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[VtR] The Aster Courts IC: A Darkness Concrete
Arivia
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When the Birmingham City Council approved the plan for the Aster Courts, they didn't quite have the same vision of horror that the tenements turned out to be. To listen to Richard Marcell, chief architect describe the plan was to see a symmetrical array of sets of four l-shaped council buildings, circled by a common road and parking, with a large plaza in the centre. According to Marcell, these plazas were to be bright and well-lit parks, filled with plants and trees and a central fountain, ringed by a row of shops inset into the tenements at ground level. "A new, brighter community for the Britain of today!" he called it, breaking away from the concrete warrens all too common to the austere Britain of the Cold War era. In the council's hopes, the Courts would be a shining modern example of how to do public housing right.
Very little of this ever came to be. The council's plan had called for brick to face the tenements, to make their concrete hulls more friendly, likeable, homely. Only two of the courts were ever faced like this, another with the spray paint guiding lines set up - and the two that were finished have been worn down by weather, lack of care, hopelessness, vandalism. One day a team of gardeners arrived to put an oak tree in one of the courtyards, that same night a gang pulled it out of the ground and left it to rot. Eventually, the City Council gave up for lack of time or money or worry: the people moved in and the slow paralyzing rot began.
Stuart's Chips was one of those stores looking out at the plazas. It was one of the quieter ones, hidden next to one of the large wide sets of stairs that descend alongside the tenements into the central plaza. Stuart himself had a good run - a sign that lit up, glass front, a stand-up bit of herring to put on the stairs to entice customers. He wasn't there that night when your lives ended - off at home, leaving a poor kid named Jack to man the fryer and the register. Jack died, Stuart lost his livelihood, ended up being shot by some thug in a dead end over in the shanty town: another dead end in the Aster Courts. Certainly, he never expected his place to look like it does now, a year on with the shattered glass front, splintered plastic chairs, lights hanging on strings from the ceiling, everything covered in dust and shit and gang tags. This place isn't safe - this place never really was. And now it's just a wreck.
Outside of the chip shop, the wind picks itself up into a howl under the night sky, the brief dusting of rain shooting right through the gap where the glass front once stood to spatter down in the front of the shop. The only cover is beyond the counter, back where the place reeks the worst of shit and piss, where bits of fish were left to rot the past year, the oil turning cold and then rancid. One of you could turn on the lights, but it wouldn't do anything: sometime back someone had the same idea and started a small fire in the ceiling that burned out inside its concrete shell. This is your beginning: a ruin in every possible way.
Very little of this ever came to be. The council's plan had called for brick to face the tenements, to make their concrete hulls more friendly, likeable, homely. Only two of the courts were ever faced like this, another with the spray paint guiding lines set up - and the two that were finished have been worn down by weather, lack of care, hopelessness, vandalism. One day a team of gardeners arrived to put an oak tree in one of the courtyards, that same night a gang pulled it out of the ground and left it to rot. Eventually, the City Council gave up for lack of time or money or worry: the people moved in and the slow paralyzing rot began.
Stuart's Chips was one of those stores looking out at the plazas. It was one of the quieter ones, hidden next to one of the large wide sets of stairs that descend alongside the tenements into the central plaza. Stuart himself had a good run - a sign that lit up, glass front, a stand-up bit of herring to put on the stairs to entice customers. He wasn't there that night when your lives ended - off at home, leaving a poor kid named Jack to man the fryer and the register. Jack died, Stuart lost his livelihood, ended up being shot by some thug in a dead end over in the shanty town: another dead end in the Aster Courts. Certainly, he never expected his place to look like it does now, a year on with the shattered glass front, splintered plastic chairs, lights hanging on strings from the ceiling, everything covered in dust and shit and gang tags. This place isn't safe - this place never really was. And now it's just a wreck.
Outside of the chip shop, the wind picks itself up into a howl under the night sky, the brief dusting of rain shooting right through the gap where the glass front once stood to spatter down in the front of the shop. The only cover is beyond the counter, back where the place reeks the worst of shit and piss, where bits of fish were left to rot the past year, the oil turning cold and then rancid. One of you could turn on the lights, but it wouldn't do anything: sometime back someone had the same idea and started a small fire in the ceiling that burned out inside its concrete shell. This is your beginning: a ruin in every possible way.
