[EVENT] T.S.O.A.M.B

The composition was ready; each line meticulously placed, sometimes erased, for hours on end until he found the exact angle it needed to be. In his mind’s eye, he had already selected the colors he would work with too, but it would still take time to finish and balance the lights and darks so that even upside down or twisted sideways, his piece would still be interesting, his lines would still catch the viewer’s eye and move them through the painting. He wanted his art to breathe, really, to show a spark of life—and this composition had haunted him for far longer than it should have. The artist—Miguel DeTorres—glanced over his shoulder at the many guests in the art gallery. Quite a few crowded the borders of his cordoned off area so that they could watch him work, while others caroused the pieces that were already on display. He had a thing, a sort of theme, that threaded its way through each of his pieces: the dark urban jungle and the monsters that lurked in its belly. DeTorres had a great eye for movement in a piece, for making it seem as if those open mawed, grotesque creatures peeking around street corners or peering down from rooftops driveled saliva or bubbled with froth around their teeth. Eyes almost seemed to swivel toward and pierce their viewers, caught in a flicker of terrifying life. He had everything here—fascinations and abominations alike that clawed their ways from the canal depths of the cities or smiled rows of pointed teeth under the cover of cars or sewer grates. Then of course there were the ordinary looking pieces—paintings or charcoal works of seemingly normal men and women that drove you mad attempting to figure out what was “wrong” with them. What had he done to make them fit in with all this unsettling depictions of the modern monster? Oh, there was something. A niggling at the back of the mind that something was wrong with these “ordinary” people, but what?

He smiled. Let them figure it out.

“Mr. DeTorres, are you ready?”

“Yes,” he said. A pair of yellow tinted glasses rested on the bridge of his nose as he reached for his materials, paintbrush poised. One quick flick of his brown eyes to the clock confirmed the time before he began, tuning out the world around him. To his guests, it would seem as if that typical, artist’s glassiness entered his eyes as he started working. Sometimes his dark hair would get in the way and he’d jerk his head to remove it, but otherwise all was mostly still, his fingers the only exception. At least the guests would be comfortable. Two floors of the art gallery were dedicated to his work; he was on the second, but there were food and refreshments on both levels, many people to talk to and a lot of art to look over, buy or place bids on. And of course, they could always join the crowd watching his progress if need be.



It rumbled.

A pulse of energy, a thread of malevolent power. A blot of ugliness in the atmosphere, but so faint only the trained eye could see or feel the tension it imposed. What an ancient entity, to have cultivated so much molten wrath in its still-beating heart, a hidden gem amongst this unfeeling, man-made jungle. It was locked away though, beating on its unexpected prison walls and shrieking vengeance as the world turned and time ticked forever on and on.  Interesting, how the living slogged about, unaware they were close to something so dangerous, so bitter. No matter, the entity whispered. It had been forgotten yes, but not lost, and perhaps its prison had served a greater purpose. After so many years of waiting, its power had spilled over, rippling, reaching. It simply needed a tiny push to crack the remaining, impertinent shell.  Ah, but if weeds could break through concrete, it would surely crack the walls of this infernal cage. Just a little push. A little help. That was all it needed.

Thankfully, something heard, something noticed.

Thus a universal truth: Ask, and you shall receive.



Brace yourself. One more round of mingling, then the slaughter personal tasks begin. Stay tuned to your PMs next round.

Drivel woke first, his bioluminescent, white eyes blinking quite suddenly at the world outside of his former playpen. Colors danced across his dark skin like the opalescent quality of an oil slick. He was a massive brute, with bulging, broad forearms that carried the bulk of his troglodyte-like weight. But he was quite simple minded too, and in the beginning he sniffed and snuffled, nostrils flaring wide, at all the sights and sounds outside of his painted, dark alleyway. He might have been tempted to stay there too, in spite of the calling of his master, uncertain of this new predicament and life he found himself in, if he had not seen the color red. A shiver rippled down his back, shaking even the elongated quills along his hunched back. The perpetual glow of his eyes brightened to an ethereal, ghostly shimmer. Reeeeed.



