Sixth Sense Vermin
Aug. 10th, 2011 09:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeTitle: Sixth Sense Vermin
Prompt: Sixth Sense
Normally, Biff left his window open if he was less hostile than usual to the idea of me being in his home. Today, he did it one better; the moment I’d gotten to the windowsill, he stuck his head out, grabbed me by the collar, and dragged me in so quickly I nearly tore my jumpsuit on the edge.
“You good with snakes?” He demanded to know.
I blinked. “Snakes? What kind of snakes? Are we talking pythons here, or…?”
“Just… snakes!” He said, gesticulating wildly as though they were all one homogenous entity, and what more could I possibly need to know?
“Uh, I guess, it’d sort of depend on what you need me to do with it…”
“Just—get rid of the fucking thing!” He bellowed, and shoved me towards the bathroom so hard I nearly fell. “Fucking thing’s in the drain. Get rid of it.”
I caught my balance and went into the scummy bathroom.
The snake wasn’t hard to find. It was lying on the bathroom floor, coiled up comfortably by the drain. It was maybe a foot, foot and a half long, a garter snake. There were tons of them in Old Faithful; I hadn’t known they lived in Vaygo too, but I wasn’t surprised.
“Aw, hello there,” I crooned to it, and reached to pick it up. The snake made only a cursory attempt to get away, then coiled around my fingers. “What a healthy snake you must be, look how big and shiny you are…”
“Stop talking to the fucking thing!” Biff’s voice sounded suspiciously close to a shriek—doubly impressive, considering his normal vocal range. He was still hanging by the window as though ready to leap out of it at the slightest sign of reptilian violence.
“Biff, it’s a garter snake. It’s harmless. We got them all the time back in Old Faithful.”
“Yeah, well, this ain’t Old Faithful, now chuck it.”
“You’re scared of snakes? You, the original gangster?”
“You’re scared of needles and you’re a fucking doctor nurse thing.”
“Junior healer.”
“Whatever. Shut up.”
I rolled my eyes but clambered out the window, snake on my arm. Biff gave me a large berth.
“It won’t jump on you, Biff. It doesn’t have legs. Or teeth.”
He scowled but kept his eyes on the snake. I snorted and climbed down the wall.
I found a nice garden to put the interloper in, made sure it was making itself at home, then came back up.
“You shall be pleased to know the snake has been removed,” I announced.
“Good.” He was in the bathroom on his hands and knees, searching to make certain there were no more. “How the fuck did it get in?”
I shrugged. “Who knows, a crack in the wall, the pipes—”
“The pipes!” The baritone-straining shriek was back. “Y’mean there’s more?”
“Biff, relax. It probably got lost; no self-respecting snake wants to be this high up in your hot, stuffy little sty.”
He kept searching. “Fucking snakes, man…”
I stood back with my hands on my hips and grinned. “You never told me you were scared of snakes.”
“Fuck you, they slither. Indiana Jones was scared of snakes.”
“Hey, don’t you be bringing the master into this. Anyway, Indiana Jones was fictional, and he managed to keep his cool in an asp pit. You, Mr. Guts and Gravy, needed me to dispose of a garter snake.”
He took an inordinate amount of interest checking his pipes as though imagining snakes crawling from the showerhead.
I rolled my eyes. “Would it give you peace of mind if I swept the place?”
He eyed me skeptically over his shoulder. “You can do that?”
“Yes. Not well, but I can.” I shoved him and he scrabbled out of the way. “It’ll only work for the pipes, but snakes are probably complicated enough to show up on my radar. And it’s not like you’re asking to communicate with them—”
“Hell no!”
“—You just want to know if they’re there. It shouldn’t take but a second.”
“Huh.” Normally Biff was pretty derisive of my admittedly haphazard ability set, but he seemed pretty sedate this time around. “Can you… zap ‘em or something?”
“Theoretically, I could, but I don’t know exactly what that would do to your plumbing, and I really don’t want to electrocute your neighbor by accident. Also, it would require a lot of energy for something laughably trivial. So no.”
“’Kay.” He watched me as I pulled off one of my gloves and put my hand on the showerhead. “Do you… need anything?”
“Sure. If I pass out, make sure I don’t hit my head or swallow my tongue.” And I sent my mind out through the pipes.
