aftr_stories | [MU] - FEELING LIKE A GHOST (PART II)

[MU] - FEELING LIKE A GHOST (PART II)

"No, no...no!"

The Storyteller's voice cuts through the inkdrop-dark, frantic and scrambling. A distant blot of campfire gutters in the far distance - far from where you are. The disorientation of the week preceding this one has translated into Mu, and everything is hopelessly out of place. The Storyteller sounds muffled, clearly addressing someone or something else, their voice cushioned by the uniform, void-like night.

"Stop it. Stop it! I wasn't gone for very long at all. You can't behave for two weeks? You have to make it all...all...wrong? I can't keep this up - not with what I've had to do since returning - !"

Gradually, however, the shadowy campsite solidifies into being. Or...a semblance of it does, in any case. Four glistening pyres rear out from the shadows, each glowing a different color. The strange material that domes them almost resembles worked steel, forming different patterns against their multicolored backdrops.

[ ♆ ] The first glows a deep crimson, kicking scarlet embers into the dream-night air. Its pit sphere portrays a crowd of people in silhouette, heads bowed in genuflection - paying homage to some looping, many-coiled shape in the sky above.

[ ♆ ] The second glows a deep orange. Its pit sphere is worked into the shape of a looming mountain, with what might be some sort of village or ruin sprawled at its base.

[ ♆ ] The third's flames are a rich green. Its designs are most abstract; the starburst patterns that swirl across the metallic composition of its fire pit sphere could be explosions, maybe...or something else entirely.

[ ♆ ] The fourth pyre is one bearing host to golden flames, amber sparks sprayed out from behind the shape of a set of scales nestled among a flurry of birdlike shapes.

Beside each pyre is heaped a pile of sticks, colored to correspond to their respective flames. The Storyteller sounds agitated when they manage to speak again:

"Will you let them at least make the choice I left to gave them?" When there is no response, they sigh. "If you can hear me...I can't make it clearer than that, at the moment. Pick one. Pick one, quickly, and try to get out before it decides to make things worse! Just add a stick to whichever one looks best to you!"

Unfortunately, whether you abstain from voting or make your choice, that's not all there is to this night...

Tonight's Storytelling, further warped by Mu's capricious nature, will likely feel familiar to those of you who were with us in December of the year prior. Only this time, you don't get much choice in what kind of story you're telling...or, indeed, any choice in the matter at all. As you wake by the Storytelling campfire, Mu shifts to form three separate events from your character's present - which is to say, within one full year of their current canonpoint - in the most stark and painstaking of detail. There is no altering the memory, nor is there any preventing it once it's begun to play. You will simply have to witness memories that are not your own this go around.

Furthermore, stories that take place in worlds other than LifeAftr will be, frankly, inevitable. Those memories, too, will be recreated, to be relived by the teller and lived by the listener.

While the initial setting will be familiar for oldcomers, and newcomers will recognize it from the introduction they received in their dreams, things will be far more similar to the memory share that occurred in December. All memories must be from within one year of your character's canonpoint. For questions, please refer to our OOC event post!

Even those who prefer not to voice their stories aloud are not safe this time around. The memory does not need to be willingly recalled in essence in order for Mu will shift to accommodate it in full.

Just like the last time this happened, all memories will be worth two offerings each, as if in compensation. So at least there's that!

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[Welcome to the Murphy's garage, I guess. Larry's here, looking through a cardboard box as Evan's watching him a little nervously.]

I swear, I have a Cal Ripken in here somewhere.

This is really generous of you. To donate all this stuff.

[Zoe comes into the room, touching Evan's arm and smiling at him. He smiles back.]

Mom says that your show is on and she doesn't want to DVR it again.

Well, tell her we're busy.

With what?

Your dad had a good idea for the orchard. [Evan gestures at the box.] To do an auction.

Evan's helping me go through my collection here.

[Zoe looks between Evan and Larry, her eyes narrowing.]

Dad, are you torturing him?

What?

Evan, is he torturing you?

No, what?

You can tell him he's being boring and you want to leave. He won't be upset.

He can leave if he wants.

