sixthiterationlogs | [i'm not crazy, i'm just a little unwell]

Entry tags:

[i'm not crazy, i'm just a little unwell]

WHO: Major Lilywhite
WHERE: The fountain, around the village
WHEN: July 23, then July 24th - the end of the month
OPEN TO: OTA; specific thread for Ravi.
WARNINGS: N/A

[Arrival - July 23, Early Evening]

The first thing Major notices when he breaks through the surface of the water is the sudden rush of air in his lungs, making his brain vibrate and buzz in his skull. It's a feeling he hasn't experienced since .. well, since he was last human. Does that mean that he's no longer a ... ? Huh. Will have to come back to that one later.

The instinct to survive, gather his bearings, figure out his sudden location change override any inkling he has to focus on the very human sensations he's experiencing. He crawls his way out of the fountain, tumbling up and over the edge of it, rolling onto the ground. On his back, he catches his breath and stares up at the sky overhead for a few seconds before the feeling of the fabric clinging to his body finally sizzles a few nerves in his fingers, and he realizes he isn't wearing the henley he remembers wearing, nor is he wearing the jeans he'd had on. Instead, he's wearing a .. very vibrant pair of magenta .. well, for lack of a better word, scrubs, and there's something digging its way into his back.

He sits up, loosening the straps of the strange pack he has on to take a look at it before deciding to get out of the open and somewhere sheltered. No weapons, no bullet-proof vests .. no hungering for brains. There's that weird buzzing in the back of his skull again.

He gets himself up, slips the pack back onto his shoulder, and begins to wander around the town.

[From July 24th to the End of the Month]

Major's memorized the layout of the town; it isn't all that large, and from his preliminary investigations, it also seems like there isn't a clear way out of the place. He's mostly stuck to the outskirts, having found some shelter in what appears to be an abandoned cabin somewhat near the river's edge (he thinks it's a river, anyway). He takes the subsequent days after his arrival to do more exploring of the village, this time venturing closer to the heart of it, as well as exploring the river to what he thinks is the southeast of his new "home."

He eventually finds himself wandering into the Inn at the center of town, intent on interacting with and asking the others any of the question he hasn't already gotten answers to.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Major Nathaniel Lilywhite. It made him sound like a character from The Mikado or Pirates of Penzance or some other G&S operetta. Maybe that explained why he seemed so good-humored for a zombie or human being. With a name like that, it was probably a survival mechanism.

Sam gave him a smile. "My name is Sam," she said, because manners were a thing. "Samantha, if you wanna be formal but...don't be formal."

She actually had no idea where the name had come from. She'd had it all through foster care and it wasn't like Robert and Anne were gonna change it after adopting her. She was nine, for fuck's sake.

"Sam," he says, tensing up his lips as he glances down to the ground as though he's upset and contemplating his entire existence. "Just ... Sam. Much normal. Much regular." He nods, like of course she has a regular name, pausing for a moment before looking back up at her. "What's it like? Having such a normal name? Having people just go, 'Oh, Sam, it's nice to meet you?' instead of 'What the hell kind of name is Major, Major?' Which - I'm not angry about, by the way," he adds on as an afterthought, laughing good-naturedly. "I tried going by my middle name for a couple of years in high school, but it didn't really stick. I never answered to it, so it didn't really work."

Sam tilted her head to a playful angle. "I imagine," she said, "it's sort of like having a normal hair color." She lived for the day, really, when someone ever noticed her for something other than her hair. Her eyes. Her lips. Her tits.

Anything.

"I can't say I've ever put a lot of thought into it," she continued, shrugging a little. "Although, I've occasionally considered changing my name to Sam Skywalker. So there's that."

"Huh," he says, glancing up at her hair. He'd noticed the color when he first saw her, of course, but he hadn't really thought much about it since. Her mentioning it is like him remembering it all over again. "I just figured you liked having it an unconventional color. You know, how like, grey and silver hair became a Thing? But for young people?" The thought and topic of 'normal hair color' makes him realize that, if he's as human as he feels, he'll never have to worry about spray tans and dyeing his hair ever again. "Side effect of zombie-ism is that your hair goes white, unless you dye it. I started getting a white streak, right here," he grabs a piece of his hair right at the front of his head, above his forehead, "Like Rogue from X-Men. But not nearly as cool and without the life-sucking powers."

