Horst Cabal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
trojanhorst) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
taxonomites2013-02-09 10:14 am
trojanhorst) wrote in taxonomites2013-02-09 10:14 am
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[holo] A Special Hell Reserved for Suicides
Horst Cabal has never actually been to Hell before, but he can say with confidence that he knows someone who has, and this is distinctly not how it’s been represented to him in that person’s descriptions. There’s no desert here with an endlessly beating sun, no hopelessly complex admissions paperwork to be filled out, no crotchety desk clerk. He’s not even naked.
Under normal circumstances, on all counts, Horst would be pleased for his expectations to have been proven wrong. In this case, however, he has cause to be suspicious.
“Johannes!” he yells, uncertain if the party in question can even hear him. The room he’s contained in is circular, and silvery from floor to ceiling, the view broken up only by a single pedestal and an open door. His own voice has an uncomfortably metallic echo. Horst cups his hands around his mouth and shouts up at the ceiling in his native German, ignoring for the moment the rather obvious suggestion of the open door. “Johannes, you little shit! This is brassy, even for you.”
Horst blames himself. He probably should’ve just gone off without saying anything, walked into the sunlight without saying goodbye. Maybe he should’ve known. He guesses, in the end, he had expected that even Johannes would have the decency to let Horst die on his own terms. So really, Horst should’ve known better. Whatever pocket dimension this is that he’s been unceremoniously dumped into, he can only imagine one possible cause. One very possible, very infuriating cause.
“Come now. Be reasonable,” he tries again, outwardly cooling his temper. “This is silly, Johannes. Wherever you've dropped me for safekeeping, you can’t keep me here forever. I can still find a way to kill myself, you know.”
Perhaps he can’t fault Johannes too badly for this, though. Alongside his long-laid plans and his calculated risks, Johannes’s rare impulse decisions are usually some of his worst ideas. His brother panicked, that’s all. Maybe he'll reconsider whatever it is he's done.
Then again, it did take Johannes eight years to come down from his last panic.
Still no response. On to a second plan, then.
Horst takes a second survey of his surroundings. There little raised stand nearby with something suspiciously purple set out atop it, which seems to be the only particularly interesting thing in the room. More worryingly, however — and Horst can’t say why this bothers him so excessively — there’s a silver bracelet of some sort wrapped just a bit too snugly around one of his wrists, set with some sort of -- glassy screen. Horst likes a bit of sparkle now and then as much as the next person, mind, but he didn’t exactly pick this particular accessory out himself. He digs at it experimentally with a fingernail, but can only catch onto his own skin. He knows enough to recognize that this is probably not a good sign.
Endeavoring to remain as calm as possible, since getting too worked up might be unproductive, Horst walks over to the wall by the door, raises his arm, and pounds his braceleted wrist against the wall as hard as he can for about thirty seconds straight. At the end of the experiment, much to his chagrin, the bracelet and the wall are both still entirely undamaged. So much for Horst’s grand foray into the scientific method, then. Whatever it is, it's staying put.
The purple objects sitting on the nearby pedestal turn out to be a familiar — very familiar — frock coat, walking stick, and hat. They match the rest of his clothes, and he's fairly certain that he'd taken them off not moments ago for his little dawn appointment and left them folded neatly in the grass. (Just because one's attempting suicide is no excuse to get ash all over a perfectly good coat, after all.)
Horst approaches them cautiously, wary of unexpected gifts from unknown sources, but a bit of careful poking and prodding seems to confirm that they are, to all visible intents and purposes, simply his coat, his hat, and his cane. He can’t really make sense of why they’re there, but they’re there all the same. It seems a relatively minor risk to take them.
He puts the hat on his head and looks upward, though nothing in the metallic device on the ceiling sheds any more light on the situation. “Well, at least that’s something,” he says of his clothes, still talking to the empty room in German in hopes there’s someone there. “I suppose it makes an immediate improvement on my last stint of captivity.”
Tipping his hat to the empty room, possessions either in hand or tucked under one arm, Horst decides to try his luck with the hallway. He'll play his brother's game for now. Wherever Johannes has dropped him, it's clear this room doesn't have much more to offer him.
He hesitates momentarily, instinctively wondering if he’s about to step out into sunny midday by accident and bring on his own accidental demise — but then remembers that that was his exact intention only a few minutes ago. Putting off death just to give Johannes a stern talking-to is probably not that crucial, all in all. What does it matter?
Horst takes a last look at the room, then ducks out into the hall.
Under normal circumstances, on all counts, Horst would be pleased for his expectations to have been proven wrong. In this case, however, he has cause to be suspicious.
“Johannes!” he yells, uncertain if the party in question can even hear him. The room he’s contained in is circular, and silvery from floor to ceiling, the view broken up only by a single pedestal and an open door. His own voice has an uncomfortably metallic echo. Horst cups his hands around his mouth and shouts up at the ceiling in his native German, ignoring for the moment the rather obvious suggestion of the open door. “Johannes, you little shit! This is brassy, even for you.”
