[CENTER][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/0199a223-f589-7609-94ed-37709394b859.webp[/img][/CENTER][indent][sub][COLOR=#696969][B]Location:[/B][/COLOR] [color=white][I]Liverpool[/I] - [I]England[/I][/color][/sub][sup][right][COLOR=#696969][b]#1.01[/b][/COLOR][/right][/sup][/indent][COLOR=dimgray][SUP][sub]_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________[/sub][/SUP][/COLOR]

[indent][color=#A9A9A9][sub][sup][url=https://open.spotify.com/track/5D1tg7hj9vcG3Pc6pSSBjR?si=0b292157e5074f15][b][color=#000000]A DREAM[/color][/b][/url][/sup][/sub]
[color=#FFFFFF][i][sub]I am curled into a fetal ball, spinning and kicking aimlessly in a void of soft-light nothingness. I cannot see - my senses are blinded, numbed - but all around me, pressing against my skin, I feel colour and light flow through this shared liminal space and onwards toward the seams in reality. Claustrophobia settles in as the pressure maintains and my discomfort only builds as the space begins to shrink and trap me; my muscles scream against themselves as I push back against the encroaching darkness, attempting to divert or at least postpone my fate, but all efforts are ultimately futile. The void holds my chest in place, unable to expand and draw breath into my lungs - pressure, pressure, inside and out, on the verge of suffocation, lungs wailing and heart thundering for air, air, sweet air! - then the nothingness open beneath me and spits me out, a wad of primordial ooze, a stain upon the carpet. A cold mire clings to my skin. There is nothing here, just myself and the mud, a bog that spans as far as the horizon and further still.

With some difficulty, I stand, knee-high in thick black mud. I stand for years. Sunless days pass me by and I gaze up at starless night skies, straining every sense I have for a single sign of life. It takes several lifetimes, but eventually I hear it: a blunt, rhythmic thudding, somewhere in the distance beyond the mud. I cannot see a source - but the thudding is all there is, and so I move toward it.[/sub][/i][/color]

[hr]
[url=https://open.spotify.com/track/0HGz82NyvC0IxMAC46fQI4?si=9e41274f73dc4bcd]John Constantine's room was a shithole.[/url]

It was, at least, in keeping with the rest of the house - a council hostel for deprived and houseless persons, suffering from budget cuts and the lack of care from its rotating cast of residents, most of whom were recent releases from either the prison or Ravenscar. Some left the city; some just left the hostel to find some other derelict to haunt. Others still just found themselves remanded back into penal custody. John had only been here a couple weeks, shown in with little more than a blanket and a few pairs of jeans to his name, and he'd already seen three other residents of varying stability come and go. He expected a new replacement any day now.

He rubbed his eyes, pushing off lingering drowsiness, which only gave way to a burgeoning hangover. Cans of Tennent's Super littered the floor, and his mouth was rank and dry with the aftertaste of cigarettes and lager. [i]Gods[/i] but his head pounded, sounding a throbbing beat that seemed to swell and warp the walls. He could barely face the thought of moving, but a tiny voice, breaching the surface of his booze-fuelled oblivion ever-so-briefly, demanded water - to drink, to bathe, and Christ, to piss. John started slow and carefully pushed himself up on matchstick arms to a sitting position; the change in temperature as the duvet fell off his body was barely noticed, both because of the thin ineffectiveness of the sheets in the first place, but also because the movement pushed waves of nausea through him. He quickly became sweaty and clammy as his body prepared to vacate its contents, but no such luck, as welcome a purge might be; he instead just dry-heaved and tasted bile in the back of his throat. A plastic bag hung looped around one leg of the bedframe, an impromptu bin, and John hocked thick phlegm into it. The need for water overwhelmed him, and he could ignore his bladder no longer; he fished a stained pair of jeans from the corner of the bed and pulled them on as he hopped strategically through litter, cigarette butts, and dirty laundry to his room door, before making a quick dash down the hallway to the bathroom to shower and piss and drink gluttonously from the tap. His hangover, a fetid miasma of muscle ache, migraine, and nausea, crashed laboriously against him in waves - but with his pills, a handful of ibuprofen, and a couple slices of stale bread standing in for breakfast, he attempted to soldier through it.