Well, he sort of did have a version of life-sucking powers .. but less through skin-to-skin contact and more through .. nomming on brains.

"Sam Skywalker would be cool as hell! But then I'd definitely have to call you Young Skywalker," he says, imitating Palpatine's voice, "Which is either better or worse than Princess Sparkles, depending on how you feel about My Little Pony."

"I'm not that young," Sam pointed out. She knew she looked it. But that was just a side effect of her own former condition.

Which was definitely not on the table for conversation at the moment. Especially when he'd dangled such a tempting bit of information in front of her.

"Okay," she said. "I gotta ask. And feel free to tell me to fuck off or whatever, but seriously. What's being a zombie like? I mean, dude, seriously. Are we talking lots of grunting and groaning and snarling 'Braaaaaaaains?' Or more like the zombies at the end of Warm Bodies?"

"It's got nothing to do with your age, just like Princess Sparkles has nothing to do with Ravi resembling a My Little Pony," he explains, leaning in a bit as though divulging a secret. "One of our - mutual friends," Kind of a complicated relationship to describe, Major and Liv, "Who's also one of Ravi's coworkers was on some frat boy brain and, while Ravi was sleeping, covered him with makeup and wrote FART on his forehead. I got to see pictures of it, but when I saw Ravi in person, he still had glitter in his beard. Hence, Princess Sparkles."

Not that he really needed to explain all of that, of course. And talking about Liv, remembering her not being here, creates a strange sort of gnawing in Major's chest, but he does well to hide it.

"Uh, well. It depends. If you're just turned, or if you get on a pretty consistent brain-eating schedule, you don't really change much at all. Your skin gets really pale, you know, like a corpse. And your hair goes white. But other than that, not much changes about you. And those things you can cover up with some spray tan and hair dye. The major thing that's different is that when you're pissed or when you get beaten up or something, you go into like, full-on zombie mode? You get these weird .. rage veins that bulge all over your face, your eyes go red. You get super speed and super strength and are only barely human, really. If you don't get on a regular brain-eating schedule, though, you get more and more Walking Dead-like. Eventually, you cross a threshold you can't come back from. We call that going full Romero. Walking corpse - and you look like it, mindless brain-eating. That sort of thing."

That actually sounded a lot like a frenzy. Sam had been pretty lucky. In her oh-so-very-brief tenure as a vampire--at least by vampire dating standards--she'd never had the misfortune of going into a frenzy. But she'd seen it. She'd seen what it looked like. And she understood the danger all too well. Both to the frenzying Kindred and to anyone within, oh, a good mile, two mile radius.

She was pretty sure that there was a vampire equivalent for the 'Romero' thing too. But she couldn't remember what it was called.

Kindred had a fucking euphemism for everything.

"Okay," she said. "So back up the van a little beep-beep-beep and clarify 'on some frat boy brain.'"

Major's .. relatively surprised that Sam hasn't run the other way screaming yet. Most would, he figures, if they'd just learned about zombies. D-Day, the other zoms had called it. Discovery Day. When non-zombies would figure out their existence and, more than likely, try to kill them all. Apparently ... not a thing to worry about with Sam. Curious, he thinks.

"Oh, yeah, so another side effect of zombiehood is that when you eat the brain of a person, you .. inherit their personality for like, a week. And their memories, which can be triggered by anything. So Liv had eaten the brain of a murdered frat boy and behaved accordingly. Can be kind of fun, though more as an observer than the eater. Having to fight through and mostly failing to overcome thoughts, behaviors, and traits that aren't yours is pretty terrible, actually. One time, I'd eaten a teenage girl brain and Liv had eaten her dad's ... it was .. quite a spectacle."

From a biological standpoint, it was truly fascinating. Sam tried to connect the dots from the digestive system to the neurons, figuring that somehow, some sort of synaptic link had to be created to the zombie's frontal cortex in order for...

Wait. What the fuck?

She wrinkled up her face. "I'm sorry...you ate a teenage girl's brain?"

Kind of not cool. Solidly not cool, in fact.