Practice meant my knees didn’t automatically buckle when my conscious mind ditched my body, but it was still a disorienting mental whiplash that I could never quite accustom myself to. Thankfully, this wasn’t tricky; I simply sent a burst of energy through the pipes, following the conductors. Tiny little nervous systems registered as hitches in the otherwise smooth flow of the metal pipe. Distance was hard to register in that state, so I went until I started losing steam, then yanked myself back.
My mind slammed back into my body and I lurched upright, shaking the pins and needles out of my hand and blinking the spots out of my eyes. “Congratulations, Biff. You’ve got a bunch of things I think might’ve been roaches and silverfish, and a good few rats, but no snakes. At least, not in the pipes that I explored.”
His shoulders went slack. “Good. Good. And hey, you didn’t pass out.”
“Yeah. I’m still rotten, but at least I’m not entirely a failure at Senyan life.” I pulled my glove back on.
Biff watched, then asked, “What’s it feel like when you do that?”
I glanced at him, trying to hide my surprise. Normally, Biff never asked me anything about the things I did, as though he took a perverse pride in his own lack of curiosity. “Oh, it’s totally cosmic. I feel one with the universe and all the life in it.”
He raised an eyebrow.
I flexed my fingers to get the fit right, then let my hand fall to my side with a sigh. “It’s unpleasant and I don’t like doing it. You don’t realize how much stuff is rooted in your body until you get ripped out of it—or maybe that’s just me being too incompetent to do it properly. It’s complete sensory annihilation, except for random lurches and stops as you get caught in the minds of other things, most of which give you nothing but the odd urge to eat garbage or burrow holes. You feel yourself losing bits and pieces of yourself along the way, and then right as you start to forget the core tenets of yourself, you get slammed back into your body and have to fit in it properly again.” I shrugged. “Apparently some Senyan back in the day forwent bodies entirely and just exhibited as energy that inhabited random objects and beings. It was a sort of sacrifice for the good of the clan. But I’m nowhere near that skilled. I’d fizzle out and leave a comatose body within five seconds.”
“It hurt?” He asked.
That required a bit of thought before I answered. “No,” I said finally. “That’d imply you can feel something. It’s more like being dead.”
He grimaced and turned away. “Glad I ain’t you.”
“Yeah, well, hey, at least I never have to live in fear of hypothetical snakes in my grotty pipes.” He left the bathroom and I tailed him out. “Hey Biff?”
He grunted.
“How come you never ask me about the stuff I do?”
He looked at me as though incredulous I’d never figured it out. “Cuz everybody asks you that stupid shit. Like you got nothing better to do than talk about what a freak you are.” He flapped one of his hands, mimicking the unthinking wagging of jaws. “Fuck, I get sick of it, and I don’t even talk about it. Why wouldn’t you?”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“Jeez,” I said. “All this time, I just thought you were profoundly uncurious.”
He snorted. “Nah. Just… shit. I don’t like being asked, sure as hell don’t wanna do it to you—”
“You asked me this time, though.”
He shrugged and waved a hand derisively. “I slipped. Here, you can ask me a dumbass question now, pay me back for it.”
I actually didn’t mind questions about the things I could do (I would’ve been a psychoelectric Special Ed kid on Della, so it helped brace up my faltering ego) but I wasn’t about to let an opportunity go. “Okay. How’s it feel when you do illusion?”
He thought the question over for a few seconds, rubbing his lower lip. Then he admitted, “When I was a kid, I thought it was God talking to me.”
It was an unusually personal answer, so I didn’t badger him about it, just nodded. “I got hit with a taser once. Were I a theistic sort, I definitely could’ve seen that as a religious experience. That or the Senyan equivalent of the best sugar overdose ever.” I sighed dreamily. “Too bad it wasn’t someone I liked doing it; that actually could be really fun…”
Biff snorted, but he nodded knowingly. “That’s it.”
“You don’t use your illusion nearly as much as you could, you know,” I remarked.
He shook his head. “I don’t believe in God no more.”
There wasn’t much I could say to that. And while we were on the topic of stupid questions… “Why’re you scared of snakes?”
“They slither. Why you hate needles?”
“They’re pointy.”
“Well, there ya go.”
And then we spent a nice, mundane rest of the day not doing anything paranormal.
