Evana's brain-aches - Unfinished writing dump

Sup, lj, long time no see. Here, have a nice big 'ol dump of stuff I've been working on for I don't know how long. Mostly projects I've been tinkering with on and off.


Title: Ennui de Cadavre (Alternately titled 'Ev Doesn't Know Shit About French')

World: Thista

Character(s): Zelco, Louise Caterwaul (soon to be added in)



Haunts of hazy smoke, of sordid sex and grainy alcohol were his, inherited by way of survival and tenaciousness. Without fear he could walk the cobblestone alleyways that were forever silent, muffling all sounds of life. Apprehension was a stranger to him, a tormenting face forgotten since the shedding of adolescent. Fear was the nonexistent closet monster long revealed to be a simple sweater on a coat hanger.

At night the shimmering heat produced from the sunlight’s daily burning rose up to warm his receptive flesh. Empty cans filled with nothing but idle wishes rolled littering at his leather boots that smelled of drying lemons. He did not step over the aluminum cylinders painted in fading tones of cherry red, sea blue, sunny yellow and grass green, but rather weaved through them like some urban trash obstacle course. No thought was spared to these menial, everyday items. Common things were terminal and disposable in his painfully lucid and bored mind.

Zelco suffered from a curse that ran rampant in his sapphire and ruby veins, an affliction that burned his senses with burning passion that had no match. Every high never penetrated enough, the lows were always shallow. At times he felt driven to madness, but never reached the final edge of blissful insanity. More than once he had tried to end life before its due end, only to vow that he would not give up until he had become satisfied. But every new sensation only made to make him hunger for something more, something more potent and deadly. Zelco had been born into the world dancing a frantic waltz with death.

Any price was willing to be paid in order to feel something new. At this moment his persistent liver was at stake as he haphazardly took swigs from a green burning bottle of Chartreuse that seared his throat with emerald fire. Zelco had long been a wanderer across the globe. At sixteen he’d calmly walked away from his room and treasured things, his aging aunt, his loving girlfriend, his handsome car, good grades and a decent paying job. He didn’t even pick up his wallet before opening the front door and leaving forever. It took him four weeks before he had completed his trek from cold and bitter Maine to the vibrant and opportunistic lights of New York City.

He spent no more than seven months there, leaving once he had seen every dance club, tasted every illegal substance, and copulated with every whore worth spending stolen money on. In his time there he slept in every kind of place; expensive hotels, dirty twenty dollar motels that smelled of bought sex, spilled liquor and sour vomit. Before he was Zelco, going by the assumed name of Terry, he slept in the homes of fellow party goers, in the houses of the long dead, and once he even slumbered in the bed of a man he killed. The chilled remains had lain next to his own warm, living, breathing body. The morning after Zelco felt no difference in his heart or in his hungry soul. He left the following morning to a different city.

All that had been more than ten years ago. Time was another thing Zelco viewed as bothersome, it only served to remind one how much longer they had until all partying and lust and joy ended. In the mindless hours before dawn the somber wander had pondered over the possibility of immortality, because it was more of a possibility than one would think. His pearl colored lips had twitched in a humorless smile as Zelco decided that living forever might be nice, if only he could find a worthwhile way to spend it.

Even now as the gangly form meandered from alleyway to alleyway his lightly intoxicated mind was stewing with boredom. The reeking odor of the almost catacomb like pathways was to his pointed nose a perfume, still enticing despite the nature of its commonness. But this boredom was a natural and subconscious type of ennui, the kind of waiting similar to that of fetus in the overprotective womb, waiting for the day it would breathe fresh air and eat its own food. The grey nothing tangled its knobby fingers in his hair like a grandmother combing out troublesome child tangles. It pressed in on him like his long dead mother, compressing Zelco to her chest where no breath stirred and no blood flowed. The boredom that weaved through him now was a comfort.

Milk chocolate hair was flipped back as its reckless caretaker snorted. Comfort; that was nothing interesting, reserved for the young and the old. Thinking of such things made him agitated, a term that only the smooth burn of alcohol could allow him to be. Eyes once mocha colored, eyes that now glimmered listlessly like drowning diamonds, gazed out into the misting, sweaty evening, welcoming all yet to come. A practiced grin, a memory muscle twitch of a smile carved his features into sinful glee as Zelco stretched out his impressively long arms to embrace the night itself. To no one in particular he shouted, and yet the message was intended for all.

