Log:Shatterman

Shatterman
Goddamned Inception
Participants Jon, Dielle, Shatterman/Puzzlebox as ST	7 March, 2017 '
Location Dreamscape
It's a lazy Saturday in the Ihrck household. The hamster cage is empty, as Houdini went the way of all hamsters, and they haven't replaced him yet. Eight year old Bethy and six year old Mattie are off at their grandparents' house in Texas, on a vacation, which means that the house is /quiet/ for once. And Jon and Lily are taking advantage of that: she's sitting up, reading a book on one corner of the couch, and Jon's using her lap as a pillow as he dozes, taking up the rest of the couch. Lily's playing with Jon's hair, lightly, while she reads. And from time to time, weird sayings come out of Jon's mouth, like this one, right now. "Unicorns aren't supposed to like fries. Quit it!" Lily glances over at Jon, and goes from playing with his hair to covering his mouth with her hand. Jon not quite awake, bit her finger. AHNUUNGHNAUNNGH... nom nom nom. Maybe in the waking world he was actually eating her finger. It was likely. Slowly he rose to consciousness. "Goddamned inception..." With a grin, Lily pulls her finger away from Jon's teeth, as fast as she can, because that can be fun or not, but given his half-asleep state, she doesn't want to chance it. "Darlin', you weren't exactly a virgin when we met, why are unicorns stealin' your fries?" she asks. Pale storm hued eyes squint at Dielle.. or Lily... the woman he was looking up at. He studied her for a minute before releasing her finger from his teeth and squint at the offending finger. "How you know that? Pure as the driven goddamned snow I tell you. And I dunno. Because they're entitled to?" "Darlin', aside from the girls tryin' to unsuccessfully pin pregnancies on you, not because you hadn't fucked 'em, but because you weren't the father, you are just too damn skilled in bed for that to just be natural talent. That's training." Lily wipes her finger off on his shirt, and adds, "Pure as the yellow snow, maybe. I thought unicorns preferred virgins, though. Unless the fries are virgins?" But there's something weird niggling at her, during this entire conversation, and she can't put her finger on it. It's that dream and she's taken to immersing herself from the start. It's easier to just BE Lily than to try to remember Daisy in this state. Jon cracked a wide grin. Preening Viking was preening. Just because in the waking he never bothered to stick up for himself didn't mean he lacked ego. He offered, "Extra virgin olive oil. It's a good deal. Very economical for them. A two-fer." He stretched. It was a dream. Everything was comfortable when you didn't have actual nerve endings and the comfort was... a placid thing right now. Something was definitely -off-... somewhere. Not here but somewhere. Lily shakes her head. "Poor, virginal fries. Not even getting to do anything interesting before being boiled in oil and consumed." She puts the book down and starts playing with his hair again, probably to get the last remnants of saliva off. "It's strange, bein' alone here, without the kids, ain't it?" she asks him, figuring that's the source of things being off. Right? Jon woke and stared. Not at her but out at nothing. He had something to say about it but rather than answer he looked to her and asked "How so?" He wasn't one to just talk about feelings of his own unless stabbed with a cattle prod and seemed honestly more interested in hers than self-actualizing or admitting anything. Dielle considers Jon. "Just that it's so...quiet. No video games or squabblin' over who gets to play. No getting asked for another hamster. No...well, it's quiet, that's all. I can't get used to it, I keep listenin' to figure out what they're up to." Because, as Jon well knows as a parent, it's when the kids are quiet that there's trouble afoot. "Don't you feel it, too?" Jon was very still, and very, very quiet. He was sand soaking up her words like water. "I'm not Jon, Lil. You know that right? I haven't been for a long fucking time." He waited to see if she understood what he meant by that. Dielle goes very still, including the hand playing with Jon's hair. "I have no clue what you're talkin' about," she says to Jon, very confused. "If you're not Jon, who the hell are you? You sure /look/ like my husband." Unspoken are the words 'this isn't funny'. She was already mildly disturbed. Now she's much more disturbed. Jon didn't move and didn't look disturbed, or even the slightest bit upset. There was a truthful melancholy stare. That was typical of the pragmatic though. "I'm not Jon, I'm 'Dad'. Can't be... dad if there's no one to be dad to if that makes any goddamned sense." His brow furrowed a bit. "I don't like not being dad. Like my identity's stripped from me. Can't remember who the fuck I am otherwise and I don't honestly fuckin care to." That makes Lily relax a little. "Darlin', you're bein' a jackass. You got other identities. My husband, for one, and if you think for half a second that it's not as important to me as you bein' 'Dad' is, you're high. You're also a doctor. Dr. Irck. Who's pretty damn well thought of by his patients. Oh, and former Patriots linebacker. But I'm glad you decided to go back to medical school instead of stayin' a linebacker. I like knowin' your profession ain't gonna lead to brain damage or death. Bein' a dad is /part/ of who you are, not just all of it." Jon said