2019-10-01 - Nothing

It was a good show. The club was packed, and the crowd was into it, roaring for the original tunes as much as for the covers. It felt nice. It still feels nice, a little adrenaline lingering to finish out the night. One of the songs echoes at the back of Garrett's head, a bassline of his own design laying the foundation for one of Lowered Expectations' better songs. It's all so clear, the melody, the lyrics, the memory of playing it on stage, how the crowd caught the chorus and sang along. It was a very good night.

But now it's time to pack up. Jaime's already done so and... who knows where he is. Maybe talking with the manager about their payment, maybe out waiting in the truck. Sparrow should be packing up her kit, but she instead lays on the stage, sprawled on her back with her feet dangling over the edge, toes just a few inches off the ground for how short that dais is. Fingers drum against her bare stomach between the cut off of her black crop top and the waist of her black jean shorts, tapping out a rhythm absently while she stares up at the ceiling with its weird stains and cobwebs.

His bass is safely in its case, but Garrett has otherwise made little to no effort to lug his own gear out yet. Instead, he sits at the edge of the 'stage' beside Sparrow, leaning back and propping himself up on outstretched arms, a smile tugging at his lips. He's dressed like he's done this before. Black jeans that fit nicely, a brilliantly white t-shirt that might be a touch tight for normal wear, but is excellent for a performance. "Not bad, eh?" He reaches over to bump Sparrow with the back of a hand and offer her a grin.

Sparrow doesn't smile. She's got plenty of reason to smile, but she doesn't. Her fingers briefly still when her gaze flits to Garrett at the contact, at the question, but they're moving again just after she answers, "Yeah." Quiet as that rhythm is, it's difficult to catch, but she seems to be drumming out the beat to that song still playing at the back of his head. Surely, it's a subconscious thing, his brain syncing up effortlessly with that external input, filling in the blanks and fleshing out the melody. "Really really not bad," precedes a turn of her head to look up at him properly. A little furrow has formed between her eyebrows, an itch of worry bunched up there. "Kinda wanna do this every night," sounds a little bit like she's asking his permission.

Two of Garrett's fingers begin to move as well, no doubt plucking out the bassline in his head. "Like, every night, every night?" Garrett raises an eyebrow, then let's himself slump back to lay down and join Sparrow in the ceiling staring. "Can we work up to it? Play more, for sure, make sure we don't run out of steam and all that?" he suggests. "But if it works out.... I'd be open to making a proper go of things."

"Everybody needs a day off," Sparrow counters, cuz obviously she didn't mean every night every night, but the aspiration seems to remain unchanged. There's a grunt from the drummer at the prospect of working up to it, evidence of restlessness, frustration that manifests in a sudden silence. When her fingers curl into fists and kill that rhythm, the song itself dissipates. Gone. Just an itch at the back of Garrett's brain that he can't quite get back. She says... something, but he doesn't catch it. Maybe she's muttering. Maybe he's distracted. Overheard, it's easy to find a pattern in the ceiling stains, the silhouette of a city skyline, the shape of a marquis. It's easy to imagine the lights, the name. He can see LOWERED EXPECTATIONS T F Sa SOLD OUT! in boxy black letters. A nice little dream. Except for the way the letters seem to melt, to lose their shape, that darkness threatening to drip down on them.

"...let's talk it over with Jaime?" Garrett offers up as a reasonable-sounding compromise. He doesn't really notice when his own fingers stop their coordinated movement, but that hand does reach up to scratch at the back of his head as if that will help scratch the mental itch. He takes a long, deep, contemplative breath, spacing out as he watches the ceiling, the possible future of a successful band... then cringes at the melting image. "Definitely maybe, though," he tries to reassure, doing his best to make clear he's not going for an outright no here.

"Everything's a definite maybe," doesn't have any melodramatic oomph behind it, too softly spoken, though Sparrow does drape her arms over her eyes, at once hiding her face and drawing that short shirt up her torso. It might prove a more pleasant distraction were it not for what's happening on the ceiling. As the letters ooze together, the pitchy plastic--it's plastic, right?--grows heavy, sagging from the ceiling in long, sticky strands. One gloopy line breaks, that blackness dripping right down onto Garrett's too white shirt, splattering against his midsection, slightly off-center. For as easily as the color seeps into the fabric, it doesn't seem wet at all. Nor does it seem warm at all despite how it seemed to melt. Smooth, almost greasy. Hard, with a bit of heft. Whatever it is, it's weird.

