all here to discuss the fate

[coffeeandscream]

There's no doubt the murderhouse is haunted. Far from a rumbling, the place had fallen into terrible fact, and fact came strolling in with vandalism, disrepair, and condemnation ages ago. Seventy years, she's been in this place, and it only took twenty for the federal officials to make up some bullshit administrative reason to tape the place off. Since then, she's seen on yearly wanderings out, the neighborhood has gone bad. The rot began in her house and spread malignantly down the street, across the electrical wires, blacking out homes and dreams and businesses along the way. Twenty-five years into her tenure, she had to start walking at sunrise Halloween morning to even catch a car to hitchhike her out to anywhere like civilization.

No new owners in the house meant no connection outside. No wi-fi, no cell service, no kids delivering paper. The years have gotten harder and harder to keep track of. Something happened to the sky some years back; it never clears anymore. The house is always cold, unless some resident forgets where they are, forgets they're years long dead and imagines the place like it was when they moved in all those summers ago. There haven't been new residents in a long time. There haven't been new neighbors lately either. Violet shoplifted a crank radio from a mall sometime back, but no matter where she twists the antenna, there's no signal.

Maybe the world is dying. Maybe just California. Maybe something is finally taking the house, but it seems like this house is the only thing that's staying the same.

Violet Harmon isn't afraid of anything. When her mother points out the man lingering at their front gate, hovering in their lawn, she sounds apprehensive. It's odd. No one's been here for years. Nobody in this house is in the mood to chase anyone away either. (It's a lie; the other's are just as restless any given day as Vivian is lethargic now, sitting in the clean kitchen with her baby asleep on her chest.) Do we need someone to chase him away? But Violet is short on apprehension; he doesn't need to be chased away. Keep the others at bay--I'll talk to him, whoever he is.

So fearlessly, she bangs out onto the front steps, eying what can only be a guest skeptically. "Y'know, the whole home invasion things works a hell of a lot better if you come at night."

Comments

[coffeeandscream]

Her seared hand stays stuck to his chest, rubber soles catching on the kitchen tile when she tries to keep him in place. "You're lying. You can't do anything to this house. This is our home!"

[bubonic]

"You're dead, honey." No pulse under her hand either, and he makes to slide around her instead, a leisurely shuffle like he isn't dripping boiling water at the moment. "You're all dead. The dead can't linger here forever, none of us can."

His clothes stick to him uncomfortably, skin throbbing. He's had worse (hundreds of trips to Earth to start wars and cause catastrophe means you're bound to end up tortured and thrown in a ditch sooner or later, after all), but still, this vessel is pretty much shot. He'll have to get another one for the next trip down, and that's always a pain.

"Why anyone would want to stay here is beyond me. I'm helping you people, let me do my job."

[coffeeandscream]

"What do you care where we stay?" She shakes the empty kettle at him. "We aren't hurting anyone! Not anymore, not for a long time, so what's the problem? How do you think you're helping us, exactly? We lost everything to stay together, you can't just dissolve it like that!"

Like what, like the snap of her fingers here, but she realizes with the gesture that if he had a solution--would he really be in here, chatting? Violet peers at him, moving around him in turn. "...You really can't, can you?"

[bubonic]

She's caught him. It reads open on his face, the way he snaps up his glasses and tosses them on the counter - the way he drags his hair out of his face in a practiced motion, almost irately.

"I'm going to." Somehow, some way. He licks at his teeth again, strolling across the kitchen to grab at a dishcloth. It isn't going to help the mess of his chest and shirt, but after so many years in Death's dry, quiet realm, he doesn't really like how water feels anymore. "Believe it or not, there is a grand scheme to things, and this house isn't a part of it. I'm not trying to be a dick, that's just how it is."

Done with the rag, he turns and tosses it to (at) her, wiping his hands off on his jacket. The water literally boils off of it.

"You really think you want to stay here while the world's ending? Because honestly, you don't."

[coffeeandscream]

She tosses the rag, in turn, into the sink, demanding roughly, "What do you know about what I want? What do you mean, the world's ending, what happened?"