simply, "Yeah but the knee replacement was a bitch. I just like being dad though. It's my favorite part. I dunno. That's it. They're grounded. They're not permitted to be old enough to go to high school. There. That fixes that." He shut hi eyes and stretched out. "Why are you asking this?" "Funny, I actually like the part of bein' your wife equal to the part about bein' mom," comments Lily. "Because they grow up and someday, we go back to bein' mostly Jon and Lily again." She shakes her head, and says, "Asking what?" Because she's confused, at this point, at what the actual subject is. Jon cracked a lopsided grin. "I didn't say which part of bein’ dad was the fun part. Part of that is you, ya doof." There was a sound upstairs and it sounded like Bethy playing with her dolls. Yup. Back to normal. Aaah normal. Lily cracks a return grin and relaxes, she'd actually been concerned and a bit hurt, there, for a moment. She bends over her husband and licks his forehead, before glancing upstairs. "That was fast," she remarks. "I thought they weren't supposed to come back for a few hours." But it makes weird kind of sense, that they just teleported from Texas. Because dream logic, yo. Dr. Jon was only half aware. Lazy Saturday nap was lazy. He did say though. "I don't want that to go away. They don't get to get any older. And who taught Mattie the phrase Y'all's wicked ah'some?" An eyebrow arched. Something was poking at Lily's senses. Dream Jon though didn't seem to be aware. If it was the actual Jon or not or... who knew how these worked. Not Lily, and not DL, either. "I think he picked that one up on his own," she replies, with a smirk. "I think it's adorable. Like Bethy saying "door" whenever we didn't lock the car door when she was a toddler." She leans back on the couch and starts playing with Jon's hair again. "I'd like t'know who taught him to say "fuckety", though." Jon muttered, "That'd be completely me. He also can say Goddamned Giants too." He stretched and fell asleep. "That's mah boy." And the house got quiet and still. There was something in the maternal instinct that lit up and maybe it was a draft or maybe it was something else like things being too quiet or... why was Bethy home? Something else was here. Lily is picking up on all this. And tries to wake Jon up. "Jon? Jon, why's Bethy home this early? Jon?" But she can't wake him up, so she slides him off her lap, gets up, and starts heading upstairs to see who's in Bethy's room. This might not have been the best of ideas, especially since her gun is in the gun safe. The silence was deafening. At the top of the stairs there was a door that opened right into Bethy's room. Her curtains were up and there was light shining down in a square onto the middle of the floor. She was brushing her doll's hair. It was a long slow walk up to the top of the stairs. The funny part is the faster she walked the more stairs there were. For all the world she seemed fine. There's a muttered comment that she really needs to start running again, these stairs didn't used to be so long. And /why/ is it so quiet? It's like the world's stopped or she's gone deaf and neither one is a comforting thought to accompany this damned never ending staircase. She actually has to stop after a few miles of staircase and take a rest. What she saw was brief. The room was impossibly grey and the door slammed and flapped though it only made the quietest of taps against the frame. The door bounced lazily open and Bethy was there brushing her doll's hair. It slammed again and there was static and a faint blurry image. Did Lily have something in her eyes? Why was the world not in focus? It slammed again. But now Lily was making an angry face at something and the light dimmed around her. There was a flash like the interior of the room was flipping back and forth between the positive light and a strobe where Lily could see into there looking like a film negative. Which spurs Lily on into action. She shouts for Jon to wake up, and there's urgency and fear and fury in her voice, and she's running up those effing stairs now, trying to get to that room and get to her daughter and this is TOO FUCKING WRONG and she doesn't like this now. Even in the dream, she's having a moment of 'I don't like this, I'd like to wake up now', even if the reality she wants to wake up to is the married-with-kids-happy-life-being-normal reality. The door was closed but not shut. One hand could easy breeze the door open on its hinges. Everything in the room was still after that last flash of light. There was a burning smell. Not that she could smell anything but she knew. "JON!" shrieks Lily, and keeps running, until she finally reaches that last stair. She walks to the door, and she's scared as hell, now. She puts one hand on the doorknob, to push it open, because if there's a fire, it'll be hot, right? Then she says, in a very small voice, "Bethy?" as she pushes the door open. There was no sound that travelled further than a foot. The room was eating sound. It was pale grey and felt sterile, not like home anymore. The doorknob was cold and the barrier effortlessly gave away. The middle of the room was surreal. Where there was a girl and a doll was a scorch mark in the shape of some arcane rune. There was a thin man, maybe a shadow person? Gaunt and translucent with eyes sunken into darker grey circles around them. He was clad in black shadow but was bare with gaunt skin