Sugar Cubes & Cobwebs 1x1 - Printable Version
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Sugar Cubes & Cobwebs 1x1 - danixiewrites - 11-17-2015
![[Image: Sugar%20Cubesamp%20Dust%20Bunnies_zpsvm4rse0b.png]](http://i1299.photobucket.com/albums/ag76/danixiewrites/Sugar%20Cubesamp%20Dust%20Bunnies_zpsvm4rse0b.png)
RE: Sugar Cubes & Cobwebs 1x1 - danixiewrites - 11-18-2015
Victrus Rosenburg liked wearing sunglasses. They let him glare at passersby and moving crews without compunction, and they made it seem later in the day than it was, like his evening would soon--and finally--be underway. They came in particularly handy when he was stuck waiting on an antique grand piano to be unloaded into his new front parlor. By simpletons. If he'd dinged or scratched it while composing, that made it character. From careless movers? It grated like a strident note from a piccolo.
Like any note from a piccolo.
He hadn't minded when they were rough with his brass trunks. The three oddly green and obviously old containers he'd stashed the bulk of his belongings in could take a beating. And deliver lead poisoning if they spent overlong with their grubby hands all over the paint. A shame as they didn't seem to have many brains to spare to begin with. Liquefaction of nothing was far from spectacular.
He scratched his chin and opened the back of the hearse he'd borrowed for the rest of his equipment, string instruments carefully packed away around a complimentary coffin from Enz Funerals and Cremations. Empty, today. He hadn't the slightest idea what he'd use it for, but figured for the time being it'd serve as a fine centerpiece in the former formal dining room. It was wood. Tables were wood and the only one sat two and looked ridiculous in such a large room. Yes, the coffin would be fine. The beastly funeral home and an even beastlier, confounding funeral director--and indeed, Enz himself could go from well-mannered and polite to beastly quite literally, when one attempted to steal his precious things--Vic would have been pleased to leave behind, had it not meant his primary method of transportation would be across the city.
"Where you want this, Mister?" asked a man whose precarious hold on the legs of his piano--
Amber eyes widened behind his sunglasses.
"Dear god, man, have you never met a proper instrument before?" Horrified, Victrus situated himself underneath the untuned hulk of a masterpiece and shoved the incompetent man further down the side. It took five people to carry it through the double doored entryway and settle it into the room, and the only side that came down gently was his own. Dust scattered in a cloud around them--as it did with most of the very few things he owned. A cacophony of sounds pinged within the grand and he immediately smoothed a hand over the rough, unpolished exterior. "Barbarians!" he yelled as the moving crew hightailed it out the front door. No doubt to take off like cowards, not so much as a farewell. "Easy, baby. You're home now."
Whether or not his behavior was met with any kind of upset otherwise, via moving crew or nosy neighbors, Vic didn't care. He casually maneuvered his new dining room table into place, along with the rest of his belongings. With the hearse empty, one of the funeral home's employees waved cheerfully--ugh--from the front seat and honked as she pulled away.
"Far more suited for a resting place. Yes."
It was old, it had a delightfully musical creak as if it were continually unsettled against the earth, it was even so dim as to not need the sunglasses which he slipped to his inner jacket pocket. One bright light hung in the kitchen but that could be remedied. Replaced with candles. Yes. His aunt had perished in it, had even written curious instructions as if it might be haunted by ghosts, and it didn't have the obnoxiously open windows of the condo. Even better than all that: it was now his. A smile slid into place on his lips, thin but present all the same. He hadn't expected to be so pleased by four walls and a roof without a rental payment in sight. But timing, as it happened, was serendipitous.
The house was also huge, and he had what amounted to the belongings of a music student cobbling together finds from posh flea markets and castoffs from his family's morbid renaissance collection and the university's trove of instruments discarded as 'irreparable'.
Oh, the heating bill would no doubt be enormous, because he could tell from the draft the willed property leaked like a sieve.
But it was perfect.
Vic fixed the lighting in the kitchen, letting out a low, mournfully whistled tune as he worked. Candles continued to burn unevenly, wax dripping onto the counters as he wandered up to his temporary bedroom with a cup of tea laced with brandy.
The first thing he noticed when he woke around 3 in the morning on the unmade mattress on the floor was that his usual cup of cold tea and colder brandy was missing.
The second thing he noticed was the blanket.
RE: Sugar Cubes & Cobwebs 1x1 - Tindome - 11-18-2015
The dust.
The dust.
The dust.
The new furniture, she had anticipated. A new owner for the home meant new furniture. That was just the way it went, even if the old furniture was very nice and she'd like it. There was going to be an adjustment period, before everything had been moved and unpacked and put where it was meant to be, and she accepted this. Boudica didn't like it, but she accepted it. Like she accepted that there would be a bit of noise, that there would be a bit of mess, that things would not be the way that they had been.
She'd even been a little optimistic. He'd fallen asleep early. Sleeping early was even better than sleeping late.
But then the dust. It hit her like icewater, skin crawling, scratching at her spine. There was just so much. Where could it all have come from? How could anyone possibly bring this much dust?
She still might have forgiven the dust. But then the candles. Burnt out, or blown out, she didn't care which. Melted stumps swimming in wax, pools and puddles and rivers of wax – that could not possibly be an accident.
It wasn't the worst mess she'd ever shared a room with. But it had been so long since she'd had to deal with a real and proper mess, since she'd felt this ache squeezing at her bones as if to crack them.
She really didn't want to move.
She got to work, sweeping the floor and dusting surfaces, getting into cracks and cleaning the hardwood on her hands and knees (because nothing on the end of a stick could be trusted to do it right). She scraped up wax and replaced candles with new ones, even though she'd rather there not be candles at all. She polished wood – and polished and polished and polished, and she would probably smell like orange oil for a week.
The instruments were tricky. Boudica was not musical. Boudica was not anything that involved making noise. She knew every board in the house, and how exactly to step on them to avoid even the slightest creak. But even after she'd cleaned and she'd polished, they itched at her, nagged and nagged until she found herself replacing strings and adjusting tension in perfect silence. She put them away when they'd stopped bothering her, though there were some that bothered her still, and she did not know how to make them stop.
Boxes for rooms that did not yet have names, and so they couldn't be unpacked. Was there a music room? She'd leave it by the hall. She didn't think they had a dungeon. She'd just have to put that one in the basement.
There was an enormous wooden box in the dining room that she had not the slightest idea what to do with. It was the cleanest thing that had been brought into the house. Far better than those great green monstrosities, which she'd been avoiding but would need to confront eventually.
Some of the boxes had been tossed and dented and torn open, and one had a quilt hanging out of a dragged corner. Some of the stitches had split, and it smelled… the less said about how it smelled, the better. She washed it by hand and she dried it in the machine in the basement, and she fixed all the ripped stitches and shored up a few that were on the brink.
A blanket. That belonged in the bedroom. Whichever room had been chosen for a bedroom. Tricky, with someone in there. Still, she crept upstairs on silent stockinged feet, neatly folded quilt in tow. Everyone in the house – except her, of course – was sleeping. A very deep sleep, but that didn't stop her from worrying. She poked her head in the door – a mess, a mess, not safe to clean it yet – and eventually moved to set the quilt at the foot of the bed.
It seemed very cold. And he – he, male, definitely, she should have known from the dust – seemed very pale. There was nothing less clean than sick.
Gently and gently and yet gentler, she unfolded the quilt and draped it over him. It made her feel a little better. Then she took the cup – which definitely did not belong there, absolutely not – and absconded back to the kitchen to wash it out.
Still hadn't finished with the boxes, still hadn't found the best places for some things left out, still hadn't washed the footprints out of the rugs or taken a brush to the molding or gone for a second turn at dusting to catch everything that had floated away. Her hands were raw and her back hurt and her skirt was wrinkled. Some of her hair had come loose from her bun, a stray wisp of brown.
He woke up.
It wasn't even morning.
It wasn't even almost morning.
She wasn't done.
She huffed, blew the little strand of hair out of the way of pitch-black eyes. A frisson of tension against her ribs, and she couldn't yet risk stealing away past his door to get to the attic. She'd wait for the feeling to subside, for the safety of sleep again.
And in the meantime, she'd just have to hide.
The dust.
The dust.
The new furniture, she had anticipated. A new owner for the home meant new furniture. That was just the way it went, even if the old furniture was very nice and she'd like it. There was going to be an adjustment period, before everything had been moved and unpacked and put where it was meant to be, and she accepted this. Boudica didn't like it, but she accepted it. Like she accepted that there would be a bit of noise, that there would be a bit of mess, that things would not be the way that they had been.
She'd even been a little optimistic. He'd fallen asleep early. Sleeping early was even better than sleeping late.
But then the dust. It hit her like icewater, skin crawling, scratching at her spine. There was just so much. Where could it all have come from? How could anyone possibly bring this much dust?
She still might have forgiven the dust. But then the candles. Burnt out, or blown out, she didn't care which. Melted stumps swimming in wax, pools and puddles and rivers of wax – that could not possibly be an accident.
