Night Terrors 11 - Sullivan and Scion
An art fair, the type that celebrate the yesteryear of days gone by where old garb and wit are the common display, provided for a charge to the locality. The likes of archaist language in lavish attire, surrounding the prioresses and young dukes tasting the wares and bartering fares as a shadow vacant in the sky above a one-room tent-house with a curtain hanging across, between its middle, to separate a small cot and pot-bellied stove to provide a solitary brisk evening and a single tenant heat. Afore the hung partition within the draped tapered lofty panels of the entrance, pinned upon the outside of the red tent cordon to large button hooks and bound in large golden ropes with tassels on end to lifeless lay. Within therein stands a wooden table, a partisan sat upon a hewed log made into beveled stump sits a man in a blue walking cloak and an equally velvet pointed cone hat, one what that its top lay lifeless from fulcrum crux lifelessly draping over the back of his head.
Sitting across, before and facing him is a young demure lass, prim and prose of humble attire, unlike the norm of the world beyond the festival and yet nearing the style of the patrons of the fete, a new way of the old, reserved and shy. Between the two, before and currently a crystal ball upon a dull and hammer driven paupers crown, no peaks or points, only a ring to balance the glass filled with smoke, as a silence is broken the prophet speaks the words of fate before action. At the edges and exits, near the entrance and penance throng, men of the army sieve through the crowd, they begin to infiltrate without speech and violate the solemn peace of festivity as they encroach to the tent of a distracted visionary.
Stalking assailants parsing the ground quietly through the brushwood, and running through the open paths, each strikingly similar to the seer, fair skin and hair, yet the enemies teaming with enmity are different as their eyes have solid black blood filling the glass orbs that hold it behind their face.
The fortuneteller jumps to his feet, but not with sparing time to acquiesce the hunters of he, the members in service to their leader sack him. First he is put in bonds, wrist to wrist, leg to leg and placed into a burlap bag from the scene, and binding both ends with ropes and dragging him sideways from the camp to their vehicles, carelessly tossing him in as if quarry of the hunt only to drive from the location. The commotions of their careless disown throws dust and dirt from the vehicle lot and in caravan down the narrow lane, in the absence of light with total tumult, captive he wanders into frantic sleep without wit of where.
He later awakes surrounded by foes of darker sight in a dimly lit interrogation room of sorts. A two-way mirror panels a portion of one wall adjacent the door, which he can see without any way but true reflection. As his captors beyond the glass watch their servants of night-mirrored eyes latch the harness of a straightjacket and toss him into listless disparity, he brings himself to his feet and tries to kick the guards, but they push him down with ease.
Sullivan: “Tell me why I'm here.”
Guard 1: “Supposed for a purpose.”
The door opens and a slender man with stamina tensile strength apparent with the muscular contours beaming from his nearly perfect black suit enter as the guards bring him in a chair for him to sit.
Interrogator: “Tell me what you do.”
Sullivan: “I help people try their hopes.”
Interrogator: “I need you to help me try something.”
Sullivan: “Try and make me!”
Sullivan runs and throws himself against Mr. Jack, but with the bottom of his foot, with his knee sharply bent, he kicks the prophet swiftly and all but gently against the padded wall, one, which its covering has long ago, began to wear.
Sullivan: “I was just about to offer my services.”
Interrogator: “Oh...were you?”
Sullivan: “Tell me what this is, who are you, what authority do you have to ask someone like me anything?”
A voice interrupts through the grate on the wall behind and seemingly through the looking glass, the voice of an important villain in the employ of the Invinidine Corporation, and similar in appearance toxic features and all. One notable difference being that he is dress regal and fantastic as if courtly and imperial.
Scion: “Wait! Don’t answer that…”
Sullivan looks with frantic haste, in dissolute fear, his chest stretches like a bird without wings, his back arches in dreadful angst as he tries to stretch the straightjacket. The malaise of terror begins to cover his eyes with a glaze of separation as he coils from fearful instinct. Intense contortion he looks to the flickering lights in the ceiling and his eyes offer the signs of pain without the sound of lament.
Scion: “Are you going to help us Mr. Sullivan?”
Sullivan vehemently becomes exasperated, his eyes suddenly awash, his frantic emotion drowns in violent sadness, all yet he does not make a sound whilst he begins to cry, though not one note crosses his teeth. He stares at the mirror swiftly after looking to the man in the chair and vaguely smiles with contempt insurmountable of fear and joy where silence is broken.
Sullivan: “…Yes…”
Spoken in a sigh of relief, and further delve into melancholy Sullivan falls in broken hopes, emotional pain, and wounded struggle to the floor as the two guards and inquisitor gracefully leave the room, taking the chair and the light with them.