Two hours later, out of the house and in the sunshine and lighting his third cigarette, the hangover had eased off; he'd sweated most of it out, and the smell clung to him, at least somewhat masked by tobacco. Still, though John had showered, the same could not be said for his clothes - jeans and a plain t-shirt beneath a Harrington jacket, an ensemble he had worn all week. Today, though - today was Universal Credit day, which meant today was also launderette day, and refilling his prescription day, and getting some more cigarettes day. All of that he stumbled through with heavy footsteps and a lulling head, pausing only briefly to enjoy a meal deal in the park as he waited for the pharmacy to re-open after lunch: an egg mayo sandwich and a full-fat coke were ambrosia in his hands. John found a moment of stillness on the bench after eating, another cigarette idly burning between his fingers, and he seized upon a fleeting feeling of peace - only for it to be broken just as quickly as the world rushed back in. Shrieking children and bluetooth speakers and obnoxious estate agents taking an early finish all pulled him back to a reality he had been trying to escape, or at least tune out; instead, he resolved to collect his pills, and then dash into the co-op on the way back to stock up, before he retreated back to his room to wile away the hours until sleep claimed him once more.

[hr]
[sub][sup][url=https://open.spotify.com/track/5D1tg7hj9vcG3Pc6pSSBjR?si=0b292157e5074f15][b][color=#000000]ANOTHER DREAM[/color][/b][/url][/sup][/sub]
[color=#FFFFFF][i][sub]The thudding persists, and so do I. Slowly at first, every step demanding all my body has to give just to wrench my foot free of the mire, placing it forward and plunging it back into the muck just to repeat the motion, over and over in a monumentous effort that feels further out of reach every second...and yet, I glide effortlessly across the bog without movement, the mud motionless around me as I sail across the surface without a ripple, pulled forward along an invisible track. I see both; I do both; the thudding grows ever-louder as I strive onward.

I find myself, all of a sudden, in the centre of the swamp. There is a small grove of scorched trees here, their trunks charred and cracked, limbs twisted, split and blackened. They form a crude circle around a singular mound of dirt, upon which rests a great wooden block, stained with all manner of blood, muck, ooze, and foul scum and viscera. The thudding is at its loudest here, crescendoing in a violent volume that slams against me, and as I listen I can begin to discern shadowy, obscured figures surrounding the block. They look roughly human in a crude, unfinished sort of way; their outlines frayed and warping, faces blank and featureless yet radiating malice. Each of them clutches a cleaver, chopping incessantly at something upon that filty slab. The scene hurts to look at, but I cannot avert my gaze, cannot resist peering closer, desperate to see the meat they are butchering; when I finally make it out, I simply faint.[/sub][/i][/color]

[hr]
John was cold when he awoke. Almost feverish; he could feel the sweat clinging to his flesh, gluing sheets to skin, but there was a draught through his room that carried away all heat. His door was slightly open and drifting voices filtered through the gap - some manner of conversation, two stern voices and one self-affacing one. John knew immediately what was playing out beneath him: police visit, having either returned a runaway, delivered a new tenant, or just here to question around an existing one. Any way you sliced it, John was not interested. He reached for clothes and pulled on a clean pair of jeans and a shirt from a carefully folded-and-stacked pile atop a chair in the corner, then once more quietly padded down the hallway to the bathroom. He'd hoped he could just sit on the bog until the voices beneath him stopped and left, and then continue his day unassailed, but the squeaking bathroom door had already betrayed him; footsteps came up the stairs, and John listened to them tread past the lavatory to the doorway on his room, and then back again. They paused at the closed door, and then several light knocks sounded that let him know the jig was up; he stood, flushed, and prepared to meet whichever pig on the other side wanted to ruin his day before it had even begun.