It wasn't the worst mess she'd ever shared a room with. But it had been so long since she'd had to deal with a real and proper mess, since she'd felt this ache squeezing at her bones as if to crack them.
She really didn't want to move.
She got to work, sweeping the floor and dusting surfaces, getting into cracks and cleaning the hardwood on her hands and knees (because nothing on the end of a stick could be trusted to do it right). She scraped up wax and replaced candles with new ones, even though she'd rather there not be candles at all. She polished wood – and polished and polished and polished, and she would probably smell like orange oil for a week.
The instruments were tricky. Boudica was not musical. Boudica was not anything that involved making noise. She knew every board in the house, and how exactly to step on them to avoid even the slightest creak. But even after she'd cleaned and she'd polished, they itched at her, nagged and nagged until she found herself replacing strings and adjusting tension in perfect silence. She put them away when they'd stopped bothering her, though there were some that bothered her still, and she did not know how to make them stop.
Boxes for rooms that did not yet have names, and so they couldn't be unpacked. Was there a music room? She'd leave it by the hall. She didn't think they had a dungeon. She'd just have to put that one in the basement.
There was an enormous wooden box in the dining room that she had not the slightest idea what to do with. It was the cleanest thing that had been brought into the house. Far better than those great green monstrosities, which she'd been avoiding but would need to confront eventually.
Some of the boxes had been tossed and dented and torn open, and one had a quilt hanging out of a dragged corner. Some of the stitches had split, and it smelled… the less said about how it smelled, the better. She washed it by hand and she dried it in the machine in the basement, and she fixed all the ripped stitches and shored up a few that were on the brink.
A blanket. That belonged in the bedroom. Whichever room had been chosen for a bedroom. Tricky, with someone in there. Still, she crept upstairs on silent stockinged feet, neatly folded quilt in tow. Everyone in the house – except her, of course – was sleeping. A very deep sleep, but that didn't stop her from worrying. She poked her head in the door – a mess, a mess, not safe to clean it yet – and eventually moved to set the quilt at the foot of the bed.
It seemed very cold. And he – he, male, definitely, she should have known from the dust – seemed very pale. There was nothing less clean than sick.
Gently and gently and yet gentler, she unfolded the quilt and draped it over him. It made her feel a little better. Then she took the cup – which definitely did not belong there, absolutely not – and absconded back to the kitchen to wash it out.
Still hadn't finished with the boxes, still hadn't found the best places for some things left out, still hadn't washed the footprints out of the rugs or taken a brush to the molding or gone for a second turn at dusting to catch everything that had floated away. Her hands were raw and her back hurt and her skirt was wrinkled. Some of her hair had come loose from her bun, a stray wisp of brown.
He woke up.
It wasn't even morning.
It wasn't even almost morning.
She wasn't done.
She huffed, blew the little strand of hair out of the way of pitch-black eyes. A frisson of tension against her ribs, and she couldn't yet risk stealing away past his door to get to the attic. She'd wait for the feeling to subside, for the safety of sleep again.
And in the meantime, she'd just have to hide.
RE: Sugar Cubes & Cobwebs 1x1 - danixiewrites - 11-22-2015
Playing strings in the depths of the night was necessary. It felt right, for those mournful strains to hit air caressed by shadows. And here, in this house--HIS house--the neighbors were further away than they'd ever been before. He didn't have to adhere to ordinances or pick locks to break into practice rooms on campus or put sound-dampening, dust-collecting materials on his ceilings and walls and floor.He just had to follow his internal clock, get out of bed, and play.
Except. Well.
The blanket looked almost new--except that he'd had it for an age, knew the charming country colors even in their current shades-of-gray-in-the-dark state and all the spots that had worn thin. It was draped over his body though he hadn't made the bed and hadn't even done a preliminary look for sheets. An eyebrow rose. The other followed almost immediately, then he yawned. New place.
Potentially haunted?
It'd been an amused consideration upon moving in but perhaps he needed to give it more credence. Or else, something else was afoot. He scooted out from under the foreign covering and stood to swipe at the dangling light pull in the center of the room. The bulbs clicked on and he squinted at his quilt. Suspicion warred with intrigue. Was it brighter than he'd remembered?
"How much time did I spend packing those cases? Not long enough for the lead to do damage, surely," he muttered aloud. Coming down the stairs in bare feet, he noted places where the wood felt uneven and yet creaked. He would have heard if he'd had a midnight visitor, a caretaker who yet had a key.
He checked the front door: locked. Two deadbolts. So he hadn't been visited in the middle of the night by a home invader who cared if he got cold. Vic scratched his head and headed back through the house. What was that...smell? Everything seemed permeated by the ambiance of early morning mimosas.
Perhaps the blanket had come from a sorority house who'd broken in and made breakfast.
Vic shuddered and dismissed the idea on the grounds that there wasn't any squealing. He did decide, however, he needed to immediately remedy the decor situation. More unwelcoming bits. Discourage the visiting classmates. Especially the flautists. Cobwebs, maybe. He had some of his family's collection of medieval torture devices packed away somewhere, and they might look good--he strode into the sitting room and switched on the light, one bulb down so it was easy on eyes used to night.
All thoughts of sprucing up the interior decor vanished. "What the devil--"
His grand.
The beautiful, scruffy, personable piano...GLISTENED. Cracks and scuff marks had been buffed, removed...FIXED.
Everywhere it glowed as though the wood itself had begun to regrow from within, like once inside the house it'd put down roots and sprouted new leaves.
The bench was the same, a gleam to the aged legs that caught even in the dimmer light.
Mimosas. His piano, the instrument of composition, pensivity, seriousness...no self-respecting musician could possibly lay claim to such a thing.
Sweet reeds and sweet wax and tiger balm, yes. Oranges? No.
No. No. No.
He swiped his finger over the wood and retracted his hand as the familiar texture came away sleek instead of like a calloused handshake.
Unacceptable.
A quilt and a piano made new--what had his aunt said about this place?
There was a box in the hall--had he put it there? And where had the other boxes gotten to? Incompetent movers! Vic dug around the bin, strewing spare parts and empty string packs and scattering half-finished and out of order sheets of scores all over the room. Carefully, he slid the note from its gilded envelope again, trying not to inhale the decaying scent of old flowers that for some reason, seemed a popular perfume. "I know you'll take good care of the place," the note read, as he recalled. "Just be happy. Oh! And remember the sugar for the attic fae."
He snorted.
"Right. And Mr. Enz really IS a dragon, too."
He shifted so he sat across the stairs instead of down them, lanky legs crossing as he slumped against the stairway wall. Vic let his head fall back against the molded faux boards with a satisfying thunk. "So this place probably had a lot of ants. Including her."
Because one didn't leave sugar for ghosts.
Or fairies.
What other quirks would he discover before the first day in his new home was out? Damn it, he'd really needed that quick shot of brandy. But maybe the strings would ease his mind...
RE: Sugar Cubes & Cobwebs 1x1 - Tindome - 11-22-2015
She'd hoped that he'd go right back to sleep.
Boudica was not so lucky.
It was possible to follow his steps through the path of creaking floorboards, out of his room and down the stairs. She slipped into the dining room, then to the kitchen as she heard him walking to the sitting room. A window, however brief, and she used it, darting up the stairs. Back to the attic, and something like safety.
Except it was too early. She wouldn't be tired until sunrise, not the kind of tired that would let her sleep. The house was still a mess, and getting messier, and she hadn't eaten anything to make her feel better about it. Hadn't eaten at all, because even if she'd finished what she was doing he hadn't left her anything.
She hadn't even had time to shower.
She felt disgusting.
She could not possibly sleep like this.
The plan had been to allow for a week. A week, and if he still hadn't left her anything she'd leave. She wasn't sure she could take a week. Three days. That would be more manageable, wouldn't it? If he was still an ungrateful slob in three days -- Boudica was not feeling particularly charitable in her assessment -- she'd pack up and find a new house. One where people slept when they were supposed to, and kept candles in jars.
Candles. Honestly. It had been centuries since she'd had to scrape candle wax, hadn't it?
She let her hair down and tied it loose at the back of her neck, peeled off her clothes in the hope that they'd take some of the sweat with them. Sleep. She had to try and sleep. She had to be ready when he slept again, if she wanted to get anything done. Like bathing. Or whatever it was he'd just done to make her molars itch. She curled up on the pile of pillows and comforters she kept hidden behind boxes in the corner, trying to be optimistic.
The worst of it had to be over. It would get easier after this. There were limits to how much of a mess a single man could make.
Right?
Boudica was not so lucky.
It was possible to follow his steps through the path of creaking floorboards, out of his room and down the stairs. She slipped into the dining room, then to the kitchen as she heard him walking to the sitting room. A window, however brief, and she used it, darting up the stairs. Back to the attic, and something like safety.
Except it was too early. She wouldn't be tired until sunrise, not the kind of tired that would let her sleep. The house was still a mess, and getting messier, and she hadn't eaten anything to make her feel better about it. Hadn't eaten at all, because even if she'd finished what she was doing he hadn't left her anything.
She hadn't even had time to shower.
She felt disgusting.
She could not possibly sleep like this.