"She was already dead," he quickly explains, realizing how it sounds out of context. "Died in a car crash. With her father, whose brain Liv ate. So, those flashbacks? Can be helpful for cops to figure out crimes, murders, that sort of thing. In addition to keeping a zombie happily fed. Liv was the one who started doing that .. saying she was a psychic. But since there were two that particular case, she'd eaten the dad's brain before I could have a say, so I ended up having to eat the daughter's. We found the killer between the two of us and the flashbacks." He winces a bit. "I've never killed anyone to eat, or anything like that. I always got them from Liv. She's an M.E. for the city morgue."

A morgue. That was actually a pretty clever hustle. Sam knew some vampires who used to do something similar, working at blood banks or in hospitals.

At least, back when there were blood banks and actual, functioning hospitals.

Ah, what a wonderful world.

She smiled vaguely, a piece of hair falling across her face. "So...you're kinda like a superhero? Major Major Lilywhite."

Crisis averted. Or, at least, a super harsh judgment. Which, honestly .. it's not as though he hasn't earned it, given everything else he's done prior to arriving in the village, but .. at least he isn't getting The Look for killing and eating someone's brain. There's a joke to be made here, about sustainably grown, ethically sourced food, but it eludes him.

"Me? No, no, no," he laughs with an adamant shake of his head. "Nothing like a superhero." A beat. "Trust me on that. If anything, Liv's the one who should be congratulated. She's helped solve more cases than I can even keep count. I just helped that one time."

It was still more than most people would give. At least in Sam's experience. But she didn't want him nosing around with questions about the company she was keeping. Or, at least the company she used to keep, before she'd become a weird village hermit with no friends, fuck buddies, or even enemies.

She really had to get out more...

"Sounds like this Liv person is someone pretty important in your life." A pause. "Unlife? Dead-life? The Suite Life of Major and Liv?"

She'd never been able to figure that one out for herself either.

"Ah, well," Major sort of laughs, scratching behind his ear. Mention of her is a strange, bittersweet kind of thing - mostly for the fact that 1. he'll always have feelings for her, 2. their timing was always terrible in terms of human/zombie status, and 3. she doesn't appear to be in the village with him. "We met in college. Dated, got engaged. She was going to be a surgeon when .. I stupidly encouraged her to go to this boat party one of her colleagues invited her to, which is .. basically where the zombie stuff started, thanks to a tainted batch of this hardcore drug that's been floating around Seattle. Utopium, is what it's called.

"If either of us frequented Facebook, we would've pissed everyone off with how often our relationship status changed. It's Complicated, to Single, to In a Relationship, to It's Complicated, to Single .. We would've been unfriended by just about everyone, maybe even Ravi." He shrugs one of his shoulders, letting out another rumble of a chuckle. "Also, I dig the idea of calling it the Suite Life of Major and Liv, though I'd have to change 'suite' to something else."

Sam nodded, sinking back against the wall a little bit. "I hear that," she said. Sort of. Sam had never had any luck in the romance department. In high school, she'd been informed more than once--and in no uncertain terms--that she had all the sex appeal of a barbecue fork. She'd cashed in her V-card with her gay best friend, just to 'get it out of the way.' And after becoming a Kindred, she'd been told without mincing words that no one would ever love her unconditionally. Ever.

Okay. Maybe she didn't understand it exactly. But if nothing else, she got complicated relationships. Even without sex, she'd managed to fuck up plenty of her own.

"Sorry for bringing it up."

Edited 2017-08-01 15:19 (UTC)

"Nah," Major says, shaking his head with a shrug. "Nothing to be sorry about. It's just life. Life as a zombie and as a human is tough, amirite?" Major isn't entirely sure whether or not he believes in soul mates (mostly cause it feels like a Hallmark movie to say so), but he knows he and Liv will always be in each other's lives in some way or another. He loves her, completely. Whether it be in a romantic light or in a platonic one, it doesn't totally matter.

Of course, if they can figure out the whole zombie/human-in-sync thing, and if Major can get back to Seattle, he isn't going to turn a chance at starting up a relationship with her. .. Again. Seeing as neither of those things seem like possibilities at the moment, well .. Best to focus on the here and now. He wishes he still had some of that Positivity Brain he could eat, if only for the side effects.

"I mean, it could always be worse, right? We could've started going through with getting married and ended up with a Red Wedding situation, so at least there's that."

