I Must Scream

Postby catch » Tue Jan 31, 2012 1:56 pm

Catch watched her with a wary eye, not understanding why she moved so stiffly, and fearing, in the moment that she reached out her hand, that she was angry, and meant to strike him for the way he had roughed her. He could not help the duck of his head, and the flicker of dull fright. But no blow came, and he tried to listen hard, tried to push past the constant buzz of the bars whistling through their broken teeth.

Hesitantly, his apple clutched to his chest, Catch reaches out to touch her, in turn, clumsily pressing the cloud-mass against her fingers. Only then does it occur to him that she is hurt, surprised and confused.

"I c-c-can..." And he stops in dismay, looking at Elliot guiltily. He had been about to tell her that he could put her back together, as he had before, but Ser Elliot said he musn't.

"You sh-should go t-t-to the Rememmberidium," he says, softly, and tries to push her, very, very gently, towards where Elliot waited. "Ser Elliot is a guh, g-good boy. He's so helpful."
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Postby Glenn » Tue Jan 31, 2012 2:45 pm

She didn't toss him the keys. She mentioned that he was Solena's apprentice. Grunting and injured and she hadn't tossed him the keys. Did she not TRUST him? The boy practically gawked at her. That had hurt. So Solena was teaching him how to use daggers, and... other useful skills. That hardly made him less trustworthy. It didn't make him someone other than who he was.

At this point, the realization hit him. An entirely different reality flashed before his eyes than the one where he ended up apprentice to the Marshall of Myrken. If she had tossed him the keys, he would have kicked her in the skull and taken Catch away from there, far away from there. It would have been simple and easy. He would have just met up with Kacela somewhere and handed him off to her and she would have taken him out to the woods where he'd be safe and people wouldn't be hurt by him. Renea hadn't TRUSTED him though, and the thought of that HURT. It didn't matter what he might have done... what he probably would have done. It mattered that she didn't trust him.

So when Catch said what he said, Elliot Brown, so recently a squire, looked to the Marshall with frustrated eyes and then looked to Catch. When he spoke, his voice was surprisingly callous, not a tone he was used to at all. "Catch. Just this once, since the Remedium's not so close and because she's hurt," and because you did it, he didn't add. "You should put her back together. It's okay, just this once. It's okay. Make her better."

And then, at that, the boy would turn sharply on his heels and walk off with this quiet quiet steps. Renea was right. It was her fault.
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Postby Caile » Tue Jan 31, 2012 3:00 pm

Renea didn't really understand what happened when Catch 'put someone back together' but she knew it was magic, and Renea didn't trust magic. She didn't trust much that she hadn't evaluated with her own mind, as poor Elliot has just discovered. She also tended to make flash judgements of people that may or may not be fair, and she knew who Solena was, rogues in general were not to be trusted, and thus Elliot was not to be trusted. None of this taking into account the boy obviously thought he knew better than her and was strongly attached to Catch meant he could not be trusted on that factor either, she couldn't know what he'd planned to do. So, sorry Elliot, on three counts already unable to be trusted to get the keys and then, well, there would be nothing to be done anyway as Catch had already stopped his assault and Renea certainly wouldn't allow a child in the cell if he was continuing one.

Distrustful of magic she shook her head at Catch and smiled at him, her hand resting lightly on his arm, the other raising to help unbandage the large paws. "I will be okay, you don't need to put me back together." She would get someone in to help bind her ribs later, the force had been spread enough that it was unlikely a rib was broken badly enough to jab at anything, she would be in no danger. She slowly unwound the gauze from his hand, rolling it as she went and humming softly to relax them both.
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Postby catch » Tue Jan 31, 2012 3:20 pm

As sorrowful as a loyal dog, Catch followed Elliot's departure long after the boy had gone, his mismatched eyes fixed on a point between the wicked bars, his lip trembling only once before he remembers himself, and remembered what Iron Shoes has taught him. The man takes a deep, heavy breath through his nostrils, steadying himself before he watches what Miss Renea does. His sore tongue rolls up and over his swollen, cracked lips, and he cannot help the words that bubble from his throat.

