2020-02-16 - I'm Burnin' For You

It is evening just after a viewing. The door to the Funeral Home is still unlocked although now there is a loud electronic DING DONG when the door opens that doesn't sound during a viewing or service. There is an older man in the viewing room closing the casket while an older woman vacuums the floor.

Beth sits in the office behind her desk, the glow from the screen of the laptop reflecting in her glasses, occasionally typing something in or picking up a black ink pen to fill something out on a form next to the laptop.

There has been a short exchange of phone numbers and texting to arrange a time for Alexander to come by, and he shows up a few minutes before that, scrupulously punctual even though he's been walking through the howling wind and is damp from head to toe from the snow. He also looks like a particularly disreputable homeless person: his head is half bruises on his face, radiating out from a split on his forehead above one eyebrows. More bruises are on the back of his neck and probably under his disheveled hair, as well. He's wearing an oversized, ugly sweater with badly knitted reindeer, old jeans, stompy boots, and a green army surplus jacket.

He makes his way up to the house; he's probably been here before, snooping around various deaths (whether anyone asked him to or not), and of course they saved strange little octopi together. But he still looks haggard, tired, and defensive as he enters the funeral home and makes his way to the office. He stops just outside the doorway. "Hey." A flicker of a smile. "How're you doing?"

Beth glances up from her paperwork when she hears someone come into the house, puts her pen down, and stands up from her chair to start towards the door when Alexander beats her there. When she sees the state he is in she winces. "I should have come over to your place." She decides, which may not be the most tactful thing to say, but she's already said it. She smiles apologetically as she realizes what she's said before she motions towards a comfy chair in front of the desk. "I'm okay. Thank you for coming. Do you want something to drink?" She looks tired but otherwise the same as she usually does.

"No. You shouldn't," Alexander says, with a little shake of his head. "It's not really ready for company, right now." He doesn't seem to notice the lack of tact on either of their points. "Water would be nice, thank you." He sidles towards the chair and sits down tentatively, like the chair might decide to eat him. "Had any other problems since the last time we talked? You look like you haven't really been sleeping much."

Beth make no comment in regards to his house being ready for company but her brow raises ever so slightly behind her glasses. She grabs a bottle of water out of a little mini fridge and a cocktail napkin and puts the bottle on the cocktail napkin on the desk for him. She shakes her head. "No, but I've been very good about not being alone." The vacuum can still be heard out in the viewing room. "I don't know if it just hasn't been interested lately or if it likes to come when you're alone, but-" She shrugs a shoulder. Her phone is retrieved from her pocket and she begins flipping through it. "I said hurt in the email but it killed the woman I was initially talking about. In a house on Sycamore. That huge guy from the ice cream shop couldn't bust down the door and by the time we got inside it had ripped her heart out and was holding it in it's hands."

Alexander looks around the office with open, even rude, assessment. He takes the bottle with a murmured thanks, his attention returning to her. "Stalkers usually do. Like it when you're alone. I imagine that'd go double for supernatural ones." He opens the bottle and takes a swallow. "I figured. I heard about the murder on Sycamore." He hmms. "Do you know if anyone else tried to make a mental connection with the creature, or if they've been having the same problems?" A pause. "Did it do anything in particular with the heart?" The fact that they're talking about a murdered person here doesn't seem to bother him; he's curious more than anything.

Beth shakes her head in response to his question. "I don't know. I don't think so, but..." She frowns, her expression as thoughtful as it is displeased, before she concludes, "Maybe the woman it killed also made one? I talked to a friend who is a cop and he says she's not the only one." She sits down behind her desk and closes her laptop. The phone is put down on the desk. "It was holding her heart in it's hands when the door opened. Her blood was everywhere. I remember the paramedic who was there slipping in it. It looked like a person but shriveled, I guess? Gray. Blackness oozing from the mouth. I think it said 'I kept it. For you. For us. I love you."

"Which friend?" Alexander takes a small notebook and pen from an interior pocket on his jacket, and opens it, scribbling a note. "This is related to the deaths with the missing organs, I'm guessing? "Shriveled appearance could be a case of psychomorphology - the interior mind reflected in the outward appearance. It's clearly looking for something to...fulfill or complete itself, so it's constantly bleeding and wasted away until it finds it. Although, if it's like most forms of violent psychopathy, that absence is not something that can ever be filled externally." He grunts, studies her. "What, exactly, do you want help with? Driving it away? Killing it? Severing the connection between you and it?"