The plan had been to allow for a week. A week, and if he still hadn't left her anything she'd leave. She wasn't sure she could take a week. Three days. That would be more manageable, wouldn't it? If he was still an ungrateful slob in three days -- Boudica was not feeling particularly charitable in her assessment -- she'd pack up and find a new house. One where people slept when they were supposed to, and kept candles in jars.
Candles. Honestly. It had been centuries since she'd had to scrape candle wax, hadn't it?
She let her hair down and tied it loose at the back of her neck, peeled off her clothes in the hope that they'd take some of the sweat with them. Sleep. She had to try and sleep. She had to be ready when he slept again, if she wanted to get anything done. Like bathing. Or whatever it was he'd just done to make her molars itch. She curled up on the pile of pillows and comforters she kept hidden behind boxes in the corner, trying to be optimistic.
The worst of it had to be over. It would get easier after this. There were limits to how much of a mess a single man could make.
Right?
RE: Sugar Cubes & Cobwebs 1x1 - danixiewrites - 11-29-2015
Vic's plan to settle his unsettled nerves was to get as close to his usual morning routine as he could. He'd pull out his favorite violin and warm up the strings with a nice tango in a minor key.
The instruments he kept for lessons and on-site for group performance use were tuned to a T and had all their strings, a consideration he made for society, the job of teaching unwitting and youthful victims of it, and because one unhappy parent made for a horrendous Holla rating. The ones for personal use, however, were more than just university rejects--they were mournful, soulful creatures who spoke of years of abuse and experience under many musician's thumbs. He chose to lavish attention on each on because gave those voices a chance to be heard, even if it were only him listening.
None of them were Stradivari. None of them possessed captured human voices or actual human souls--at least, Vic didn't believe that they did. But they were unique and alive in their own way, history in each bump and bruise and unfinished fingerboard. And he was honored to keep them that way, each morning.
Unfortunately for Vic, he did not look at the violin he pulled first, assured that the moving had gone successfully, for unlike his piano, he'd moved the strings by hand. No, this morning he did just as any other morning and placed his fingers firmly along the neck, drawing his bow in a single stroke across the strings.
What came out was NOT the wail of wind or eerie dirge from the underworld. It was HAPPY. A little like he'd suddenly decided to cue up an Irish jig. Blasphemy! Worse yet, it wasn't at all like a human voice. Not even in the slightest.
Shocked, Vic slowly lowered the instrument from his shoulder and stared at the strings looped there. An extra had been slotted into place along the edge, and all of the pegs had been turned. The...fingerboard...was...newly...blackened.
Refinished. Polished. Someone's opinion of FIXED.
Vic hated fixed. He hated the modern, wasteful societal constraints that regarded the things that he called his instruments as "broken", when it was through him they lived again.
"Who..." he asked in disbelief, "WHO?"
And then a demand. "WHO?!"
First the blanket, then the piano, and now, now........NO.
Vic set the bow back into the case and slid the violin onto one of the open stands. "This is troubling," he admitted aloud. "Unacceptable, even."
Vic strode into the kitchen, hunting for paper with which to make a list. The candles weren't lit--which was to be expected. But they were........whole. They weren't nicely draped over the counter, there wasn't even a trace of the usual faux cave formation beginning from former drips. They were simply...gone. New.
He recalled the envelope again and wondered. "It has been a strange week, indeed. I'm certain someone must just have a spare key. Someone horrible. With a lust for consumerism. And quite possibly a death wish."
Was the sugar to keep the "fairy" from touching his things, perhaps? Did it work as a ward against ghosts? His aunt didn't say, hadn't left any further instruction. It seemed as reasonable now as the suggestion of a ghost at all did. For now, he'd have to operate on the obvious, the very human explanation of keys.
Yes, someone tangible had touched his things, wrecked them, and it was going to be an excruciatingly long day of righting the horrible wrongs. He'd have to skip his classes. Two rehearsal sessions. Maybe lunch. He'd have to go to the hardware store for new locks. Terrible.
As he considered the side trip he wondered if he could get away with setting up an alternate solution. Rigging the front and rear doors with some of his family's antiques--so that he could catch the intruder the next time they sought to come into his HOME and displace his chi. Yes.
That would do nicely.
He had brought up one set of spikes from the basement--where they'd somehow migrated to in the first place--by the time his still-sleepy mind comprehended the fact that booby-trapping the doors would effectively trap him within the building. Vic sighed and ran a loving finger over one of the spikes. "I'll just cancel lessons and rehearsals until the miscreant returns." It was a small price to pay to have the opportunity to sit them down and explain things. Sharply. Besides. It wasn't like the ground floor was devoid of windows. He rubbed his hands together and got back to work.
RE: Sugar Cubes & Cobwebs 1x1 - Tindome - 11-29-2015
The presence of so many musical instruments probably ought to have clued her in to the fact that he would be playing musical instruments.
And yet, somehow, it was still a deeply unpleasant surprise to hear the sound of a violin filtering up through the attic floor. Boudica buried her face in her pillows, pulling one of them on top of her head to try and wrap over her ears.
It was surprisingly effective.
Possibly too effective?
She lifted the pillow off her head, and the silence remained. Not perfect silence, because it sounded like he was talking to himself, but the music did not continue. Perhaps he'd realized that playing music at this hour was absurd? That would be good.
It wasn't as if she'd be able to sleep, anyway. But she could at least… not sleep in silence.
That he might find her was not a concern, because the glamour that made the door of the room she claimed so easy to overlook had yet to fail. It was hardly foolproof, but it didn't need to be. She was not sought out or sought after, and only occasionally did she need to avoid someone looking for an old something-or-other.
The attic was not the trouble. The trouble was that she would need to leave the attic, eventually. To fix whatever it was that he was doing, to bathe, to hopefully eat, to… fix whatever it was that he was still doing.
What could he possibly be doing down there, to irritate her so?
She pulled a comforter entirely over her head, as if that would insulate her from the situation. The amount of time that she spent awake was limited. She needed to use that time efficiently, and over the years with the previous homeowner she had grown very efficient. She'd managed to get the house cleaner than most other houses she'd lived in. She'd even found time to watch television, until the little wooden thing stopped working for reasons beyond her control.
(The analog to digital conversion had been hard on attic-dwellers everywhere.)
As something like sleep finally started to creep upon her… the anxious itch in her ribs went away.
He fell asleep.
It was the middle of the day, and he fell asleep.
This was horrendous. This was hideous. Three more days of this? Or was the first day already over, and now there was only two?
She forced herself upright, rubbing at her eyes, because time was clearly of the essence. She grabbed a towel and some clothes on the way out of the attic, because even though showering before cleaning made no sense at all, she could not bear a moment longer of feeling so utterly filthy.
She had turned showering quickly into an art form.
Dirty clothes taken care of, clean clothes arranged neatly, hair returned to its ideal state of pulled-tight perfection. She would have been in her ideal state, if not for the fact that she was exhausted and starving.
The dust had not returned. But something certainly had. He had unpacked boxes and left things strewn about in the entryway, or so it looked to her. She reached out to pick up something large and nasty-looking when a chill through her arm made her stop.
Iron? He'd… barred the door with iron? She tried to touch a few more things, strange boxes and hoops of metal and spikes like overlarge nails, but each time stopped short before they could hurt her. With an awful feeling in her gut she checked the back door, and found it no better. Heavy things suspended from the ceiling, even, little spikes underfoot in worrying configurations.
It couldn't be a fairy trap. There wasn't any bait. But then, what on earth was it? It was all a horrible mess, and she couldn't even clean it. She tried to prod at one with her toe, but recoiled immediately; even through her stockings, it burned.
And a quick check of the kitchen found that he still had not left her anything to eat.
Definitely only two more days.
She took care of what she could, anyway, cleaning away wax – why, wax, again with the wax, why this – and scrubbing the floors. She padded quietly into the room where he'd stored away the instruments, and found with horror that much of her careful work had been undone.
What on earth could he possibly be doing with this instrument?
Again she polished, again she replaced the string. He hadn't managed to do as much damage as was there before, at least, and he had not bothered with many of the others. Just the one violin, and the poor piano. And what had he put beneath it? She bent at the waist to look underneath it.
Himself. He had put himself beneath the piano. He had fallen asleep on the floor beneath the piano, doing she-did-not-know-what.
She had no idea what she was supposed to be doing about this.
She rubbed at the bridge of her nose in irritation as she backed away from the piano, heading back toward the kitchen. The kitchen was becoming her safe zone in this now-alien house. The only strange thing there was the candle situation, and she knew what to do about that. She did not know what to do with a grown man sleeping beneath a piano, trailing a mess that even she could not clean.
Only one thing was certain: she was never moving in with any man under the age of sixty again.
And yet, somehow, it was still a deeply unpleasant surprise to hear the sound of a violin filtering up through the attic floor. Boudica buried her face in her pillows, pulling one of them on top of her head to try and wrap over her ears.
It was surprisingly effective.
Possibly too effective?
She lifted the pillow off her head, and the silence remained. Not perfect silence, because it sounded like he was talking to himself, but the music did not continue. Perhaps he'd realized that playing music at this hour was absurd? That would be good.
