sixthiterationlogs | the road goes strange with faces new

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the road goes strange with faces new

WHO: Jacob Kowalski
WHERE: Inn / Around the Village
WHEN: March 22
OPEN TO: OTA!
WARNINGS: n/a
STATUS: Open

bugging out

Today's not really going so swell.

He'd started off with a pretty good day. The lineup had been around the block and he'd just hired the new kid, so he wasn't even run off his feet the way he'd been after the bakery really took off. In the middle of going to get more loaves of bread from the back, though, all of a sudden, it'd been like he got sucker punched and shoved down a giant well, water clouding up his lungs. He doesn't know why, but something about the whole thing felt familiar, like that wobbly feeling is something he ought to know about.

Near drowning, that's got a weird association to it too, but Jacob keeps thinking it ought to be ice and not water. Whatever's going on, he manages to clamber up top to a ridge, spitting and coughing up water before he realizes he's in a fountain, like the kind in Central Park. How'd he get to Central Park so quickly? How'd he get so wet? For that matter, where'd his clothes go? That tie had cost him a lot of money, now it's gone, replaced by clothes that make him look like he belongs in a mental institution.

"Aw, come on, not today," he says, barely keeping the complaint from his tone. He's got three big orders this afternoon, he's got prep to do for tomorrow morning, he's got...

He's got a group of weird little bugs staring at him when he doesn't exactly get out of the fountain. They're all grouped together, looking like little lights. The water sloshes around him from his less than graceful emergence over the top, now he's got an audience. Regardless of the bright things, he's gotta try and get back. Maybe if he goes back the way he came?

Only, as soon as he even tries, one of those bright little things zips forward, jamming itself against his wet clothes, which are the only thing that stop the little stinger from hitting him. Yelping with alarm, Jacob rolls himself over the top of the edge of the fountain, but the bugs don't stop then. Barely aware of the bag on his back, Jacob starts running as far as he can for the nearest building he sees, a big multi-story thing that looks like it belongs back in the old country (not that he remembers the old country). He h its the door with his shoulder, fumbling with the knob to get it open. "C'mon, c'mon, just open, would you, come on!" That's when he goes staggering inside, the low buzz of fireflies after him drowned out by the slamming door.

Pressed up against it, Jacob works to sling his wet backpack to his feet, breathing hard as he tries to figure out what the hell's going on and why he's being chased down by a load of bugs with a grudge. Awkwardly, he realizes that he ain't alone when he sees someone right there, so now he's dripping all over someone's floor and he looks like he escaped the asylum, and for some reason he can't place, this doesn't even feel like the weirdest thing that's ever happened to him.

"I'm dripping all over your floor," he says, words heavy with apology. "I swear, I'm not trying to ruin anything, but these things are after me," he insists, probably a little paranoid, but hey, are you paranoid if you're actually being chased?

foggy wandering

So, Jacob is trapped. That's not exactly something you wanna hear, especially not when you figure you've got a pretty good life going. He's trapped with swarming fireflies coming at him in a place that you can't get out of, but not only that, it's got all these faces he could swear he's seen before, but when he tries to remember, there's nothing. It's just a big blank canvas, waiting for a painter, and he's no good with art. Once he'd dried off, he made his way upstairs in the inn, picking himself a bed to sleep in while he gets his bearings.

Now, he's out in the soupy fog, feeling a little edge of panic. It's not like he was there for the years when they were using gas in the war, he got there too late, but this kind of cloud still makes him fumble, reaching for a gas mask that isn't there. He's got some comfort, knowing he can breathe easy, but it still makes things look like something out of a nightmare.

He feels like he's creeping around without permission, as if you need permission to be wandering around a little village like this. Every once in a while, he sees a little buzz of light and he tenses up, on guard, but they don't seem to care so long as he keeps doing circles of the main little fountain area, which he's been doing for a while, just trying to get this to all make sense in his head. He's so lost in his own head that when he turns to start the fourth loop around the place, he bumps right into someone, sending him staggering a few steps back.