from teh waist up with the same strange markings carved into it. They were a part of the creature. Long, almost skeletal fingers were wrapped around a slate cube not much bigger than a Rubik’s cube. Lily didn't know what it was. What she knew was her daughter was somewhere in there. She could feel it. The figure was stillness. There was no motion in the room save for the dust that caught the light of the open window. It was then the creature moved, gaunt features and cracked lips parted to deliver their message just inside a whisper from three directions in the room at once. Disembodied. His voice? Not his? Maybe this shadow person was the stillness. The language was that you know is being spoken but the words cannot be made out. Lily knew. He wanted her to know. And the words were only for her. No sound left the space that was hers. Eyes that shone like polished silver reflected in the tiny motes of light. "...yOu arEn'T suPposEd to bE here..." Lily stares, transfixed and horrified. She snarls, "Give me back my daughter!" even though the sounds go nowhere. He just scared the hell out of her and it's making her /angry/. She's about two seconds away from launching herself at him and trying to take the cube back. The boneless figure looked at her confused and took a step towards her. It was not human. Humans had a gait when they moved. The intruder bent like darkness around a beam of light. Pale, scared fingers came up in front of her and one word came. "...waKe..." And she did. The image of eyes confused, detached, and filled with ...emotion? were burned into her temporary memory. And soon, just a feelnig. The room was cold. There was a Jotun in her bed. It was a shitty apartment that protected her right now. A cool hand palmed her back gently; able to crush buildings, or just be a wall ablating any other incoming concerns so she could have a minute and deal with anything else when she was ready to on her time... Jon's voice spoke, "Dielle? You're sweating." She's also shaking the way a horse does when it's /really/ scared. It's damn near a vibration. She can't talk at first, just press against the cool skin against her, burying her face in Jon's chest. She's trying to calm down. She's failing miserably. "Bad dream. It was just a bad dream." There's been a lot of dreams lately where she hasn't wanted to wake from them. "God, please let that have been a dream." That last one almost comes out like a prayer. Jon didn't ask questions. He had one job to do. One. Keep her enabled to have the peace of mind in the manner of her choosing. And not fuck strippers. Okay two jobs. Large arms scooped her up emphasizing how negligible her weight was to him. He had mixed feelings on doing that but he was running on instinct and the instinct told him to be her body armor right now. The unicorn was swallowed by meaty limbs that pulled her and the sheet into his lap. A cheek pressed to the top of her head. A quiet gravelly voice rumbled, "...Hate that shit." "Yeah, me too," whispers DL, still freaking out. And too freaked out to tell Jon about that dream. Not while it's dark, not while that guy who took Bethy and shoved her out of the dream might still be hanging around. Maybe in the morning. Maybe when she's mastered the urge to start sobbing, which she's working on right now. Maybe when she's calmer. Maybe when she can tell him without making him feel bad that he's not human anymore, not really, and neither is she. Maybe when she can do it without feeling like she's lost a couple of children she never had to begin with. Maybe. Jon didn't know. How could he? Shit it wasn't like he was a psychiatrist. He just held her and said "I got you. We're right here, Dee. We ain't goin’ anywhere.'" Which begs the question of if you never had something you never lost anything. So how could a hurt from a hole exist from having something that wasn't there 'not' taken? Reason battling emotion. In the end the experience was there. Feelings were real. Experiencing makes something become manifest. This was not the take-away she was probably looking for. Not losing a child to a box by some shadow person separating a mother and a child. Not to mention the harsh reminder that no. She doesn't even get to have any. All of which means that Di doesn't really take as much comfort from Jon's comment as she normally would. And she loses that fight to keep herself from crying. Instead, she's doing that hard crying, the kind you do when you're grieving. All over the unsuspecting Jon. Poor bastard didn't know what he was getting into, when he let Dielle decide that he was her guy. Jon didn't say anything. Normal guys would tell her it's going to be fine. That they love her. Remind her that she's safe, or that it was just a dream. But this was Jon and dreams could fuck you up and eat your face and he wasn't ever much on bullshit platitudes, and if she needed reassuring about his feelings in regards to her then there was a bigger issue afoot. So he didn't say anything. His arms tightened slightly and his forehead rest on hers. The Jotun sighed. Sometimes it was just fucked up. And sometimes you woke up crying. Honestly he was just glad she wasn't fucking abducted by some shit sucking gentry or gentrified cocknozzle like last time. She wasn't safe, but she was secure. It'd have to do. He was on her time and she'd let him know what he needed to know if he needed to know. God being patient sucked sometimes.