LOG: i'll stop the world and melt with you [open]

[cacophonish]

Who: Jeff & OPEN
When: Any time in August
Where: Bonnie's, Dogtown, and various businesses around town
Summary: In which Jeff adjusts to life in Gloucester (and encounters problems with his drivers license).
Warnings: Drinking (prompt I), drugs/hallucinogens (prompt III), magical mind fucking/Spiral-related antics (prompt III)

I. TIME TRAVEL BLUES (various locations)

"So, you're..." Pause for mental math. "Forty... seven years old?" Totally deadpan. The liquor store clerk clearly isn't buying the validity of his driver's license.

Jeff flashes a grin, shrugs a shoulder, casual, like he gets that question all the time. "I look good for forty-seven, right? It's all about clean living." ​

Unimpressed, the woman clicks her tongue and pushes the ID back at Jeff. "Cute. Go home, kid."

Later, he tries his luck at a few bars, but it's pretty much the same thing. One look at his ID, and he's out on his ass. One bartender's at least nice enough to give him a soda for his troubles, with a side of advice: "Try harder next time. You can't just use your dad's ancient license from the 90s."

This is so fucking stupid. After years of getting into bars without anyone giving a shit about his age, now Jeff's getting turned away. And the dumbest part is: he's actually 21! He's totally legal! He's been legally allowed to drink for, like, two months!

But, apparently, when you look as young as he does, and your license lists your date of birth as June 6, 1974, and you're trapped in the year 2021, suddenly everyone thinks you're a dumb kid who got majorly ripped off on your fake ID.

Fellow off-worlders may find Jeff trying his luck at a few bars around Gloucester, either getting turned away at the door, or when he tries to order a drink, or-- once he's decided to try a more strategic approach-- flirting his way into getting others to buy him drinks. Maybe you're watching this happen, or maybe you're one of those, uh, "lucky" others.

II. THERE IS SUCH THING AS FREE LUNCH (various locations)

Oh, is your character enjoying a nice meal at a diner? Checking out a local restaurant (or a ubiquitous Denny's)? Hitting up a coffee shop? Suddenly, they've got a new best friend. Jeff flops down at their table like the two of them were always planning on meeting up here. He smiles, like a languid beam of summer sunshine.

"Oh, hey. I've seen you around. How's it going?" His affiliation with the ADI is loose, at best, but he's stopped by HQ a few times, enough that he can recognize some of his fellow off-worlders. Or maybe he knows them from Bonnie's. Whatever the case, he's just invited himself to hang out-- and maybe he'll order something for himself, while he's at it. Does he actually have the money to pay for his share of the food? Good question. The answer is: probably not.

Look, he doesn't get one of those fancy ADI stipends. But he's always been able to rely on the kindness of (relative) strangers before, so why should now be any different?

"Hey, um... can you spot me? I'll totally owe you one."

III. SCRATCHING THE ITCH (Dogtown & Bonnie's)
[ This one's long and mostly takes place in Jeff's headspace to lay the groundwork for why he's doing what he's doing, so here's the tldr summary for anyone who wants to jump in without reading my totally self indulgent narrative:

Jeff goes on a ghost hunting hike to Dogtown with some college grads, they all take a bunch of shrooms, and eventually he uses whatever magic he can grasp to fuck with their emotions and mess with their heads, feeding the Spiral their fear and powering his magic back up for the time being. He steals a bottle of booze from them in the aftermath and wanders back to town, and your character can encounter him along the way, on the trail, in town, or drinking in the common area at Bonnie's! ]

There's three of them, college grads on a haunted road trip across America. Jeff runs into them at a coffee shop, bright eyed and buzzing with excitement about the day's plans. They think he's another tourist, another amateur ghost hunter, because he's too sun-kissed and his accent's from the wrong coast to be from anywhere close to New England. And they're nice enough, and Jeff gets along with them easily, just happy to find some people his own age. Soon, they're chatting and laughing and fitting together like Jeff's always been part of the group, even though he's a high school dropout and they're all setting out for their next round of higher education. Of course they wind up inviting him on the day's outing: a hike around Dogtown, and the promise of magic mushrooms.

Of course Jeff says yes to drugs.

