2021-07-12 - The Crossroads: Make a Deal
Joseph meets a Dealer at the Crossroads. They make a deal... but will the other keep up their end?
IC Date: 2021-07-12
OOC Date: 2020-09-11
Location: A Crossroads
Related Scenes: None
Plot: None
Scene Number: 6011
Perhaps you fell asleep. Maybe you even just closed your eyes for a second. Whatever it may be, when you come to yourself you realize you're not in Kansas anymore (or Gray Harbor, w/e). It's a dim, dark stretch of highway crossed by another dim, dark stretch of highway. There's no storm here, but there's one in the distance: its lightning flashes just about the only thing brightening the sky. Thick, heavy trees press in from all sides and form a dense canopy above.
The road is paved, but not for many long years. The pavement is cracked and dust drifts in eddies over it from the wind carried by the storm in the distance. The night weighs heavy and the quiet heavier still. It takes a moment or two, but you finally realize why: there's lightning, but no thunder. The only sound is the breeze rattling the branches of the trees.
That's the problem with Gray Harbor: one moment you're just minding your own business, and the next you've been dropped into this other version of reality. It's the case with Joe - he was just walking into his bedroom from his living room. One step leaves the living room rug and comes down on the fissured pavement of the road, and leaves him standing, bemused. He's only in t-shirt and jeans, boots still on.
This....this is almost more like the backroads of Georgia, the long, oak-lined streets he knew from childhood. The sailor looks around him, carefully, as if in search of others. Usually he falls into these with other people.
Could be Georgia or Alabama or even Louisiana. It definitely has the feel of one of those states. The mugginess, too, but that could be attributed to the storm in the distance if one wanted to rationalize.
The wing kicks up, leaves and dust moving in whorls along the intersection. There are no cars. None to be seen or heard in any cardinal direction and a good survivalist (or hiker) would be able to tell this intersection sits perfectly poised in the cardinal directions. One road true north and south, the other east and west. But there's no sign of the sun right now... nor the moon and stars. It's all obscured by clouds and trees.
"Well, well, well," a voice says, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. It's got a low, bemused rumble. A deep basso that could stand in for the absent thunder. And then, the voice's owner is there. If one is looking east, he appears to the west. If they're looking south, he appears to the north. But there he is: a tall, lightly-tanned man with perfectly coiffed brown hair and wearing a white suit with a black shirt and red tie. His belt and shoes are also black. He begins striding towards the intersection proper; taking his time of it.
"Seems someone has a desire."
That feeling in the air, humid as breath, in a way that the Pacific Northwest just isn't, even in summer. He knows it. Knows it's the South, somewhere, somehow. It feels like home, in some visceral way.
Which means that the man in the white suit fits. Fits with the place and the hour, for Joe was raised with tales of the man at the crossroads. He startles, truth be told, when that voice is heard...whirling to face the newcomer. But, perversely, he smiles after that first moment's startlement. Like he knows who this has to be. Like he's welcoming an old friend.
"Of course," Joe says, warmly. "Don't we always?"
A rotation of the hand and the man in the suit has a cane. Twisted blackwood capped with a claw (like from a bird of prey). He leans on it, staring at Joseph.
"It's a mighty fine sense of want to bring you here." Though in the sense of Gray Harbor... is that necessarily true? But then, desires can shape dream and can shape Dream. He brushes an invisible speck of dust from his lapel. For all the wind-stirred detritus around, none of it seems to touch the man. He's the eye of the storm.
"So tell me, Mister Cavanaugh, what is it you seek?"
This is no one to be glib with. No one for a flippant answer, far from it. Joe's silent, for a long moment, lips primmed up into a thoughtful line. What does he want? What could this being give him that he doesn't have already?
".....can you heal old wounds?" he says, finally, softly. "Really heal them?" Joe's tone is dubious, uncertain. But he has to ask.....since surely this one can't undo an old accident.
The man in the suit sets to walking a circuitous path of the intersection. "Old wounds? Are we talking those done by man, beast, or perhaps my favorite of all-" he stops and turns to face Joseph. "a lover scorned?" There's a slow smile before it disappears as if it were never there to begin with. "Might be that I can. What do you have to offer in exchange?"
Circling like a tiger, or so it feels. Joe turns with him, determined to keep him in sight. The question makes him flush, uncomfortably, and he licks dry lips. "Well, man. Sorta. A vehicle accident. No one's fault, really, equipment failure...."
He manages to keep from wringing his hands or fidgeting, but even the way he holds himself still is betraying. "What would you want?" he asks, simply. A beat where it looks like he'd volunteer something more, but he leaves it there, for now.
When asked what he'd want, the man in the suit stops. He plants the cane and leans on it toward Joseph. Those teeth shine again in another grin. "Now, now, Mister Cavanaugh," he says in that low, velvet bass. "I can't tell you that. You have to make an offer. Something you think would be worth the exchange."