Horst blames himself. He probably should’ve just gone off without saying anything, walked into the sunlight without saying goodbye. Maybe he should’ve known. He guesses, in the end, he had expected that even Johannes would have the decency to let Horst die on his own terms. So really, Horst should’ve known better. Whatever pocket dimension this is that he’s been unceremoniously dumped into, he can only imagine one possible cause. One very possible, very infuriating cause.
“Come now. Be reasonable,” he tries again, outwardly cooling his temper. “This is silly, Johannes. Wherever you've dropped me for safekeeping, you can’t keep me here forever. I can still find a way to kill myself, you know.”
Perhaps he can’t fault Johannes too badly for this, though. Alongside his long-laid plans and his calculated risks, Johannes’s rare impulse decisions are usually some of his worst ideas. His brother panicked, that’s all. Maybe he'll reconsider whatever it is he's done.
Then again, it did take Johannes eight years to come down from his last panic.
Still no response. On to a second plan, then.
Horst takes a second survey of his surroundings. There little raised stand nearby with something suspiciously purple set out atop it, which seems to be the only particularly interesting thing in the room. More worryingly, however — and Horst can’t say why this bothers him so excessively — there’s a silver bracelet of some sort wrapped just a bit too snugly around one of his wrists, set with some sort of -- glassy screen. Horst likes a bit of sparkle now and then as much as the next person, mind, but he didn’t exactly pick this particular accessory out himself. He digs at it experimentally with a fingernail, but can only catch onto his own skin. He knows enough to recognize that this is probably not a good sign.
Endeavoring to remain as calm as possible, since getting too worked up might be unproductive, Horst walks over to the wall by the door, raises his arm, and pounds his braceleted wrist against the wall as hard as he can for about thirty seconds straight. At the end of the experiment, much to his chagrin, the bracelet and the wall are both still entirely undamaged. So much for Horst’s grand foray into the scientific method, then. Whatever it is, it's staying put.
The purple objects sitting on the nearby pedestal turn out to be a familiar — very familiar — frock coat, walking stick, and hat. They match the rest of his clothes, and he's fairly certain that he'd taken them off not moments ago for his little dawn appointment and left them folded neatly in the grass. (Just because one's attempting suicide is no excuse to get ash all over a perfectly good coat, after all.)
Horst approaches them cautiously, wary of unexpected gifts from unknown sources, but a bit of careful poking and prodding seems to confirm that they are, to all visible intents and purposes, simply his coat, his hat, and his cane. He can’t really make sense of why they’re there, but they’re there all the same. It seems a relatively minor risk to take them.
He puts the hat on his head and looks upward, though nothing in the metallic device on the ceiling sheds any more light on the situation. “Well, at least that’s something,” he says of his clothes, still talking to the empty room in German in hopes there’s someone there. “I suppose it makes an immediate improvement on my last stint of captivity.”
Tipping his hat to the empty room, possessions either in hand or tucked under one arm, Horst decides to try his luck with the hallway. He'll play his brother's game for now. Wherever Johannes has dropped him, it's clear this room doesn't have much more to offer him.
He hesitates momentarily, instinctively wondering if he’s about to step out into sunny midday by accident and bring on his own accidental demise — but then remembers that that was his exact intention only a few minutes ago. Putting off death just to give Johannes a stern talking-to is probably not that crucial, all in all. What does it matter?
Horst takes a last look at the room, then ducks out into the hall.
[holo]
Something about his host's words strikes Horst a bit odd: but that's what it is, exactly -- his host is odd. Odd and disembodied.
Confronted with the caged zombies, a carefully assembled dinosaur skeleton, and other ... artifacts(?) that he can't quite make sense of, plus himself, plus a queer, disembodied violinist, Horst is beginning to develop a working theory about the company he's currently keeping.
Is there a polite way to ask a ghost if they're a ghost? Not a problem he's really run up against before. Perhaps best to avoid it until he can come around to it more naturally.
"Well, that doesn't sound like very much fun," he says with calculated understatement. "I hope you haven't been imprisoned for brutalizing your Schumann, or something like."
[voice --> holo]
He stands up and goes over to his desk to fiddle with the chassis of the desktop he's trying to build. Belatedly, he shrugs off his housecoat; fortunately he hasn't bothered to get undressed from the day yet. While he tinkers with the computer parts he switches his tablet to holo and a ghostly, full-sized image of him flickers up next to Horst in the Sanctuary.
"That isn't me," he says conversationally. "You can think of it as a kind of magic, but it really has more to do with Nikola Tesla, if you know him. When were you born, 1860, 1870? I'm afraid things have changed a bit."
[holo]
His nameless, ghostly friend appears alongside him, looking quite clear but also insubstantial, and insisting he's not actually himself (even though his lips track along with his words). That's a bit less neatly fitted to Horst's theory, of course: either ghosts know they're ghosts, or they don't, but he's yet to hear of one that recognizes its own ghostly form as something other than itself. A kind of magic, his helper tells him, and mentions Nikola Tesla. That's a name Horst knows. Wasn't he some sort of madman, some half-mad scientist? He did some things in America? He was building a death ray, or so they said?