"Ser Elliot is my vuh-very buh-best friend," he tells her, anxious that the boy's virtues be known, though almost everyone in Myrkenwood could claim the title of Catch's 'Very Best Friend". Even not-Jirai, Selenthis. But certainly not Treadwell, though his intense fear of the flabby man has been directed elsewhere, and not Cloud-hair, or the Faceless Egg. "He helps me, you know. He tuh-tells me I m-m-musn't be so t-trusting, or-or p-put things together too rashly. But I'd d-d-d-do it for you, you know," he adds, wistful.

Then he must gape at his hands, slowly revealed, where wounds done two hours before had not healed a bit, and glared redly in his pale, vein-spidered skin, and - here and there - the smooth, glistening curve of bone. Whatever skills he has in Putting Things Together, it has not manifested itself, except that the pain feels so very, very far away. Trembling, Catch looks around, his eyes blank on the cot, the plants, everything exactly where it was before he couldn't put his Times together. Except he hurt.
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Postby Caile » Tue Jan 31, 2012 3:30 pm

"You hurt yourself sweetheart. You see why we put the clouds on your hands? It will help them get better."

She watches his eyes roam the cell and while she had known there may be risk in replacing everything, causing confusion, she had thought the risk worth the rewards and now was the test of that. "You were chewing on everything so I brought new things that weren't chewed, but I can't put you back together like you can do for other people." She wished she could, wished she could make him well physically and mentally but the only thing she could offer was friendship and protection and while that may be a welcome thing it certainly did not solve any of the problems that were occuring. She was human, plain and simple and had no magical powers with which to soothe the mans fractured mind, nothing that could help him see more clearly.

"It is hard to know who to trust sometimes. I think that Elliot just doesn't want anyone hurting you." She olds the rolled up gauze so he can see it and waits until he does so before asking him if she can put it back on again.
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Postby catch » Wed Feb 01, 2012 1:29 am

"I love Ser Elliot." Catch is, only faintly, listening to what Miss Renea says, and so only truly grasps the last thing, while the rest most percolate slowly through the ruined paths of his brains. His eyes quiver back to Renea, and he slowly nods, and holds out his hands again. He does not like the clouds, but he will accept them. Miss Genny had wrapped his hands in clouds once, too. he remembers.
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Postby Suede » Sat Feb 04, 2012 5:33 am

There were so many unwanted children in Myrken from the years of wars, famine, and general horror that tended to crop up regularly. In the case of one Vanessa Willers she was fortunate to find herself with two loving parents who doted on her regularly since her birth but three months ago.

Of course as kids grow up they tend to get more rambunctious and curious. This might explain the panicked scream that woke her husband and several nearby neighbors this morning when she found her child not in her room. A distress that would quickly spread to their friends as people began to search frantically for the child.

And where was that child? Why somewhere entirely safe of course, for nestled beside Catch, just out of sight of those currently on watch over him, there'd be the little darling herself, a dot of star shine for the addled man in his cage that was slowly becoming alert after her most recent nap. Ready to announce to the world her hunger.

Of course, how the child got there is a mystery, but likely the poor man had gone and found himself another after his time with Drache's girl.
"So, Lone Starr, now you see that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb."
~ Dark Helmet, Spaceballs
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Postby catch » Sat Feb 04, 2012 6:51 am

His hands were still bound in clouds, and while a saner person might question the sudden appearance of a sleeping girl-child, to Catch, it seemed only natural. After his initial surprise, of course, the unfamiliar warmth and breath stirring him from his own, strange, semi-sleep, where his brains went wandering while his body stayed behind, blessedly inert. And if his mind could go wandering, then why couldn't his hands? They were, after all, bound in clouds.


Catch curled quickly around the baby, trying in his own dull, confused way to hide her from sight. He knew he should say something. Bring the baby to Lady Renea's attention, who was hovering close, as she always was. He wasn't certain how the girl had come to him, but what if his cloud-hands had stolen her? Then he was a twice-thief. Catch attempted to keep her quiet as his brains tried to think, his massive, gauze-wrapped hands gently settled on her belly, rocking her a little side to side as he pretended, not very well, to still be Away.
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Postby Caile » Sun Feb 05, 2012 7:03 am

She had been lightly dozing while Catch slept that was true, but even then she would have been aware of someone breaking into the cell. should have been aware of someone breaking into the cell but apparently it had happened anyway because there was Catch curled up around what appeared to be a young child. Of course Renea hadn't noticed the child right away, it was only after she had become aware of the conscious state of the big man and his attempts to keep that state hidden that the swordswoman began to notice something was up. She watched Catch closely and then saw he had curled himself around something, and that something was where those noises had been coming from.

