In The Kitchen (Mature Themes)

[Tigan Milburn]

Through the Back Window, 8 Navidson Circle, Old Temple

"--elcome to the kitchen, new friend."

Trevor's eyes shot open at the greeting, darting left and right as the vague shapes of faces became manifest. It was most certainly not the kitchen, but the dining room itself. It was as much of the house; dark, polished wood with a rich kelly green wallpaper, heavy curtains, and mirrors situated in the strangest places. While clean, certain corners were caked with dust, where a mop and broom had consistently missed for decades on end. The rugs were dark, cheap, and common, and the windows that weren't inches thick had been boarded up thoroughly from the outside. "Erh.. how did I...?" He fussed with his glasses and squinted around the room, thick fingers scratching at the brown argyle sweater over a brown-striped button-down.

"Now, Friend..." The wiry woman's thoroughly-worn teeth showed as she smiled through the curtain of greasy hair over her face. "Don't go actin' like yer some innocent little teddy bear..." She started to circle, but more a pace. It wasn't any less unnerving. "We all know koalas got the clap, n' we all know you wanted somethin' feuked up from the liiiiiiberry." She ran her tongue over her teeth and slunk backward.

The chandelier had been outfitted with brand-new hyper-efficiency LEDs that cast shadows around the kitchen in settings that would have looked absolutely grand by candlelight. Alas, it cut harsh, jagged edges and long, pitch shadows. The mood was Deco/Nouveau Magpie, with countless jars, drawers and cupboards tucked in corners, left on the banquet table, and all through the adjoining actual kitchen through the swinging door.

It was a spider's attempt to be friendly to its flies, at the very least.

The next voice piped up from the table, from a man cutting into a semi-burnt cut of lamb with mostly-roasted vegetables. "I mean--" He had long since stopped caring whom he offended when he talked while he ate, and he enjoyed every bite of his meal. "I haven't eaten this good since boarding school." He dabbed the corners of his mouth with a cloth napkin, to keep the canned au jus from dribbling into his meticulously-crafted beard, yet his tailored duster was threadbare, and the hypnotically-patterned cravat left untied around his neck. The lean look in his eyes, and the puncture wounds in his arm, didn't exactly seem out-of-place. "Y'know, [ unintelligible ] takes requests."

"... Up to a point." The slimeball in the gray-with-brown-stains tank top made direct eye contact with Trevor, squaring her eyeline with his. "Still ain't delivered me my Fucked Duck, Garnished with Horse Shit."

Trevor, remarkably, didn't see much of the joke. "Ah. Well..." He took off his glasses, and a handkerchief from his pocket, drawing small counter-clockwise circles. In each cross of shadow over the space,a letter burned in cold light, revealing in pieces the wards scrawled in arcane tongues writ across the surfaces and walls. "It appears we--"

Magician Beard rolled his eyes and shooed away the visions with flicks of his wrist. "Yeahyeahyeahyeah. We get it. Magic is afoot. It's a trap for sorcerers, necromancers and uh..." He gestured to the slimeball with a wince. "... necromancer-adjacent and well, we fell for it," He pressed the top of a fist against his mouth to stifle a burp. "Might as well get comfy while we're here."

[Tigan Milburn]

The Dining Room, 8 Navidson Circle, Old Temple

Trevor Cavendish found something close to peace within the confines of The Eighth House. They had the run of the kitchen, save the liquor cabinet. Opening it tended to drive them into an ever-changing rotation of the most embarrassing fugues. He had learned in his time a series of culinary techniques that his fellow prisoners seemed amenable toward. Admittedly, he was without the full faculties of his kitchen back home, but he made do. A water closet clumsily given a shower booth went across the hall, lined by a quintet of rooms outfitted with beds, but hardly a proper bedroom. Other facilities existed within the house... but they were rarely found conveniently. It was an irritating, but hospitable Limbo by which to bide his time until the House caved in around him. For his purposes, what he sought he could just as easily pick out of the rubble.

The sallow-cheeked, wet-haired woman with the hollow eyes, answering to the name of Taffy, was not having the best time. The rainbow of Mentats she'd chased with a spoonful of Med-X had lasted her a short while after Roast Trevor toddled into 8-House. She found one of the Fake Spooky Wooky Bookshelves (laid out with the Lesser Keys of Solomon, the Voynich Manuscript, Splendor Solis, and the completed works of John Dee, Aleister Crowley, Anton Lavey, and Robert Anton Wilson for a lark) and began going through withdrawals. The experience was enough to dissuade at least two groups of intrepid teenage boys from ever trespassing again. By the time she awoke, she was in a bedroom, struck from her soiled clothing, and dressed in a tank top and black jeans that someone would think she might like. She did not, in fact.

The "Stage" Magician, known as Marquis Stof of the Hollow Ones (Mitch Stover to the Ohio DMV), just fiddled with his steak's parsley garnish, turning it in circles, over and over again. It was always after he had come to an acceptance of his situation that the bottom dropped out and the melancholy over How the Hell He Got Trapped in a Haunted House started to loop in his mind, all because he couldn't find any powdered cocoa. The curling, twisted wards planted throughout the House seemed to stop registering, and he could just as easily read them as if they were the Sunday Funny Papers. However, he mad no move to head beyond their bounds, nor did he seek escape. He had food, he had shelter, and he had his penance in the form of a giant mosquito-thing slowly drinking him dry for the audacity of thinking that Chasing the Forbidden at his age was going to make him relevant again. He could swear that he had dreams of that Bug from the Abyss being pretty good company. Best to get to know your jailers.

Every few nights, the entire room would go black. The air would thin while the pressure around them swelled. Then, a pinprick here, a snall nick there, a pleasant tingle, and the World of the Eighth House returned, if seen by eyes with a pint less blood swirling behind them. Taffy had become numbed to the tingle thanks to the Med-X dependency. She could recall what felt like a lick over the wound. She sat staring at her arm for hours, then returned to the dining room, brushed and trussed and hating every minute of it. "... I want my Fucked Duck, dammit."

Trevor stood pleased with himself, thumbs in his suspenders as he canted his head toward the far end of the banquet table. "It appeared this morning." On it, a large bronze platter rested, piled with five Moulard ducks. "If if is Fucked Duck you want, Mademoiselle Taffy, then Fucked Duck you shall have."

He strutted toward the platter, utterly taken with his own gumption, until an oak chair met the side of his head in the least hospitable ways.

[Tigan Milburn]

... Crrrreeeeeaaaak...

Crr-rr-rr-rr-rr-eeeeeeeaaaaak...

The noose had been made from the tiebacks from the curtains, and slung over the rafters in the dining hall. They didn't entirely fit the purpose, being from slippery, silvery satin instead of proper rope, but they were frayed enough to keep a knot. Bit by bit, the cord frayed on the rafter's rough edge.

C-c-c-crrrreeeeeeeeeyeeeeak-k....

The note was written on a napkin, In tamarind paste, hastily finger-painted (with a dab still dripping off of a fingertip), it read as follows:

I'M SORRY

... ... ... ... Cree-ee-ee-ee-eeak...

Memphis-style ribs, Mitch's favorite, had gone cold, the fat congealed on the plate around the nest of julienne fries.

... Creeeeaaaaak...