parley rolls onto his stomach, his face mashed into the mud where he /sets/ it because he’s just not worried about it right now. And drags his feet under him. Pushes hands against the ground. And shoves himself to his feet. He fixes his eyes on those tree. And he begins to WALK. Smoke continues to rise, filling up the overturned car and spilling out of windows. Other movement is sorely lacking from within the vehicle, but another sound joins the fray-- "H-help...!" The driver. He manages only a single word, panic-stricken, before his lungs fill up with smoke. The car's twisted metal creaks just slightly as he attempts to push free, but freedom comes with a price. Though what follows tears the seatbelts off of him, it is probably not what he had in mind - an explosion warps the car further, spewing flames from the front and back of the vehicle almost simultaneously, blackening its insides. Though the explosion itself is brief, flames take over its role of destruction. Sheltered from the rain, the fire swallows up anything inside still left unburnt. Speaking of which... "... HhhhaaaaAAAAAAaaaAA/AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA/." A voice manages to /wrangle/ its way out from a throat, preceded by noises of heavy, slow dragging. The Goblin emerges, too, from the front of the car. Twitchily, moves ungainly and strained. His face and shoulders are positively /riddled/ with glass, sticking awkwardly out from under skin and flesh. One shard is ripped out of his eye, now yellow streaked with crimson red. His partially blackened form is followed by another. He's dragging the driver out with him, by the throat, low across the wet leaves. Maybe he means to save him. Even over the sound of the flames it is easy to discern the force at which the Goblin breathes in both air and smoke in order to /screech/, "PAAaaAAARLeeeEEYYY..." The ripple of brief dry /heat/ pushes against Parley’s back when the car goes up, and with the conflagration rising up behind him in a miniature mushroom cloud, rapidly turning from fiery orange to dull smoky black, he doesn’t really cut the daring figure of a hero walking away from an explosion. He just looks grim and tired, an arm reached across his chest to hold down a flap of skin torn up from his shoulder. He’s nearly at the trees when that /screech/ rushes across the ground and shoots up his spine. And he actually stops. Looks over his shoulder, breathing deep, slow breaths. And meets the Goblin’s gory yellow eyes, his own livid, feverish, and -- again, that strange fascination, not inhibited so much as /fueled/ by the horror burbling up in his mind, around those lingering shrapnel-shreds stuck throughout his innerscape like snapped off mental /sharkteeth/ - it’s not impossible that their lingering damage makes a single thread of connection /sing/ between them, like twin tuning forks. He pulls a shard of glass from his arm with an unhidden grimace. Drops it. And then turns and /runs/ for the cover of the trees, limping badly, and dives into the underbrush with a last flash of torn dark clothes, shredded open to show tawny fur and rosettes. And red. Drag. Drag. The driver's limp body is hauled yet further over the wet floor and away from the mini-inferno that once was a car. The Goblin's injuries becomes clearer now-- he's breathing heavily, muscles contracting of their own accord after having been scorched, bruised and torn. Part of his blackened leg just /falls off/, leaving a gaping hole where the side of a thigh once sat. Much the same happens to a hand the larger part of an arm. He collapses, then. Yet the dragging continues, claws tight enough around the corpse's throat to force blood to bubble up from out from the driver's partly blackened face. "... What d'ya make of THAT, huh." The Goblin's eyes flare brightly around the protruding corners of glass, only to dim again straight afterwards. They /peer/ from above the collection of flesh and limbs that he dragged with him. "Two in a row. You're getting sloppy." There is a giggle. High pitched and wrong. Another follows it, louder, cascading into a spastic laugh that carries to Parley and yet further. But it is not drawn out. No. Something else follows. The sound of wetness and loosening of tissue and organ. Sinews snapping and bones cracking clear in two. And of the creature that devours it all.