2019-06-12 - That one time when Graham's player was like "Sure, I'm cool with something dark" and lived to regret it.

Well, at least 'something important' can't say she didn't know what she was setting herself up for, 'cause Graham done told her repeatedly! After just a terrific amount of profanity and some dithering - he should just stay here and finish doing something important and get killed later, because what kind of life is this?! - he pulls on some clothes and scampers out the door. Then comes back in the door, because he forgot his keys. And his wallet. Annnnd his phone. "I'm a fucking mess tonight." Kiss-kiss, and he's finally off to the races. He rolls down all the windows, the fresh air will do him some good and cool him down before he has to go do whatever it is he has to go do.

Plus, he smokes in the car, and - in his mind - this keeps the smell from sinking into the upholstery.

The streetlight thing was a bit of a brain-tickler, it's true. Graham eyeballs a couple of them, but it's not like he works for the city or is some kind of electrician, so fuck it; somebody else's problem. He lights his cigarette, eases the car on down the street, and adjusts the rear-view with his eyes on this completely normal Cadillac that's tailing him with the lights off. And that's when he remembers that the other thing he forgot was his pistol, so that sucks.

But it's only two blocks from here to the club. (Mind, it's only two blocks from anywhere to anywhere in this town but yeah.) He keeps a weather eye on the car that's absolutely going to be a problem, he can just tell, and makes his big, heavy car that he loves mosey on down Oak, turn onto Maple, and aim toward the club. Where the lights better be on, or he's about to turn this around and call Felix back to be like 'wtf boss.'

Okay. Sure. Sometimes, on the way to work, a person checks out. That happens to everyone, and Graham can excuse himself for this because he's got a lot on his mind: the girl left at home, the lights out, the cigarette, the gun he forgot, and now this person tailing him onto a street he didn't mean to be on in the first place. So that's how he rationalizes having overshot the two-block drive and wound up on Bayside, doing eighty in a car that takes forever to brake.

He doesn't have ABS in this car, just to really complicate things, so he eases on those old-fashioned brakes, waits for the tires to skid... eases back off the pedal. It's a whole thing, being able to not just lock up the brakes and skid right off the fucking road. Granted, getting rear-ended in a rear-wheel drive car makes it tricky to keep the thing going exactly how he wants it to, but at least he can slow it down! All while suffering the penalty of having a classic car with no Bluetooth, and thus being unable to just be like 'hey, Siri, pls call Andre for me.'

Basically, this car would be easy as shit to drive off the road if he wasn't a better-than-average driver.

Whoever spray-painted that on the sign? Graham gives them the finger. You know, seconds before another car comes and wrecks his beloved Malibu, and the last thing he thinks before impact is FUCK THAT GUY. No airbags. His recently concussed head knocks back against the headrest, then forward against the steering wheel, and his lights go right on out.

Then come back on beneath that glaring bulb, and he hunches his shoulders away from it, turning his head so he catches the majority of it in one eye instead of both. A knock of his head forward gets some hair across his forehead, too, anything to cool that right down. Now then. Eyes adjusted, he takes a momentary survey of his environment, turns his wrists in the chains, and does what he does best (or worst): starts fucking talking bullshit. "Hey! Hello out there? Hello, hello. Hell-o. Aaaaannnybody home?" And so on and so forth. He can do this all night.

Graham's been around this town long enough to have heard stories about its weirdness. For twenty-five years, they've mostly managed not to touch him. So as long as that light stays up there? Continuing to not touch him? He can make his peace with it, just looking up at it like he's making a mute treaty: you do you, light, and he'll do him. Despite how obnoxious he sounds, he keeps up the hellos-and-heys until...

"Holy shit, Nutless? What the fuck are you doing, man?" He squirms in the chair, reeling back from the sudden apparition (that he totally justifies as having crept up on him while he was staring at a light-bulb, like idiots do). "Look, man." Keep talking, G. "I'm sorry about your balls. Ball? Whatever, I definitely never intended for you to shoot off your nuts, singular or plural. All right? So let's just - c'mon, there's no way Felix signed off on this." Better to cut him off. He'll keep going. "He'll have your dick if you don't lemme out." Etc.

Graham's eyes get enormous for a second. Like, stunned beyond belief large. While Nutless Mac is talking about Felix's lack of value. "You're so fucking dead," he says, almost like he's sorry to be the one to have to break that news to the guy. He's not sorry, but he puts just a touch of regret in his voice, to make it properly irritating. Like, if he has to listen to himself be a smarmy prick? He may as well go full throttle. A hiss of breath comes in through his teeth, and he shrugs as much as he can with his hands chained behind his back. It'd be better if he could lift his hands to show the two fingers to Mac; he can't, but he still wiggles them behind his back.

This is the point at which Graham accepts he's almost definitely going to get tortured and then shot in the head, so he may as well do some collateral damage. "Twice, actually. Well, I mean, one time, she just blew me. Gray area, but I figure it still counts."

Tight-voiced with the chains pulling on his hands, Graham counters, "Yeah? I'd wear a rubber, if I were you. She's definitely got chlamydia now. Hey, just like your daughter, they could probably swap prescriptions." Behind him, he rolls his fingers into a fist, squirming a little like he might be able to... wriggle... outta... these... chains. While Mac's getting to the question about defiled. "First off."

He turns his head to try to chase the sound of that voice, leaning here and there, like he knows the guy's still here somewhere. There's a quick shake of that turning head, an attempt to clear the fog - fucking concussions, man. 🙁 "If you're giving me the option, then no. I don't wanna see her. Second off, I think defiled is a little harsh. Your daughter - what's her name again? Mary? Molly? Anyway, Marcy was definitely a goddamn slut way before I got in there. Third off," he probably doesn't have anything, but he'll think of something if given the opportunity to keep running his lips.