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But this was no memento. The warmth of nostalgia did not grace his undeath. It seemed to him, as he shuffled among shattered glass and splintered plastic, that his life was even more distant now than before he had come to visit the corpse of Stuart's Chips.
He moves aside some rubble with his shoe. "If the lights were on you could a bit of a stain. But they came in here and cleaned it all. Heavy industrial chemicals, but the blood is still there." Isaac takes a deep breath. His new undead senses picked through all the smells. Clorox, bleach, and a finally a heavy undertone of blood. No amount of chemical would take that away. In response to the breath, he starts to cough. Hack, really. He presses his mouth into a sleeve until the fit ends.
Sway's Beast reacted to the others. It felt like a snake coiled around his spine, tightening, threatening to shatter his backbone if he didn't let go and let the alien id attempt to dance in the ashes of his associates. He knew it'd get him killed some night. He let thoughts of a dark garden flood his mind - a grisly image of the Beast's skin shed onto bare, bony branches where black apples grew. The Other was banished to the subconscious.
"Ain't my blood no more, fam," Sway brayed, passing through the glass shard threshold. He wore Avirex over a faded hoody. His eyes passed over the ruin before turning onto Joe and Isaac. "Why'd you come?"
"I got..." Joseph paused to consider the word, "sentimental." He barely constrained a growl. "Why are you here?"
"Last I was here was back when we breathed. S'all gone to shit, hasn't it?" Gingerly, he picked up the cash register and gave it a shake. He glanced up with a strange, lost look in his eyes.
"This chipshop, I mean," he clarified, looking sideways at Isaac with his oversized coat.
Johnny's eyes passed over the faces of the occupants inside. He recognized them all. They were here during the embrace, the night they were changed. The urges screamed at him now, begging for him to destroy the others in the room. Johnny stood, waiting for the urge to subside.
"I was nearby. Stepped into to get out of the cold.". Truthfully, he had come in to search the place for any remains of the sires or mortals that had died here. It was a longshot, but if he could scrape any of the vitae off the floor or walls it could give him insight into all of this. So far, the only blood he had the chance to examine under his microscope was his own and it wasn't helpful. "Looks like I walked into a little reunion though."
Johnny laughed to himself. It was a reunion in the sense that funeral was a reunion. Nobody was laughing and having a good time reminiscing about days gone by, that wasn't the case at all. There was only tension here. He felt the urges soothe, but they could still feel them lurking deep within guiding him.
"I come by here often. You know... it reminds me of before."
His mind went back to that night. He spent five years of his life trying to earn back what he lost. What he was threatened to tear it all away again. Johnny wouldn't let it, he fought it everyday that lead up to this point.
"Mucker this, Blud," he replied, almost certainly grabbing his crotch back behind the register. His tone wasn't entirely unfriendly, though. After all, Colton's presence made this strange meeting a little less like a support group for spree killers and a little more like the old days.
"How we been livin', then?"
He pulls his coat around him, an old habit he hadn't lost yet.
"The odds of all of us just happening to show up here is a little low, so stop acting like it was an accident. Now stop me if I am wrong, but has anything actually gotten any easier since ...", he gestures to the ruined chip shop ".. this little incident? Looking at you fucks I doubt any of you are living in a mansion with Renfields polishing your boots. So, save for the change in dietary requirements has anything changed at all? Or are we still stuck in this same fucking dung heap?"
He reaches out and picks up a plastic carp off a ruined table, "Is it just me or are we still fish in a small pond? Only this pond has goddamn sharks in it and they know what we look like now?"
"Cromwell..." Joseph snarled the name.
"Claiming tower now, chemist. Got a mandem running for me. S'not the world, but it's no shit heap."
"Y'right, though. Be better without them sharks..." he conceded, letting the implication hand in the air as he glanced at Joseph.
