|-NOTICE-|
Neil Tannenbaum and Bentley Morelet have been eliminated.
|------------|
The man's shirt. It's as if a caricature artist found inspiration in the contents of a trash can. His face is like a kid had chewed up a Blow Pop. Pineapple maybe. What's the palest fruit? His face is all mangled and pale like a chewed up pineapple Blow Pop.
Imagining it, the sergeant pops her lips. Pop pop. "And what did you use to do in Idle."
"Oh, you mean back up there? Back up before you lot came in and shunted us off down to here, yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah, well. Well I used to do pictures. Grisly stuff, I honestly don't blame yous, I had to be stopped. I just had to be stopped." Travis' tourist shirt ruffles and the sergeant thinks she can pick a depiction of a banana out of it somewhere. "It wasn't much, I had my phone camera and a printer." Travis brims. "And then I had this stand up with a painting of a horse and then a cow was riding on top of it and he had a cowboy hat on so it was like a cow boy, yeah? Had an udder though, the cow, so I don't know really. A girl cow I suppose. Cowgirl!" He's quite pleased with himself for working that out. The sergeant is less impressed. "A cowgirl, aye" Travis repeats, now sheepish to the sergeant's stare. "Wasn't any sheep on it though, just the horse. And that cow of course. But wait, but here's the kicker, the real money maker, it's that none of those guys–or girls–they didn't have no faces, yeah, just big holes cut out of the wood, so the kids would come up and stick their heads in them and it would look like they were a horse or that they were that cow, and they would pay me five dollars for that opportunity, and for a picture of it in the end. Anyway, what were you saying?"
"I–I think you've covered it all by now, thank you." The sergeant removes her pen from against her lips and brings the point back down to her paper. "And while you were in Idle, did you ever encounter any strange creatures–other than you and your neighbors?" she asks, powering through the interruption.
Travis swallows his first remark, but is quick to come up with this: "Not unless we're counting government agents."
The sergeant doesn't bother glaring at him, she instead lets her eyes wander to the unfettered lightbulb dangling above the air between them. It is dimmer than all the other dangling unfettered lightbulbs in all the other holding cells–she knows this is true without observation because she made it so. As God did on the first night, so says the bible. Travis follows her eyeline of thought and winces when he comes to her conclusion.
"And what about the crystals?" The sergeant says with steel.
"What about them? They look nice from a distance. You'll know more than any of us do, isn't that what you're paying those scientists to come tinker around for? Some of them brought a couple chunks in here to wave in front of me once, and I told them that was the first I ever knew of the things." The two opponents lean into each other, playing around a pause. Travis breaks first, glancing up and away at that light again. His eyes are meek to the glow, but under the shadow of his nose, his fanged teeth twist into a glowering smile. He continues, "Seems they have some sort of power though–almost magnetic. Seems they draw in psychopaths like a swarm of bloody locusts."
Without a word, the sergeant stands straight and gets to work putting her things where they belong. She undoes her questionnaire from its clipboard and places the rest of her supplies back on the pedestal in the front-right of the room. All the while, Travis is cackling at her. But then the sergeant slaps the wall as she leaves and the cackling turns to crackling of light and power.
The sergeant strides down the cool and clean halls to the sound of screams. She sees wide worried eyes from the corners of her own, and she eats them all up. At the end of the hold it is clear though, that all is not as it seems.
The exit does not proffer a response to her keycard. She frowns and reaches into her pant pocket for something physical, extracting an iron rod with a strange array of protrusions pointing away in every direction. It seems to stick to her hand, and causes a great deal of pain down her wrist. It is a key of sorts, and she plunges it into the mechanism of the door. There is a click, but even after that, she has to dig her fingernails into the crease between the two halves of it and physically pull it open. She almost screams herself when she does. Sparks of electricity fly in her face and the entrance to her base is wide open for the world. She curses God and rushes through the room to find help.
The door does not close and lock behind her as it is oft to do; the power to it is out, after all.
|-TASK THREE-|
Once again, it's everybody's favorite task (unless it isn't) the dialogue task! So, as you can see with your amazing skills of reading comprehension, the hold is now also left open. The prisoners still can't get out, but the world can currently get in. It's up to you if you would like to or not. To keep things open, all I'm requiring for this task is that you meet someone that you haven't met in person yet (it can certainly be someone you saw on the security cameras) and that you have a conversation with them. I will especially be looking for characterization through dialogue, and how the way a person speaks can tell us about who they are. Also be especially careful with the grammar of dialogue this task.
|-WORD LIMIT-|
2500 words.
|-STAKES-|
The 4 lowest scores for this task will be up for votes. Of those, 2 will be eliminated.
|-DEADLINE-|
Sunday, October 9th, 10:00 PM EST
