Thursday, March 14th; 11:58 p.m.

It wasn't a deep sleep that she was stirring from. A light weight filtering of drowsiness where she was one foot in dream land while the other was firmly set in the now. That awkward limbo that kept her tossing and turning, her mind running on fumes and her body feeling the sickening weight of fatigue. Frustration wasn't hard to decipher on her features when they screwed up into sprinkled frowns, all spurred on by the restless behavior she was experiencing. It was as if something wouldn't let her drift into a peaceful slumber, cruel and tormenting in thrusting snippets of a horrible scene from her past.

It had been this way for the past few days but tonight was different. Tonight was vicious in it's merciless shake at her core. It was hungry for her spirit. Starving for her soul.

Elizabeth.

A whisper crept against her skin. Fluttered near her cheek in the dark. That thick nothing which invaded her room and seemed unfazed by the sharp, knife like fingers of the moon light which tried so desperately to shed some kind of illumination. The void seemed to have none of that when she flexed up in a sudden jolt from her sheets, gasping for a breath as if the very insinuation that her name had been murmured strangled her.

Wide eyed, she clenched a jumble of blankets against her chest and strained against the vast black in her room, trying to hear it again. Listening for anything. Any sound; a pin drop would have shattered the silence that she felt pressure from, even as she felt the wild fluttering of her heart. It beat like a thousand fists banging at the architecture of her sternum, flooding her head with the startled drumming of her anxiety.

It felt as if she had been poised like a shocked prisoner in that bed for more than a handful of minutes. As some time slipped by, so did her pulse. It dulled when she rubbed both palms across her face, smoothing down some of her hair, stroking at her bare shoulders to calm her untamed imagination.

It was a quick slant to the side so she could click on the bed side lamp that burst a blinding shade of yellow-white into the room. An artificial guardian that chased out the dark. Her hands again cupped at her cheeks; she felt clammy, semi-sticky from the dew of a cold sweat. She traced her fingers near her brows and down the line of her jaw, massaging into her skin like it might help release some tension clawing at her nerves. She paused when a hint of copper swept under her nose. An aroma that made her mouth purse from a side effect of salivating, sick-like, from it. Her fingers rubbed up to her temples and with it was a feel of slick oil.

It was blood.

She had pulled her hands away to stare, in disbelief, as they were soggy in a dark pigment that bloomed into fresh crimson at the sides of her fingers. It dripped down like tiny rivers to her wrists. In an instant she was glancing down to realize that large bursts of wet and warm blood painted at the white tank top she had been wearing.

"What -- what the **** --!"

Blankets were thrown off in a scramble of her limbs. More blood. It was everywhere. Her sheets were stained. Inner thighs were shining with the essence of it. Breathing became erratic while her hands slapped down, inspecting with haste the areas that seemed to be maimed.

There were no wounds. No pain. She felt the braille of her scars but there was no tenderness. Nothing to signal that she had been hurt.

" -- what -- what --", she stuttered to herself, fleeing the scene of the bed to stumble-rush into the bathroom. Blood stained the wall when the light switch was flicked on. Water rushed into the sink, tepid at first until it warmed up.

Her mind was racing just like the very battle rhythm of her heart. Concerns were replaced by utter chaos; she was brought back to that hotel room of pure horror. Of what Hell had to be like. She was splashing all she could to her face, trying with desperation to clean off the streaks of red she had unknowingly painted on herself.

"Hello, love."

That voice came from behind her. Ghost thin in it's echo but gutteral enough to warrant attention. It froze her in place; her body locked up with her hunched over the sink, unwilling to respond to the small scream inside her head. Every hair rose, her skin riddled in goose bumps. The paralysis was slow to melt away when she inched her head up to glimpse into the fog outlined mirror.

Jack grinned back at her. His appearance was sallow enough to be considered grotesque. Lips a thin, purple-black trail of ink that pulled away from grime lined teeth. A bullet hole just to the left of his skull was corroded and moss-green, sprouting vile ebony lines that resembled squirming worms beneath his cold skin. Three more holes bore into his chest and leaked some kind of fluid. Thick like crude oil but as shiny as obsidian.

It can't be, she thought to herself. She wanted to say it, out loud, as if discrediting the very sight of him would fizzle out the image but her tongue was too heavy to orchestrate anything. Dead, he's dead --

"Miss me, pet?"

Instinct suddenly flexed beneath all the frightened tightness of her limbs. She reacted a split second after he spewed that phrase -- he always would say that, every time he came back. It was a frantic shove towards the door, slamming it shut on the apparition, leaving more claw marks of blood (it wasn't her's -- was it?) to the egg shell of the door.

"Now, is that how you're supposed to say hi, Lizzy!?", he raised his volume from the other side. The door knob rattled as he shook at it, expecting that the lock might not be strong enough.

A trip backwards had her falling into the bathtub, taking the shower curtain with her. Pain spiked a flash of light behind her eyes when her head hit the tile wall behind her. Her elbow crash landed into the porcelain of the tub. None of it was enough to really shake her out of this nightmare.

The door began to shudder with the weight of a pounding fist. It was so loud; it echoed in the room and even rippled the mirror. It sent a few photo frames falling on the other side from the force of his banging.

"HEY! HEY! LET ME IN, LITTLE PET! YOU ******* OWE ME, YOU ******* ****! COME ON, LIZZY -- OPEN -- THE -- ******* -- DOOR!"