John opened the door to be face-to-face with some wet-behind-the-ears PCSO, a young lad who looked only slightly less scrawny and slightly less pre-pubescent than John did himself. John ignored his introduction, as well as the timid wavers in his voice, to peer around him instead, noticing the broken window at the end of the hall. The shattered edges of the pane had been taped over, and a towel hastily hung across the opening, but this was clearly where the draught was coming from - and judging by the wiped-away remnants of fresh blood staining the sill and yet to be scrubbed out of the carpet immediately below, this was the likely catalyst for the current police presence. John sighed, an affectation the young faux-officer in front of him did not appreciate, before he was lead downstairs to join the [i]actual[/i] police officer and the only other present resident of the house for 'questioning' in the form of a righteous and bullying lecture.

Lectures were the theme of the day; it opened with the porcine duo, John only permitted to make his escape after an hour in that uncomfortable kitchen, and then he was on his way to receive another at the local job centre. He was lucky enough to get only a brief dressing down from the receptionist, before sitting for another hour and then being called for a more expansive diatribe from his appointed case worker. He left that onerous meeting and the depressing, brutalist building that played host to it with a mixture of relief and dread swilling in the pit of his stomach; his next agenda item was the worst of the week - his therapist. He'd not opted for CBT when presented with a choice by the nurse overseeing his release from Ravenscar; such an active course, requiring such conscious and actionable behaviour from him, seemed an unconquerable mountain. Instead, he'd chosen what seemed to be the less arduous of the treatments offered, and so it was he was locked into a six-month minimum of guided counselling. This was to be only his third session, but already the urge to play truant had blossomed within him; only the looming spectre of the asylum battled the feeling, a forced remand back to that hostile cage and its darkened corridors the ever-present consequence of failure to comply with his mandated release conditions. So it was he would indeed attend the third floor of a city-centre office building, and sit beneath buzzing fluorescent lights as a well-meaning, but ultimately ineffectual practitioner nodded solemnly along as John played association games with his own train of thought. Occassionally his therapist would scribble something down in a notepad, or attempt to pry further past the surface level John kept them on, efforts recognized and halted quickly. These were the worst lectures: the ones John gave himself, forced for fifty minutes a week to talk around events he'd rather pretend never happened, faltering under the eye of some blasé, courts-assigned third party - and all while he inwardly berated himself for being incapable of seizing the opportunity for healing and resolution and a pathway toward being even an small percentage closer to a human being with worth and purpose. 

The weekly impotent rattling of his own bars, slamming against the walls of a cage he had constructed around himself - it all exhausted him. These were the booze nights, the trudging journey back to the house intermissioned only by a stop at the offy for as much as alcohol as the cash in his pocket would get him, the only question in his mind whether to aim for greater liquid volume or percentage potency. After making his purchase he returned to his room and closed his door, stuffing a towel underneath to block the draught, and drank himself into oblivion once again.

[hr]
[sub][sup][url=https://open.spotify.com/track/5D1tg7hj9vcG3Pc6pSSBjR?si=0b292157e5074f15][b][color=#000000]A FINAL DREAM[/color][/b][/url][/sup][/sub]
[color=#FFFFFF][i][sub]I am lying on my back, strapped to the slab by great leather belts that restrain my limbs and body and head so tightly all I can do is wriggle my digits and whip my eyes around in their sockets, searching in the dark for an escape or a perpetrator. There is nothing, only an expansive pitch darkness and a chill in the air that cascades goosebumps across my skin and puts a bitter cold in my bones. Then, suddenly, they're there - the shadows, holding their terrible cleavers, gathered on all sides and pulsing with hatred. The cleavers rise in unison; and then the thudding begins again.

Over and over the cleavers rise and fall, carving away at my body. They start at my feet and I cannot move as every falling blade bloodlessly hacks away a sliver of flesh, only for the blows to keep coming, the steady rhythm of their cutting and carving never ceasing, never slowing. A shadow looming at the base of the slab deftly plucks away each hewn strip of flesh and tosses it over its shoulder, discarded into a pit dug in the mid behind it. I thrash and struggle and attempt to break my ties with all my might, but it's no use; I am bound so thoroughly that my efforts are futile, and instead I can only strain my eyes to watch as the thudding grows louder and the cleavers move up my body until the noise and glint of the blades is all there is. I am portioned up neatly and thrown away. The last cleaver falls across my eyes. I am returned to the dark.

