Physical State: Tired.
Mental State: Worried but stable. Focused.
Faye Desdemona.The name lingered fresh in August's mind as he was thrust into the world of the living; which is to say he awoke in the small room he'd been renting for the better part of a week. Like usual his face was covered in a particularly cold sweat as he sat up in bed-he swore if his temperature had been any lower the damned downpour on his face would literally be frozen.
The odd thing was he didn't remember going to sleep-let alone coming back to the cheap yet rather well maintained Inn he had been calling home. In fact the last thing he remembered was being on a small wooden rowboat bobbing across a black surface of water-[b]but that couldn't be right.[/i]
No, he quickly decided that the only real explanation was this...memory(?) had simply been yet another random thing that had made its way into the bizarre nightly horror show that were his dreams. The
very dreams he had come to the small city of Arkham to disprove.
A part of him still held hope that if he could prove this “
Faye Desdemona” of his dreams in fact didn't exist the nightmares would cease or, at the very least, quite down. If nothing else he would know he was just being crazy which in all honesty would be a slight relief; afterall a mental break was somehow easier to accept then...
visions? Hell, he didn't even know what to call them, but the bottom line was that these dreams had to come from his damaged mind and nothing more.
Right? Right.In a surprisingly fluid motion the giant of a man heaved his massive frame off the cheap box screen mattress that squeaked with relief beneath him. Standing at his full height of 6'6” he gave himself a quick once over and found that he was not only wearing the same dark gray pinstripe suit from the day before but was also encased in his favorite beige raintcoat-
as if someone had knocked him unconscious and then been kind enough (and strong enough) to haul his massive dead weight into bed. No. He demanded in his mind. He'd obviously gotten ahold of some illegal booze or something, no doubt while chasing another dead end lead.
That must be it. In fact, he decided, he had probably been conned into buying
someone drink after drink in some shady speakeasy while getting himself likewise inebriated in pursuit of some phony lead on the ever illusive
Faye Desdemona.
Probably a pretty someone. Yeah, that had to be it. Right? Right.Deciding he looked and smelled clean enough he chose to just set about his day instead of going through the rigmarole of bathing. changing, and shaving. He did have a job to do afterall-even if his clients were technically nightmares that tormented him each night. He had a reputation to keep up.
He'd been brought to Arkham by the word of one of the few men he trusted; Kane Kitter. Despite being non corporeal and just half a torso Kane had informed him over the course of several conversations that he should look-had to look-in a particular place called Arkham City. And Kane had been right. Sort of. Believe it or not August came to find out that there were in fact 33 women named Faye Desdemona in the town of Arkham City. More surprisingly over half of them had killed themselves within the past two years leaving a mere seventeen women who shared the exact same name that his mind had made up.
All of the fourteen girls he had managed to track down so far didn't match the same woman he had seen in his dreams. In all honesty though he had only seen the woman in question from behind, but that was still enough to make a profile in his mind that she was rather slender and stood no higher then 5'5” with long jet black hair...he wasn't sure what her face looked like though because every time she turned around in his dreams...well...there was a reason he sometimes woke up screaming.
He brushed these thoughts aside as his right hand felt for the usually holstered Colt .45 beneath his left armpit. He was extremely relieved to find the deadly black piece of steel still holstered safely in the old leather rig he constantly seemed to wear. The fact he still had a gun assured him his lack of memory had been from an uncommon bout of debauchery and not...
something else. At almost the same time he came to the belief that all things in the world made sense again he noticed what he could only be described as...
gouge marks(?) in the old wooden floor of his room.
They almost looked like claw marks.No. Probably just from...furniture being moved around no doubt? They were old marks he hadn't noticed up until now he assured himself half halfheartedly. Not wanting to spend another second in the room that consisted of little more then a bathroom, bed, dresser, and peeling wallpaper he made his way for the door. He picked his brown fedora up that had conveniently been placed on the doorknob as he made his way out-he made double sure to lock the door behind him.
It didn't take anytime for August to make his way out of what he had come to know as “Nightshades Inn.” He was rather glad as he descended the stairs that lead to the rooms above-as far as he could tell the thin pasty white weazily man that ran the inn, the same one that swore up and down his real name was infact
Nigel Nightshade, was nowhere to be seen. This small miracle allowed the behemoth that was August Dupin the ability to slink out of his temporary residence without the usual extremely odd and somewhat creepy morning chatter Nigel seemed so fond of. Not looking a gift horse in the mouth August made his way past the front desk and out the door onto the snowy streets of Arkham.
To be more precise he practically stood on the sidewalk at the intersection of Parsonage and College Street. He breathed in deep letting the cold air fill his lungs in a rather refreshing way despite the rather gloomy atmosphere that seemed to hang over the City streets. Having lit a cigarette with the stroke of a match he was in the midst of convincing himself he was just in a mood-he just needed get some good sleep, maybe some food? It wasn't this town, it was him.
As if in defiance to this thought a shrill scream floated in on the winter air-he couldn't quite pinpoint it but August was rather certain of the direction as the previous cry was quickly accompanied by a few more sounds of panicked yelps and gasps of terror. He was almost positive the commotion was coming from the prestigious Miskatonic University a bit down the road.
Without a word August set off on foot towards the sound of screaming that was already dying down: with one of the three girls left to track down actually attending said University he thought it was a rather good place to start today.