"Gabriel Quintanilla." Beth says as she glances down at her phone. With the smallest of sighs she picks it back up and turns the screen back on. Whatever is on the screen makes her visibly wince. "I have just heard of missing hearts. I don't know about any other organs. I mean I've heard about it in the local paper, but not in relation to this." She offers the phone to Alexander so he can see the picture. "That sounds about right. It seems to have abilities somewhat like mine? It can mask itself. I felt it's emotions so strongly when it was here. It made the viewing room dark so I couldn't see what it was doing to the decedent."

In the picture the corpse of a elderly woman is propped up in a standing position in the Service Room. The rods meant for pallbearers to hold while carrying the casket torn free and driven through the small of the body's back to emerge in a V beneath her chin, propping the head up. A grin pushed into her flesh, and pinned there by black slivers and peeled back eyelids allow eyes clouding from dust scratches on the desiccating orbs to stare blankly in a mad harlequin smile.

The ribs are bent, not broken, in a graceful set of sweeps - the sternum gone, the lungs laying in a heap on the floor where the rods are thrust and the embalming fluid pools. Her heart is held up on bits of bone and sinew, a display and a letter hangs in her stiffened fingers, which are folded at the dead woman's waist.

Alexander makes a noise and makes a few notes. "I see. Detective Quintanilla hasn't asked for any assistance in the case. But that doesn't always stop me." He smiles, for a brief moment. "So it has the mental abilities? I wonder if..." he trails off, and shakes his head. "There's been a case of a person who lived and died in the Veil, and they were...resurrected, of sorts. I wonder if maybe your stalker underwent some of the same transformation?" He scratches his head with the back end of his pen. "Irrelevant for this, I suppose."

He leans forward when she shows him the picture. He doesn't wince or show any disgust at what he sees. "Well, that's artistic." It doesn't appear to be sarcastic. He reaches out a finger to point at the letter. "What did it say? The letter?"

Beth's eyes widen ever so slightly from behind her glasses as he describes a person being resurrected in the veil. "That is pants shittingly terrifying to think about." When he asks for the letter she goes, "Oh right." and then she opens a drawer in her desk. A ziplock baggie with the letter inside is produced along with a box of latex gloves. "It's written in embalming fluid along with whatever body fluids were left in Mrs. Rodriguez. It's a carcinogen so I wouldn't handle it without gloves."

Written in bile and embalming fluid

"Oh my dear sweet. Oh my love. My lover. Our minds touched. Our hearts. Our very beings.
We must be together. We will be together. I shall take our hearts and never others.
We will be one heart.
We will be one soul.
Split no longer.
Yearning no longer.
Forever."

And then black, wide mouthed, lip prints all around the margins

"Yeah," Alexander agrees tonelessly. "But I think he was a guy who'd pretty much lived over there, maybe for decades. I don't think you're in any danger of it as long as you don't get a summer house or something." He brightens when she brings out the baggie with the letter, and reaches out to take it with one hand. He reads it with intense interest. "Fascinating." A glance up at her. "Have you tried to read it? I mean," he reaches up with his free hand and taps his temple. "If not...would you mind if I did?"

"Why would anyone do that? It's bananas in that place. Like being in a nightmare." Beth asks with a furrow of her brow. His question earns a shake of her head. "I thought about it but then I thought it would know somehow? I don't mind. I just...well, I would advise against it for your own safety, but I won't tell you no."

"People are strange," Alexander says, with a shake of his head. "I think you'd find more than one person who'd choose to live in a fantasy land - even a fucked up deadly one - than the real world, if they had the choice. I'd say it's probably better for them to be over there, than over here, if that's what they want, but," he sighs. "Hard to say." At the caution, he actually grins, brief and bright. "Well. Worse case scenario, it gets fixated on me instead, and you're okay. Not a bad outcome."

"That's the truth of it I suppose." Beth says in agreement when Alexander notes that people are strange. She gives him a bit of an alarmed look when he grins. "Jesus are you excited about that? I mean I'm not one to judge, but..." She's totally judging you right now, Alexander. "And can we kill it? I don't know if it can fixate on multiple people, but it's pretty clear it moves from victim to victim. I don't want to die, but I also don't want someone else to die, either. It needs to be destroyed if possible."