The child had not wandered in on her own, being both too young and too small to manage, and she knew Catch hadn't escaped and come back so that left, as far as she was concerned, only magical means. But who would do such a thing? No one she knew certainly. She motioned for the constable that had been doing paperwork at the desk to come to the bars and she quietly requested he have someone send for Glenn Burnie. They couldn't keep Catch her indefinitely and she was getting impatient herself. She needed to know what the plan was and how much longer it would take to enact. She also asked him to find out if anyone had mentioned a missing child. Once the constable had left to see to her requests she turned back to Catch and sighed softly in resignation, she didn't want to be the villain.

"Catch love, I know you're awake and I know you have a baby there. It's okay you aren't in trouble but the baby needs to go home to its mother now." She kept her voice calm and reasonable, knowing that it really wasn't his fault made it easier, and she just hoped that he'd listen to reason.
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Postby catch » Sun Feb 05, 2012 7:34 am

It was fruitless. Lady Renea knew. He curled a little harder, hoping that she would not be too cross with him. But she did not sound cross. She said he wasn't in trouble. And the baby was crying, now, a sound that upset him more than anything. Catch levers his bulk upwards, carefully cradling the baby in his gauze-covered hands, memories of Rhin stinging his heart with angry, sad pricks.

"I th-think my hands fuh, floated away," he says, trying to be truthful, but not terribly certain of even that. His mismatched eyes shine with tears, but he holds them ruthlessly back as he clumsily tries to pass the squalling girl-child to Renea, without her sliding out of his hands. Catch felt a twinge, a weasel, but he does not tell Renea, not quite believing it himself. Chicken-feathers and teeth. The memory of it itched at his mind.
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Postby Caile » Sun Feb 05, 2012 8:09 am

"No darling I don't think your hands floated away, I think someone brought her here while we were sleeping." Renea smiled at him softly and took the baby from his arms. The constable had come back by now after delivering his messages to one of the other men outside and he unlocked the door to take the child Renea offered to him. With a quiet word from the Marshall he nodded and again left the room, Renea's hope that the absence of the child would cause less stress for Catch. The door to the cell was once again locked and Renea walked back to the big man. She laid a hand on his arm.

"Don't worry, her parents will get her back and I'll make sure everyone knows you didn't have anything to do with it." What she needed was something to keep him happy and occupied, but that was getting harder and harder every day. What distracted him one moment held no interest at all mere hours later and she'd run out of ideas. The only thing that seemed to draw his attention for longer was babies and she really couldn't ask a parent to give up their child for his entertainment. She'd have to ask around and see of there were any babies orphaned. She had planned on opening an orphanage anyway and she did trust Catch to be careful when someone was around to watch him in case his attention wandered. That might actually work now that she thought of it, though it would be one more responsibility for her she was sure she'd be able to handle it. She could always hire help if it was needed. She wrote a quick note and handed it to the man that had come to take the previous constables place asking him to see it delivered and turned back to Catch.

"Would you like to tell some stories to each other?"
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Postby catch » Sun Feb 05, 2012 8:49 am

He was upset. But he tried to hide it, fidgeting where he sat on his cot, going through memories that were not His, but infested his worm-paths all the same. No matter what Renea has said, Catch cannot help but feel that his hands have floated away, and his teeth pluck again at the bindings that hold his torn flesh. They have not healed much, and Catch is confused by it. He had never had problems before, putting himself back together. He hadn't even needed to think about it. But it was abandoning him. Friends and his own flesh, leaving him behind.

And the baby was crying, too. She was crying. Was he really that horrible? Was he a terrible person, so that Rhin and the baby his hands have stolen cried? Rhin hadn't cried at first, but she did. Catch suppresses his own whimper, just now realizing that Miss Renea is speaking to him. She wants to tell him stories? Why, when he was terrible? Catch utters a miserable hiccup, and nods.