Thanks for that. Graham needed whiplash on top of everything else. He reels and teeters, makes a strangled noise somewhere between 'aahh' and 'oww' when the chair brakes - only to slam the flats of his feet to the floor, trying to shove this chair backward from what used to be a girl who he woulda swore was named Mary but is apparently named Heather so who was Mary? Yanno, anything to keep his mind occupied and not on that.

But. Hey. Congrats to Mac. He finally took stuff so far that Graham is rendered speechless. He blinks at this, uh, person a couple times, gaping, then keeps trying to foot-push the chair backward and pull his arms out of those loosened chains. Come on, he can do this. Mostly, he keeps his eyes turned up to the weird light overhead; he'd rather his vision filled with spots of visual purple than have to look at this wrecked girl.

Graham kicks at this insane thing. Like, he puts his foot flat against her carved-up stomach, and he shoves with everything he's got. Maybe it'll push her away. Maybe it'll make his chair tip over. Whatever, he doesn't give a fuck right now, as long as it accomplishes something other than him being chained to this chair while a monster that literally choked on his dick throws up blood all over him. He keeps trying to wriggle his arms out of the chains, pulling against them, twisting his hands around to try to slip them loose, writhing shoulders to make something give. Something's gotta give.

And he squeezes his eyes shut hard. Because he obviously hit his head. He hit his head, and he's got a concussion, and aaaaaaaaaaaany minute now, the paramedics are gonna roll up and shine that little flashlight thingie in his eyes. The ambulance ride'll probably cost him about ninety-thousand dollars, but fine, that's fine, he'll pay that. Maybe the paramedic will be hot. Oh shit, Elise works at the hospital; she'll totally be there, so that'll work out, things will be fine. All this is what he says in his head, because he's too terrified to even spew words now.

Behind his eyes, Graham knows this is just a dream. It's a seriously fucked up dream, but he figures... that's probably normal when you get, like, two concussions and whiplash all in the same month. The Elise-voice makes him grind his teeth and hunch his shoulders toward his ears, pull his neck down, try to raise his arms enough to at least muffle one side and keep the sound out as much as possible. Come on, chains - though why? Like, if it's just the nightmare he's having while he's unconscious on the side of the road, why keep trying to get his hands loose?

That's a mystery for some future-Graham to worry about.

Current Graham keeps pulling, and current Graham turns his open eyes toward Mac. Spoken slowly, like if he can just stir those shadows into obeisance, talk them into showing Mac this story he's telling, "What the fuck, Nutless, is I'm gonna get out of this. Then I'm gonna put a bullet in what's left of your daughter. And I'm gonna make you fuck her corpse. And the last thing you're gonna feel? Is what it's like to come inside your daughter's lifeless body. Knowing full fucking well that the last guy that was there before you? Was me."

Or Mac is going to shoot him in the head now for getting lippy again. That could be how this all ends. But alllll Graham has to do is get one of those links on the chain to break, just one. And he will beat this mother-fucker to death and then, he's pretty sure, he'll wake up. 😃

No, dude. Those shadows are barking up the wrong tree. Graham has some issues, and revenge is one of his favorite things, but this? This is way too twisted for him. He reels back when the gun goes off, his eyes widening, the chair tipping onto its back legs when he gets his feet flat on the ground. Feeling the chains loosen just enough, he stands hurriedly, brushing - dude, he's not even gonna think about the thing he just brushed off his jeans and into a wet, plopping mess on the floor. He's just not ready to square with that yet. There's some extra twisting, some dragging, and he gets his arms free.

"You're so fucking fucked," he says - to Mac, we can assume, but there's no heat behind the words, not now that he's got some sort of agency of his own again. He doesn't mean to talk the guy into this. It's just what he does. Yanno, for a living. Convinces people to do shit they shouldn't. "If I were you, I'd eat a fucking bullet. Because when Felix hears about this twisted shit? He's gonna roast you and eat you. Take the quick way out." His skin crawls while he back-steps toward... uh, come to think of it, how'd he get in here? How does he get outta here? Whatever, he'd rather keep backing away from this toward anything else.

Graham gets out, "You're fucking nuts, man," before that gun goes off, and he physically recoils from it. Like, he skitters backwards several steps, tripping over the loose chains with his heels, and not bothering to try to right himself. He lands on his ass, teeth chattering violently while he reaches for the empty chair, one half-hearted attempt to pull himself upright made. Then abandoned. He reaches up, runs his hands backward through his hair, and laces them at the base of his skull, bleary eyes passing over this disaster.

Shaking breaths at least keep the full-blown nausea from overcoming him - nope, nope, they don't. There go the contents of his stomach, heaved right onto the floor, with blood and brain-matter and Mac's testicle and apparently his own phantom penis. What's a little barf on top of all that, you know? Here's a pep talk, just for himself. "Get your shit together, G. Get your shit together, and get out. All right? All right."

Knees first, then feet, then he's heading for the... door? Is that a thing? This isn't just like the room where he stays trapped till he dies, right? 🙁

Yeah, well. Graham heard that guy has his sister tied up in the attic, so maybe he doesn't want that dude's sympathy, asshole.

He smears a hand over his face, where cold sweat has taken up residence, and he presses a hand to his stomach, where bile keeps churning up toward his throat. His hands continue checking various parts of his body for their in-tactness: he has a face; a stomach; his heartbeat's still there, he can hear that one in his ears even before he puts a palm over it; cool, his junk is still attached, that's reassuring (though he gets a little awkwardly handsy with himself, making sure both nuts are still in place, whew); and -

"Shit. El? Elly? Elise?" This once he goes tearing ass back into the house. With absolutely no game-plan for how he's going to explain this shit. Should be fun.