"It's interesting. I like interesting things," Alexander says. "And I don't actually...know if we can kill it, or banish it, or whatever. I may be the town crazy, but I'm used to the crazy being over there, not as much over here. Not in such a...physical sort of way. But we can try. And if it does change targets, I'd rather have it going after me than someone who mat--who can't fight back quite as well." He studies the letter again. He glances out back towards the others in the building. "Will they come running if I, uh, cry out? Sometimes it hits rather hard."

Beth can't exactly argue when he calls it interesting. She sighs a little when he says they may not be able to kill or get rid of it. "Well, it came from somewhere, right? It's not like something has been pulling out people's hearts for decades. There has to be a way to send it back." She blinks incredulously, "Dude you are extremely important. People who know what you know are important, okay?" She may have said more but his question causes her gaze to cut towards where her parents are tooling about. "I'll close the door." She gets up to close the door before she adds, "We'll both try it. Maybe if one doesn't get it the other will? Try to not touch the writing." She then repeats, "It's a carcinogen." The door is closed and she comes to sit back down again, not in her chair but in the chair next to Alexander's so she can also touch the letter.

"I don't know nearly enough to be useful," Alexander says, with a careless shrug. "And yes, I'm sure it came from somewhere. Although it's hard to say...where, or when. We don't know much about Over There." He reaches for the water while she goes and closes the door, taking a quick swallow from the bottle. "Sounds good. Have you done a lot of reading before?" A quick, worried look in her direction, even as he takes it out. "I apologize. In advance. If I do anything weird." He avoids the 'ink'.

"You know more than anyone I know." Beth points out. She shakes her head before she admits, "Well, not intentionally. I end up touching a lot of people's stuff that they were wearing when they died so..." She trails off, assuming he gets what she's putting down, and then she sort of flexes her hand a little. With intention. It's a little ridiculous. "Ditto." She says before reaching over to touch it as well.

She is quiet for a few moments until a whimper of fear escapes her lips. She draws her hand back from the letter, the color draining from her face, and sniffs back tears. Fear is radiating off of her now. "Did you get it's name?" She asks in a shaky voice.

Alexander coughs as the scent fills his mind, sweet and rotten and dark. He actually lifts his hands up to cover his nose, like that might help, but the rotten stench clings to the inside of his senses. "God. That's foul." But he nods at her question. "Yes. I can," another cough, "I can try to do some research on it, if you like. But it seems to be truly focused on you. You need to not be alone, or without someone who has combat experience to back you up. Do you have someone?" He puts the letter back in the envelope, eyes still watering.

Beth wipes her eyes before she shakes her head. "Not really. I was staying with Ciprian. He's strong but he doesn't use it often because he doesn't want to attract Bad Things. I had to put an end to that because he's a single parent and I can't in good conscious expose his kid to that, and finding someone to watch her so he could stay with me was too much." She motions towards the closed door, "I've been staying with my parents. My mom glows but..." She shakes her head.

"Ciprian?" Alexander pauses. "Ah. Minerva's brother. Yes." He frowns. "I don't know if you need to have someone who stands out strongly - just as long as they have enough to be able to understand what's going on. But they should be able to protect you. Do you...do you have anyone? I'd offer my house, but," he sighs, and rubs wearily at his face. "It's just not a good time right now. I'm sorry. But I can--" he falls silent. "Do you feel that?" He stands, carefully, pivoting to examine the room.

"Gabriel said I could stay there." Beth says, but she makes a little face after she says this. "But that would be awkward." And then she scrunches her shoulders before rolling her head back a little. "...Yeah. It was damp the last time it came." A look of alarm crosses her face, "My parents are here." She springs up from the chair to start towards the closed door.

Alexander steps forward to open the door. "Let me go first," he says. "Is there anyone else?" Even as he asks the question, his eyes are on the door, and he reaches out to open it with all the caution of a cop casing a building with an armed suspect somewhere inside.

"Just my parents." Beth says, but there is a lot of urgency in her voice because her parents are here. Her phone, laptop, and the funeral home speakers shriek before they begin playing Blue Oyster Cult. "Noooo..." She moans out in fear. Which is really an odd reaction to BOC. "It might already be there with them!" She then shouts, "Mom! Dad!"