[There's a slight incoherent noise as all three of them talk at once, but then Evan repeats himself, slightly louder:]

I don't want to leave.

Okay. [Zoe sounds unconvinced. She reaches out and squeezes Evan's arm.] Well, don't say I didn't warn you.

[Zoe leaves, and Larry laughs.]

Women, right?

[Evan laughs, a little bit awkwardly. It's clear that he finds the comment a little uncomfortable, but doesn't want to rock the boat.]

I know.

So, you and Zoe . . .?

[Evan picks up a baseball glove and inexpertly tries to change the subject.]

This glove is really cool. Wow.

[Larry seems to appreciate the change of topic, point at the glove that's now in Evan's hands.]

You feel how stiff the leather is?

For sure.

Never been used. You probably have your own glove at home, I'm sure.

Oh. Uh. Somewhere? I don't know if it fits anymore, it's been a while.

You know what? Why don't you take this one?

Oh, no. I couldn't.

Why not? Because it sounds like, I mean. If you need a new glove anyway . . . This one is just going to sit here, collecting dust.

Are you sure?

I bought this glove a thousand years ago for a birthday or Christmas. I though we'd play catch, but . . . It's just been in the bag with the tag still on. [Larry takes the glove from Evan, looking down at it.] You'll have to break it in, though. Can't catch anything if it's that stiff.

How do you break it in?

Your dad never taught you how to break in a baseball glove?

[Evan looks a little bit uncomfortable with this line of questioning too, but answers anyway.]

I guess not.

Well, there's really only one right way to do it: shaving cream.

Shaving cream?

[Evan seems incredibly skeptical, but Larry hands him back the glove and rummages around in a different box before he finds what he's looking for: a can of shaving cream, which he sets on the table.]

You rub that in for about five minutes, then you tie it all up with rubber bands and put it under your mattress, sleep on it. Repeat the next day, and every day after for a week. Every day. Consistent.

[Larry's rummaging around in boxes again, while Evan kind of just. Look at the glove he's been holding.]

Nowadays, with your generation, I hate to say it, but it's all about instant gratification. Who wants to read a book when you can read the Facebook instead?

Totally.

[Evan's reply is distracted, which is why he doesn't notice when Larry picks up the shaving cream and rubber bands, handing them to Evan.]

With something like this, you have to be ready to put in the work. Make the commitment.

Connor was really lucky to have a dad that - [Evan swallows, changing course.] A dad who cares so much. About . . . taking care of stuff.

Your dad must feel pretty lucky to have a son like you.

Yeah, he does.

Good. Well, if you wanna go catch up with Zoe.

[Evan smiles a little nervously and turns to leave, his arms full of stuff. When he's in the doorway, Evan turns back.]

I don’t know why I said that. About my dad. It’s not true. [Evan's talking quickly, nervously.] My parents got divorced when I was seven. My dad moved to Colorado. He and my stepmom have a new family now. So, that’s sort of his priority.

[Larry studies Evan for a moment, and then points towards the stuff in Evan's arms.]

Shaving cream. Rubber bands. Mattress. Repeat. Got it?

[Evan nods] Got it.

[It's been a pretty rotten night, all things considered. Memories of things that transpired in the Castle, memories of people he thought he'd forgotten, memories of mistakes he made and continues to make.]

[It's not really the greatest feeling in the world to know that someone else is having just as shitty a night as you. Tim recognizes Evan by sight, by now, picks up who Zoe is by observation, meaning that the guy talking to Evan with this...]

[Connor was really lucky to have a dad who cares so much. He cares so much that some kid pours his heart out, and he just regurgitates the same advice about baseball gloves. He cares so much that he doesn't bring up Connor at all, except in this vague, disappointed context, that Connor never broke in a fucking baseball glove.]

[Tim snorts. It's only mildly derisive, but it's still...he'd hesitate to call it creepy, Connor's dad's weird pseudo-connection with Evan, in part because creepy is a word he reserves for so many other things, all of them of the significantly more preternatural variety.]

[It just feels like Connor's the afterthought. Postmortem, only talked about obliquely. What a shame he never fucking played baseball.]

[Tim's no expert in fathers. He doesn't know where one begins to imagine what they're supposed to be like.]