“Come and entertain me, City of Musicians and Demons! Let us feast upon each other and drink our full! Come and dance, hellions and angels alike! Brothers and sisters, show me what it is that you are truly made of!”

Roaring car horns and the persistent rattle of the city that never ceased were the only audible answers to his cry. Still, Zelco seemed satisfied and nodded. The gleam only left his eye when he noticed his beloved bottle of Chartreuse had escaped from his hand and flung itself against the concrete wall that made up the alleyway in an impromptu inanimate suicide. Further reflection pointed out that perhaps swinging one’s arms about madly while holding a container of precious liquor had perhaps not been the best of ideas.

With a sort of reverence reserved for the departed the crafty man wove closer to the shimmering carnage of broken glass and spilt liquid now starting to lose its glimmer. In swift and flowing motion he stooped, prodding at the bits of colored glass. A single lime drop rolled its way down a sharpened edge and Zelco reached out with a knobby finger to scoop it away. His own drops of ruby blood joined with the emerald liquor, swirling into a morbid concoction that once collided with his tongue proved to be quite pleasant. The lightly inebriated man took note to one day attempt to drink the mix on a larger scale, if he ever so had the chance.

“What a cruel mistress Fate can be,” The stooping man muttered with a touch of sarcasm.

With a pale hand placed on the sturdy wall before him Zelco stood, head spinning pleasantly. With one source of alcohol removed he intended to find another, a task not hard to accomplish considering he was located in the more seedy area of Thista.




Title: Untitled so far

World: Thista

Characters: Zelco, other Thistans



Behind the sobbing and whimpering, fingers tapping on gun triggers; waiting for a signal, there was silence. An unattended cigarette rested stationed in Zelco’s calm mouth, his slender digits fingering through his unwilling subjects’ personal possessions. He kept them lingering in the suspended moment, lackeys and victims both as they waited for him to speak, act, kill, or something.

As he laid out the five drivers’ licenses, putting names to frightened faces, Zelco admitted to himself that he was indeed a cruel man, making everyone wait on him. Listless diamond blue eyes flicked towards those gathered with him, his audience. The eternally bored man mused over that last notion, chewing it and tasting it mentally.

This day and age it seemed that there were only two roles one could play in life; the audience, or the staring role. At that very moment Zelco was the star, center piece of the twisted drama that was unfolding. And just by stooping down to peer at his little frightened audience, asking a single question he transferred roles with his ensemble.

“If you could start over tomorrow,” the cigarette in Zelco’s mouth bobbed up and down, raining ash onto the floor. “What would you do?”

Five gaping, tight jawed mouths. Ten watery, pleading eyes. It felt like an eternity crammed into mere minutes as Zelco waited for a reply, the shiny handgun tapping a slow tempo against his thigh.

Three minutes and forty two seconds ticked by, the waiting Zevplague junkies growing more agitated and anxious. Zelco resolved that not all were ready for a leading role, even more so under such conditions. Neither displeased nor content the lanky man stood and righted himself, center stage once again his. Exhaling smoke out his nostrils, the smoldering burn making its way up into his brain, Zelco considered his options in his casting of the villain role. If he was to be a classic he would need to follow the clichés. First and foremost, a condemning monologue.

“I suppose,” Zelco continued from his previous and now neglected question, preening his long chocolate hair. “It’s good fortune that none of you have any preexisting plans for the future.”

Again the leading commander glanced at his gaggle of midnight terrors and their quarry. Even thought the petrified innocents kept their anxious worried faces, they seemed more at ease, their waiting over. People are most comfortable in repetitive roles, given cues that know how to react to. Fear is always brought on by the unknown. Zelco’s face remained placid; mind stewing with the words he was to conduct his audience with.

“It would be an inconvenience if your plans conflicted with those already chosen for you.” Voice always level, face always indifferent. “Tonight, you all will become martyrs, a collective icon for generations to come. But you will not be sacrificing your lives to some old, dusty, all knowing and kind god. No, your deaths are going to fuel the eternal ideals of fear, terror, and remorse.”

The twitchy junkies finally seemed to settle, relaxing into the warped normalcy of the usual tormenting and taunting. They snickered and toed their quivering captives, whispered their own little threats and perverse jokes. Zelco allowed them this small amusement before he gave them another cue; one foot inched forward and a subtle shift of his body weight. Again the purple marked junkies were silenced by their own fear of the eerily calm man who promptly continued, his lucid yet unfocused eyes locked on the fine terrified faces.

