The events condemning him to a disgraceful variant of house arrest were nothing more than a jumbled blur to him. The sour aftertaste of rot still clung to his tongue while his paws ached with assumed miles of limping. Not to mention the numbing buzz settled over his mind persistently nagged and nipped at his thoughts. Recovering from his... episode wasn't faring quite smoothly, needless to say. Even as he shook off the catatonic daze, he failed to notice the adjustments made to his dwelling. A day was lost recollecting his consciousness amidst a dull stupor. The next day, Beck paced around the unfamiliar pagan addition to his yard, receiving a singed flank from an attempt to sidestep the pentagram entrapping him within. He couldn't remember who in this miserable swamp dabbled in witchcraft nor exactly why that same someone would mockingly confine him to a fragment of land. The only memory he could conjure from the previous two days was that of a rotten elk with hollowed sockets guiding his actions, rendering him nothing more than a marionette to the entity's will all over again. And that memory was enough for his stomach to twist itself into knots, a dreadful pit in his gut telling him he must have done something horribly wrong.

    Yet panic seized the boy's chest when he realized his cloak -- and the contents bundled within -- were missing from its hidden nook beneath the floorboards. A short-lived panic replaced by stinging mortification upon finding the cloak intact and stowed up on a shelf. Someone had touched the few belongings he could truly call his own; someone had seen the physical remnants of the gory past tethering him. Would they question him if they returned? Or were their plans to steal the archaic items? You're overthinking things again, he comforted in his mind's voice, the quiet voice so frequently silenced by the deafening persuasion of his counterpart.

    Words alone never could calm his rattled nerves, though. Restless habit controlled trembling paws as the cap to a jug of cleaner popped off, soon cast away over the poltergeist's shoulder. He may not have been able to leave the suffocating walls of his house, but fortunately, he had more than a few supplies stashed among cabinets and boxes. His dark eyes peered into the bottle's mouth, nose flaring as the chemical fumes wafted from the container. Ignoring the plethora of warning labels on the bottle of bleach, Beck leaned his back against the side of a box and dragged the jug closer to him. Despite its weight, the little ghost tipped back his head and took a healthy swig of the toxic cleaner -- a practiced motion. Immediate pain was enough for him to sputter and gag, some of the bleach escaping through his missing cheek and dripping down his chin. It burned like hell, obviously. It stung and irritated and inflamed, but Beck only slumped, a grimace on his snout. His mouth, nose, throat, chest, everything screamed in pain as the acid ate away at all tissue it touched.

    The agony eventually ebbed into a painful yet tingling delirium; the poltergeist found himself sprawled on his back in the middle of the floor, wistfully staring at a spidering crack in the ceiling's plaster as he tore the bandages from his arms. His existence truly was a curious thing. Years ago during a fit of lunacy, he discovered the unexpected high caused by such internal damage and a chemical cocktail. A bizarre addiction to many but cigarettes and alcohol and substances from the living world failed to provide any sort of relief for him. Like other so-called vices, side effects duly followed the bleach, evident by the foam collected at his mouth, darkened with his oily blood, in addition to a heavy nosebleed that rolled down his scarred cheek and onto the wooden flooring in a black pool. However, that was a mess for later. Dilated eyes hooded in contentment, Beck absentmindedly began to knead at his shallow chest with his paws, the pricks from his claw tips lost in the haze.

    [ [member=2072]selby roux ![/member] ]

    Two knocks on the rickety door he might have forgotten to lock pounded in his ears. Confusion briefly flashed across freckled features. Nobody ever visited him; why would they? He knew he wasn't good company in the slightest, instead viewed as a nuisance rather than a viable collocutor. A recognized voice sounded through the slit beneath the door, and Beck lifted his head off the floor to squint at the shadow responsible. Selby; Crow's son and part of the medic team that proved to be better than him. He rolled his eyes -- he opened his foam-lined mouth to shoo him away, only for the poltergeist to surrender halfway through and allow his head to flop back on the floor, huffing quietly to himself.

    Just as he began to fiddle with his scabbed paws, the door creaked and sunlight hit his glare. Before the intoxicated feline could even so much as flinch at the shout, he felt his jaws being pried apart by foreign touch. Beck wrenched his head from Selby's reach and scrambled into a slouched sitting position, face contorting into a mindless snarl. The lingering sensation of rough hands tightly gripping his face as he kicked and squirmed and grappled with the wrists belonging to the assaulters wormed its way into his mind, and his ragged breathing hitched in fear. The self-inflicted pain was supposed to distract from those memories, yet here he was, wincing at blows that occurred centuries ago.

    Froth and blood speckled the wooden floor with each tremble that wracked his gaunt frame, eyes wide as Selby offered a different bottle. He stared at the water in bewilderment, the gesture pulling his mind out of the past before a harsh giggle hacked its way out of his lungs. Wheezing despite the pain resulting from exerting his damaged airway, Beck could only shake his head as he recovered his shallow breath. Selby must have forgotten the obvious state he was suspended in by Death itself. An understandable slip; Beck prided himself on his lifelike facade his apparition provided. "Calm down, Selbs, I ain't gonna die again," the boy slurred, an uncharacteristic smile twisting the unscathed corner of his mouth upwards. He paused, remembering the tar-colored blood leaking from his nose. Quickly wiping the blood on the back of his exposed arm, Beck ignored the pain of speech as he continued, "It's fine, it'll go away in a bit." Obviously inebriated, he wobbled before allowing his front paws to slide out from under him, returning to an upright version of his sprawl moments before with glossy eyes distant and unblinking as if Selby wasn't present at all anymore.

    Twitching ears flattened against his head at the outburst. His enlarged pupils flit around for anything to focus on besides the tabby before him, settling on the scarring grooves striping his forearms. Only halfheartedly listening to Selby's lecture, Beck traced the varying scars in sheepish silence, an absent-minded action. Why couldn't the sawbone understand? He never will. His paw ran along his wrist, stopped by the cold iron of the hell-forged shackle encircling it. His brow creased. He didn't deserve for everything to be easier. The stubborn reminders of his death were his fault, weren't they? Undoubtedly twisted into a fabled moral, warning children of the cruel fate following equally cruel actions. The chemical-laden ghost withdrew his roaming paw, turning over the other to gaze upon the ragged pad burnt by salt so many years ago. Beck's expression remained distantly numb, Selby's words piercing through his brain fog.

    When he finally spoke, his voice faltered into a rattling croak. "Okay," the boy paused, his bloodied chest deflating with a sigh before he gave a crooked grin, "But only if ya hang out with me for the day." An offer surely the worrisome Selby couldn't refuse. Probably. Maybe he would reject his obvious plea for company. After all, who wanted to spend their afternoon with the undead? Beck's dopey smile wavered at this thought and his lifeless gaze returned to his arm. Mumbling under his breath, he idly picked at the persistent stitching of the dog bite that sentenced him to death. "Ya don't have to if ya don't wanna, though."