"I'm having a rough day," he mutters, but he's contrite immediately, at fault. "I'm real sorry, I didn't look where I was going. You okay?" He might not have been barreling at anyone, but getting shoved isn't exactly high on the polite behavior scale.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sonny's been trying to avoid the fog and the fireflies as much as possible. The safest option would be to hide out at the inn until it clears up, or stay inside at his own house. But there are very few things that Sonny dislikes more than staying cooped up and immobile, and so he ventures out anyway, stopping by the fountain and the church as he normally does.

Though, he doesn't get too close to the fountain. Just close enough to see if anybody's actively coming out of it, and then he's on his way. It'll be nice when the fireflies finally go away — he'd like to continue his practice of stopping by the fountain with blankets and tea for any newcomers, as Riza did for him when he arrived.

He'll just have to make up for lost time later. For now, he's making his way back to the inn to see what sort of cooking and cleaning and upkeep needs, and comes around the corner just to run into a solid mass of person.

He stumbles back a step, righting himself fairly quickly. But he only smiles, noting that the person he's looking at isn't familiar, and therefore, has probably only just arrived recently.

"I'm fine, don't worry about it. It's kinda hard to see through all this fog anyway, right?"

Jacob squints through the fog to try and get a better look at the guy, still struggling to come to grips with what's happening to him and why here, how here, and a bunch of other things that he's not even able to process because none of it makes any sense, no sense at all. "You had this for a while?" Jacob asks, gesturing around him like he can dip his finger through it like cotton candy, but it just sort of dissipates and clouds the vision in front of him.

"This whole place, I gotta tell you, I don't even know what I'm doing here," he protests. "The fog's kinda second on my list of worries. What's this place called, anyway?"

"For about a month now?" Sonny guesses. It's hard to keep track of time without any calendars. They can keep a running tally of how many days they've been here, but it's hard to pinpoint exactly which month it is, and impossible to tell what day it is. They can only make a very educated guess. It's likely that it's heading into spring, given how it's been warming up some.

Either way, though, this much fog for this long isn't a natural thing, he's pretty sure. Granted, he's no expert. But everyone seems to agree that this is weird.

"It doesn't have a name," Sonny says shrugging a shoulder. "Not as far as any of us know, anyway. We were all brought here the same way, and we're all stuck here. But hey, what you really want to be worried about is those fireflies hanging around. Seems like their sting brings on a nasty fever."

So those were the things that had come after him when he'd got here, like some wacko kind of welcoming committee that kept trying to sting you through your wet clothes, no matter how much you tried to bat 'em away. Weird, too, how he's got this sensation of deja-vu, like he's used to being bitten by strange things before when he thinks the only time an animal has actually sunk its teeth into him is one of the neighbor dogs back when he'd been a kid.

"You don't got exterminators or anything?" he jokes. "There's gotta be something that you can spray, right? I mean, bug-be-gone?" he says, not that he likes the idea of spraying something to make a bunch of bugs drop dead, but if they're giving you fever, sometimes a guy's gotta prioritize.

Sonny laughs, and while it's light and genuine, there's a subtle undercurrent of sadness in it, too. Truthfully, an exterminator never even crossed his mind. Bug spray didn't occur to him as a solution either. It says something, he thinks, that the most obvious fixes for this situation were not ones he thought of. It says that he's been here too long. Since when did waiting it out and hoping for the best become his go-to solution to swarming bugs?

He's getting to used to this place. Not exactly settling in, but growing accustomed to a certain way of life. It's not something he wants.

"I wish," Sonny says, and even those two words alone sound particularly harsh with his New York accent. "At this point, I'd be surprised if we had a fly-swatter. From what I've heard, they'll pretty much leave you alone if you stay away from the fountain and out of the woods."

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foggy wandering

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bugging out;

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foggy wandering

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