Zelco could see the spite igniting within them; those last sputtering flames that could keep people alive for no matter how long under any harsh and bleak conditions. Something hungry twitched awake within Zelco’s innards, most likely soured and petrified after long years of using any and every narcotic under the sun and stars and hollow faced moon.

“Do not look to us for blame,” One spider limbed hand gestured in a sweeping motion at its owner and his blood lusting company. “Your fate was chosen by those not in this room, but by an entity that resides deep within this city you thought to be perfect and grand.”

Zelco had only taken a blind guess that that was the standard these youths clung to, an image of a splendid metropolis filled to the brim with opportunities unsoiled by the blows of the dark and sinister outside world. Bitterness stung in the captives’ eyes, a clear indication that Zelco had indeed shot down their collective dream without so much as a forged care.

“However, I believe we can give you a way in which to vent your justified frustration,” As he spoke the slender man picked his way through the group’s knife drawer, laying out five sharp looking tools.


Title: Lost with a Kirin

World: Thista related

Chracters: Faux King Gabriel, random New Yorkers, Echo, Tim, Natasha



One hand held the cigarette that pushed weaving smoke down into his lungs at command; the other clutched a sixteen inch stick of sugar cane, its contents already smeared on his pierced lips. Below him the city street roared in constant turmoil, a busy network capillary that connected to the larger veins which tunneled into the metropolis’ heart at the speed of one life per minute. He roughly estimated that figure as he suckled childishly at the sugarcane, stick figure then legs kicking the semi-solid air that seemed to hum outside.

Gabriel smiled as serenely as his angelic namesake at the slowly descending sun, powder blue shadows already roosting and settling on the preexisting shade created by the tall buildings that stood like waiting giants. Multitudes of sounds and smells plugged into Gabe’s sensory system, carried up to him on his window seat by the city draft; the simmering, sultry tang of the Thai café that resided street level wafted through the blue eyed man’s olfactory system then fingered the back of his throat playfully with its implied spices while modified cars with amped speakers crashed out waves of sound, the beat so loud and heavy that the lyrics were meaningless consonants stuck with vowels here and there. As Gabe gripped with on man-child hand, adjusting his weight distribution carefully, at the reliable windowpane he felt it vibrating idly from the sound waves that came from all origins.

Two blue eyes (one a shade lighter or darker that the other, depending on how one looked at it) flicked cross eyed to gaze at the glowing ember that burned in front of his face, precariously close to the blue-black locks of hair that bobbed with every absentminded movement Gabriel made. A stern, well intentioned thought jabbed at the back of his head, causing the young man to turn cautiously with a practiced smile of compromise on his angular face.

“Yes. Ma’am,” A confirmation directed to no visible being. “I did promise. No smoke. Not in here. Understood. One hundred per-cent.”

Another thought clicked in Gabe’s head, a reminder along with a word of thanks. The scrawny man nodded, his plumed mohawk accenting the gesture.

“Only fair. Yes. Thank you. Again. For letting me board. For free. Promise I’ll be out. Of your hair. Soon.”

Gabriel felt a humorous sigh rustle through his conciseness. A question loomed teasingly, what good would money be to someone who doesn’t need it anymore? Pierced lips spread in an honest smile followed by a bubbling chuckle. The implied thoughts stopped for the time being and Faux King Gabriel returned to inhaling blue tinted smoke.

Kirins’ were a brand primarily indigenous to Thista, though some specialty tobacco stores were known to carry them at customer request. It wasn’t all too uncommon for people to confuse Kirin cigarettes with Kirin beer, yet somehow both were separate companies, and a law suit had never arisen. The cartons were printed with the image of the cigarettes’ name sake, a Chinese unicorn that never touched the ground, carried on waves of smoke created from a small dish filled with what one was supposed to assume was the same tobacco rolled into the cigarettes. Sometimes Gabe wondered if he too could ride on the curling swell that unfurled out of his mouth as he rhythmically exhaled and inhaled.

In some manufacturing process that the not-quite-a-man could only fathom, the tobacco was chopped finely and mixed with spices from the Orient, giving the thin sticks incense like quality that massively boosted their popularity once the 60’s rolled around. Gabe lacked the knowledge to correctly identify the seasonings employed, but he remembered how Natasha once said they tasted like nectarines and silk. He himself wasn’t sure if that was the targeted taste of Kirins’, all he knew was that his father smoked them and so Gabriel did the same, in his father’s memory. At 12:09 on his eighteenth birthday the then mohawk-less boy had walked down to the corner store, then to the house where he was raised by his biological parents until they vanished like they’d never existed. He had sat in every room and blessed them with the smoke from his lungs.