Booming of his voice is what smacked into her the most. Hearing it for the first time since she shot him. Remembering that slurred batch of gritty English. How he slithered it into her ear from behind. How it signaled another hour or two of unbearable pain, emotional trauma, utter disgust. It was what made her scream. Her hands clawing at her own ears to try and drown out his yelling, the loud thudding of the door as he banged both fists against it.

"JUST ONE MORE TIME! ONE MORE TIME WITH OL' JACK! FOR MEMORIES SAKE, YOU ******* ****! YOU'RE MINE! YOU'VE ALWAYS BEEN MINE! NOW OPEN THE ******* D--"

She was still screaming even though the noise level had dropped tremendously. The door was silent, as was whatever lay on the other side of it. Warm tears were blinked away when she dug up enough courage to try opening her eyes, slow and mottled with fear. Her hands fell away from her skull only after another minute of the quiet which reigned supreme.

Blood -- there was none. It was gone. Vaporized in the few moments that transpired after everything had become eerily calm. She pulled at her top, skimmed her bare hands near her thighs. Nothing. Not a single drop.

Unable to really catch her breath, she sobbed out a fit of dizzy insanity. The world never seemed so quiet just then when she braved movement out of the tub. Shower curtain crinkled under her weight and with the clumsy motions she operated with. Once she made it to the door was when her fingers shakily dawned on the knob, seizing it with a white knuckled grip that surprised even her. Forehead to the wooden barrier, the only thing that separated her from the gruesome entity she had come into contact with.

One, two, three --, she counted with her forehead pressed to the door and her eyes burning with all the tears that still threatened to blind her. As quietly as she could, she unlocked it and pulled it open just a sliver, shivering within that small space that granted her some sight of the room.

There was no movement. No silhouette of a body. It was the pawing of a grey cat that came sweeping into the crevice that jolted her some. Trouble shoved the mass of his figure into the bathroom to swarm around her ankles, purring loudly as if this sonnet would help diminish some of her trepidation.

(Part of this playable: http://rdi.dragonsmark.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=25150)

Sunday, March 17; 10:48 p.m.

Her options were counted off in her head the entire cab ride to the notorious Inn. She watched the world pass by in a blur of lights and buildings while navigating in the urban belly, but nothing kept her from listing every bit of her problem. The entire situation, in all it's eerie glory, had backed her into a corner.

Explaining it to Ford would have exposed some of her more skeptical qualities; the silver lining of her self diagnoses was not so treasured. It was a cowardly type of move, to keep him in the dark, but the light he offered her was too priceless to subject to this mess. She wasn't willing to throw it all away, to tell him all her dirty secrets, because of a black-hearted jackal from the past.

Others were thought of, too; Jackie, Ben, Jane, Nigel, even Lucy who she had not spoken to in what felt like ages since the confession, but none of them seemed to be what she needed. What she wanted. She wanted someone who would be savagely honest, who wouldn't sugar coat the cataclysmic event.

She needed a war-wraith to battle a ghost.

Thanks was murmured, crusted over with her delirium, and she spilled away from the cab. It was with a hurried fumble of her own feet that she burrowed into the gap of the door. Lights, sounds, the very people which filtered here -- none was really noticed, or paid mind to. None of it seemed important.

Folded, crinkled, hand written in city calligraphy. The note was taped to the bottom of a hidden bottle. Stolichnaya vodka; she remembered amid all the random happen-chance meetings that it was a preferred vice for Evander.

She felt a slice of uncertainty, a smidgen of guilt; she didn't know him well enough to consider him an ally, but their moments were shared with a genuine interest. One that wasn't hindered by the social structure of simply playing nice. Once the message was left was when she evacuated the Inn. There was a small bit of hope that maybe tonight she could crawl beneath Fords shadow and cling to him for stability.

Evander-

I didn't know the best way to get a hold of you. This seemed to be my best chance. Please, if you can, if you get the chance, I need to talk to you about something. It's going to sound crazy but I can't think of who else would know about this kind of thing. Bring Mesteno if it would make you feel more comfortable.

Sincerly,
Peaches

Saturday, March 24th; 11:35 p.m.

We shouldn't be here.

The white blurred against the black. It created a smokey haze of the blending hues. One pulled from the other, a separation of ivory from ebony. The entire world was oblivious to both; stars winked with out catching a glance while the swollen eye of the moon sagged behind a drift of late winter clouds with an ignorant glow.

Where should we be?

The black crackled. Heavy weight of it's mass twitching like static on the television. Sharp and rare was the delivery of yellow within all that nothing.

The white was quiet. Haunting echoes dwindled to a quiet hum of the nightlife. Crickets, beetles, midnight larks. A natural orchestra that was dumbed down behind the white's transfer of conversation.

Looking. And finding. Not hiding and waiting. She can't remember. She doesn't know. If she finds us --

How would she find us if she can't remember? If she doesn't know?, the black interrupted. It did not startle the white into backing down from it's conviction.

She saw you. You let her see you. We cannot play favorites, not now. Not when we have found her. You are playing recklessly. Letting your emotions cloud your judgement.

Both the white and the black fizzled into the back round. A chameleon blend to the surroundings of a realm freckled with artificial lights that spit halo's to the sidewalk. Cars swam up and down a river of asphalt. The neon motel light bucking at the static the white and the black shed.

She's hurting.

The white sighed into the connection.

Hurting, but not dying.

How do you know?

The blacks question was eager. Thirsty for a sample of the whites theory, of the hope. The black tasted despair, anger, utter need for acting on such primal urge. To protect.

It's not in the story.

Moments in this time limit finally ran like sand through fingers. Minutes that were months to the white, to the black. A stroke of the witching hour lured both the white, and the black, to find refuge in the Walls.