Smoke & Mirrors: Aaron's Dream
4/26/2006
08:26 PM
Logfile from GarouMUSH.
Currently the moon is in the waning New Moon phase (8% full).
It is currently 20:15 Pacific Time on Wed Apr 26 2006.
Currently in Saint Claire, it is a cloudy day. The temperature is 54 degrees Fahrenheit (12 degrees Celsius). The wind is currently coming in from the west at 7 mph. The barometric pressure reading is 30.15 and rising, and the relative humidity is 64 percent. The dewpoint is 42 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius.)
[In the upstairs office of the Odeon.]
It's just after 5am as Aaron walks into the Odeon-- dragging his feet as if his shoes had been filled with lead. He makes his way slowly up the stairs to the projection booth and when he gets to the top of the stairs, he finds that he has the place to himself. It has been a tough night on the streets, but his mood this evening reflects the calm new moon. He drops into his pile of blankets with a heavy 'humph!' It only takes a second before he passes out and falls into a deep sleep.
The dreams come slowly, encroaching upon the subconscious dark like catfeet. Like fog. It's at first, unnoticed. There's no distinction between waking and dreaming world at first. Where he'd been dragging himself towards the Odeon in reality, once again he's on the streets of St. Claire, hanging out. Walking around. People pass by with barely a second thought or a glance to him, like the Curse isn't there. Speaking of that, what is the Curse? It doesn't even cross the ahroun's mind. Right now, he's not a Garou. He's just a kid. A teenager. Roaming.
The Ahroun remembers those days clearly. He has memories of those times that he was given to hang out with his friends and not be bothered by his step-family. He stops on the sidewalk as he always does, pulling out a cigarette from his back pocket. Placing it to his lips, he finds the lighter in the pocket of is hooded sweatshirt. He continues at a stroll, bulking himself up a little to make him appear manlier as people pass him by. He lifts his chin in a greeting sort of way every now and then to the oncoming traffic of people.
"Hey Aaron!" That voice. That derisive, sneering tone. It has to be Roger. Only he'd stink that bad and no one'd tell him about it. "Where y'goin', huh? Shouldn't you be in the house doin' something that'll make me a bit more cash?" A heavy hand falls upon the ahroun's shoulder, jerking him around so that he can face... someone who doesn't look like Roger. No one he's ever seen before.
"Fuck off!" Aaron says before he turns around to notice that it's not Roger in appearance anyway. Apparently the Ahroun has the ability to speak, and his southern accent is as true as the day that it was taken away from him. His expression changes into confusion, although he feels hairs bristling at the back of his neck.
No idea who he is, but it doesn't matter. In the next moment, he's in his household. And feeling three years old again, if only because he is. "Aaron, I want you to meet, Ruth. She's going to be your new mother. And you're going to have a brother and sisters soon, ok?" His father is lightly caressing the arm of the woman he loves, explaining in a very slow, warm tone to the young child. "Everything's going to be different, but we'll be alright. Right?" But those eyes. The step-siblings leer at the boy like he's their next target.
Aaron can feel himself clinging to his toy truck given to him for Christmas in his arms.
Aaron can feel himself clinging to his toy truck given to him for Christmas in his arms. It's the one that Roger would break a year later, and his mother didn't even make him apologize for breaking one of very few toys that Aaron ever owned. "No!" he screams in a baby-voice up at his father. He forgets about the truck in his arms, dropping it in a clatter to the floor as he turns and runs away from those daunting eyes on him. The young Ahroun can feel the tears wielding up in his eyes as he runs away.
Childish laughter follows him like a plague. The voices of his step-brother Roger, only slightly older. His step-sister Ronda, with her high and haughty tones. As he runs, his vision blurs with tears. His father calls him back with strict, but desperate tones, but he keeps running. Running onward, into a forest much like that of the woods around the caern. Again, he's changed in shape and form, from boy to wolfdog. "Where're you goin'?" asks a voice. It's Basil's, as the other ahroun leans against one of the trees on the bawn, smoking away on a cigarette with utter disregard.
As the sequence changes, Savages-Enemy takes a moment before he recognizes Basil's voice. The Ahroun lifts his tail in dominance. Who are you to tell me where I am going? The wolfdog responds, curling up his lip in a snarl. Where have you been?
"What're you talking about? I've been here all along," Basil replies, still remaining completely at ease with himself. The cigarette the other ahroun smokes stinks and burns like Wyrm gasses. Like those from the warehouse, on their Rite of Passage. "Besides, what do You care, Fluffy?"