[Given what snippets Connor's dispensed here and there thus far, he's not really impressed.]

Was he always like this?

He bought me that four years after I quit little league. I was fourteen and he thought we would "play catch."

[There's a lot of bullshit going on here, but Connor can only focus on one thing at a time. He'll deal with the weird implication that Evan Hansen stole his life when he died later, whenever he feels like destroying his life in a new and interesting way.

Sometimes, it's nice to feel everything crumbling around you because you caused it. At least then you know know exactly why it's happening.]

The reason it still has tags on it is because he never made time for me. But I guess when the person in question is dead, the only story that matters is the one other people tell.

Do you think he believed him?

[Evan, he means, though he's vague about that part. Evan. A stammering, anxious, but seemingly earnest kid, and he's seemingly achieved a sense of familiarity with this family that Connor has only ever expressed anger, discontent, and resentment for.

[He doesn't know enough to parse a judgment, one way or the other.]]

I think things look better from the outside looking in.

[Because he doubts that even Larry is terrible enough to scream at an effective guest in their house. Well, actually he knows that Larry wouldn't. It's all about appearances. It's all about making it look like they're a perfect family, even if they're all falling apart at the seams.]

My dad's a lawyer. It's his job to convince people he's right.

[It's not like Evan seemed to have much of a backbone to protest, in that regard. Or do much of anything besides go along with it. At least up until that last point, there.]

I thought it was a dad's job to...you know, try. But what do I know. [Again: dads aren't his specialty. He has no idea what they're supposed to be like.]

"Nobody gets second chances. If you keep taking shortcuts, you're never going to find your own way."

[It's obviously a recitation of something someone said, and with the way Connor is about things, it's probably almost verbatim.]

Big believer in "tough love," my dad.

[Doesn't seem so much like it here. Which isn't to say he doesn't believe Connor. He just finds it so curious, so strange, so fucking peculiar, that his disposition here is comparably so much more agreeable when he's not talking to his own kid.]

That, and just not talking about shit.

[Maybe that falls under the same category. Evan confesses to a missing dad, and he gets some meaningless crap about shaving cream. Evan, who seems pretty far from someone who favors sports of any kind.]

[Connor snorts.]

You know when he was arguing to send me to rehab the first time, he couldn't even say it? He was just like "We have to send him to get fixed, Cynthia, and looking at trees isn't going to help!" I'm not even sure my mom even knew what he was arguing for, 'cause he definitely didn't get what he wanted.

Fixed could mean anything.

[Hell, Tim was sent away to get fixed. Fixed in the fucking head, because he was just born a little too broken for anyone's tastes. Couldn't function.]

Great way for him to put it.

Yeah, I only know what he wanted 'cause he handed me a pamphlet for a rehab program and offered me a hundred bucks if I agreed to go.

[Which, like. In retrospect, that was a wild and stupid choice because 100% Connor would have just used the money to buy more weed and that's like the opposite of what Larry wanted so. There's that.]

Guess it took him some time to bother trying.

[So far, he's not sold on the concept of fathers. Nothing about this changes his mind, see.]

He's usually quicker about it if he thinks it benefits him. So you know, he never missed Zoe's jazz band recitals but me? Dividends were too low to bother until I was negatively impacting him.

[He stopped submitting to art shows after the first three, none of which his father could be assed to show up to. At that point, the message had been clear: accomplishments only mattered if they could get you into Harvard.]

And he thought you'd want to learn to play baseball.

[Heaviness, bitterness, eyes sliding over the dream-fire guttering in the metaphysical campsite. Familiar weight. New direction. It's always handy to try new things.]

Or...hoped, I guess.

Wanted.

[There's a certain emphasis on the word that Connor's sure Tim won't understand, but it leals through anyway. He didn't play sports for him, every effort he made in that category was in a desperate attempt to please his father. He learned how to catch. He learned to swim. He tried, with increasing desperation to do anything to make up for the things about him that didn't quite match up to his father's expectations.

After a certain point, though, he realized it wasn't worth trying at all.]

