#lieability

“mhm.” at first he appears convinced. deft fingers rotate the caballito against the surface of the bar, eyes fixed upon the woman. but what had been a jovial smile, accompanied by the shrug of his shoulders and a general impression that he was done with his interrogation, suddenly falls flat again. he stares like he's undressing her. not physically but inside, her pathology. peeling back the layers of what's wrong with her. something is and he perhaps he intends to know in case of a threat, or maybe he's just curious.

WHAT SHE SEES FIRST IS THE WING OF A BUTTERFLY.

that's how her mind makes sense of the sharp cut of a shoulder blade in the dark: that trancelike back and forth of curved bone, not unlike the patterns of flight, pale skin eating up the slant of moonlight.

she understands it only for what it is only for the sound. the smell. dove has done so much for so long to no longer resemble a prey animal, but the instincts are still there — the ability to sense danger even before her eyes have adjusted enough to identify it.

the blood spreading across the floor is dark, almost black in the dim light. like this it better resembles her own displaced blood, the way it pools in a bruise at her cheek, the joint of a hip. the whole of the office staining the way she already is.

arkham never changes, not really. not in its bones.

a year gone, torn to the other side of reality, and it's still the same thing when he gets back. wet, crowded, not quite as cosmopolitan as new york, but most of all, haunted. they've spent the same time of day yesterday on stakeout, watching the small townhouse as rain drummed down against the roof of the car—which is to say they've both been on stakeout, as was the deal. not that arthur can see any of it, but that doesn't matter to john, who just seems to want to describe every inch of the street in near-painful detail.

they walked the exterior earlier of the townhouse two days ago. dug through the trash, the unglamorous work of a private investigator at its least clean. one of the cops at the precinct by the office left them the tip. something about public disturbances that no one with a badge wanted to look into. so that left it to those less inclined to legality.

the glass wasn't warped that john could tell. but there was something in the air. like something's clinging on with its teeth, john said, which was more poetic than helpful, but it got the point across. public records showed that the last person to die in 32 west garrison street was one devlin maitland, he died suddenly and brutally, along with his wife. a whole mess with his brother, who had since fled arkham altogether and moved further down the east coast. dead now, too, in a confrontation with police.

a neat answer, in that way, to the question of what spirit would be vengeful enough to stay within this home's walls.

their goal, as per usual, is to see if the ghost can be convinced to peacefully depart this plane.

so they've gotten in through a side window with only some minor negotiation with an old lock, and are now moving slowly around the living room. john's in the midst of describing the photographs on the mantle when something creaks.

arthur, behind you—

they pivot on the spot, the cane in arthur's hand held a little more like someone's going to swing.

in the doorway. someone. not a… spirit, obviously, from the fact we heard anything at all. she must've come in through the back door. short. long dark hair down to her waist. a… severe stare. she's looking right at us, in the eyes. not a police officer, that's for fucking sure.

often times the eyes throw people off. too bright of a yellow, an animal glint there in low light. someone not looking away either says they're very brave, or very nonplussed.

jackson. this was the closest they'd gotten to normalcy. to before. and it made every ounce of her uncomfortable. it wasn't that she hated the place. it was beautiful. they had food, water, power, medicine . . . not a single person was left wanting. they had jobs, homes, kids went to school. civilisation was being built from the ground up in a small walled town in wyoming. it was like a goddamn movie.

and maybe tess did, in fact, hate it.

or maybe she just wasn't sleeping. maybe it had only been two weeks since they'd arrived and she wasn't really giving this place a proper chance ( but who could really blame her ? she had spent twenty some years surviving in a quarantine zone ). but tess was fucking stubborn. in her mind, the only thing out of place with this situation was this entire fucking town.