Nothing really happens on the hike, no spooky ghost sightings or anything like that. They laugh about the weird, motivational stones, take pictures with their phones-- they're even nice enough to put something called Spotify on his phone, even though it baffles and amuses them that a musician doesn't know about Spotify (or Soundcloud or anything else). They tell him everything he mentions-- every artist, every band, every movie-- is classic. Retro. Vintage. Obscure. It makes him seem more cool and detached from the mainstream, because it comes across as, like, authentic, like he really loves this stuff, lives and breathes it, instead of using it for hipster cred. For his part, Jeff has no idea what the fuck they're talking about half the time, though he rolls with it with nods and laughs and vague remarks. Fake it til you make it.

They make their way to a nice little secluded spot in front of a long-abandoned building, perfect for drugs and a picnic, settle in, and take the shrooms in responsible, respectable doses. Nothing too crazy, just enough to really vibe with the energy here. Jeff lays back on the blanket, looking up at the face of a future doctor as he waits for the shrooms to kick in, and he's beginning to realize they all think he's quaint, a weird and adorable fucking novelty who's never even heard of Instagram, whatever that is.

"I didn't grow up with computers," he says, which isn't a lie, really. Eventually, there was a computer in his house, for his dad, for work stuff. Jeff never gave enough of a shit to use it. "Or the web," he adds, and they make a weird face and then giggle because nobody calls it the web anymore.

"What, were your parents luddites or something?" a future lawyer asks him, and Jeff shakes his head and tells them with total sincerity that, "No, they're not religious." They laugh like he just told a joke, and for the first time, it feels like they're laughing at him, not with him.

Jeff joins them, bursting out in a vibrant laugh of his own. He wants to cry. He can't even pretend it's just the shrooms making him emotional. The truth is, he wants to cry most of the time, usually when he gets all tangled up in his thoughts. He reaches for a drink to coax himself out of his hole, and things get easy again. They pass the time talking about nothing, conversation drifting further away from whatever the topic was as a wonderful trip begins to bloom inside of them. At some point, he looks up at the future doctor again, and he realizes she's glowing with the sunset. She's so radiant, and pure, and she's looking down at him like he's another radiant and pure thing (which he isn't), and they retreat into their own space together, in the abandoned house. The walls breathe around them, shallowly wheezing with age, and Jeff dances with her-- she leads, he follows. It feels like magic, and in the moment, he thinks that maybe this can scratch the itch for magic magic.

It doesn't. There's still a hole where the Gift used to be, and as they lay together in the bones of a once-loved home, he feels it more achingly than ever. Eventually, they join the others again, and chill out around the illumination of a flashlight, babbling about the energy of the land, the ghosts of Dogtown, and just, like, the viiiiibes of this place. Jeff doesn't say much, he just fixates on that hole inside of him, retreating into his head, wishing he could climb right into that hole and get lost. Maybe he'd find himself back home. Maybe he'd end up in that Other place, the "aether," his grandparents' generation would call it. That space in reality where the magic lives and breathes in its purest form.

That's where Ziggy came from, before it fell down to earth and landed in his head. If he climbed inside that hole, would he land in Ziggy's head?

He wants to cry. Even now, he still wants to cry. Jeff giggles suddenly, and it sounds sharp and discordant to his ears. Nobody seems to notice, since they're all giggling, anyway, from whatever it is they're experiencing right now.

Make them feel what you feel, something says from inside that hole where the Gift used to be. For a second he thinks it might be Ziggy's voice, inasmuch as Ziggy had a voice at all, but he realizes it's just his own voice. He doesn't know if it's spite or loneliness fueling the impulse. He doesn't even know how long it lingers and rattles around in his head, because it's not like time's flowing normally anymore. All he knows is he continues to sink into his own trip, and he's laying on his side, eyes on the flashlight that's standing in for a campfire. Eventually, the future professor asks him to sing one of his songs. He's a musician, right? He's in a band? The future lawyer and future doctor chime in. They all want to hear a Nervous Tix hit.

Make them feel what you feel...

