ataraxion | NINE: video

[The room Taylor's sat in is dark, unidentifiable from the wall behind her, but soft, blue-tinged light from another source washes over her face intermittently. It highlights how drawn she looks, pale, tired. She's a mess, really. Even by Tranquility standards.]

It's January, right? Been counting on the jumps since I got here. [She isn't slurring as she speaks, but the lack of focus in her expression and sluggishness to her movements makes it clear she's inebriated to anyone who knows what to look for.] Guess it doesn't matter though. Just start calling them by numbers. I was meant to turn twenty in December. Be an instructor back at the Academy. [She frowns for a moment, taking a drink out of an unlabelled bottle.] Or maybe they'd have terminated me.

[Another pause, and she shifts off to the side for a moment, putting the bottle down. When she comes back into view she’s holding something else – a mask. Her mask, an mongrel canine face, beaten, bruised and bloody. She holds it up, hanging off the fingers of one hand.]

Turns out these show you ghosts. Hallucinations. Whatever. If that isn't fucked up enough to get you thinking don't touch them, you're a fucking idiot. [Very evidently angry, suddenly, half a snarl on her mouth. She looks at the mask again, then drops it to one side.] Didn't want to see my old man the little he was around, sure as fuck didn't want to see him here. Thing I've been thinking, though - what do you see, you wear someone else's?

[She doesn't hold the second mask up for the camera, but it's there in her hands, looks like a modern military gas mask. She's quiet for a long while, like she maybe forgot she even had the comms running, all of the anger and energy drained out of her again.]

Tommy's gone. Gone last jump. Told him he would, cause everyone goes. [A thin smile, strained, sad, and then gone again.] Guess I didn't wanna be right.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Didn't just get rid of it in the first place?

[She shakes her head.]

Nothing works. They come back.

[Which was just more points on the creepy, do not wear.]

Most you can do is lock them up somewhere.

[ That definitely adds to the creepy, disturbing, vaguely psychotic factor. ] And I take it they're not all that easy to forget about.

[ because it only makes sense. ]

No. They just... you always know where you put them. And that you want to take them back out again.

Just one more perk of being in space. [ pff. ] Place gets more realistic by the second. Don't think anything happens here with the intention of you getting to keep your sanity.

Edited 2013-01-17 03:35 (UTC)

You're alright. You don't have one. [Not that she'd rule out the possibility of it happening again. She shrugs.] The ship likes fucking with us.

[But he said realistic, and she's been here long enough to see enough people trying to cope by telling themselves it wasn't real.]

You thinking it's a dream or something?

Dream's not the word I would choose.

Then what? Nightmare, hallucination? Doesn't matter. It's real.

Yeah, so everyone keeps saying. Still can't make me believe it. [ have a shrug. and an abrupt change in topic. ] People disappear pretty often around here?

[Something will happen to make him believe it. It's what's happened to all the other people turning up thinking this place was anything other than real. But she doesn't argue it. He'll know when it happens.]

Yeah. They leave during the jumps. Go home.

So i've heard, just didn't know it happened all that often. [ He'd offer his condolences, but what's the point? No one ever really likes to hear 'sorries' when you lose someone close. Pity parties aren't worth it when there's no time for pity. ]

You still got your dogs?

Few people every month.

[No pattern on how long they've been there, how many people they knew, where they were from, things they'd done. No pattern at all.

That last question makes her frown, though. She'd never considered the possibility of her dogs being sent home without her.]

I've always got them.

Good. [ He didn't mean it quite like that, but maybe he did unintentionally. He wasn't quite sure really what he was implying, but now that he's got his dog from ages ago here, he can't help but be curious. ]

Something around here should stay the same.

[It's a surprise, him saying that, and she's quiet for a moment, doesn't know how to reply. She doesn't want anymore people to leave, wants things to stay the same, but so far all that's really stayed is her. She smiles slightly, dry.]

You mean except from the constant creepy.

[ Comforting people's sort of out of his league at this point, and being bitter and sardonic's about all he's got. Apparently it worked though, and he can't help but be at least a little bit pleased. Because if he can't make himself feel better, trying to help someone else always works wonders. ]

Except for that. Pretty sure I wouldn't mind if that changed for the better.