Aaron smells that nauseous scent from the rite of passage touch his nose and causing him to sneeze. At this and Basil's tone with him, the Ahroun is not hesitant as he shifts up into Crinos. He is quick to try to grab Basil's shirt and shove him against the tree that he is leaning against. The wolfdog's nostrils flare wide as he looks down at the other Ahroun. It is you that does not care! Where have you been when we have needed your help? Where have you been He stops, his body shifting has he breaths heavily from his massive lungs. His thoughts are toiling with him at how similar Basil is to Roger and that makes him angry. You are a fuck-up, Kills-The-Cries. I should have killed you when I had the chance you are no aid to Gaia!
Swooff. The rancid smoke billows out of the ahroun in a choking cloud, getting sucked in by those massive crinos lungs, irritating everything down to the core. "And what're you going to do about it? Huh?" Even though his shirt is grabbed, this dream Basil grabs his assailant and somehow, before things can even be noted, gets put in a headlock. Like Roger's headlock, learned from all those hours and hours of watching wrestling and putting it to use on young Aaron. Humiliating! And there's nothing he can do about it. Somehow, he's not in Crinos anymore, but a teenager again in school, being restrained by his stepbrother and his gang of bullies. He can only see those dirty scuffed shoes Roger always wore - the shoes he'd later get tossed at him as handmedowns - and what's ahead of him. The darkish rectangular hole that is the gym lockers at school.
Aaron jerks his head when he finds that he is held in a headlock and again he is confronted with a vision of Roger's never-ending tormenting and the embarrassment of having others watch. He twists about, trying to get out of the headlock that his step-brother has him placed in while on a trip towards the gym locker. "I swear I am going to kill you someday, Roger!" he says under his breath.
Again, laughter. Derisive laughter. All those threats of killing him? They run off like water from a duck's back. He struggles hard, but he gets shoved headfirst into the locker door, and then stuffed inside. The door closes behind him, leaving him in darkness with just the echoing sounds of Roger, Basil, and others from his life all laughing at him. "What a little bitch." "What a slacker." Another kick delivered to the locker door bends it so that it's shut tight.
Aaron turns in the cramped space and begins banging on the door of the locker to try to get it open again. He growls in his throat as he shoves his shoulder against the door, bruising himself in the small space that the locker provides. 'I am not those!' he screams to himself, finding that he is unable to speak again. They are just words. Words to make him angry but there had been sticks and stones.
The words ring out, hotter than he would've thought he could say, loud and fervent. The locker door bangs open and he tumbles out, hitting his skull against the concrete floor and causing a renewed bout of laughter. This time though, it's a bunch of Garou laughing at him. Hidden Walk Garou, whose faces and names only barely come to mind amidst the haze of anger, the lick of firey Rage deep inside. ~Did you see what happened to him on the Revel?~ ~Stupid Gnawer, should have died. What kind of a scar is that?~ ~I'd rather have the Jackal's Voice.~ "You're such a loser." That final voice is Roger's, from a figure standing there in the center, surrounded by the sept's Garou, all pointing and laughing at the Gnawer ahroun. "Can't howl out any more threats to kill me, can you?" But though there's Roger's voice somewhere, it's Basil's body. Under the full moon's light shining down with a blood red color upon all the faces of the caern, they all smirk and sneer. "Pathetic. So pathetic that he needed Yi to hand off a task to him 'cause he couldn't find one of his own to do. What a dumbfuck. Why don't you go back to Georgia or Arkansas or wherever the fuck you came from?"
Aaron listens to the laughter around him, reaching his boiling-point as he once more shifts swiftly into Crinos. He burns up his rage and hits the ground running as he charges directly towards the Basil/Roger. The wolfdog's ears slide back against his head, rising up to leap at the other Ahroun.
He falls upon the laughing Garou with nary a thought. Frenzy is what hits fast, hits hard. Claws tearing away, fangs biting, it feels so real with the ease with which the flesh on his hated enemies comes off and blood spills around him. The ahroun wakes, but his thirst is unabated. Frenzy has its grip upon him, and he's tearing into the upstairs office couch, destroying it with no regard for what's around him. Though his throat strains with the urge to roar, his battlescarred throat gives nothing but an unsatisfying huff and puff of broken vocal chords. Only when he has felt he's completely destroyed the object... only when his maw is stuffed with acrid, pungently stale couch stuffing to the point it's hard to breathe, does the haze of frenzy fade away. And it does so ever so slowly, never quite fully disappearing, instead leaving a burning simmer inside.
Aaron comes out of the frenzy, not sure if he is awake or still in his nightmare. When he finally comes to the conclusion that the torn couch in front of him is real, he takes a few breaths to calm his nerves and stumbles up to his feet. He leaves the couch in the state that that it is currently in and begins heading back towards the Odeon doors. Sleep is no longer on the young Ahroun's mind, and he heads back out onto the streets of Saint Claire.
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