Oh, he liked it. Drivel salivated at the sight of it, his drool dropping in curtains from his simian-like mouth and the tusks that jutted out of his lower jaw. He simply had to have it. All of it. Drivel slumped closer on the massive knuckles of his hands, slouching carefully. Slowly. He didn’t want to startle the creature wearing it until the last possible moment, when it would be too late to stop him. Good thing the human wasn’t even looking his way. Its back was turned, facing someone else, and thus, when he finally burst, roaring from the confines of his painting, he expected to pummel the creature into oblivion—to beat the color out of him if necessary because it was his. But Drivel did not expect to be caught in mid charge, his massive shape leaning halfway out of his painting, his thunderous roar startling the crowds on the first floor as he floundered, stuck because he had taken things a tad too fast. He flailed the one good, muscular arm that had made it partway through his painting, thumping and punching everything in range while people screamed and scurried or blinked with the dumb confusion of animals. One unlucky woman was bashed by his heavy fist and she crumpled to the floor in an instant, but all the while Drivel struggled, and slowly, he began to make progress. The monster still had one heavy hand aimed at Lucien, his clubbed, grabbing fingers reaching so hard for that poppy red hair that was mere inches from his grasp.







Ugh, Drivel. That juggernaut of an imbecile; he had no notion of the word, inconspicuous, nor forethought. His sibling, Quid Pro Quo, might have rolled his eyes to the damn moon at Drivel’s display of noise and spittle, if only Quid Pro Quo had eyes to begin with. Instead, there were hints of sockets dug out of his face but little else, and he came from a painting in which he peered around a thin streetlamp with a smile full of serrated teeth that only seemed to grow ever wider. Must he always be the only one of his brothers and sisters to do the smart thing, he wondered? Well at least something good had come from that bumbling ape’s thrashing around the place. It had effectively distracted the crowd, so much so that down the hall and closer to the door, Quid Pro Quo, once his spindly self had slid out from behind the his former street lamp, could gain his freedom too.

He was much smarter about the “getting out” part than Drivel was as well. The opening was narrow, and Quid Pro Quo squished his awkwardly long limbs close to his body and crawled his way out—all twelve feet. A man in a dazzling dapper suit almost bumped into him in the process, and Quid Pro Quo, with his unnaturally long and knobby fingers, reached out and grabbed him about the waist before realization could dawn on the poor fool.

Let’s switch. Shall we? You for I and I for you, Quid Pro Quo thought as he finally began to stand in the cavernous space of the gallery. His face, so malleable and chalky white, split into a toothy grin that would make a Cheshire cat purr with pride, but he quickly muffled the man’s screams by shoving him into the painting before the threshold between the two spaces closed permanently. A young woman standing nearby--Emmeline--might have met the same fate, if in all his infinite mercy, he did not change his mind at the last second. He merely turned his hollow, invisible gaze upon her and pressed a finger to his wide lips and shining teeth and left her there, to ruminate on what she had seen. Quid Pro Quo’s head twitched on his thin neck; it was his terrible tic, an involuntary spasm in his body that was somehow just as grotesque as the rest of his bony frame. As he heard shouts and shrieks upstairs, he stalked on his lanky, crackling legs toward the door.

No one was getting out that way. No sir, not today. He could sense the truth already, long before the rest of these panicking meatbags could; Skewer had taken care of the emergency exits, sealed them shut with his noxious mucus, as solid as cement, and was now shuffling his sneaky self out of sight again before he was seen. And Tinct. Tinct was upstairs, with the only windows, barring any escape from above and serving a greater purpose. They would introduce themselves when they were ready, but for now, Quid Pro Quo hunched down, squatting on his legs and leaning on his knees; he watched the havoc unfold, occasionally grabbing a fleeing man or woman that rushed his way and making an unholy mess of their ridiculously un-flexible, oh-so-breakable bodies. Drivel, that dumb ape, would like that—the crackle of bone as Quid Pro Quo had his fun, but more importantly, sometimes they bled. And Quid Pro Quo knew how much Drivel liked the color red.