The sailor's caught by this, hesitating again. "All the stories I heard, you deal in one specific currency," he says, softly. "Souls. But I think you've got mine as is - can't sell you what you already own..." His voice is a lazy drawl. "I won't give up my memories or what little inspiration I've got. I don't have any firstborn children to trade you...." Then he pauses, and there's a wry glint in his eyes. "What about pain? Suffering a coin you deal in?"
There's a tch from the man in the suit. "Sensationalism. Yes, I deal in souls, but not just." When the former astronaut mentions memories, the brown-haired man does lean forward a few inches. But alas, those are not for offer. So he leans back and looks away. "Suffering?"
Now that seems to interest him. He turns back, takes a few strides in. "What sort of pain are we talking, boy?"
Joe stands his ground, draws himself up a little more, though he was hardly slouching to begin with. Like an animal trying to look bigger to scare off a predator. But he keeps his expression as calm as he can. "Usually physical. Sometimes emotional. What kind do you like?" Nothing flippant about his tone, but that gleam is still there.
That grin broadens and there's something inhuman about it. The mouth a little too wide. A few too many teeth. It doesn't reach his eyes, either. A feral smile, if anything.
"Pain is pain. All that differs to me, Mister Cavanaugh, is the flavor. But if you are already in pain, why do you offer up yet more?"
"Because to me, the flavor does matter," Joe says, and his voice is very soft, though there's no one else here to hear it. "It's one thing to deal with an ache in the bone, to deal with weakness I can't shed, something that may cripple me in time. It's another to offer pain as a gift, or to find it as a challenge that I can meet. That's different. It gives me....control, of a kind."
There's a long moment of consideration. Is the man in the white suit going to leave? Going to let this one go?
He finally takes a few strides forward and lifts the cane to point at Joseph. "Two minutes."
A currency too debased for the Prince of the Powers of the Air, perhaps. Joe's an old warhorse, after all, battered and scarred. He lifts his chin at that, poised....and doesn't flinch away from the pointing cane. "Two minutes of what?" he asks, gaze never wavering from the face of the man in the white suit. "Of pain? Sure." No boasting or bragging about how he can handle it. Likely he can't, and he knows it, indeed. But he'll stand under it as long as he can.
"Yes. Two minutes of pain." The man in the suit takes a few steps closer, that grin growing broader. "Submit when ready, Mister Cavanaugh." It is likely a mental form of submission. A sort of signing of the contract, as much as it were one.
<FS3> Joseph rolls Composure-2: Great Success (8 8 6 6 6 4) (Rolled by: Joseph)
That arrogant tilt to his head doesn't waver. Bravado? Quite likely...and surely he doesn't think he can deceive the Father of Lies. The man in the white suit can see Joe's Adam's apple bob as he swallows hard, and then he nods. "Very well," he says, bowing his head and spreading his hands, in token of that submission.
The pain that comes is sudden and intense. The man in the white suit doesn't even move. One could make a comparison, perhaps, to the box that Paul Atreides must suffer in the beginning of Dune. It is simply pain that seems to radiate from everywhere and nowhere all at once. And the man with the brown hair? He just watches, that grin ever-present. But maybe bravado (pride is a sin, after all) goes over all with him. Because Joseph will be able to manage it until it just... stops and the man steps back, lifts a hand to brush back his hair.
"Now then, that is something. Are you sure you want to be rid of this old injury and not achieve something else?"
The sailor's not such a stoic that he's mute throughout the ordeal. He makes a terrible noise, low in his throat. Head thrown back, muscles taut as wire...and when it's done, Joe's down on his knees, panting, one hand on his chest. Still himself, though.
And after a moment, he grins up at the man at the pale suit - it's pale and shaky, but sincere. "Can you fly me to the moon?" he asks, and is apparently serious about it. "Although I think the traditional reply is 'done told you once, I'm the best that's ever been.'"
"If you so wished. But you may not survive the trip." A hint, perhaps, to phrase one's requests properly? The cane is gone and the man steps back, adjusting his cuffs. Maybe he's giving Joseph the opportunity to collect himself.
"You mistake me with another. Demons, we are many. The Christians make such a deal of one in particular and attribute everything to him. Must be terribly busy, keeping up with everything they claim of him." He looks to the coming storm, then back to the man on his knees. "Two week's time and you will have what you seek."
His eyes are bright, too bright, as he cuffs at dry lips. Joe gets to his feet, unsteadily. "Fair enough. I'll save that one, then. I like bein' alive and able to breathe." He fishes a handkerchief from his pocket, in some subdued dad plaid, wipes at his face. "Well, usually he's the one as is supposed to show up at the crossroads at midnight. Two weeks, huh? Don't have any way of holdin' you to it, but....we'll see."
Then he's tucking the hankie away, and extending a long hand to the man in the white suit. "Shake on it?"
The man -- the demon -- scoffs, straightening. He smooths his lapel. "I am a man of my word, child." But he does accept the hand that's offered. His own is clammy, yet warm. Very warm. "Two weeks. We meet here again and the deal will be done."
And then, between one breath and the next, he's gone. He's gone, the road is gone, and Joseph is proceeding into his bedroom once again.
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