The GarouMUSH Log Page of Clemency Haynes

The three 'visitors' are shown to an upstairs room after some further conversation. The room contains bunk beds that don't look particularly comfortable or well-made. Clemency pokes at one of them thoughtfully and examines her finger for splinters. "This is a fucking freaky place," she comments to Reggie and Abraxas once they're left alone in the room.

Reggie bullies past Clemency to check the other exit from the room: the window. His thick fingers pull back the plain-woven curtain and he stares out into the night. "There're no streetlights. It's black out there." He turns back into the room. "And there's no orchestra to play suspenseful music. Should be one if we're on a movie set."

Abraxas's lip curls slightly. He gives the leg of one bed a light, experimental kick with the toe of his run-down sneaker, and shakes his head. "A movie what?"

Clemency looks at Reggie hopelessly. "Are you going to explain Hollywood to our metis friend or do I have to?" she sighs. Then without waiting for an answer she turns back to Abraxas. "Are you familiar with the concept of fiction?" she asks.

Reggie jerks his head towards Clemency, nostrils flaring in a snort. "You'd take that risk?", he asks, appalled, "That he might get star-struck and run off to Hollywood to be the next undiscovered star?" He brings his hands up to frame Abraxas in a picture, and squints one eye at the Lord.

Said metis' patience is apparently wearing even thinner than usual. Abraxas turns narrowed eyes on Clemency, his lip still lifting slightly away from his teeth. "Yes," he says, as though she'd just asked him if he knew what a toilet was. Any ire that might have been directed at her, however, is instantly focused on Reggie as he speaks. He looks affronted, in the way that people look when they're sure they're being insulted but aren't quite sure how or in what way.

"I had to ask," Clemency fires back to Abraxas. "Some tribes keep their metis locked up in a cellar and fed on raw meat. Well. Movies. You know. I think -- and from his reaction I guess Reggie thinks -- that somehow we've fallen into one."

The heavyset Uktena drops his hands with a spasmatic twitch and sweeps his arms about the room. "Everything's all--greys, whites, blacks, no colours, not even the people downstairs. And these names they were talking about--wolfman might be one of ours, gone bad, and Dracula, well, could be the real thing or some uppity motherfucker thinking to make himself sound a badass by taking that as his name, it all could be", he makes a vague wave, "But it feels more like I fell asleep in front of the television and somehow stepped into one of these b-movie late night things."

"Some don't?" Abraxas snaps. He takes a deep breath, lips twitching, and glances between Clemency and Reggie. "...I know what a movie is..." Said in such a way as to suggest he probably doesn't really. "Dracula, like the vampire?"

"Yeah. If we're lucky," Clemency says grimly, "the townsfolk are being terrorised by Bela Lugosi in a silly cape and false teeth. Knowing our luck, though, this is some nightmare terrain in the umbra where the wildest dreams of film directors come alive, and in that castle out there --" she jabs a long thin finger at the window -- "is the biggest baddest leech you ever saw."

Reggie pauses a long moment, hands frozen mid-gesture, as his mouth works soundless, then he pinches, hard, his own arm with his hand, and grimaces. "Okay. I'm awake." He shakes away disbelief and addresses the other two, with a short look at Abraxas, "Vampire. Yes. And a Mummy. There's a Mummy. Why couldn't it be a Pam Anderson home video?"

Abraxas's expression only grows tighter at 'Pam Anderson' and 'home video'. He says nothing to that, however, instead turning to look out the same window Reggie was looking out. "Coyotes..." comes the irritated mutter.

"This isn't an occasion for stupid jokes, Rags," Clemency snaps icily. "We have decisions to make." She holds her hand out and starts noting points on her fingers. "For instance, what the hell has happened to the philodoxes? I don't know about you two clowns but I'd feel a lot easier if Kenneth and Thomas were here as well. Do we try to find them? If so, how? And the vampire. Do we owe the people of this village any obligation to defend them from it, to try to get rid of it even? If this were a movie," she goes on, a troubled expression on her face, "we'd be noble heroes and say 'Leave it to us!'."

Reggie recoils from the snap, and starts to turn towards the window, only to find Abraxas taking up the view, and he turns the other way, towards the door, and opens it a crack, peeking out, then closes the door. "No one's listening on us", he informs the room, then impatiently clenches and unclenches his grip on the doorknob. "I don't know where the fuck they are, where the fuck we are. Or who that wolfman is. Maybe they're with him and the vampire, being told the people here are the real villains, because that's how a movie can go. Set people off against each other through 'misunderstandings'."

"It's not a movie," Abraxas points out, stating the obvious. "We're here to find a fetish before a Wyrm-tainted spirit gets to it, not play heroes." He listens to Reggie's remarks, scowling all the more. "Wouldn't that be just like things."

"And don't you suppose that the way to the fetish is going to require us to fight our way past all the bad guys one after another?" Clemency retorts. "That'd be good cinema, that would."

Reggie lifts his hand off the doorknob adruptedly, raising his hand like a kid in grade school. "Oooh! Oooh! That Dracula dude and his castle--he's got to have the fetish right in that castle! Bet you when he goes out doing his thing--uh, terrorizing the countryside and scaring the cattle, he brings back the best of what he finds right back to that castle, so if there's any fetish anywhere, it'll be there."

Abraxas scowls. "I don't know about good cinema, but it sounds fucking irritating to me." He leans against the wall next to the window, now and then casting a suspicious look outside. "So what do we do?"

"This may sound a crazy suggestion," Clemency replies, "but we're in a room with beds late at night, in a building that's probably the safest place for miles around. Sleep might be an idea."

Reggie casts a skeptical look at the beds. "I call lower bunk.", he grunts, as he tests if it takes his weight, sitting on it. "Hey, do these places, they have latrines or--", he bends, with some difficulty, to look under the bed, then he starts laughing. "Chamberpots!"

Abraxas crosses his arms, looking all the more sour as Reggie starts to laugh. "We shouldn't all sleep at once," he hisses. "We don't know anything about these humans, and they don't know anything about us."

Clemency bends over and examines the mattress on one bed. "Might have known it. No springs for us. Stuffed with straw." She turns round and her fist is clutching three pieces of straw from the mattress. "Come on, then. Shortest straw takes first watch."

Reggie, reluctant to struggle back to his feet, remains sitting on the bed, which has not yet collapsed, as he reaches out to pull a straw from Clemency's fist.

Abraxas also steps forward, reaching out to take one of the straws. He's rather careful not to touch Reggie's fingers as he does so.

Clemency keeps a grip on the final straw and opens her palm. Reggie's straw is longer than hers, but Abraxas's is shorter. "Bad luck," she says to the metis. "You first, then you wake me. Reggie gets to snore a while."

Reggie tosses the straw lightly into the air, and pulls his feet up onto the bed without unbooting them. His weight jiggles as he unbuckles his belt, freeing some of his girth, then he lies down. He stares at the ceiling a while. "I don't suppose either if you wants to tell a bedtime story--", he begins, apparently begging for an aid to get to sleep, then, "--but how did these movies end? Always with a happy ending?"

Abraxas grunts. "Fine." He turns and makes his way back to the window, where he takes up a post leaning against the wall, where he can peer out without much danger of anyone seeing him do so. Reggie's question receives only a snort in reply.

Clemency climbs into the bunk above Reggie. "Usually with an angry mob of villagers burning down the castle and spearing all its inhabitants on pitchforks," she recalls as she lies down. "Night, guys. Wake me when it's my turn, Peter."

It takes a long while for Reggie to get to sleep, what with one thing and another, but eventually the chainsaw buzzing of his snores fills the room, making it difficult for others to get their sleep.