It wasn't as if she'd be able to sleep, anyway. But she could at least… not sleep in silence.
That he might find her was not a concern, because the glamour that made the door of the room she claimed so easy to overlook had yet to fail. It was hardly foolproof, but it didn't need to be. She was not sought out or sought after, and only occasionally did she need to avoid someone looking for an old something-or-other.
The attic was not the trouble. The trouble was that she would need to leave the attic, eventually. To fix whatever it was that he was doing, to bathe, to hopefully eat, to… fix whatever it was that he was still doing.
What could he possibly be doing down there, to irritate her so?
She pulled a comforter entirely over her head, as if that would insulate her from the situation. The amount of time that she spent awake was limited. She needed to use that time efficiently, and over the years with the previous homeowner she had grown very efficient. She'd managed to get the house cleaner than most other houses she'd lived in. She'd even found time to watch television, until the little wooden thing stopped working for reasons beyond her control.
(The analog to digital conversion had been hard on attic-dwellers everywhere.)
As something like sleep finally started to creep upon her… the anxious itch in her ribs went away.
He fell asleep.
It was the middle of the day, and he fell asleep.
This was horrendous. This was hideous. Three more days of this? Or was the first day already over, and now there was only two?
She forced herself upright, rubbing at her eyes, because time was clearly of the essence. She grabbed a towel and some clothes on the way out of the attic, because even though showering before cleaning made no sense at all, she could not bear a moment longer of feeling so utterly filthy.
She had turned showering quickly into an art form.
Dirty clothes taken care of, clean clothes arranged neatly, hair returned to its ideal state of pulled-tight perfection. She would have been in her ideal state, if not for the fact that she was exhausted and starving.
The dust had not returned. But something certainly had. He had unpacked boxes and left things strewn about in the entryway, or so it looked to her. She reached out to pick up something large and nasty-looking when a chill through her arm made her stop.
Iron? He'd… barred the door with iron? She tried to touch a few more things, strange boxes and hoops of metal and spikes like overlarge nails, but each time stopped short before they could hurt her. With an awful feeling in her gut she checked the back door, and found it no better. Heavy things suspended from the ceiling, even, little spikes underfoot in worrying configurations.
It couldn't be a fairy trap. There wasn't any bait. But then, what on earth was it? It was all a horrible mess, and she couldn't even clean it. She tried to prod at one with her toe, but recoiled immediately; even through her stockings, it burned.
And a quick check of the kitchen found that he still had not left her anything to eat.
Definitely only two more days.
She took care of what she could, anyway, cleaning away wax – why, wax, again with the wax, why this – and scrubbing the floors. She padded quietly into the room where he'd stored away the instruments, and found with horror that much of her careful work had been undone.
What on earth could he possibly be doing with this instrument?
Again she polished, again she replaced the string. He hadn't managed to do as much damage as was there before, at least, and he had not bothered with many of the others. Just the one violin, and the poor piano. And what had he put beneath it? She bent at the waist to look underneath it.
Himself. He had put himself beneath the piano. He had fallen asleep on the floor beneath the piano, doing she-did-not-know-what.
She had no idea what she was supposed to be doing about this.
She rubbed at the bridge of her nose in irritation as she backed away from the piano, heading back toward the kitchen. The kitchen was becoming her safe zone in this now-alien house. The only strange thing there was the candle situation, and she knew what to do about that. She did not know what to do with a grown man sleeping beneath a piano, trailing a mess that even she could not clean.
Only one thing was certain: she was never moving in with any man under the age of sixty again.
RE: Sugar Cubes & Cobwebs 1x1 - danixiewrites - 01-01-2016
A sliver of light traveled outward from the base of the heavy draperies on the front windows. Just enough to determine it hadn't yet crossed into evening when Vic woke from his impromptu snooze under the enormous instrument. Moving his things the day before had taken its toll--or was it the exhaustion from undoing as much of the monster's work as he could from the wood surfaces? Probably he should have just concerned himself with the visible parts of the piano, or even the parts of the piano that might actually impact its tone, but he'd found he couldn't sit on the slightly bowed bench knowing that nearly touching his knees and thighs would be...FIXED.
He couldn't even bear touching the keys.
The one spot, the only spot, that he hadn't taken the time to address was what remained of the long scratch the movers had dug into the side. Someone had painstakingly filled it in, oiled the wood, polished it to a shine in a way that meant when the finish did wear off over a normal period of time it would just be one more worn-in scar upon the instrument's lifeline, rather than a great, bleeding wound. Vic himself had intended to see to that damage this very day, save it by naturalizing it somehow.
He'd also planned to visit the movers at home and further educate them on the caring of instruments, courtesy of some extra violin strings. Except his extra strings weren't exactly pristine, the stuff acceptable threats were made of, suitable now only for restringing. Neither was the piano wire. And the discontented mess of bubbling fury toward the movers had dulled somewhat due to the slash no longer being in as much evidence. Not to mention due to the mysterious fixer-upper. And then there was the fact he could only currently leave his house through its windows which frankly, after napping on the floor and feeling his muscles twinge as he crawled out from underneath the instrument, didn't sound as reasonable as it had before he'd begun his quest to drag around ancient iron constructs.
Hindsight.
Vic curled bare toes against the smoothed-to-a-shine hardwood that filled the entryway. He let out an indignant huff of air through his nose. The house had character too, but the voice of age could be heard in the creaks and groans of it settling in the depths of night, not its appearance. This didn't bother him to the extent the newly buffed surfaces of stringed creatures. It grated, because his privacy was his. But even he knew a roof was only kept overhead with certain measures of care, even he knew being rained on was a misery he had no intention of indulging in, extremes in temperature and humidity the fastest way to utterly destroy his instruments--faster than "fixed".
And at least, come night--and that was if they even dared show their face again--he'd catch the culprit.
In the meantime, he could console himself with--
"Dear God."
Sleep-befuddled steps came to a stop in the archway of the dining room, where his favored violin gleamed once more.
"It."
He passed a hand over his eyes, then scrubbed them, as if rubbing the grit out of his lashes would remove the reflectiveness from the fingerboard, the string from its mooring.
"No. Wha--Where did they even FIND a spare?"
He'd been certain he'd hidden them all. Shooting a glance toward the front door's iron maw, which remained undisturbed, he stepped quickly through the rest of the ground floor. Vic had nearly reached the trap on the back door when he stopped abruptly, then backpedaled to one archway of the kitchen. The fact that it glowed cheerily with dancing candleflame wasn't the issue. Candles suited the ambiance and his mood just fine. The fact that not a single one had gone out...because all of them were once more jutting proud and tall from their bracers...the lovely wax drip that he'd intended to keep as it made his home look lived in...gone.
"Curious." It was the only word that came to mind that wasn't excessively violent. An internal volley of curses were followed swiftly by reason: "No one's come inside. At least not by conventional means." He shoved his hair back with his fingers. Either they'd used his alternate exit strategy to enter his house or..."They're still inside."
Because it couldn't be--surely not--that he had to leave out a damned bowl of sugar for a ghost/fairy/imaginary friend named Sparkles. Victrus Rosenburg just couldn't buy "supernatural".
RE: Sugar Cubes & Cobwebs 1x1 - Tindome - 01-03-2016
Boudica slept late. She knew that she'd overslept because by the time she awoke, the homeowner was already asleep. Precious time wasted, though she did not know how much. It was hardly a relief, anyway, when iron scattered about still made her skin crawl. Nothing she could do about it, even more helpless than she usually was.
Exhausted and hungry and aching. One more day.
There was no rule saying she had to stay another day. No reason, technically speaking, that she could not leave immediately to look for a new home. But she had given herself a deadline, and now she was perversely determined to last until then. She wanted to prove that she had done all that she could to try and make it work.
Even though no one would know. Even though no one would ever ask. But she would know, wouldn't she?
That was the problem with being alone, always alone and always working. Challenges made things interesting, time limits and things she wasn't allowed to use and ways she wasn't allowed to move. But it had become a habit, and a bad one, a source of stubbornness, a rebellion against no one's expectations but her own.
And now she was still here, because she did not want to lose a game that only she knew that she was playing.
The kitchen was swimming in wax again, but that was no surprise. She was getting used to that, now, scraping up the wax and polishing the surfaces beneath it and finding the candles hiding where they didn't belong to put them in their proper places.
Still nothing left for her to eat. That wasn't a surprise either, really. If anything, it was almost a relief. What would she have done if he'd left something? Would she feel obligated to stay, knowing that if nothing else she could keep her things and be fed?
But, no. Nothing, instead.
The various iron contraptions still had not moved. Those were going to be a problem, when it came time to leave. She would manage, still, but it was an annoyance. Was that why they were there? To keep her stuck without having to feed her?
Rude.
The piano was a wreck, again. This time, bending low to check, she could see that there was no one sleeping beneath it. The wear in the finish prickled against her skin as she ran her fingertips over it with a sigh.