"I duh-don't know many stories," he says. "Juh-j-just what Miss Genny tuh-tells me."
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Postby Caile » Sun Feb 05, 2012 9:19 am

"I bet Miss Genny tells wonderful stories. How about I start?" She takes his swaddled hands in hers so he stops worrying at them and settles herself, the baby having now gone leaving just the scratching of a quill as the man behind the desk fills out reports. She didn't think he was terrible, she never had. Sometimes she had difficulty explaining in words how she saw the man but she never believed he did what he did out of any sense of malice. Mischief and desire certainly, protection and fear as well certainly, but she never saw malice in his actions. Which is not to say it wasn't there, it may well be but Renea had never seen it and thought she knew the man well enough to assume that it wasn't there at all.

And so the former mercenary sat in a locked cell in the local gaol telling stories to an addled man with gauze wrapped hands who mourned the loss of the children he'd held, hoping to distract him long enough for the governor and council to find some way of protecting the town from him, and him from the town. The only other option she could see would be to take him away from the people but she didn't think that he'd enjoy that, having made friends and connections. Everyone said that Catch needed to be fixed, but Renea didn't see that he was broken just different. She gave way to their beliefs however, fearing that it had to do with magic, a topic she knew nothing about at the best of times, and just did her best to keep the man as happy and engaged as she could.

The story she began to tell was a classic tale of knights and princesses, valiant deeds and epic tests. She knew many such stories and could quite easily go one for hours at a time.
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The End.

Postby catch » Sun Feb 05, 2012 5:02 pm

Renea's tales of knights, princesses, and far-gone deeds, calmed him. Like clinging mud it dribbled through his scar, his brains, held between his ruined fingers as tangible and real. It kept him quiet, kept him satisfied, like a thick, good meal. It let him forget about the strange baby that had appeared, unbidden, unsought, but not unwelcome. Being locked in here wore at his nerves, frayed them, and only Renea's presence could remind him of Himself, what he was, even if the bars crept closer, the stones crowded in. Sometimes he thought he could look forever into the ceiling, and he wanted to scream into it, claw at the solid, wooden door of the Room.

Deep, deep in the night, because of soothing tales and soothing words, and countless days between true, human rest, Catch could fall into exhausted sleep. His dreams were not the typical dreams of farmers or Councilors. They were reflections of when he was awake. Catch did not think he dreamed, the way he understands the term. There were, simply, other places he could go, places in his mind that were just as real as the distant creak of ice-caked forest outside.

Catch carefully undid the locks on his door, and he slipped away, feeling the oppressive, shrinking cell shed itself from him, a heavy coat taken from his shoulders. He climbed out of the gaol, very careful not to stir or wake anyone. They worked so hard to keep him happy, even if they did put him away. As he emerged, blinking, into the moonlight, he was surprised to see the massive, thick form of Rowsdower Cattails before him, the massive, drooping-fleshed dog looking uncharacteristically nervous, shuffling so much that the rolls of skin rippled along his neck and jowls, the cat tails strung about his neck jerking and twitching, obscenely alive, their blood-crusted stumps throbbing. One still bled, and Catch saw that the tail was crooked.

"Don't belong in there," the giant dog rumbles uneasily, his voice shaking the swirling ground. The night was familiar, but it was a mad-man's night, full of strange light and luminescent turmoil. The snow and ice glittered like all the stars in the spotless sky. "Come."

With no further words, no explaining why Catch shouldn't be where he belonged, being twice-thief and terrible and Bad, the massive dog lumbered away, casting a last look over his broad, rolling shoulder. Catch followed him, but it was not his choice. His feet drew him onward, bare, and Catch had a fleeting thought that he should have put his shoes on, or put on a heavier coat. But he didn't feel cold. He never did.

"Killed my cat," a voice came, muttering high in the branches, and when Catch craned his head to look, there was a wizened, crooked man, dressed like the monkey from the Gypsy Camp. He was familiar, but that familiarity was buried under Lamai's tender shields, and it brought only a sense of unease. "You damn dog! You murdered her!" His screams followed them, but though Catch hesitated, Rowsdower did not, and the addled man was drawn further into the forest.

