the thread: Téte-a-Téte > Likes and Comments

"Victim? You call that pasty-faced kid a victim?" A voice like dry ice cracking across asphalt scraped the silence. A figure like heat haze above blacktop shimmered, indistinct, barely there, except for the chill it threw.

The other form, as thick and cloying as cheap perfume, pulsed with a wet, throbbing light. "He WAS a victim, you desiccated husk. Brutalized, broken. They loved him. They just… loved him wrong." The light intensified, casting greasy, crimson streaks across the featureless grey expanse they occupied.

"Havenwood burned for that love. Reduced to ash. A fitting monument, wouldn't you say?"

"Monument to incompetence," the heat haze scoffed, the sound like static. "Westfield was clean. Precise. A flick of the wrist, a whisper in the right ear, no one liked that kid. Not really. Johnny. Johnny with his ratty Slayer shirts and basement rituals. Town just… shifted. Left him out to rot. And rot he did. Took half the goddamn football team with him, and the booster club president’s prize-winning petunias." A dry, humorless rasp that might have been laughter. "Efficient. Elegant."

"Elegant?" The crimson light flared again, momentarily solidifying into the shape of a weeping heart, fat with arteries and oozing a viscous fluid the color of cherry cough syrup. "There's no elegance in indifference. You just… let it happen. Like leaving a dog chained in the sun. Where's the artistry? The passion?" The heart pulsed faster, splattering droplets of syrup-blood onto the grey. "My boys, those Spartans in letterman jackets, they felt something. Gut-wrenching, soul-searing devotion. They carved a masterpiece in blood and gasoline. Yours was a sinkhole. Literally."

"Functionality over flourish," the heat haze retorted, the air around it growing colder, the grey deepening to near black. "Westfield died quietly. No screaming, no melodrama. Just… gone. One minute, Friday night lights, the next, a goddamn crater where the fifty-yard line used to be. Subtlety. A lost art, apparently."

"Subtlety gets you cable access public television," the heart spat, the syrup-blood now congealing into sticky, black clots. "Give me the primetime special! Give me the weeping mothers on Geraldo! Give me the goddamn fireworks!" It gestured with a fleshy tendril, the gesture leaving a trail of viscous goo. "Havenwood’s still smoldering in their collective memory. Westfield? Another footnote in some dusty Reader's Digest 'Drama in Real Life' compilation."

"Footnotes are efficient," the heat haze insisted, though a flicker of something... pique? seemed to ripple through its form. "Less mess to clean up. Less… residual emotion. Yours is still clinging to this plane like cheap cologne. All that… empathy. Disgusting."

"Empathy is power," the heart declared, its crimson light burning brighter, almost painful to look at. "It's the puppeteer's string, the maestro's baton. They wanted to save him. They tore themselves apart trying. You just… unplugged the machine. No struggle, no beautiful, agonizing failure."

A moment of silence hung between them, thick and heavy as humidity before a summer storm. Then, the heat haze shifted, coalescing slightly, forming a sharper edge. "You think this is it, don't you?" it murmured, the sound losing some of its rasp, becoming almost… thoughtful. "That we're the end of the line? The apex of tragedy?"

The heart pulsed, a slow, rhythmic throb. "Are we not?"

"Naíve." The heat haze actually seemed to solidify for a fraction of a second, taking on a vaguely humanoid shape, then dissolving back into shimmering nothingness. "We're just… flavors. Vintage. Like rotary phones and Tab cola. Quaint. The machine keeps churning, sweetheart. Always churning."

"And what then?" the heart asked, its light dimming slightly, the crimson softening to a bruised purple. "What’s the next vintage? After apathy, after empathy… what beautiful horror are they brewing now in that festering petri dish of theirs?"

The heat haze was silent for a long moment, then a whisper, cold and vast as deep space. "Wait and see. They're always… innovating."

I love the stark contrast between the two characters! I can feel their differing personalities and how the conversation jumps between both! I want to see how these two continue to interact with each other over the course of this installment of Outcast.

One little note if I could give some decries: Give the characters a quick sentence about how different they are in personality, like one of these "The heart, being the more emotional one, rebuffed the haze." I can see room for this in the beginning of the post mostly with the Haze's lines. Adding some more motion in between their lines will help balance that a little. And of course, you have the option to completely ignore me, lol.

Julia wrote: "I love the stark contrast between the two characters! I can feel their differing personalities and how the conversation jumps between both! I want to see how these two continue to interact with eac..."

Oops, I meant two pointers. A sentence about how different the two are, and some motion between the haze's line in the beginning.