More polishing, more waxing, on her hands and knees to get beneath it as best she could when her skirt limited her movement, twisting around her knees. It hardly felt like fixing anything at all, was as much of a fix as putting a bandaid on a papercut and trying to ignore a broken leg. Awful, hideous mess, and for the first time she understood the impulse to burn down the house she left behind.
She probably wouldn't. But it was very tempting. It would serve him right, anyway. It would be her right to do it, disrespected so terribly.
Rude.
When she stood again she needed to untwist her skirt, smooth it out over the curves of her thighs before it wrinkled. She slid her hands over her hair to fix her bun back into place, stretching out her back and her neck and up onto her toes. She smelled like orange oil again.
She still hadn't tried to touch those monstrous trunks. What they needed was to be buffed down to a bare gleam, but she always hesitated to sand away paint. Even when it didn't belong.
Maybe that was a peculiar place to draw the line.
He'd put the strings for the violin somewhere strange again, but just like the candles, they were easy to find. Put somewhere that they didn't belong, itching at her to find them and put them away, fix what had been broken. It was much faster than the first time, because she'd already started getting better at it. It was unfair, was what it was. Fixing an instrument she didn't even want to listen to, and instead of playing he just… broke it.
Well. He could enjoy his filthy house and his broken things when she was gone.
She placed the violin carefully back where she had found it, looking pristine once more. The violin was much less an ordeal than the piano, and so she did not need to fix herself the way she had before. She had even managed to avoid getting any stains on her blouse.
With a sigh, Boudica took a moment to sit on the enormous box in the dining room. What a strange thought, that she would leave, that she might never clean this house again. Thousands of nights cleaning the same house, and it was hard to imagine never seeing it again. It made her ache, though not in the way that so many things made her ache. This ache was something more ethereal, not a physical pain or a hurt.
She sighed again.
Exhausted and hungry and aching. One more day.
There was no rule saying she had to stay another day. No reason, technically speaking, that she could not leave immediately to look for a new home. But she had given herself a deadline, and now she was perversely determined to last until then. She wanted to prove that she had done all that she could to try and make it work.
Even though no one would know. Even though no one would ever ask. But she would know, wouldn't she?
That was the problem with being alone, always alone and always working. Challenges made things interesting, time limits and things she wasn't allowed to use and ways she wasn't allowed to move. But it had become a habit, and a bad one, a source of stubbornness, a rebellion against no one's expectations but her own.
And now she was still here, because she did not want to lose a game that only she knew that she was playing.
The kitchen was swimming in wax again, but that was no surprise. She was getting used to that, now, scraping up the wax and polishing the surfaces beneath it and finding the candles hiding where they didn't belong to put them in their proper places.
Still nothing left for her to eat. That wasn't a surprise either, really. If anything, it was almost a relief. What would she have done if he'd left something? Would she feel obligated to stay, knowing that if nothing else she could keep her things and be fed?
But, no. Nothing, instead.
The various iron contraptions still had not moved. Those were going to be a problem, when it came time to leave. She would manage, still, but it was an annoyance. Was that why they were there? To keep her stuck without having to feed her?
Rude.
The piano was a wreck, again. This time, bending low to check, she could see that there was no one sleeping beneath it. The wear in the finish prickled against her skin as she ran her fingertips over it with a sigh.
More polishing, more waxing, on her hands and knees to get beneath it as best she could when her skirt limited her movement, twisting around her knees. It hardly felt like fixing anything at all, was as much of a fix as putting a bandaid on a papercut and trying to ignore a broken leg. Awful, hideous mess, and for the first time she understood the impulse to burn down the house she left behind.
She probably wouldn't. But it was very tempting. It would serve him right, anyway. It would be her right to do it, disrespected so terribly.
Rude.
When she stood again she needed to untwist her skirt, smooth it out over the curves of her thighs before it wrinkled. She slid her hands over her hair to fix her bun back into place, stretching out her back and her neck and up onto her toes. She smelled like orange oil again.
She still hadn't tried to touch those monstrous trunks. What they needed was to be buffed down to a bare gleam, but she always hesitated to sand away paint. Even when it didn't belong.
Maybe that was a peculiar place to draw the line.
He'd put the strings for the violin somewhere strange again, but just like the candles, they were easy to find. Put somewhere that they didn't belong, itching at her to find them and put them away, fix what had been broken. It was much faster than the first time, because she'd already started getting better at it. It was unfair, was what it was. Fixing an instrument she didn't even want to listen to, and instead of playing he just… broke it.
Well. He could enjoy his filthy house and his broken things when she was gone.
She placed the violin carefully back where she had found it, looking pristine once more. The violin was much less an ordeal than the piano, and so she did not need to fix herself the way she had before. She had even managed to avoid getting any stains on her blouse.
With a sigh, Boudica took a moment to sit on the enormous box in the dining room. What a strange thought, that she would leave, that she might never clean this house again. Thousands of nights cleaning the same house, and it was hard to imagine never seeing it again. It made her ache, though not in the way that so many things made her ache. This ache was something more ethereal, not a physical pain or a hurt.
She sighed again.
RE: Sugar Cubes & Cobwebs 1x1 - danixiewrites - 01-03-2016
Victrus Rosenburg was frustrated. He'd searched the house from top to bottom, closed off rooms as he did so, trying to corral the intruder. Once, upstairs, he'd felt the distinct impression he was missing something horribly vital.
He'd dismissed it, because obviously nothing was there.
Just as obviously, though he'd discovered items moved into rooms he was certain neither he nor the movers had so much as opened to air out, no one was in the house with him.
And yet, at 3 AM, the status quo was found to be reversed AGAIN, the "fixing" unfixed and then "fixed" once more, no cold brandy to shake himself awake, no wax comfortingly dripped upon the floor. He tugged on the long strands of his hair, driven to growling at shadows.
Driven to reconsider the carefully penned note attached to the will, to consider things that made him scoff at himself. And growl again, because he was losing FAR too much practice time--and missing too much paying work--to what the supernaturally indulgent (delusional) people in Valesport would term a horrible, musical instrument-torturing sprite.
He honestly considered calling in one of them to get their take, decided it wasn't worth it. The man who thought he was a dragon would merely flit about his personal space and declare ghosts or some such, and Vic didn't have time for nonsense. And though it might help to know which legends to read up on, which to sort through and which to discard for the superstition that it was, Vic also didn't have time to slot fairy tales touted as truth into his more proper, human-condition-centric literature.
Mostly because he was spending it all on repairing things that shouldn't have needed it.
He relit the candles, watching the dance of light upon the walls. Suitable, considering the mood he found himself in, considering the shadows he wanted to smite. Oh, he would find the culprit. Even if it meant...this. A slight shudder went down his spine and he straightened, shaking the sensation away. There really wasn't another option left at this point. He couldn't exact violence upon that which he couldn't find.
"Fine, then. We shall indulge." Vic dug through his things searching for a blank sheet of paper with which to pen a warning of his own. He came up with only staff paper, which was hardly suitable for such plebeian usage.
"To the fixer," he wrote, words broken between lines because for the life of him he couldn't sort out how NOT to write in measured beats of the ledger. "This house is mine. There are rules. Instruments too. To be played. Never polished. In gratitude. Vic Rosenburg."
Note written and set aside, he sifted through his cabinets and emerged with a sealed jar he'd never intended to use for this purpose. But the note had specified the sweet substance, and he was just concerned enough with irony to bring it along. Sugar would do one of two things, neither of which was really clear given his aunt's postmortem missive. Either it would rid him of the spirit, a protection circle of sorts, perhaps, or it would reward it for all of the horrible work it had accomplished. As Vic couldn't see how destroying his musical belongings was a particularly good thing, he assumed it must be the former. Sugar, rather than salt, a well-known tactic for ghosts that even he had heard of. Sugar, forestalling an impossible, supernatural being with a grudge against stringed instruments.
If this was to work, he would hardly do it by half measure. Just as with the house-intrusion prevention set up, Vic spent the day setting up an array, dish upon dish surrounding the strings, and then, when he ran out of bowls and plates and cups and spoons and the lids of butter and cream cheese containers (the tubs of which were left out on the counter because he meant to cover them and return them to the fridge but became subsequently sidetracked by the unpolishing), he made circles. Circles around his candles, specifically, and a great, massive sugar circle--thin, because he'd nearly run out and had to make sure he'd left enough to go around his bed come late afternoon--surrounded his piano.
It was ridiculous, and it smelled like the inside of the damn Keebler Elf tree.
Minus the chocolate.
Vic scrubbed at his face with his palms, managing to get in an extended session of rehearsal, a delightfully dark In the Hall of the Mountain King to sing out on a newly unfixed cello. If all that came from this ridiculousness was that he got ants, he was not going to be pleased.
RE: Sugar Cubes & Cobwebs 1x1 - Tindome - 01-03-2016
The majority of Boudica's possessions could fit easily inside of a small leather bag. The majority of Boudica's possessions were actually cleaning supplies. Those things that were not cleaning supplies were clothes. Her bedding had all been pilfered from attic boxes, and other than that…
Her entire life had always been designed to take up as little room as possible, easy to pick up and move. A long stay did not change that fact.
