log ; missed connection ; day 221 ; closed

[loveismadness]

Characters: Harley Quinn; Davesprite
Location: Ice Spires
Date: Day 221; Afternoon
Summary: That real relatable feel when you run into the kid you wanna adopt and he's a puppet monster.
Warnings: body horror, blood, impalement + other injury, death imagery; to be added as thread progresses

[the thing about exploring in this place is that it's lonely. harley can see her breath, her makeup feels frozen to her face, and her lips are chapped to the point of being cracked and bleeding. what's worse is the loneliness, though, especially lately. even as she stops to inspect the icicles--and man, it looks like they could plunge from the ceiling and impale her easily.

she shivers, and moves on.

but there's something that feels different--something aside from the fears that have been eating at her for the past day. she feels as tough there's someone...something else here.

so, like a horror movie protagonist, harley calls out foolishly.]

Is someone there?

Comments

I have no good icons for monster Davesprite

[mrcreamsicles]

[There's something of a clack that answers Harley first, like wood striking wood. Not a word, not a hello, not even footsteps. But there is something moving closer, and if she listens she may hear the tells: creaking threads and the brush of soft objects across the frozen floor of the tunnel.]

[It's funny, almost. There's a part of his mind that propelled him to keep moving toward a goal instated before this all happened. He's heard Harley's voice from that post of hers about music that he never answered. He can put the voice to a face, the face to a name.]

[It just doesn't matter.]

[Well, maybe a little. What if she has a light to take? But conversation is beyond him, human concern something for other people. He drifts in deeper with eyes roaming for an expected figure.]

[The overall shape of him is, oddly enough, not that different from usual: orange and winged and bearing two arms, yet a tail instead of legs. He floats a couple inches from the ground. The oddity comes from everything else. He's stitched together, is the thing. Thread weaves across the edges of mismatched parts, no neat seams but more like someone pieced together something that had been chopped apart. They don't even line up right, and that creaked noise comes from the strain of the stitches to keep him together. White, cotton stuffing leaks out in places. At others, blood has smeared at the threads. And that's the other part: it's so hard to tell which part of him is real. Some bits are skin, feather, hair, scale, but others are made all in facsimile. Felt adorned with the artificial, dull and bent sequin scales, faux fur fluff poking from under a grey cap that seems practically a physical part of him. Keep looking, though, and a part that seemed undeniably real in one moment looks soft and stuffed.]

[But even apart from the stitches, he's been through something rough. The right wing dangles, thread insufficient to hold it back tight to the stump, such that the feathers drag across the ground. The hilt of a katana pokes from his chest; his coat is open, showing where the wound (dead center) has bled. Get a look behind him and one would spot the back of the blade pierced out between his shoulder blades, wedged through a wing slit in the coat.]

[He doesn't look like he's in pain, though. How else could he grin so stubbornly?]

[Without aid of clown makeup, Davesprite's face has been set in a rictus grin, round cheeks marked each with a red circle like a cheer blush. His jaw is as neatly hinged as a ventriloquist dummy's—hence the clack. His eyes are hidden at the moment, blocked by dark, triangular shades, the arms of which seem to disappear into his skin. If Harley should look into the mirror lenses, they show nothing less than her own body run through by his sword.]

[But for all he's a monster, he still carries his things with him: a tote bag slung from a shoulder, a bottle of bleach in one hand, backpack clutched by its strap in the other. He's got gloves on, fingerless and black leather, which seem just as fused to his semi-avian hands as the hat to his head. There's other things he couldn't wear like this that poke from the bag or the backpack's pocket.]

[loveismadness]

Oh. Shit.

[she sees it, perhaps before it sees her. harley can't really tell how aware this thing is, just from the look of it. she's seen weird in gotham, really; she's broken bread with villains almost as horrifying. but the fact that she's alone, right now, in this freezing hellscape--that's more than enough to set her on edge.

and she hates being alone.

determinedly, she pulls a box cutter from her backpack. a meager weapon, but better than nothing. she wishes it would make her feel a little bit safer.]

Who are ya?! Can ya talk?!

[mrcreamsicles]

[Davesprite is hard to miss at the best of times, but his noticeability factor is through the deadly, icicle-laden roof of the tunnel right now. Monsters tend to do that, let alone the neon orange ones.]

[And yes, though he spots her second, that is Harley he sees. He hears her questions, but the first thing he does it reach up and nudge the pointy sunglasses out of the way of his eyes. Then lenses still stubbornly reflect the image of Harley's own death, but his eyes may draw their own attention, bulbous and round and glassy as a doll's. The irises are red; they shift in jerky movements as he looks her over, pausing on the box cutter, then at her mouth. No light.]

[He lets the shades fall back into place.]

Hoo hoo, haa haa, hee hee.

[That dumb little giggle is all the answer she gets, voice soft in volume but higher in pitch than it would be naturally. He turns his head from her and drifts forward. Without a light to steal from her, she's of no interest—boring. And if not interrupted, he'll float right on by her down the tunnel without any further fuss.]

i'm laughing at your unsuitable icon

[loveismadness]

[her eyes go wide, and they seem fixed on his shades. there's something mesmerizing about seeing her own death, again and again, as though it's something inevitable. and his eyes--they seem dead, and terrifying, and she stops in her tracks for as long as he stares at her.

worst staring contest ever.

and then he laughs, and begins to float away. she stares after him, shaking, still holding the box cutter aloft as though it could possibly protect her.]

..........The heck was that?

he is trying his best

[mrcreamsicles]

[Davesprite answers only with the clack of his closing jaw, neither pausing nor slowing for it or the box cutter, let alone Harley's apparent fear. He just continues on, until eventually he's out of sight.]