"I'd even go so far as to say definitely probably?" Garrett doesn't turn his head to reply, or appreciate the view, too distracted by what's happening overhead. His head cocks to the side as the plastic (?) looks like it's actually dripping down towards him... and then it hits him. "Bloody fucking.... what the hell?" Garrett pokes his finger at the mystery goop, cringing and moving to a little crab-walk position to get out from under whatever is going on on the ceiling.

Though Sparrow offers no reply to that sorta assurance from Garrett, it's impossible to ignore the swearing, the movement. She manages an inexplicably muffled, "What?" before drawing her arms from her face to look at him, to double-take and jerk away. Her lips move, but the words seem so far away, distorted, impossible to make out. But who's paying any attention to her now?

When Garrett pokes at the blackness, it sticks to his finger. Just a little dab at first, but it spreads. Just barely cooler than his own body, it's almost impossible to feel how it creeps over his skin, over his clothing. That one little drop spreads farther than it should, losing no darkness for the thinness it adopts as it grows, as it clings to him. Were that not horrifying enough on its own, what's worse is how the spots which have been subjected to that tenebrous substance start to lose their thereness, an emptiness growing from the goop, seemingly erasing Garrett at an alarming prace.

"What the shit?" Garrett jumps to his feet, trying to brush the.... emptiness.... away with his thus-far-clean hand, and when that doesn't work tries to shake it off his limbs. "Get some water or liquor or /something/!" he half yells, half begs, moving quickly from vaguely startled to full on panicking. "Fuckfuckfuckfuck!" He continues shaking his arms like he's trying to get bugs or something off them, eyes wide with fright

Where there is nothing, there is nothing to feel. Fingers fall into emptiness, ribs and innards and all the things which make Garrett whole and human simply gone. The insistent shaking of limbs slows the brain's understanding of that absence even as it hastens the spread. The nothingness is already up to his neck by the time he notices he can't feel his fingers. Sparrow lunges foolishly forward, reaching for some part of him that hasn't yet been swallowed up, but the last thing he sees are her fingers slipping through where his other arm had been.

And then he's gone. Everything is gone. The bar, the gloop, the girl. Sound and sensation and, for just a moment, thought. Everything is nothing. Empty and still.

Until it isn't.

The air is cool and still. Clean. It smells like autumn, the way the forest smells when the leaves just start to turn and fall. A hint of sweetness. A promise of death. The path ahead is unfamiliar, forked, but the trees are tall and old and... It's good to have lungs again, to have skin, to feel the air and breathe it in.

That first breath is sucked in in a huge gasp once he can /be/ again, and then Garrett is turning in circles. "Sparrow? Sparrow!?" He calls out, but not for long, some gut instinct telling him that she isn't here. At least, not immediately in this vicinity. Taking deep breaths more to calm himself than to appreciate the existence of lungs, he looks at the paths in front of him. Definitely unfamiliar. "Hell..." he grumbles to himself before shaking his head and heading towards the path to the right, lips pressed into a thin line.

No Sparrow. Maybe some sparrows up in the branches, chirping out their songs of territory and romance, but no redheaded drummers anywhere to be found out here. No one at all, really. No voices in the distance, no vehicles. Just rustling leaves and scurrying critters, nature doing as it does.

It all seems so serene until Garrett takes that first step down the right-hand path. Something snaps on the path behind him, like someone stepping on a branch, and the hair on the back of his neck all stands on end. It's nothing. There's nobody there. Nothing. But something certainly feels wrong in a way he can't quite place.

With as much time as Garrett spends outdoors, it's impossible for him to miss the off-ness of everything. His head snaps around when he hears that branch crack, a little shudder running through him when there's nothing to see. Hands balled up tight into white-knuckled fists, he continues down the chosen path, only now with regular, furtive looks back over his shoulder.

Determination only does one so much good when the world doesn't play by the same rules.

Each step takes more effort than the last, demands more of Garrett to move one foot in front of the next. Part of it is the certainty that there is something back there, something ... lurking? No. Left behind? It feels like loss, burdened with the gravity of grief, a strange regret without shape or substance. Part of it, too, is the narrowing of the path ahead, the trees increasingly nearer on either side until he needs to pick and choose every footfall, trying to find a trail with less and less evidence that there ever was one.

Each step takes more, drains more, leaving the ranger sluggish and slow. Tired. So tired. One stumble is all it takes. One misstep, and he's tumbling forward, falling into nothing again, all that black...

And pain. Ow. A branch pokes into Garrett's ribs, another at his hip. This feels way too real. Uncomfortable and awkward. Too much awareness of everything that is definitely wrong. Like being outside in whatever he went to sleep in. Like having stumbled into a neighbor's shrub while... sleepwalking? What time is it? The sun doesn't look anywhere close to coming up yet.