The house felt particularly filthy, and she would be glad to have the feeling gone. The itch, the ache, the needles at her spine. She'd actually worn her shoes this time, and it took careful steps to keep the heels from clicking against wood. The pain hit her worse when she made her way downstairs, and it did not take much investigation to see why.
Sugar. On the floor. Deliberate trails of sugar.
She stepped out of her shoes and set down her bag, because she was going to need to see just how far this went.
Around the stringed instruments, the sugar had been placed into various dishes — a gift? Surely not. She returned to the trail around the piano, and there on the keys was a note. She picked it up with a frown, reading it over. His house. His rules. In gratitude? She looked again to the sugar on the floor. He could not possibly expect her to eat that.
But the sugar in the dishes, maybe?
She held onto the note as she made her way to the kitchen. Another trail of sugar around the usual mess of wax, which did not inspire confidence. But on the counter...
Traditionally, milk and honey would have been the preferred gifts, in those years long gone. But butter and cheese were a close second, as these things went. She considered the open containers with pursed lips. They had to have been left deliberately, hadn't they? It wasn't as if he'd done this sort of thing before. She looked at the note again. In gratitude.
... maybe he was just...
... really stupid?
Maybe the constant, awful messes were not malicious. Nor the lack of gifts. Nor the noise. Maybe he was just an idiot.
It wouldn't be fair to hold it against him, if he was. Would it?
She frowned at the note again, then bit down on her lower lip as she considered the issue. She was hungry. She couldn't eat until she'd cleaned. Who knew how long it would take to find another house. She could, if nothing else, stay one more night before leaving well fed.
Just one, though.
She opened her bag to retrieve her supplies, and got to work cleaning the wax again. It felt a waste to throw out the sugar, but she had not yet been lowered to the point of licking sugar off the furniture. There were limits to her desperation. She scrubbed the floors in the kitchen and around the piano, and moved the dishes of sugar onto the counter. The spoons were emptied onto plates and tossed into the sink to wash later. The instruments bothered her, begged to be tidied and set to rights. But that was the point of the note, wasn't it? No cleaning the instruments. Off limits. Maybe the sugar was supposed to distract her before she could touch them.
When she was satisfied that things were as clean as they could get, under the circumstances — which was not very — she went back to the kitchen to consider her gifts.
The spoons were all dirty, leaving her none with which to eat. That was a bit rude. She scraped a finger through the tub of cheese, and cautiously licked it away.
Yes. Good. Acceptable. Fat and dairy and, generally, just, good.
She poured the sugar into the largest bowl, consolidating to stack the others into less of a mess. Except for the spoons, which she washed immediately. When they were clean, she claimed one for herself, still hot from washing and melting butter in its wake. She saved the pure sugar for last, because... well.
A spoonful of sugar on her tongue, and she all but melted, eyes fluttering shut as the silver rested in her mouth. Another and another, and the ache seeped from her bones, the mistreated instruments no longer pricking her skin. She leaned and then sagged against the counter, and she would have hummed if she made any noise at all, toes curling as warmth spread through her.
She may have licked the bowl.
She may have licked everything.
She looked at the note again before cleaning up after herself, even washing out the containers he'd left. He could toss them out, if he wanted, but she didn't know yet if he did. Better safe, and all.
Vic. Humans gave their names out so easily. It meant nothing to them, really.
No one had ever left her a note before. She found a pen — and maybe it was the same one he'd used, so conveniently nearby — and she deliberated.
She should not have responded. But she had eaten a great deal of sugar. Her judgement was, at least mildly, impaired. Her handwriting was impossibly neat, almost a font in its carefully crafted curls and stock-straight lines, tidy print just large enough to be legible and no larger.
Could you put the iron away?
There. Yes. Good.
She gathered her things to put them back in the attic, her bag and her shoes, before sneaking silent into his bedroom. More sugar around his bed, the wretch, but fortunately she'd had enough that it did not bother her so much. She swept it away, though she would not risk cleaning the floor properly, gathered up his laundry and his mug. In its place she left his note, with her new addition at the bottom.
She was going to sleep marvelously.
Her entire life had always been designed to take up as little room as possible, easy to pick up and move. A long stay did not change that fact.
The house felt particularly filthy, and she would be glad to have the feeling gone. The itch, the ache, the needles at her spine. She'd actually worn her shoes this time, and it took careful steps to keep the heels from clicking against wood. The pain hit her worse when she made her way downstairs, and it did not take much investigation to see why.
Sugar. On the floor. Deliberate trails of sugar.
She stepped out of her shoes and set down her bag, because she was going to need to see just how far this went.
Around the stringed instruments, the sugar had been placed into various dishes — a gift? Surely not. She returned to the trail around the piano, and there on the keys was a note. She picked it up with a frown, reading it over. His house. His rules. In gratitude? She looked again to the sugar on the floor. He could not possibly expect her to eat that.
But the sugar in the dishes, maybe?
She held onto the note as she made her way to the kitchen. Another trail of sugar around the usual mess of wax, which did not inspire confidence. But on the counter...
Traditionally, milk and honey would have been the preferred gifts, in those years long gone. But butter and cheese were a close second, as these things went. She considered the open containers with pursed lips. They had to have been left deliberately, hadn't they? It wasn't as if he'd done this sort of thing before. She looked at the note again. In gratitude.
... maybe he was just...
... really stupid?
Maybe the constant, awful messes were not malicious. Nor the lack of gifts. Nor the noise. Maybe he was just an idiot.
It wouldn't be fair to hold it against him, if he was. Would it?
She frowned at the note again, then bit down on her lower lip as she considered the issue. She was hungry. She couldn't eat until she'd cleaned. Who knew how long it would take to find another house. She could, if nothing else, stay one more night before leaving well fed.
Just one, though.
She opened her bag to retrieve her supplies, and got to work cleaning the wax again. It felt a waste to throw out the sugar, but she had not yet been lowered to the point of licking sugar off the furniture. There were limits to her desperation. She scrubbed the floors in the kitchen and around the piano, and moved the dishes of sugar onto the counter. The spoons were emptied onto plates and tossed into the sink to wash later. The instruments bothered her, begged to be tidied and set to rights. But that was the point of the note, wasn't it? No cleaning the instruments. Off limits. Maybe the sugar was supposed to distract her before she could touch them.
When she was satisfied that things were as clean as they could get, under the circumstances — which was not very — she went back to the kitchen to consider her gifts.
The spoons were all dirty, leaving her none with which to eat. That was a bit rude. She scraped a finger through the tub of cheese, and cautiously licked it away.
Yes. Good. Acceptable. Fat and dairy and, generally, just, good.
She poured the sugar into the largest bowl, consolidating to stack the others into less of a mess. Except for the spoons, which she washed immediately. When they were clean, she claimed one for herself, still hot from washing and melting butter in its wake. She saved the pure sugar for last, because... well.
A spoonful of sugar on her tongue, and she all but melted, eyes fluttering shut as the silver rested in her mouth. Another and another, and the ache seeped from her bones, the mistreated instruments no longer pricking her skin. She leaned and then sagged against the counter, and she would have hummed if she made any noise at all, toes curling as warmth spread through her.
She may have licked the bowl.
She may have licked everything.
She looked at the note again before cleaning up after herself, even washing out the containers he'd left. He could toss them out, if he wanted, but she didn't know yet if he did. Better safe, and all.
Vic. Humans gave their names out so easily. It meant nothing to them, really.
No one had ever left her a note before. She found a pen — and maybe it was the same one he'd used, so conveniently nearby — and she deliberated.
She should not have responded. But she had eaten a great deal of sugar. Her judgement was, at least mildly, impaired. Her handwriting was impossibly neat, almost a font in its carefully crafted curls and stock-straight lines, tidy print just large enough to be legible and no larger.
Could you put the iron away?
There. Yes. Good.
She gathered her things to put them back in the attic, her bag and her shoes, before sneaking silent into his bedroom. More sugar around his bed, the wretch, but fortunately she'd had enough that it did not bother her so much. She swept it away, though she would not risk cleaning the floor properly, gathered up his laundry and his mug. In its place she left his note, with her new addition at the bottom.
She was going to sleep marvelously.
RE: Sugar Cubes & Cobwebs 1x1 - danixiewrites - 02-16-2016
Victrus dreamed of blue and red ghosts high on sweets, careening around the creaky hallways and chasing him like he'd become trapped in a game of Pac Man. Eating instruments polished as if they'd been mass produced for a superstore, no tone or soul to speak of. Why Pac Man, he couldn't say. It wasn't as if he'd ever allowed his brain cells to be eaten by a machine, and even his cell phone lacked the apps with which so many his age chose to while away their productive moments.Sweat drenched the quilt he'd pulled over himself, the sheets underneath he couldn't remember putting there either, the pillowcase, his hastily pulled-on silky bedclothes. Leaving sugar out for invisible beings was hard work. He untangled himself from the mass of covers and headed for the bathroom, barely noting the odd grains here and there underfoot. With nowhere to be for another day and lesson plans filling his head, the shower ran so long the deliciously cold water became lukewarm.