By dawn Gabe had smoked every cigarette in his first pack of Kirins’.

He swore the next day as he lay on the cold floor with an aching, muffled head that never again would he smoke that much.

Back in the windowsill made temporary seat Gabriel mused absently if the city people below him could smell his Kirin from the massive conglomeration of other scents. And if so, was it possible that the musky smoke reminded at least one among the crowd of another time or person in their life? Perhaps while sightseeing or performing a right of self exploration they stumbled into a bar or club in Thista and had their lives touched by some music made creature; perfect and flawed in all the right ways. Some citizen that played their helpful role with a Kirin in the corner of their mouth. Gabe could think of many Thistans that fit that bill, the majority of them from Red Street, the clan of freeloaders and free-lovers alike. The Brigadier couldn’t help but chuckle to himself as he recalled the times he’d seen one of the brightly colored sexual empathy endowed natives jump on an unsuspecting tourist and lead them into a night’s worth a memories, borne on the same smoke that allowed a Kirin to never land on solid ground.

Gabriel flicked out his cigarette, hoping that if a native of this city did have memories of the incense like smoke, that they were remembered fondly and with hopeful longing.

He then returned his attention to the sugarcane previously left to coat his hand in a sticky combination of sugar and stray saliva. The small grains of raw sugar ground their way comfortably into Gabe’s mouth as he sucked them out, his tongue earning a massage as it lapped against the opening of the cane. The carefree boy enjoyed this simple pleasure, mixed with the slowly darkening atmosphere, until a familiar beeping sound brought him out of his tectonically shifting thoughts.

“Oh. That’s mine,” Habit spurred forth the obvious statement; the chirping cell phone could have belonged only to Gabe.

With a huff that black and blue clad man-child scrambled off the sill and back into the room, unfinished sugarcane stashed on a nearby table. Avoiding his various scattered items that littered the apartment floor, Gabriel sprinted for his phone as the beeps became more and more urgent. The screen flashed ‘Echo-Cell’ in bright LED lights, automatically bringing to Gabe’s mind an eternal mental image of his foster sister; stoic grey eyes, heavy lidded, and circled by smudged kohl, with soft, rose bud lips that always seemed to be pouting, all set in a petite face framed by straight cut blue hair. Gabe was smiling before he hit the answer button and brought the cellular phone up to his gauged ear.

“Faux. King. Gabriel,” He always made sure to pronounce his full name as separate words, else it would sound if Gabe was cursing himself. “Hi, Echo.”

“Where in the name of All Saints are you?” Echo’s low, irritated voice fully contradicted Gabe’s cheerful greeting. “We’ve been looking for you all over, and your pain of a phone kept giving us a busy signal.”

“Oh. Must have sat on it,” Gabe reasoned with a nod that Echo had no way of seeing. “Let it run on. My fault. Sorry.”

Over the phone Echo sighed angrily, yet Gabriel could tell she was relieved he was safe, regardless. In the background on Echo’s side, two other voices conversed and questioned Gabe through Echo, who ignored them for the time being.

“Then try not to sit on it again,” Echo’s voice had a bark like quality, as if she were talking without using her lips, talking through her teeth. This meant she was either snarling or smiling. “Where are you, anyway?”

“Lost,” Gabe chirped back without a thought.

“Alright,” More teeth talk from the other end. “Where are you lost?”

“I’m lost.”

“Gabe. Just tell me where you are.”

“Lost.”

“Meaning…”

“I’m lost, Echo.”

“You have no idea where you are, do you?”

“Bing-o.”

Gabe heard Echo sigh at him with an undertone of teeth being ground in frustration. He could just imagine her; head bent, brows knit together, her free hand massaging at an aggravated temple. Before Gabriel could apologize he heard Echo bark something off to the side, her growling replied by a low voice. The earpiece made a brief rattling sound, followed by the sound of someone stomping away, chased by mirthful laughter. Gabe assumed he had been passed off, which proved to be correct as a new, but familiar voice came on.

“Gabe.” If Echo talked with her teeth, then Tim talked with his entire chest, as loud and comforting as distant thunder.

More pieces will be put up once I edit them properly. WOOOOP EV