I'M JUST WALKING IN CIRCLES / selby

[beck.]

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    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] ]

[selby roux !]

[align=center][div style="width: 51%; text-align: justify; font-size: 10pt; letter-spacing: -1px; font-family: georgia;"]Selby had not been there at the... incident, but word traveled around quickly. His first instinct had been to refuse to come, as the disrespect for the dead Beck had displayed made his skin crawl with disgust. The medic had quickly suppressed that instinct though. Crow had already punished Beck by trapping him in his home, and it was not his place to stack things on top of that. It was also morally wrong to withhold care as a punishment, whether or not Beck strictly needed it. On top of that, Selby had promised to come, and a man is only as good as his word.

So, Selby had packed his medical bag with anything and everything he thought might help, natural and artificial alike. Thread, sterile needles, and plastic tubing sat next to neat bundles of herbs. The bag, once packed, was not heavy but was awkward to carry. It would be a pain to lug it across the woods and a bit into the swamp, but without a better option, Selby had to do it. It couldn’t be that bad.

Beck’s home, which was well off the worn paths, was harder to get to than Selby had initially thought. He had gotten lost twice, and he had thought he knew the territory pretty well. The terrain was rough as well, and the medic had dropped his bag more times than he could count. Still, a promise is a promise.

When he arrived at Beck’s door, something felt a little off. It wasn’t the pentagram that his father had meticulously painted onto the ground. He traced the edge of it gently with one paw, examining the work. Turning his head back to Beck’s home, he discovered what had initially caught his attention. There was a sharp, unpleasant odor hidden just under the heavy stench of the swamp. He knocked twice, firm and clear. "Beck? It’s Selby. I promised I would come over and see if I could help you, remember?" He waited a moment, then let himself in.

"Fuck!" he exclaimed when he saw the scene. The acrid odor became instantly more pungent, and Selby became urgent. He rushed over, took the bottle of bleach, and quickly read the label. Selby took a flashlight from his bag and forced Beck’s mouth open, quickly looking at his throat. He pulled away as soon as he could, wincing in sympathy at the chemical burns, then tried to speedily consider what to do. Should I give him something to make him throw up? Would that help, or would it burn him more? I don’t want him to aspirate... He decided against making the ghost throw up, instead going back into his bag and retrieving a bottle of water.

"Beck, I need you to drink this for me. It’s water, it should help," he said urgently, opening the bottle and setting it next to Beck. He didn’t want to have to force Beck to drink, in case he accidentally waterboarded him. Selby struggled to conceive of a reason that Beck would do this to himself, especially if he knew that he might be discovered.

[beck.]

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    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.

[selby roux !]

[align=center][div style="width: 51%; text-align: justify; font-size: 10pt; letter-spacing: -1px; font-family: georgia;"]Shock gripped Selby’s mind, and he spoke without thinking. "It’s not about you dying! It’s about you being in pain, which is exactly what I came to prevent!" he said loudly, before taking a moment to calm down and speak with more thought. "It’s not fine, Beck, and it doesn’t matter that it’s going to go away in a bit. Everything goes away if you give it time. I want to make it easier for you when it does go away, alright?"

He did not go to touch Beck again because of his reaction last time, though he wanted to reach out to provide some comfort. "I need you to drink the water, please. It’s important to dilute the bleach so it doesn’t hurt as much when it comes back up," he said as gently as he could manage, though his heart was still pounding in his ears from his earlier panic.

"I’d also like to take another look at your throat, if it’s okay with you," Selby mentioned, retrieving his flashlight and holding it tightly between his paws. "I... I don’t think I’ll be able to do anything about your lungs this time around. I know that I said that I’d try, but there’s too much damage in your throat right now. I don’t think I’d be able to tell what’s normal and what’s... chemical burns," he said slowly, picking his words carefully, not wanting to upset Beck. "If there are other wounds you’d like me to look at, I’d be more than happy to do so." He looked at Beck’s bloodstained fur, concern brewing in his gut. He ran through possible solutions to the chemical burns, but the only thing that he knew would help was water, and if Beck refused to drink it, then there was nothing Selby could do.

[beck.]

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    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."

[selby roux !]

[align=center][div style="width: 51%; text-align: justify; font-size: 10pt; letter-spacing: -1px; font-family: georgia;"]Selby watched as the ghost fiddled with his wrists, seeming to not pay much attention to his words. He felt himself get a little frustrated, then took a deep breath, and thought about it rationally. Beck had probably not been told that he was important, or that he mattered, in a long time. Or, if they had, it had just been a one time comment mentioned off handedly. Of course Beck would have doubts. It was only natural. So, Selby decided that he would say it as often as he could without coming across as a broken record, like he was only saying it to say it.

The sawbone’s worry increased a little as he heard Beck’s voice, croaky and painful sounding. It was... saddening. Selby nodded at the invitation, but his anxiety instantly spiked as Beck took it back. Why would he say no? Selby had cleared the whole day specifically to come here, done all the chores as quickly as he could when he woke up to get them out of the way. Beck probably hadn’t had any visitors since Crow has set up the pentagram, and it was likely the time stewing in his own... whatever this was that set off Beck’s episode. "Of course I’ll stay," Selby said, trying to convey his desperate sincerity. He looked around at the crowded shelves. "Ah, what do you want to do?"