Alexander reaches out with his mind, trying to find her parents and figure out what their emotional state is at the moment, as well as any living presences in the building around them. He says, "Don't shout. If they're okay, you'll only scare them. If they're not--you'll warn it." His own voice is hushed, and his steps are hurried, trying to find the two before it's too late.

Beth thankfully takes Alexander's suggestion that she should stop shouting to heart even though she looks very panicked at the moment. She draws in a few breaths though her nose before exhaling through her mouth to calm herself. The voice causes her to freeze a moment before her head turns ever so slightly so she can look at Alexander pointedly. Then she reaches out mentally, It uses illusions. Wherever it is dark or not normal is where it is.

Alexander sucks in a quick breath as he feels that growing fury. "Your parents seem calm," he tells her, quietly. One hand slips to the small of his back, under his sweater and his jacket, and he pulls out a long, antler-handled knife. When she reaches out, he immediately accepts the contact, and replies, If we can lure it to a single, contained space, I can try to nullify the area. It'll shut down any abilities in the area. I don't know what it'll do a Veil creature. I haven't...done it before. But it's a worthy experiment. Where would you suggest?

A sigh of relief escapes Beth when Alexander says her parents are calm. Does it need to be a room smaller than this? She asks, and she may have thought something else but then the door bursts into flames. She lets out a cry of alarm and takes a step back away from the office door until she bumps into her desk and nearly sits on it. "It has to be here!" She cries out loud.

No. Size is negotiable. It just has to be--FUCK! Guess when the door bursts into flames? Alexander scrambles back, putting himself between Beth and the door. He licks his lips. I don't know if it's IN here. But... He takes a breath. Tries to make his voice way more confident than he feels as he says, "Because you are," to the voice. "You're unwanted. She never asked you to become fixated on her. It's pathetic. You probably couldn't even take me in a fair fight, so why should anyone love you?"

This is probably one of the more stupid things Alexander has done, but at the same time he's taunting the creature, he's reaching out with his expanded mind and imposing nothingness on the world around them. Filling the room with it, sealing it away from the Veil and all its powers. He hopes.

Beth gives Alexander a bit of an alarmed look when he begins talking smack to the creature. The release of the pressure from Obsesi makes her relax a little. That is until she realizes it's on the other side of the door. She lets out a cry of alarm when it begins clawing through the door. Hands come up to cover her mouth as it sticks what she really hopes is it's tongue through the hole in the door. Finally she lowers them. "If you want me then get in here." She says challengingly.

Alexander has gone blank-faced, dead-eyed. He's in the stance of someone who knows how to use the knife he's carrying, and although the loss of his empathy is like a gnawing hole in the back of his mind, he's trying to stay focused. He gestures to Beth to pick up a weapon of some sort, if there's anything in the office that can be used, then carefully moves towards the door, just out of reach of its swing if it breaks. "It's only the truth. You're not wanted here. You're not needed here. Obsesi, there is nothing and no one for you here. You need to go back to your side and stay there."

Beth turns to look around the office. This is not where all of her scalpels and bone saws and other sharp implements are. She takes a display urn off of the wall and hefts it up in one hand. At least she'll be able to bash it if she needs to. Maybe. It's not exactly the most effective weapon.

She holds the urn and stares at that eye as it appears. There is a feeling of victory until it makes that announcement to Alexander. A shaky exhale escapes her lips before she cries out, "No! Wait! I'll come out! I'll come out! Don't hurt anyone!" She starts towards the door, trying to get around Alexander and get out, before Obsesi can leave and find whoever it is Alexander loves.

"You're really going to have to get in line for that one," Alexander mutters, sounding infinitely tired. When Beth starts towards the door he hisses. "Stop right there," he snaps. "You can't indulge a madman---madthing." He doesn't grab her, but he does try to get in front of her and stay in her way, like a particularly annoying cat. "It's fine. I'll contact people and let them know to look out for a crazy fiery heart ripping thing. It's, it's only a 'five' on the Gray Harbor Weirdness Scale these days."

"Jesus Christ it is literally threatening to kill people you love and you just look tired!" Beth snaps back when Alexander gets in her way. She moves forward to attempt to slip past him. "All because you helped me! This is something that requires some urgency, I think!" She stops when he says that last bit before she just throws her hands up in the air, "Fuck! What the fuck are we going to do?!" And then she remembers she was trying to get out the door and continues trying to do just that.