Jeff sits up, blinking like he's just woken up from a dream. He thinks for a moment, then hums softly, wandering through melodies until he lands on the right song. 'Lick The Pole.' It's a silly one, juvenile and irreverent, full of innuendo that's so thinly veiled it barely even qualifies as innuendo at all. Jeff always sings it with a smile, and tonight's not any different. And they don't know the song, so it's not like they can pick up on the tiniest changes in inflection, the way the pitch goes a little this way or that, just slightly, almost imperceptibly, weaving magic into the melody. The Gift isn't here; he can't feel it, hasn't felt it since his arrival, but he still sings as if he's harmonizing with it, and he could swear he feels something coiling around in the hole where the Gift used to be.

The chorus is easy enough to pick up on, and they're singing along soon enough.

Make them feel what you feel.

There's nothing bad about that. It's just... melting his emotions into theirs, bringing all of them together as one unified being of pure empathy. The ultimate bonding. It's not cruel to spread his feelings to them. People always loved it at Tix shows, the manic crush of pure revelry that would bring the show to the next level. Back home, people would say there was something else about a Nervous Tix show, that it was a fucking religious experience.

And here, in this intimate setting, it should be no different. But they don't know what he's doing. They don't understand why they begin to cry, partway through the song, but they know there's something wrong about it. It feels like an infection. They want to laugh and sing along-- or, at least, they know that's what they wanted to do before the wave of loneliness and alienation and grief crashed over their heads and drowned them, and now they can't stop wailing, and they feel like they're going fucking insane. They know what they're feeling is incorrect and unnatural, but they can't stop it, and it's like a nightmare they can't pull themselves out of. Jeff keeps on singing the song until completion, like Nemo or whoever the fuck it was, that Roman asshole with the fiddle.

When he's finished, he feels complete. There's still a hole where the Gift used to be, but now it's occupied. There's something there, and while it doesn't feel like the Gift, it's still magic of a kind, and it'll do. His companions are all curled up on the ground, choking on their own sobs, and he tries not to look at them. He just reaches into the future lawyer's backpack and takes a mostly-full bottle of tequila.

He wanders back in the direction of Gloucester, seemingly aimless as he drifts towards his destination, bottle in hand. It's early in the morning by the time he makes it back to Bonnie's, singing softly to himself.

"Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Weird and Gilly, and The Spiders from Mars..."

Others can encounter him on the way, on the trail from Dogtown or in the sketchy parts of Gloucester-- or maybe they're likely to find him curled up and cozy on a comfy chair in Bonnie's flophouse, drinking his ill-gotten tequila as he tries not to think about what he did to those tourists. They could have been his friends.

IV. WILDCARD
[ Throw whatever your heart desires my way! If you want to plot something, hit me up at weeyotch or weeyotch#8200 on discord and we can hash something out. ]

Comments

[cacophonish]

He clicks his tongue, wondering if he should bother trying to explain this consequence of time travel (which neither Back to the Future nor The Terminator prepared him for), or if he should just make up a lie that's a whole lot easier to believe than the truth.

But if there's anyone who might understand his dilemma, it's this guy. A fellow... off-worlder, he figures, having seen him in passing at the ADI HQ.

"About this." Jeff holds up a finger, then pulls out his wallet so he can hold up his ID. His totally legit California drivers license, which is totally expired by at least 20 years. There's a wry smile on his face as he explains, "They think it's a fake ID. Time travel fucking sucks, dude."

[emptyvessel]

Marcus leans in to look at it, and immediately sees the problem. Not only is the ID expired, the birth year would put the young fellow (Jeffrey, according to his ID) in his late 40s, which he... clearly is not. Time travel sucks, indeed.

"Well that's just unfair. ADI couldn't issue you something appropriate?" He considers the situation for a moment longer, then shrugs. "What would you like?"

[cacophonish]

"Ahh..." he drags out, stalling for time before he admits, "I didn't ask." It's one of those details that totally slipped his mind when they were processing him. "It feels like everything they give you comes with strings attached, you know?"

Like all those fucking rules in the apartments. He may not have a clothes stipend or free cafeteria food or anything, but at least he's got the freedom to be himself.

But hey, he perks up at Marcus's question. The way his expression brightens up, it's like the clouds have parted and he's just positively sunny now.

"Whiskey? Tequila? I'm not picky, I don't need, like," he waves a hand vaguely, "all that top shelf crap. Anything cheap and strong."