A river of wet soaked the bathroom floor, creeping into crevices along the tub and wall and dotting footprints down the hallway. Vic noticed, but only because he almost slipped, and he put a bathmat on his mental shopping list. Such an exercise was forgotten when he returned to his room.
The floor...was sticky. He braced himself against the wall and picked up one wet foot, then the other, then scrubbed a hand over its sole. "Blast. The sugar." But it wasn't in a neat, obvious mound around his bed, not now. He set his foot down and eyed the floor with suspicion.
Surely the house itself hadn't attempted to devour it; the few grains he had discovered were only caught in the floorboards.
Perhaps the army of ants had come after all, the sugar too much to carry in one night.
Still.
This might have been good news.
He pulled on jeans and a black tee, hopping awkwardly down the stairs. "It's gone! All of it!" Room after room that he'd dosed with the sweet treat had been tidied, the receptacles missing. He found those in the kitchen, put away and scrubbed clean. Vic picked up an empty butter container and tapped it against his hip. "Guess I'm buying that too."
But there was only one way to know for sure if it had worked, beyond feeding whoever had chosen to torture his strings. Each violin, viola, cello, all were inspected thoroughly, and though a few still needed a second pass to fix the earlier polishing machinations, nothing new had been hurt. No new strings had been strung, no fingerboards mauled. The next time he played the voices would be properly mournful, properly sounding as old, weathered things with long, wretched lives should sound.
He couldn't have hoped for a better outcome.
He still didn't quite believe he wasn't dreaming.
But then, finally, the piano.
Approaching the grand like one might approach a wild animal, Vic slid his fingers over the high C, the scuffed rim of the board. It didn't shine. It didn't gleam. He opened it up and check the tension, tugging on one string just so, snapping it across the bridge. He pulled the string free and coiled it around one palm, patting the side of the great wooden instrument.
"Shhh," he said, "it'll be okay now. It'll all be okay."
There was something to this sugar thing after all, sugar he would be running out to pick up in bulk just as soon as he closed the--"What...what the devil is that?"
His pen lay cradled on the music stand, the paper he'd left by way of final notice to whoever insisted on playing the hideous games with his motley of musical brethren flipped over.
Neat as a mortician's makeup job sat tiny, tiny letters, looped and curled along the top of one of the staves. He blinked, unbelieving, scrubbed momentarily at his eyes and then stared again. After another long moment, Vic set the paper down and returned to the kitchen.
Two brandy glasses later--one per shot--he returned. And stared.
"The iron," he muttered. "An odd thing to be concerned with, considering your penchant for polishing wood."
This, he would have to look into. Something niggled at the back of his mind about ghosts and iron and oh. Perhaps the invisible polisher couldn't leave the house with the doors blocked by traps. He shrugged. Then wrote in the same four-beat scrawl, "Quite like decor. Heirlooms offend? Tomorrow then. Today shopping. For more sugar. No polishing. Very good Ghostie. Vic Rosenburg. PS Butter? Maybe ice cream?"
Ice cream, perhaps, he'd leave that instead of the butter he intended to use for his own cooking. He narrowed his eyes. Why in all that was tarnished had he added that, considered it at all? The last thing he needed to do was encourage the thing to stay away from his instruments by paying it off in some kind of confection-funded protection racket.
RE: Sugar Cubes & Cobwebs 1x1 - Tindome - 02-16-2016
Boudica stirred in her sleep, sprawled out amidst her pillows with a yawn. She might have just gone back to sleep, except: the house was empty. The master was away.
Master of the house, that is. It was the preferred terminology of houses. She had nothing to do with it.
Always tricky, an empty house. Impossible to tell how long it would be. Never worth the risk to try and do a full cleaning.
But the sugar on the floor of the master bedroom…
If she hurried, maybe. She was feeling emboldened, anyway, after leaving that note.
Which she shouldn't have done. Absolutely should not have, n-o with a capital no. If she thought about it too much she was going to make herself anxious. She was already a little anxious. Maybe he hadn't found it? Maybe she could get rid of it and abandon the endeavor. She'd really had too much sugar. She really shouldn't have done that.
So, plan: quick jaunt downstairs to clean the floor and tend to the matter of the poorly-planned note, then right back to sleep.
Scandalous as it was to be wandering around the house in nothing but her slip, she was in a hurry. She was going back to bed soon enough, anyway. It was fine. This was definitely all a good idea.
The letter took priority, and so that was where she went first. Now that she'd rested the iron was bothering her again, the instruments and their disrepair, all of it itching against her skin and twisting in her bones. It dampened her mood, somewhat. Dampened again when she saw new writing, making her heart sink and skip all at once. It was all very nerve-wracking, this communication business. Dangerous, was what it was. Indiscreet.
She bit her lip as she scanned the writing, which did nothing to disabuse her of the notion that Vic Rosenburg was not possessed of great intelligence. Sentence fragments, barely even ideas. Or maybe it wasn't his first language. That would explain it as well, wouldn't it?
Very good Ghostie. Ghostie? She lowered the paper with a frown, then lifted it again to consider it. He would get rid of the iron… tomorrow? Today he was buying more sugar, that was good. 'No polishing', she could understand the gist of that.
Was… was she Ghostie?
Did he… think she was a ghost?
Why would she… how would… what?
The evidence was piling up in favor of his being not-at-all clever.
Was it safe for him to be living here on his own?
She should have put an immediate stop to all letters, but now she felt a bit guilty about it. Maybe it was better if he thought she was a ghost, anyway. No searching through her glamours or trying to find her name.
One short note. That was it. Nothing too encouraging.
Cream is good. Why is polishing bad?
… maybe that last bit wasn't entirely necessary. But why. She really did want to know awfully. Not that he was sure to have a good reason. He thought she was a ghost. His reasoning was spurious at best. Even a bad reason would be better than no reason, surely.
Tempting though it was to tidy a few things up, she was still standing around in a slip. Back to the master bedroom, then, to take care of the… puddles. There were puddles. He had left puddles of water all over hardwood and, yes, the evidence was really piling up. And pooling on the floor. She cleaned it, anyway, all the stray water in the bathroom and trailing outward, scrubbing away the sugar that remained until the floor gleamed.
Eventually she'd need to find a way to wash the sheets, but she'd settle for making the bed in the meantime.
Master of the house, that is. It was the preferred terminology of houses. She had nothing to do with it.
Always tricky, an empty house. Impossible to tell how long it would be. Never worth the risk to try and do a full cleaning.
But the sugar on the floor of the master bedroom…
If she hurried, maybe. She was feeling emboldened, anyway, after leaving that note.
Which she shouldn't have done. Absolutely should not have, n-o with a capital no. If she thought about it too much she was going to make herself anxious. She was already a little anxious. Maybe he hadn't found it? Maybe she could get rid of it and abandon the endeavor. She'd really had too much sugar. She really shouldn't have done that.
So, plan: quick jaunt downstairs to clean the floor and tend to the matter of the poorly-planned note, then right back to sleep.
Scandalous as it was to be wandering around the house in nothing but her slip, she was in a hurry. She was going back to bed soon enough, anyway. It was fine. This was definitely all a good idea.
The letter took priority, and so that was where she went first. Now that she'd rested the iron was bothering her again, the instruments and their disrepair, all of it itching against her skin and twisting in her bones. It dampened her mood, somewhat. Dampened again when she saw new writing, making her heart sink and skip all at once. It was all very nerve-wracking, this communication business. Dangerous, was what it was. Indiscreet.
She bit her lip as she scanned the writing, which did nothing to disabuse her of the notion that Vic Rosenburg was not possessed of great intelligence. Sentence fragments, barely even ideas. Or maybe it wasn't his first language. That would explain it as well, wouldn't it?
Very good Ghostie. Ghostie? She lowered the paper with a frown, then lifted it again to consider it. He would get rid of the iron… tomorrow? Today he was buying more sugar, that was good. 'No polishing', she could understand the gist of that.
Was… was she Ghostie?
Did he… think she was a ghost?
Why would she… how would… what?
The evidence was piling up in favor of his being not-at-all clever.
Was it safe for him to be living here on his own?
She should have put an immediate stop to all letters, but now she felt a bit guilty about it. Maybe it was better if he thought she was a ghost, anyway. No searching through her glamours or trying to find her name.
One short note. That was it. Nothing too encouraging.
Cream is good. Why is polishing bad?
… maybe that last bit wasn't entirely necessary. But why. She really did want to know awfully. Not that he was sure to have a good reason. He thought she was a ghost. His reasoning was spurious at best. Even a bad reason would be better than no reason, surely.
Tempting though it was to tidy a few things up, she was still standing around in a slip. Back to the master bedroom, then, to take care of the… puddles. There were puddles. He had left puddles of water all over hardwood and, yes, the evidence was really piling up. And pooling on the floor. She cleaned it, anyway, all the stray water in the bathroom and trailing outward, scrubbing away the sugar that remained until the floor gleamed.
Eventually she'd need to find a way to wash the sheets, but she'd settle for making the bed in the meantime.
RE: Sugar Cubes & Cobwebs 1x1 - danixiewrites - 08-02-2016
Vic may have overdone it on the sugar.
