[Sodium_noir] L'enfer c'est les autres

[Jennie Teakle]

JOINT POST Mitzie, Jennie with thanks to Liz :-)


Sinclair Party
Verandah

Jack, Simone, Christine
Enigma, Malkavian, Orphan


[Christine]
Christine opens her mouth to murmur some platitude. Then the wave of  
vertiginous disorientation flushes every sense of the here and now  
out of her brain. It is replaced by a glittering, fractured  
kaleidoscope of images and impressions. It is like stepping into a  
slow motion tornado of shattered glass, each shard containing a  
shining reflection of a different living scene as it twists and  
twinkles in free fall. Desperate for something to cling to, so as not  
to be herself shattered and lost in the chaos, Christine flails and  
clutches at one of the glimmering mirrored fragments, passing  
straight through it . . .

(Simone)

Ah, the beauty of broken chaos!  Glorious.  Spectacular!  Unlike  
anything Simone has seen or felt before.  So quickly it happened,  
this vision... this trip for the inner eye.  There was no time to  
think about it, only to revel in the pure, violent clash of visual  
and emotional calamity.  The chaos, she tried to soak up as much as  
she could but too soon they were drawn to....

(Christine)

She is standing in a large room, eerily lit, so that long twisting  
shadows lend it a surreal, monochrome clarity and distort the space.  
It is a paradoxical place  - spacious and opulent yet the air is  
dense and claustrophobic, settling around her like a heavy, invisible  
fog. It seems to press down on Christine, make movement impossible.  
She is transfixed, staring at a huge and intensely macabre sculpture,  
mounted on a wall. Many figures, human, limbs and bodies twisted  
unnaturally, locked and writhing together in horrifying anguish and  
despair. The expressions on the subjects' faces are all unique but  
each one is a study of agony, of a suffering too hideous to describe.

(Simone)

... a place that was dark and deathly silent.  Hollow.  The only  
sound the Malkavian heard at first was a woman's racing heart... she  
was holding this woman's hand as if in a simple handshake.  'Who was  
she?' Simone wondered.  Something had caught the woman's attention  
and the rapt look of dawning horror was hard to turn away from but  
she just had to see.  What? What could it be?

It was too much to take in all at once.  The mural spanned a large  
section of the wall and from this distance it was hard to see the  
entire piece without stepping further away.  Simone found she  
couldn't move.  It was like her will wasn't her own.  So instead she  
just peered at the mural.  Kindred, attached to the wall in various  
poses and dress, thought no one she knew or recognized.  It was  
eerily familiar.  She searched the face of each victim in turn,  
soaking up the image.  Who were they?  Why were they here?  What  
monster would create such a thing?  Her eyes were drawn to the  
central figure and as realization dawned upon her, she froze.

(Christine)

"Es fascinante, verdad?"

Christine hears light footsteps approach from behind her and a quiet,  
intimate purr of amusement, laced with malice. It makes Christine's  
flesh crawl and her stomach shrivel to an icy knot. She must get out  
of here - right now - because the owner of this place is here and he  
is monstrous and quite mad. But she cannot seem to urge her body to  
move nor tear her gaze from the terrible sculpture. And as she stares  
she sees that the sculpted figures are moving, constant, minute  
shifts of cramped limbs and tortured expressions. A living wall, a  
blasphemous, eternal crucification. At the center, an Angel. Trapped,  
screaming in silent madness and horror. Even in torment, she is  
beautiful . . .

(Simone)

... and there she was again, trapped in the long sleep.  Nothing but  
the horror of emptiness.  Alone.  No!  Inconceivably, Simone was  
instantly pulled back to her despairing eternity.  Impossible!  It  
was as if the time she'd been free was only a figment or a wisp of a  
dream.     Her soul screamed for release.

(Christine)

Christine wrenches her hand away from Simone's, stares at her in  
shocked recognition.

"That was you!" she whispers. "Oh my God . . . "

Reality smacks Christine upside the head. She turns gray.

"I think . . . excuse me . . ."

Christine turns blindly toward the French doors, staggers through and  
toward the cloakroom that is discreetly set on the edge of the ballroom.


(Simone)

And suddenly the black desolation was gone.  Simone blinked, rapidly,  
several times.  Where was she?  What was she doing here?  There, a  
man stood.  His name was Jack.  She'd only just met him... here... at  
the party.  Wasn't there a woman here too, just a moment ago?  A soft  
breeze brushed across her skin, ruffled his hair a bit.   The soft  
shadows of the veranda beckoned to her.  She was confusion... and it  
felt like a natural state of being.

The words echoed back to her;  "That was you!" Christine had  
whispered. "Oh my God . . . "


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