Major was seriously nerdy. But that was okay. Sam kinda dug it. She didn't often get to deal with people who actually spoke her language.

...she wondered how his Klingon was.

That was an inside thought for another time.

Shaking her head, she offered him a slight smile. "At least you still have Princess Sparkle. And, btw, if you're gonna do that shaving cream in his hand thing, I want in."

"I'll always have Princess Sparkle, given that I doubt Ravi's ever going to get rid of her. He always says that it makes him look distinguished and gentlemanly, which I mean, I can't really argue. I've tried having beards here and there. I just look like a hipster who makes a habit of frequenting Starbucks-es so I can write my novel on my laptop in plain view of everyone, just to be sure they know I'm writing a novel. Or maybe a screenplay." He absentmindedly lifts his hand to scratch a bit at his bare chin, though a tiny bit of stubble has started to poke its way through, peppering his skin like weeds.

"Absolutely," he says, laughing. "How do we .. get in touch with people here? Carrier pigeon? Smoke signal?"

"I'm not sure," Sam admitted. She'd only every intentionally tried to get in touch with someone once. Helen. And that had mostly involved stalking her, hanging around outside of the butcher shop where she was supposed to be hanging. "I think we kind of kick it old school and just try to find each other. Maybe leave notes, if you can get your hands on any paper."

She seemed to remember Jude had been working on making some.

Sam pointed up to the ceiling. "I'm here, if you need me. Room 3. If I'm not there, I'm either here in the kitchen, or out sitting on a fence post like some dumb hick."

"Paper's .. not a thing here? What, do we use clay tablets and use cuneiform?" he asks, making a bit of a face. He glances up when she points, as though he might see anything there, then laughs at himself for being so dense. "Room 3. Sam-not-Samantha. Got it. I'll be sure to give you fair warning before I do the shaving cream thing ... if I can also get my hands on some shaving cream. If not, I'll improvise. Use something else. Mud, maybe."

He considers her a moment.

"I don't wanna hold you up, but - out of curiosity, feel free not to answer - what made you take a room here instead of a cabin?"

Mud would work.

Mud would be hilarious.

If nothing else, Sam started to comfort herself with the idea that maybe, just maybe, she'd found something of a kindred--not Kindred--spirit. Pranks, weirdly enough, seemed like just the right thing to make this place marginally less a torture.

Maybe.

She shrugged at his question. "I like being close to the kitchen," she said. "I'm a biologist, not a chemist. The only things I know how to cook have the words 'microwave' and 'burrito' in them."

"A biologist?" he asks, perking a brow. "Oh, is that what Ravi tried to lecture you on? He tends to do that sometimes. I just ignore whatever he's saying until he starts making sense again, but I'm also not one for the sciences." Not that he dislikes them, but throughout high school and later college, he'd been focused more on sports - football, namely - while academics weren't necessarily as big of a part of his focus. He did well enough, graduating Cum Laude, but he didn't remember all that much of his random Biology classes. "God, I could go for a microwavable burrito right now. We don't have those, do we?"

Frankly, if Ravi had started lecturing her about science, she would have gotten only slightly less peeved than if he lectured her about Star Wars. Combining the two of them would have resulted in a Ravi-shaped hole in the kitchen wall.

She gave Major a wry smile and shook her head. "No microwave," she said.

They might be able to pull off a burrito with the supplies they had. But it wouldn't be the same.

"Geez. Next thing you're going to tell me is that the Bubonic Plague has resurfaced, or Smallpox, or something equally as bad and equally as extinct," he says with a huff of frustrated air. "How do you manage not to go absolutely crazy without all of it? I've been here, what, an hour? Two? (Who knows, time is a man-made construct) And I'm already itching to kill some virtual Nazis in Call of Duty."

Definitely a kindred spirit. Sam was like a shark. If she didn't keep moving, she'd die. And this place had definitely been testing her resolve.

"Well," she drawled. "I mean, there's a lot of work to be done. Someone like you could probably pitch in with building and repairs or something. Some of the science-y types work on making soap or paper. If you can cook, you could probably lend a hand here."

It wasn't all that appealing. Sam knew it.

"In terms of extracurriculars, I'm pretty sure everyone is sleeping with everyone else?" She shrugged. "And I think there's a swimming hole somewhere?"

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