He wanted me to learn baseball, so I did. I played baseball for four years and he showed up to my games at first. But then he stopped, and for a while I believed his excuses of being busy but nobody's so busy they miss your entire season two years in a row. So I quit, and four years later he tells me we should play catch on Sundays. I told him I'd believe it when he actually made the time. He never did.

[But he makes time for some kid. Some kid who isn't related to him, and is just...what, spending time with the family? Maybe because he could project the idea of someone he preferred onto the kid. Or maybe because the kid in question was too lacking in a backbone to say "no."]

Sounds like your mom picked a real winner there.

It works out. They both would rather go through my shit than actually talk to me.

[He used to plant post-it notes to taunt his mom until she broke down crying, begging him to just talk to her. Then he did, and she couldn't handle it.]

And my dad's inability to see other solutions worked out with my mom's inability to pick a plan and stick to it.

[He can't even say he knows how that feels. He knows how it feels to grow up isolated, bitterly alone, but there's a reason he's not an expert on the subject of fathers, nor even the subject of mothers, really; all his experience is borrowed.]

[He understands sympathy, he understands it, and in most cases he's good at implementing it. But - ]

I'm sorry.

That sounds like hell.

In retrospect, it just seems fucking stupid.

[Like, seeing this? He just feels everything about his family was petty bullshit. That's what happens with almost a year of distance and removal from the source of his problems.]

At the time . . . well. Killing myself seemed like a good solution, so I guess that says a lot.

It always seems like a good solution.

[Maybe it's panic, choking you out. Maybe it's feeling like there's no fucking way out. Maybe it's an inability to really process day to day life, to the point that you find yourself idly just wanting it all to stop, the same way you'd want the drilling of a constant room tone to cut out.]

[Going nowhere fast. Go somewhere, even if it is just straight down.]

When you don't have control over anything, that's the one call that's just yours to make.

[In theory, anyway.]

[Turned out that's got some holes in it. Wasn't your choice after all.]

Yeah, but there's that, like. I always want to die, sure, but there's this moment when it changes from being an abstract thing to an actual option. Right now it's an abstract thing and I could probably hold a knife no problems.

[He doesn't mean to, but he instinctively turns his hands so the insides of his wrists aren't visible. Out of sight, out of mind.]

. . . But there was a period of time where I wasn't even allowed to use butter knives. If I wanted butter on my toast, someone else had to do it for me.

Hospital stay?

[He...he knows, intellectually, that other people have dealt with that. It just doesn't occur to him that other people would have readily dealt with it. Accessibly. People he knows.]

[It strikes him, belatedly, that he doesn't know enough about the people whose souls he hasn't literally shared.]

[Because he never asks.]

[Some friend you are, huh?]

Apparently one of the conditions for my release was that I wasn't supposed to have access to knives, so good ol' dad put them in the safe and kept them there until the swimming pool thing, which was when he decided I was just faking for attention and he put the knives back.

[So yes and no.]

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postictal - 2018-11-11 17:58 (UTC) - Expand

[Tonight is - it's strange, to say the very least. Every thing he recalls that doesn't belong to him, every moment spent occupying thoughts and feelings he isn't accustomed to... Well. He can't say he doesn't have experience with that, but not in this way. This is much different.

And this, perhaps, is the most troubling of the bunch; he remembers this moment occurring not long before he came here. To him, it's a warm memory, a moment where he dropped further into what he's always wanted. It takes a few moments to slot in that this isn't from his perspective, and that notion makes his stomach drop like an anchor.

That sinking feeling isn't going to dissipate any time soon, but this - he can't just let this go unaddressed. There's no plan to what exactly he'll say, but what comes out first is quick and panicked.]

Connor. I, I don't...

Why the fuck were you in my house?

[It's probably slightly more agressive than Connor should be, maybe, but he's freaking out and that's the thing he most desperately needs an answer to right now. Why was Evan at his house? Why did it seem like Evan had stolen his fucking life after he died? Why was Zoe looking at Evan like that?]

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[MU] - FEELING LIKE A GHOST (PART II)

ii. the more they are talking, the less it means to me

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cw: suicide

cw: same

cw: still that

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of course it was going to be this one

i still hate your new username just fyi