06:56 <VoxPVoxD> <I am so terribly sorry for my behaviour the other night. whatever the instigating vampiric force, it was not They but I who chose to act in such a degrading, disrespectful, viol 06:58 <VoxPVoxD> She holds down backspace urging it to chew faster than one letter at a time. Take whole words. Take sentences. Eat the thought from her mind. This is her sixth? seventh? attempt to say something; this is the furthest she's gotten until her nerve failed and she was left looking at their most recent conversation. Dress shopping feels like it was months ago. 07:01 <VoxPVoxD> Even looking at Sergio's name in her phone makes her stomach churn. Words don't even cohere enough to disgust her. Her shift ended at 2; she could be at his place right now. She hasn't seen him since Monday, before the meeting with the Dragons. She hasn't spoken to him except to tell him that, caught between Night Work (fighter of the Day Work) and feeling a bit under the weather, she wasn't 07:01 <VoxPVoxD> going to be very available until the weekend at least. 07:05 <VoxPVoxD> Out of food, too. Too late for shopping. All she's got on hand is coffee, milk, and the last bit of the tiramisu she made last weekend. Willie's been running on caffeine all week. Just back from the spa, at least her skin looks phenomenal. 07:07 <VoxPVoxD> Doomscrolling happens with less and less momentum now. The timeline spins down like the cylinder of a revolver in a game of Russian Roulette, faster and faster now, always landing on some leaden reminder of the other thing, or the thing behind that. 07:10 <VoxPVoxD> She had the TV on when she came home - she left it on while she left, allowing an autoplaying wall of light and sound to keep the flat warm for her. But now it feels like an intruder, so she's curled up on the sofa in the dark with two blankets and the last stiff corner of the tiramisu. 07:12 <VoxPVoxD> Her throat burns as she looks dimly down at it. Hunger? Disgust? Some lingering echo of the Dragons' curse? Maybe just all the espresso she's been pulling into an empty stomach. 07:15 <VoxPVoxD> "I miss Bob." 07:17 <VoxPVoxD> Willie looks up sharply at the yellow eyes in the dark that hover by the far arm of the sofa. Before the urge to kick him registers she has done so, or tried: the angle is bad and she's not very strong, so her heel sort of grazes the demon mastiff's jowly face, coming to a full stop just past his shoulderblade. 07:17 <VoxPVoxD> Kagemenauch: "What? I do." 07:19 <VoxPVoxD> It took six words to slide a knife between Goreman's ribs. Wellesley merits a blade only half the length. 07:20 <VoxPVoxD> She'd made it almost 48 hours without crying. To commemorate the broken streak, she says, "I hate you. I hate you." 07:20 <VoxPVoxD> Kaga: "Liar." 07:23 <VoxPVoxD> "You were in a much better mood at the spa. You seemed comforted by the thought that that woman wasn't using that primeval simpleton as a toy after all." 07:23 <VoxPVoxD> "Now envy settles in." 07:24 <VoxPVoxD> "Of the toy? Or of the implied decency?" 07:25 <VoxPVoxD> Willie doesn't respond. 07:30 <VoxPVoxD> Kaga pads up and rests a heavy head on her lap. "Tell me to stop if it hurts you so badly. Compel my silence. Go further: compel my kindness. Order me to love you. How many monsters does one woman need under her thumb before she's satisfied?" 07:30 <VoxPVoxD> "Do you think the mad Tetrarch feels such useless ambivalence? Do you think De La Warr wallows in self-pity? Does Cosmos second-guess itself?" 07:31 <VoxPVoxD> "What use has the night for so weak a predator?" 07:33 <VoxPVoxD> "This suffering doesn't expiate your sins. It merely elevates cowardice among them." 07:41 <VoxPVoxD> Willie's silence finally spreads. Kaga just stays there, head on her lap. Eventually, unconsciously, she begins to stroke him behind his ears. 07:42 <VoxPVoxD> Minutes pass. A quarter hour? A half? Finally she says, "I suppose you're right." 07:46 <VoxPVoxD> Kaga: "What, then?" 07:49 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Nothing. It is what it is. I am what I am. I take like a vampire. I condescend like a Seer. Insofar as the people I love don't suffer in my presence, it's only because they didn't know to." 07:49 <VoxPVoxD> "I'm still thinking about the Gibran." 07:49 <VoxPVoxD> "Sand and Foam?" 07:49 <VoxPVoxD> "Yeah." 07:50 <VoxPVoxD> "'Make me, O God, the prey of the lion, ere I make the rabbit my prey'." 07:51 <VoxPVoxD> Willie shakes her head in the dark. "'Let us not be particular and sectional. The poet's mind and the scorpion's tail rise in glory from the same earth.'" 07:56 <VoxPVoxD> Kaga: "Is he really the Lebanese depressive you should be sparing your thoughts for?" 07:56 <VoxPVoxD> Warningly: "That I do forbid you. Don't." 08:00 <VoxPVoxD> Kaga: "As you wish, master." 08:01 <VoxPVoxD> "That is not rhetorically impressive." 08:05 <VoxPVoxD> Kaga: "I simply wish to see you claim the glory that is your birthright. The prerogative to take without giving back. To claim without sharing. To hold, to hoard, to have." 08:05 <VoxPVoxD> "As befits a true queen of Hell." 08:06 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "I think you wish to vomit up the Oxford Unabridged and then lap it back up." 08:06 <VoxPVoxD> "As befits a dog." 08:10 <VoxPVoxD> The dog chuffs. 08:10 <VoxPVoxD> "A bit." 08:12 <VoxPVoxD> More silence. Another spin on the timeline; nothing new or interesting has happened in the last 15 minutes. It's coming up on 3 now. She's taking tomorrow off because of the alien invasion, but she really ought to get to sleep. Sleeping in so much and all this coffee has just about made her nocturnal. 08:12 <VoxPVoxD> Her face glows white in the light of the phone screen. 08:13 <VoxPVoxD> Finally she withdraws her non-scrolling hand from the demon's scalp. "Okay, I'm done with you now. Do go lie down." 08:14 <VoxPVoxD> Kaga lingers just long enough the first wisps of wondering if the binding has failed start to sneak in before, with visible effort, the big dog stands, shakes himself, and pads over to his bed in the corner. Soon that's where the Christmas tree will go. 08:14 <VoxPVoxD> Most years she'd have decorated by now. She hasn't felt up to it yet. 08:15 <VoxPVoxD> It's not that cold in here, but soon she feels the lack of extra body heat acutely. 08:16 <VoxPVoxD> ...back to Sergio's text window. 08:19 <VoxPVoxD> <I want to see you. soon, after the coming Martian Attack. perhaps immediately on the weekend if i'm not too injured. I miss you terribly, and there's something I need to conf nibble nibble there's something I'd like to d nibble nibble gnash before you destroy your life any more by idolising me you should understand what a weak and worthlchomp chomp chomp brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr 08:20 <VoxPVoxD> Phone needs to charge if she's going to have it tomorrow. 08:21 <VoxPVoxD> She'll sleep on the sofa tonight. It's not comfortable, but to get up she'd have to untangle from these blankets. She'd have to fold up at least one of them and put it away. 08:22 <VoxPVoxD> Realistically, she should expect to lose them both.