Someone else steps into the shop, a thin, tall, gangly man none of you recognize. He has pale skin, black hair slicked back against his head, small beady eyes and a pointed nose - the kind of face a poet might call a rat or a mole. A leather trench coat two sizes two big is belted around him; it crinkles weirdly around his pressed and starched white pants. If it wasn't for the Beast in your heart uncurling in a little anger, a little fright, a little fight, you'd still know something was wrong for the pungent stench he carries with him - soured milk and rotten eggs, decay unfurling and filling your every pore.
He leans up against a pole, a step or two away from you all.
"Like I said, everyone hates our feral laird." He rolls the Scottish term into a mockery of honour and a mangling of rulership. "But anyone who stands up to him, he kills - you five saw that yerselves a year past. No, if you want to make change happen, you'd better be planned and strong and have a lot of friends. Not just boys-" - he points at Colton's Zulu patch "- but friends with real power. Everyone knows ye're here, but you five've kept to yer own. Not even a coterie or brood or nothing between yerselves. There are big monsters circling around this tiny pond, and you're liable to get gobbled up." He smiles, a black and brown mess of dead and decaying teeth and sores.
"Name's Graves. Let me show you folks around."
"And what's to stop us from just taking what you have?"
Yeh don't need pounds. Yeh need connections."
"Tell it straight or fuck off. Iss sketchy enough here before you come in telling us something already crystal fucking obvious like it's a favour."
Graves drawls out the last word.
"'Course, it's up to yeh all what yeh do when yeh meet them."
"Fine, Graves, but if I sense any foul play..." He bared his fangs to finish his sentence.
"No downside to knowing people..." Especially seeing as he had tried to meet other kindred and had always been given the cold shoulder. He liked to believe it was because he was so new, but deep down he believes that they know how broken he is.
Isaac gets up off the table and strides to the door, nimbly picking his way among the debris. The merchant in him keeps a close eye on graves, just what do the dead sell anyways?
"I don't trust him," Johnny said plainly, "but there's something greater going on here."
Johnny made his way towards the door; his past wouldn't let him let his guard down. 'Maybe God had finally answered my prayers?' he wondered to himself.
"Got no problem letting him sell if I'm getting contacts out of it, s'long as it's on the level. Don't have a problem burying him if it's not. Till we know, best nobody turns their back on him."
"Look, these guys we are going to meet are some of the exact sharks I am talking about. They may not be the big fish in the pond, but they are a hell of a lot bigger than us. So, I am just throwin' this out there, but maybe we should put on a bit of a unified front? They won't come after all of us at once... at least not in the open..."
Johnny looked around, hoping to see another sign, some sort of reassurance. He saw nothing.
"Well then... shall we?"
"99p frosts and lollies!" the side blazes, but you know otherwise. You've seen this truck before - no one in the Aster Courts buys ice cream from such a thing. No, the truck is a mobile drug store - not for Vicodin or Tylenol, but cocaine, ecstasy, worse. Anything you want. And out of the roll-down window, you can see Graves: his long jacket discarded, revealing the starched and bleached white uniform beneath, complete with cornet cap. A throng of dirty addicts and filthy thugs surround that side of the truck, handing over rolls of bills, receiving packets and vials back in return.
Upon seeing you, Graves' face lightens, smiles, gestures you over with a nod of the head while he continues processing transactions. When you enter earshot of the Haunt: "Go around to the back!" Graves kicks open the back door to the truck, and you climb in. "We'll be on in a moment as soon as these get their fix." He smiles, all rotten teeth, and it would almost be compelling if it wasn't for that stench. Soured milk - it's so strong here, stuck to every surface, that you look in one of the six freezers that are pushed against the walls. Inside is a frozen block of what were once rainbow lollies and a stack of boxes, filled with chilling heroin vials.
You sit down on the freezers for lack of seats, and look around for all of nothing to do but wait. Graves finishes his dispensation, and rolls down the window. "All right, let's get yeh going. Ecstasy! Start the engine!" He turns and looks at you all. "Right, yeh haven't met. Up there's my ghoul-girl -" he blends the two words together, a terrible amalgamation of ghoirl "-Ecstasy. Named after the first drug she ever came to me for - but not her last." Graves hacks up a cough at his own joke, and then heads to sit in the passenger seat in the front next to Ecstasy.