Alexander's hand slams the door shut with the non-knife-wielding hand, and does not budge, although otherwise he avoids touching her at all. "It's been a very, very, very long week," he says, softly. "You can't travel faster than the speed of electronics. I'll warn her. But running off into the night is only going to get you snatched up or killed. Which wouldn't be helping anyone at all. "So stop. Use your head. Please, because my head is killing me, and this room is creeping me right the fuck out."

Beth continues to do that fussy little awkward dance with Alexander where she tries to get out of the door and he just blocks her path before finally he slams the door shut. Her head snaps up and she looks at him very carefully while he speaks. Her shoulders hunch and she turns to walk over to the desk and sits down behind it to show she isn't going to try and get out. "I have some advil if you want it." She says softly, by way of peace offering.

Alexander goes all tense and wary when her head snaps up, and his shoulders hunch, as if steeling himself for whatever decision she makes about what to do next. When she turns around and retreats, he lets out a visible breath of relief, and sags against the door for a moment, resting his bruised forehead there. Then pulling back with a hiss, because the wood is hot and smells bad. "This. Will have to be fixed," he mutters. "Sorry about that. And Advil would be...the best possible thing, unless you happen to have some ridiculously potent alcohol that I can drown in." He's maybe joking about that part, and he releases the door to step back and turn to her. "I'm sorry. I wish I could have stopped him right there." He's pulling out his phone and sending off a quick series of texts.

Beth sits in her chair and takes in a few decompressing breaths while Alexander sags against the door. "It's not your fault that the personification of that song by Lady Gaga has decided it's in love with me." She says in a very rational tone. Her purse is picked up and she gets a bottle of advil out of it to offer to him. At the mention of alcohol she laughs. "I'm a funeral director. We have one of the highest burnout rates for a career in the country. Of course I have alcohol." She stands up from her chair to turn around and reaches behind one of the display urns to produce a bottle of bourbon. She shakes her head softly. "It's not your fault. At least you came to help."

Alexander can't help it. He laughs, short and sharp, half under his breath like he's afraid of it being heard. "Thanks," he says, taking the Advil that's offered and immediately dry swallowing three of the pills, reaching for the water bottle just afterwards. "I was kidding. About the alcohol. I have to walk home." He rubs at his eyes. "And I could have handled that better, I'm sure." His phone goes off and he checks the texts, and grunts. "Isabella's been warned. She's a fighter. I'll try to find out more about this creature and its weaknesses. I can't...guarantee anything, but I will try." Then, he fixes a dark-eyed look on her. "Where are you staying? This room is safe for about a day. Or at least, if he crosses over, he won't have anything but strength against you."

Beth keeps the bottle of bourbon, twisting off the cap to take a swig herself, and sits back down behind her desk heavily. "Well more for me, then." She says a little dryly. When he says Isabella has been warned she looks slightly relieved. "Good. I'm sorry she got dragged into this." As for where she's staying she shakes her head softly. "I don't know. Here for now, I guess. Other people being around isn't going to stop it so I need to not be around others. I can't put anyone else in danger."

Alexander stares at Beth. His gaze is flat, reptilian. "Unacceptable," he says, curtly. "Find someone. Do full disclosure, but you're not putting someone in danger if they choose to help you face this. But I'd really rather not hear on the news that you've been found vivisected on your own tables. It would ruin my day, and it's already been a pretty bad one." He rises to his feet, grabbing the water bottle. "I need to get started on a few things so we can shut this thing down. But please find somewhere to go - or if you absolutely refuse, call me back at about this time tomorrow, and I'll seal off another room for you. Okay?"

Beth glances down at her desktop when he tells her that her plan is Unacceptable with a guilty expression on her face. She nods her head once. "Okay. Fine." Still, she doesn't exactly look thrilled at the prospect of finding someone to keep her safe. A hand is tugged through her hair and she takes off her glasses to rub her face. "I could get a room at the motel. Get someone to help me and then maybe you could seal it off?" She shrugs helplessly before saying, "I'll figure it out. Thanks."

"That would work," Alexander allows. "Just let me know when and where, and I'll let you know as soon as I've managed to find out anything. Or if I don't find out anything." He gives her a brief, sad little smile. "Don't die, okay?" Then he turns and slouches his way out, carefully opening the burnt and rotted door, and breathing a sigh of relief when he steps out of the room and feels his abilities come back online.