It was not long, but perversely, it was not short, either, when they came to the clearing. Rowsdower stopped, and the fear and regret in his rheumy eyes told Catch that he could go no further. That frightened him, because there were shapes in the woods, shapes that quivered with fat, made wet noises with their mouths. And the silhouette of a Wolf. Catch felt his own sadness clutch in his throat, and he put his arms around the giant dog's terrible neck, ignoring the feel of cat's tails on his arms.

"We can't follow," the old beast said, though he turned to press his vast cheek against Catch's own. Then he turned, and rambled into the woods, where the wet noises of the Fat Man grew in pleasure. Catch turned and ran blindly to the place he had been taken, a clearing of shafted moonbeams and sunbeams, of stars hung in the branches that glittered like ice.

Catch had a vague idea that he was running, but he was suspended, his feet flying over ground. Though he ran, he did not feel tired, only a cold, confused terror, a sadness that blinded his eyes. But he could still see. Before him were three people, strange people. There was a broad man with fire-red hair, a tall man with deadly pale eyes, a wolf's skin around his shoulders, bare of anything else. And a shadowed, uncertain woman, flickering between the beams. For a wild moment, Catch thought he was Matron Faeryl, but there were differences. Subtle differences.

"Who are you?" They asked him, but though Catch wanted to ask them the same thing, he could do nothing but run. And run. There was the sound of barking behind him, the sound of cat-tails and pounding hooves. He felt the sweat begin to stream from him, soaking him, working to a lather all over his body, but still they stayed before him.

"Who are you?" the Wolf Man demanded, stepping forward, his pale hair tossed in a wild mane behind him. His strong fingers tangled themselves in Catch's beard, jerking his face down cruelly to look into his eyes. Catch saw no mercy or kindness in those eyes, but he saw the sadness, the despair that infected them.

The shadow woman's hand passed through his hair, flickering into place next to the cruel man, her thin, spider-like fingers finding all the gentle places, the good places to touch. Yet she, too, asked him that baffling, insistent question, her voice deep as a pool, black as the Pit.

The Red Man with one horn lifted his hand, beyond man of pain and woman of pleasure, and his fingers slowly crooked until a single one was extended to the sky. Catch could not help but look, follow that gesture, though the Wolf man still gripped him tightly. This was not a good dream, he knew. This was not a happy dream. But was this a dream at all? It must be, for in the sky, past the barren, icy branches, a Golden City flickered across a younger moon.

"Who are you?" the Red Man asked, his voice resigned, and saddened. But it was the voice of the Crooked Man that croaked from behind Catch, a hissing, cheated howl.

"ASMUDAS!"


-----------------------------------------------------

The body of Catch paced the confines to the cell, unaware that he moved at all. He was unaware of everything except what went on in his mind, sleeping-not-sleeping, a restless companion to Renea's wish for silence and rest. But there was a newcomer, a fellow occupant, a grotesque, giant spider that crouched on Catch's cot, black as Sin, with eyes that glittered blindly from it's head. It watched. It waited. And when Catch stopped his pacing, when he turned to face his spider, she lifted her pronged front legs, keening a barely-heard cry of triumph.

Catch titled his head back, his mouth opening to a wordless, cryless scream, nothing emerging but a dull swirl of silver fog, of oppressive pressure.
It began as a rumble, a belching deep within the earth, those who dwell there finding an upheaval, a roiling destruction that only intensified as it trembled to the surface. Earth cracked. It heaved, bucking like an animal that cannot be tamed. Glass cracked, china was flung from the walls, and a scream of the wind shattered frozen trees together until they splintered from the force of it.

The man, the Thing, was no less confused as he normally was. But there was a bell sounding inside him, something breaking free, something that allowed him to run somewhere than in infinite loops in his mind. He lifted his arms, and like the gentle peeling of a flower's petals, the walls of his little prison-room split their stone foundation and fell, one at a time, out from the sheer force of his presence. Catch did not even afford a look back. He lept over stone and rubble, graceful, full. His hands came down on he earth that wept burning tears to welcome him, that heaved under his body in a lover's ecstasy. He ran as he was supposed to run, free, wonderfully free, his hair churning behind him, tendrils kissing the ground under his hooves, too brilliant to look at with a liquid light that was All Lights.

He laughed to his earth, and his voice was the sound of bells.
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