Taking glimpses of her during the short trip, you can see that the ghoul is little more than skin and bones, a poor thing wrapped in a short-skirt version of the same uniform Graves himself wears. Her eyes are blank and hollow, her skin ashen, the only colour on her face the bright pink lipstick that matches the faded tips on her hair.
Eventually, the truck rolls to a stop, the bells silent. Graves shrugs on his coat again, looks at you all. "Yeh aren't nowhere yet. If I'll be taking yeh lot to some places tonight, I'll need some more medicines for all the buying going down. Now, yeh can get out and stretch yer weary bones, just don't wander too far." He chokes again at his own joke, his teeth locked in a rictus. Graves kicks open the back door once more and drops out.
Where you've stopped is a small cross-street between some of the tenement buildings. Here, when the City Council realized that the Aster Courts weren't going to live up to their dreams, they shoved extra narrow townhouses in, just to increase how many poor citizens they could consign to Hell. These tenements are even more narrow than the others, sets of two units a floor split by a central staircase in a haphazard wooden frame covered over with plastic siding. Graves goes to a service entrance cut into the side of one of these tenements, looks around for anyone else watching, and lets himself in with a key on a large ring, shutting the door after himself. The night here is dark and quiet, the streetlights broken, the only other souls in view a gang huddled around a fire - close enough for the Beast to awaken, skulking in fear around your spine, prickling at your neck, your eyes watering; but not close enough for a true fear to set in.
"Well, this is a lovely field trip."
Isaac squints for a second, letting his highly attuned senses stretch out around him. Mainly, he focuses on his hearing, looking for the sound of footsteps and sweeping it over the gang nearby, wondering what they are chatting about. A tad paranoid, yes, but it is a trait one picks up fast in Aster if they want to last long.
(Auspex ^^)
"For those of you who think that this is the relaxation portion of our little get-away, I am about to disappoint." He gestures down the way with his head, his hands never leaving the large pockets of his jacket. "Those skags down the road think this truck is a rolling free meal. I also doubt they are going to be very understanding of us sitting here and gawking."
They stream across the plaza surprisingly quickly, the group giving itself courage, strength, speed. Drawn up and close, they look as imposing as they can, but nothing you haven't seen before: mops of cropped-close blond hair, a panoply of facial piercings in steel, and the leader with a particularly nasty knife scar from ear to ear, crossing below his nose.
"Ey, wot's this?" he cries, the scar flaring with each word. "You lot got some smack in there? Gi'it here. It's ours now." As he says this, he thumps the long knife - almost more of a machete - against his hand, catches Isaac's eyes, dares him to challenge him.
"Ha! Did you see that? I thought we were going to have a go there but they turned tail and ran!" Johnny slaps Colton on the back, speaking rapidly, "Where the fuck you learn to do that? Do you think we should chase them? No that probably would be a bad idea we shouldn't chase them."
Johnny's mind reeled, straining to hold back the fire that burned inside of him. He began to pace back in forth, staring off in the direction that the gang ran.
A slow murmur began from Johnny's mouth, "Hear my prayer, Lord, give ear to my supplications: in thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness. And enter not into judgment with thy servant: for in thy sight shall no man living be justified. For the enemy hath persecuted my soul; he hath smitten my life down to the ground; he hath made me to dwell in darkness, as those that have been long dead. Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate. I remember the days of old; I meditate on all thy works; I muse on the work of thy hands. I stretch forth my hands unto thee: my soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty land. Hear me speedily, Lord; my spirit faileth: hide not thy face from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit..." he trails off as he continues to pace about.
At some point during the confrontation he had pulled a single hand out of his jacket. Those who look close enough might notice small trails of green smoke lingering about his fingertips and the soft acrid smell of swimming pools on the air before it is replaced with the general foul air of the courts.
"Well, that certainly went well. See what I mean about strength in numbers? Those animals know it and so should we"
He rolls his eyes at Johnny. His religious streak had always rubbed him the wrong way. A life in Aster combined with too much knowledge had turned Isaac into a devout atheist. But he tolerated religion in others in the same demeaning way he tolerated most things.
Inside his jacket, Isaac takes his hand off his knife. "Nice of you to thank the man upstairs and all, but do you honestly think he still listens to you?"