Everything melts away as the pit swells and opens up, swallowing the world. The figures, the trees, the slab and the mud - all dissolves as I fall, now little more than scattered remnants of a spirit long-forgotten. My descent is slow and gentle, a slow sink, but eventually it ceases and my ethereal feet stand on solid inky blank. In front of me is a woman, softly humming and cooing a soothing melody, her refrains interspersed with lilting sobs. She is clutching something to her chest, rocking ever-so-slightly; in front of her lies a bloodied pile of gore and viscera, the scraps of my body cut and quartered. I reach out with ghostly hands to console her, to ease whatever burden troubles her so - but my hands fall through her. She turns. She has my sister's face. I see through her eyes as she raises her own arms to clutch my neck, watching as she slowly strangles what is left of me.[/sub][/i][/color]

[hr]
John woke with a franticness he hadn't experienced in years, if ever. He tore off his bedsheets and tossed clothes around his room and kicked litter and cans around the floor, ripping through his surroundings in desperate search for a piece of himself he'd deliberately buried; a piece that now, in a waking fugue, he feverishly sought to exhume. He dug through jean pockets and cuffed shirt sleeves and discarded cigarette packets, and then, in a moment of clarity - it was so [u]obvious[/u], why didn't he try there [u]first?[/u] - he went to his Harrington and fished in the inside pocket for a cheap velcro wallet, empty save for some rolling papers and years-old receipts and-

His quarry. He got goosebumps again as his fingers pinched the glossy paper, and pulled out a folded photo that every neuron in his limbic system told him to [i]stop, put it away, don't look, you don't need to, don't want to, shouldn't, can't[/i] - the tips of his fingers found the edges of the paper regardless and unfolded the square.

John barely glanced at the old photograph before he dropped it reflexively and cast his gaze away; his whole body flinched before going rigid. He was dumbfounded, all thought functions having seized up and clattered to a halt. His vision swam and his heart and lungs sped up involuntarily as the surroundings seemed to swell against him. He sat back upon the bed, half-collapsing as his legs buckled beneath him; he screwed his eyes shut hard enough to hurt, blood pounding in his ears. John was breathing but he felt suffocated - his chest was like a spring wound tighter and tighter, twisting his innards into a tense ball, every gasp for air a renewed threat that the whole thing would burst and punch a hole clean through John's sternum. It would kill him and set loose every devil and fear, every insecurity and bad thought he'd ever had, an endless tide of poison to spread and burn and rot and everyone would see and recoil, ridicule, flee and ostracize-

There was the briefest sensation of a kindly hand rested upon his shoulder, and then it was all over. The coil unwound, slowly but surely, and John opened his eyes as his breath came back to him. He let go of the bedframe he'd been unconsciously clenching, his knuckles brilliant white and hands aching, and carefully, deliberately, picked up two pill boxes that sat alone atop his singular chest of drawers. He pulled a foil rack from each and [i]pop-pop[/i] released the pills he needed into his waiting palm, briefly reading the words 'citalopram' and 'clozapine' with glazed-over eyes as he put the boxes back and swallowed the pills dry. With gathered resolve and steady, controlled breathing, John bent to retrieve the photograph from where he'd dropped it, holding it open with two hands as he stood. The photo was of a young girl, center-frame, an expanse of water behind her and the light of the sun reflecting off it to illuminate the subject from behind, giving her an ethereal golden outline. He pushed back tears as he studied the photo. 

He finally tore his eyes away to dress, pulling on his jacket before he pocketed his pills and carefully re-folded the photo and tucked that away too. He checked what cash he had and then, downstairs, drank a pot of tea without milk or sugar and put away half a pack of digestives before heading for the front door.

John's hand felt heavy on the doorknob, and he hesitated. His other hand went to his jacket pocket and brushed fingers over the folded photograph of his sister. 

With a short breath, and a resolute nod to himself, he left. [/color][/indent]