"I know of Nikola Tesla," Horst confirms for him. "An acquaintance of yours?" The uncertain connotation is clear. Did he trap you here?
A study of his new friend's clothing puts something else in spotlight that he said, that Horst is still working on sounding out. I'm afraid things have changed a bit.
Horst knows what day it was (Walpurgisnacht) this morning, what year. His ethereal friend's clothes aren't from his time, nor from any historical fashion he recognizes. Still, he knows what time it was this morning. He looks around again, considering the slick metallic technology he saw before, the current surroundings. "Are we ... outside of time?"
[holo]
That's a thought. Still, time travel and suspended timestreams are even more science-fictional than virtual reality (or vampires): extremely low on his list of possibilities. "No," he says. "We're near the beginning of the year 2013 anno Domini. Are you a vampire or a revenant? Or something else?"
[holo]
His voice softens -- perhaps this is the best time to broach a touchier subject. It seems his companion may be able to relate somewhat. "What about yourself? Did you die here in captivity, or was it before you were brought here?"
[holo]
Then his mind hits upon the obvious. Of course. He thinks he's a ghost, or he thinks they're all dead and in the afterlife. The fact that he might be concerned about Sherlock's reaction to his vampirism only occurs to Sherlock as an afterthought, and not a very significant one.
Sherlock purses his lips. "Dying is how I brought myself here," he says with uncharacteristic bluntness, even for him. And since they appear to be playing Twenty-Startlingly-Direct-Questions: "And who is Johannes, then?"
[holo]
"I'm sorry," he says gently. "To die is a hard thing. But," he says perceptively, aware of 'I brought myself here' because it hits so close to home, "neither is living easy."
Horst wanders back into the hallway, away from some of the more unnerving exhibits and their guttural groaning noises. Interestingly, though his companion doesn't seem to be in motion, he does travel with him when Horst moves.
There must be an exit to this building somewhere.
[holo]
That categorically isn't Sherlock's problem. His interest in the matter of Johannes, whoever he is, has paled considerably facing the prospect of having to hear about someone else's personal or romantic or necromantic drama. But--he remembers the circumstances of his own arrival, too, and it gives him a little pause on saying anything too cold.
A little, anyway.
He clears his throat. "I'm an image projected from the device on your wrist," he says brusquely. "It's where my voice is coming from as well. Think of it as an advanced, wireless telephone. I'm some distance away in my own flat at the moment. I can see you because everyone here--" he puts a delicate emphasis on everyone "--can see you. Say hello, Herr...?"
[holo]
"Brauer," Horst Cabal offers not quite immediately, but not too belatedly, either. "Horst Brauer." The Cabal family name is no longer one that can be handed out to strangers with confidence that it's good currency. He studies the object on his wrist with new interest and immediately dislike, feeling like a cat with a belled collar.
"I'm afraid I don't have your name either, Mister -- ?"
[holo]
He thinks about it briefly, and doing so, answers absently, "Holmes. Sherlock Holmes," piecing out the syllables deliberately so the phonetics are clear for Horst's benefit. "How old are you, Mr Brauer? I'd take you for thirty-two or thirty-three, maybe. You don't have the bearing of a younger man or the English consonants of an older one."
The worst, inevitable bit is that he isn't even trying to be insulting. "You're a ringmaster or a barker," he muses, "but nothing Covent Garden: a music hall or a funfair? No Victorian would dress like that otherwise." Never mind the curious Britishness of referring to a German as "Victorian."
[holo]
"Thirty-three right on the nose, yes," Horst confirms, showing his own capability with second-language idioms. "I'm impressed, Mr. Holmes."
That gives him a bit of pause, actually, and so instead of asking 'how do I turn off the projection of myself' or 'who is everyone' or 'where's the exit,' he instead thinks, you're a very unusual violinist. That's something worth getting a bit more information about. He can't be sure he can trust Sherlock Holmes, after all.
"I'm in the entertainment business, or was," he confirms, not quite sure what 'a Victorian' connotes, but understanding the rest. "Though if you ask me, on the job or off, a splash of bright color never really goes amiss. Unless you're planning a burglary, I suppose. That would just be foolish. But you're in the entertainment business as well, though, aren't you? What sort of violin do you play, Mr. Holmes?"
The repetitions of Sherlock's name are for his own benefit -- saying it a few times will help cement it in his memory. Uncommon foreign names really are the hardest.
[holo]
So the man's frittering away at small-talk to avoid answering him directly again. That's all very well--and a sign he's marginally intelligent, he supposes--but Sherlock has better things to do than make idle chit-chat with a fin de siècle vampire, particularly one with just a tad more adeptness with conversational handling than himself. He says idly: "I'm almost always on the nose, Mr. Brauer. Good luck with the Sanctuary. That's the building you're in. You might want to look at your new wristwatch: there's something there for you to read."
He's about to shut the holo transmission when an addendum occurs to him and he adds, "I should warn you that we do have sunlight here in the daytime."
Then he closes the window and goes back to his chassis.