The back of the hearse made it look like he planned start his own bakery tomorrow, rather than spending the day overseeing students who didn't know a sheet of staff paper from a printer calibration page. It towered over everything, and it would be quite inconvenient to haul it all through the windows of his new-old abode.
Worse, a downpour had begun, and while that sort of weather was normally his favorite, wet bags of sugar were useless. Given how well the sweets had worked to protect his instruments, and given he was starting to come around to this deeply disturbing, fledgling belief in the paranormal, he wasn't about to lose protection-from-ghost supplies. It would be a crime to leave the stringed instruments to fend for themselves.
So he backed the car as close as he could, then trudged through the side garden to open the unlocked window. Mud scraped along the sill, water dripped down the ruched wallpaper and textured paint of the sitting room, and the hardwood caught evidence of the path he took. From the sitting room to the iron maiden behind the front door, backwards then, the great hulking ironwork dragged to sit in front of the hallway. Then a wide curve around it, until the muddied prints came to rest in the doorway.
The cross-breeze from the doorway and window scattered his sheet music to a litany of curses, but that wasn't the crescendo of this endeavor.
No, he'd parked too blasted close. Opening the back of the hearse was impossible from this angle.
Victrus brushed back damp, dark locks and tugged on his trench coat to straighten it from the adventurous home entry procedure. If all this trouble had merely been for a maybe-ghost, he wouldn't have gone to the effort. But whatever, or more probably whoever, had taken to obsessively cleaning his things could not be denied existence--and was already in the house. Also, his own groceries were a necessity that had his stomach grumbling.
The resulting dance took multiple trips back through the window until he'd arranged the vehicle and the awning over the house entryway and the wide-swinging door on the back of the hearse was anchored against the siding, a series of umbrellas tied together and stretched over the whole exposed mess to keep several enormous bags of sugar from the elements. He lugged everything inside, his own bagged groceries dumped atop the now extensively muddied boards, plastic bags marring footprints.
Sugar made it all the way to the kitchen table, safely dry and enclosed in a towering heap of enormous paper bags. After parking the car and closing the window and door to the house once more, he lit the requisite amount of candles and spent the afternoon filling the pantry. All remained in their commercial-sized bags save one, which he broke down into smaller containers. Less portion control, more ease of space, but anyway one sliced it, far too much effort for a ghost. It was worth it.
"For the strings," he reminded himself again. "Certain things simply must be done."
Vic stepped back, appraising the closet as it barely closed. Taken altogether, it was enough sugar to kill a dozen diabetics.
One fell swoop. Poor souls.
With the half pound he'd left out the night before, and given the resulting note, he was quite sure his ghost was not so afflicted. Or perhaps...it had been. Hence the cravings. Could a ghost be killed twice?
Recalling the note sent his eyes to the grand piano, and Victrus cursed anew at the damp and muddied pages spread across the floor. Retrieving them one by one, he carried the dripping stack through the house until he stood in front of the laundry room. It was a rather large room, for laundry. Not like the modern apartments with a tiny closet where one machine could be stacked atop the other. No, this was a room designed for washing, scrubbing, ironing, folding, and drying. Large industrial sinks in the corner gleamed like the rest of the house after his co-habiter got to it. Two long cords crisscrossed the room, hung from one wall to its opposite and laden with clothespins.
That would do. That would do nicely. He fastened the edges of his papers to the strings, clipping the corners up to hang the music to dry. It wasn't until he got to the middle of the stack that he saw the brief message.
Vic frowned. Aaaaaand now he had to explain his methods to an entity that, before his aunt had passed, he'd believed to be a mere popular culture explanation for things that go bump in the night.
Again.
But first, the ice cream that was probably melting all over the entry!
By the time he'd finished hanging the music to dry and put away the groceries, he sank to the floor in front of the pantry and swiped his arm across his forehead. Exhausting, this, the housekeeping and pandering to supposed supernatural houseguests. He was too tired to do more than flip over the grocery receipt and scribble a quick note--this time not constrained by measured stanzas of sheet music. Quite enough physical activity for one day--if not the week. And yet, there was practice to be had, a disastrous floor that even he could not in good conscience leave in its present state nor leave cups of sugar amid the muddied steps, lesson plans to sort for his students........
He dozed off to this far too extensive list of should-do's, damp trench coat balled underneath his head, long legs sprawled over the kitchen tile and under what would assuredly be a healthy dripping of wax, and a crumpled receipt draped across his fingers with words scrawled across the back in black ink:
"Polish is shiny but naught but a mask. It strips identity. Prevents the baring of soul. And the wrong strings rob them of voice. Would that you or I"
The rest lay smudged beneath his thumb, save for the words "cream" and "fridge".
RE: Sugar Cubes & Cobwebs 1x1 - Tindome - 08-31-2016
The mud.
The mud.
The mud.
This was utterly beyond the pale. Why? How? What?
Boudica was dressed this time, a gray pencil skirt and white blouse with no blazer, but she strongly considered going back upstairs. Not that it would help. It had itched at her enough to wake her up, even before he'd gone to sleep. Lying upstairs with her skin crawling would still, surely, be better than this nonsensical atrocity.
She didn't even check the other rooms before she dropped to her knees and started scrubbing. She couldn't stand it, she couldn't possibly stand it, if something didn't get done about the mud immediately then her throat would close up and her lungs would shrivel. That was what it felt like, at least. She'd had enough foresight not to wear a jacket. She didn't know when she would be able to get away with wearing a jacket again. It was always something, wasn't it, dust and sugar and mud and iron and who even knew what else. For so many years it had been nothing but detail work, but how would she ever find time to dust the molding when there was mud seeping between the floorboards?
When the floor was bearable, clean enough by most standards but not by hers, she stood to check the other rooms. Bailing water on a sinking ship, that was what it felt like. How could any one man make such a mess?
The floor of the laundry room was covered in the drippings of pages upon pages, all hung up on the line. She didn't even know where to begin, and settled for cleaning the floor. Just enough that nothing would be ruined, and she could see to the inevitable wax abomination in the kitchen.
The kitchen was the final straw. The final straw was sprawled on the floor, as if he did not have a perfectly good bed with nice clean sheets in his nice clean bedroom.
Awful, monstrous, unutterably wretched creature.
She couldn't even clean the wax, not without risking that she might wake him. Something in his hand, but she couldn't read it while he held it, not unless she wanted to get very close. Which she did not. For the better, if it was a note; she needed to put an immediate stop to those shenanigans. To any and all shenanigans. No more shenaning on her part.
He hadn't even left any gifts out. Still hadn't gotten rid of the iron. It would serve him right if she burned the house down.
He'd probably enjoy living in the burnt-out husk, the wretch.
The kitchen would simply have to wait. She'd tend more thoroughly to the other rooms, scrub and polish and dust until her knees and fingers all ached.
And then — because it made her feel better and because she was feeling spiteful — she polished a violin. A single ominously gleaming violin, put neatly away in a room with a shining floor.
The mud.
The mud.
This was utterly beyond the pale. Why? How? What?
Boudica was dressed this time, a gray pencil skirt and white blouse with no blazer, but she strongly considered going back upstairs. Not that it would help. It had itched at her enough to wake her up, even before he'd gone to sleep. Lying upstairs with her skin crawling would still, surely, be better than this nonsensical atrocity.
She didn't even check the other rooms before she dropped to her knees and started scrubbing. She couldn't stand it, she couldn't possibly stand it, if something didn't get done about the mud immediately then her throat would close up and her lungs would shrivel. That was what it felt like, at least. She'd had enough foresight not to wear a jacket. She didn't know when she would be able to get away with wearing a jacket again. It was always something, wasn't it, dust and sugar and mud and iron and who even knew what else. For so many years it had been nothing but detail work, but how would she ever find time to dust the molding when there was mud seeping between the floorboards?
When the floor was bearable, clean enough by most standards but not by hers, she stood to check the other rooms. Bailing water on a sinking ship, that was what it felt like. How could any one man make such a mess?
The floor of the laundry room was covered in the drippings of pages upon pages, all hung up on the line. She didn't even know where to begin, and settled for cleaning the floor. Just enough that nothing would be ruined, and she could see to the inevitable wax abomination in the kitchen.
The kitchen was the final straw. The final straw was sprawled on the floor, as if he did not have a perfectly good bed with nice clean sheets in his nice clean bedroom.
Awful, monstrous, unutterably wretched creature.
She couldn't even clean the wax, not without risking that she might wake him. Something in his hand, but she couldn't read it while he held it, not unless she wanted to get very close. Which she did not. For the better, if it was a note; she needed to put an immediate stop to those shenanigans. To any and all shenanigans. No more shenaning on her part.
He hadn't even left any gifts out. Still hadn't gotten rid of the iron. It would serve him right if she burned the house down.
He'd probably enjoy living in the burnt-out husk, the wretch.
The kitchen would simply have to wait. She'd tend more thoroughly to the other rooms, scrub and polish and dust until her knees and fingers all ached.
And then — because it made her feel better and because she was feeling spiteful — she polished a violin. A single ominously gleaming violin, put neatly away in a room with a shining floor.