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Drivel beat his one free fist against the floor in frustration, that thud of force almost cracking through the hard surface, but the sound virtually drowned in shrieks and stampeding bodies. He didn’t like it. That pretty Red had moved too fast and now Drivel didn’t have a single strand of red hair to show for all his efforts. He thrust his arm back up from the floor to reach for Lucien again, not quite understanding why his limb wasn’t listening to him. Why wouldn’t it grab? (Imbecile, your arm only stretches so far, Quid Pro Quo thought as he watched.)

Then the bang happened, the sound exploding through the gallery, amplified by some of the cavernous space, and Drivel turned his head. His eyes peered down the hallway in wonder as a minor twinge of pain consumed his arm; a bullet had pierced his skin. But instead of bleeding and screaming in rage, Drivel blinked, a rope of drool sliding from his bottom lip and plopping quietly to the floor.  He glanced back at his arm, then up again. Down, up, down, up, down again. Slowly, Drivel’s dark skin around the wound seemed to ripple, as if it were wet. Then it sucked in the bullet like quicksand, covered the hole, and the wound disappeared entirely. He could not forget that prick of pain though, and angrily slammed his arm against the floor a few times because of it.

Why. Wouldn’t. It. Listen? And now it hurt momentarily for no reason?! Stupid. Arm. That should teach it. Satisfied, he resumed his raging.

His long claws scraped the floors and gouged deep rivets as he pulled. He spat and huffed and puffed and kicked and then—finally!—his trapped shoulder popped through the painting, and with it, his other arm. His bright, glowing eyes blinked in dumb shock as his balance pitched forward. He collapsed right into the gallery, confused. It took a few seconds to stand again, his massive body hunched forward on his powerful knuckles like some perverse silver back gorilla, only larger, and arguably dumber. Then, by stroke of luck, he looked to one side and saw it: Red! Right on cue, Drivel opened his mouth to roar in triumph; he rushed after Red (and that human that Red seemed to be following) but was slowed considerably, stuck in a mob of people all shoving and pushing at one another as they tried to get to the stairwell. Drivel pushed back of course, parting their swarm by force, but it was stealing precious time from him. This was everyone's chance to hide or gain more distance.



People seemed to learn, very quickly, that the front door was not an option when it came to escaping. That was good; Quid Pro Quo didn’t want to start dismembering things too to get his point across. He began to build a crude line of broken bodies to block it off though, propping them against the front doors as if they had just gone to sit down and had slumped over, fast asleep. Many of the corpses had been trampled by other humans, actually. It was slightly fascinating to him that they were causing more damage to their own kind than he was. At least Quid Pro Quo had the decency to recycle their wasteful deaths by turning them into an imposing—if not potentially traumatizing—group of macabre sentinels that guarded the exit. Anyone that tried to go this way would have to shove them out of the way—after getting by Quid Pro Quo, of course. The monster kept glancing wearily over his shoulder toward Drivel and his stupid predicament (the stupid part could not be fixed unfortunately), but Quid Pro Quo would not step too far from his position.

He was ordered to be here. And thus, he could not help his sibling. He did, however, peer curiously over the crowds when he heard the first gunshot. Seconds later, a second bullet almost pierced his face and crashed through his teeth; it was to his credit that his limber body shifted to the side, and the bullet lodged in the wall instead. His empty eye sockets stared at it quizzically, before he twisted around again, to stare at the woman.

Nice try, he wanted to say. But he couldn’t. His face was split in that permanent, stomach churning smile of teeth. The throngs of people were beginning to thin out though. Some were heading upstairs. Others were gathering in corners or at the end of corridors, unable to go anywhere. Nevertheless, Quid Quo Pro stayed put, only his neck bones crackling as his head twitched with his terrible tic. He had his orders, and he would stay right here. Right here, yes, at the only, unsealed exit. But it had him for a guardian, and that had to count for something.

Meanwhile, a streak of color scuttled through a nearby painting, so quick it might not have been noticeable. It was racing, jumping from painting to painting, shadowing Kyoko and the young boy, its eyes burning with angry purpose. And now there was someone else too: Emmeline. It would let them progress a while further; but the entity wouldn’t stay hidden for very long.  It could sense that the older woman in particular, might be a problem.