Prompt: Sixth Sense
Normally, Biff left his window open if he was less hostile than usual to the idea of me being in his home. Today, he did it one better; the moment I’d gotten to the windowsill, he stuck his head out, grabbed me by the collar, and dragged me in so quickly I nearly tore my jumpsuit on the edge.
“You good with snakes?” He demanded to know.
I blinked. “Snakes? What kind of snakes? Are we talking pythons here, or…?”
“Just… snakes!” He said, gesticulating wildly as though they were all one homogenous entity, and what more could I possibly need to know?
“Uh, I guess, it’d sort of depend on what you need me to do with it…”
“Just—get rid of the fucking thing!” He bellowed, and shoved me towards the bathroom so hard I nearly fell. “Fucking thing’s in the drain. Get rid of it.”
I caught my balance and went into the scummy bathroom.
The snake wasn’t hard to find. It was lying on the bathroom floor, coiled up comfortably by the drain. It was maybe a foot, foot and a half long, a garter snake. There were tons of them in Old Faithful; I hadn’t known they lived in Vaygo too, but I wasn’t surprised.
“Aw, hello there,” I crooned to it, and reached to pick it up. The snake made only a cursory attempt to get away, then coiled around my fingers. “What a healthy snake you must be, look how big and shiny you are…”
“Stop talking to the fucking thing!” Biff’s voice sounded suspiciously close to a shriek—doubly impressive, considering his normal vocal range. He was still hanging by the window as though ready to leap out of it at the slightest sign of reptilian violence.
“Biff, it’s a garter snake. It’s harmless. We got them all the time back in Old Faithful.”
“Yeah, well, this ain’t Old Faithful, now chuck it.”
“You’re scared of snakes? You, the original gangster?”
“You’re scared of needles and you’re a fucking doctor nurse thing.”
“Junior healer.”
“Whatever. Shut up.”
I rolled my eyes but clambered out the window, snake on my arm. Biff gave me a large berth.
“It won’t jump on you, Biff. It doesn’t have legs. Or teeth.”
He scowled but kept his eyes on the snake. I snorted and climbed down the wall.
I found a nice garden to put the interloper in, made sure it was making itself at home, then came back up.
“You shall be pleased to know the snake has been removed,” I announced.
“Good.” He was in the bathroom on his hands and knees, searching to make certain there were no more. “How the fuck did it get in?”
I shrugged. “Who knows, a crack in the wall, the pipes—”
“The pipes!” The baritone-straining shriek was back. “Y’mean there’s more?”
“Biff, relax. It probably got lost; no self-respecting snake wants to be this high up in your hot, stuffy little sty.”
He kept searching. “Fucking snakes, man…”
I stood back with my hands on my hips and grinned. “You never told me you were scared of snakes.”
“Fuck you, they slither. Indiana Jones was scared of snakes.”
“Hey, don’t you be bringing the master into this. Anyway, Indiana Jones was fictional, and he managed to keep his cool in an asp pit. You, Mr. Guts and Gravy, needed me to dispose of a garter snake.”
He took an inordinate amount of interest checking his pipes as though imagining snakes crawling from the showerhead.
I rolled my eyes. “Would it give you peace of mind if I swept the place?”
He eyed me skeptically over his shoulder. “You can do that?”
“Yes. Not well, but I can.” I shoved him and he scrabbled out of the way. “It’ll only work for the pipes, but snakes are probably complicated enough to show up on my radar. And it’s not like you’re asking to communicate with them—”
“Hell no!”
“—You just want to know if they’re there. It shouldn’t take but a second.”
“Huh.” Normally Biff was pretty derisive of my admittedly haphazard ability set, but he seemed pretty sedate this time around. “Can you… zap ‘em or something?”
“Theoretically, I could, but I don’t know exactly what that would do to your plumbing, and I really don’t want to electrocute your neighbor by accident. Also, it would require a lot of energy for something laughably trivial. So no.”
“’Kay.” He watched me as I pulled off one of my gloves and put my hand on the showerhead. “Do you… need anything?”
“Sure. If I pass out, make sure I don’t hit my head or swallow my tongue.” And I sent my mind out through the pipes.
Practice meant my knees didn’t automatically buckle when my conscious mind ditched my body, but it was still a disorienting mental whiplash that I could never quite accustom myself to. Thankfully, this wasn’t tricky; I simply sent a burst of energy through the pipes, following the conductors. Tiny little nervous systems registered as hitches in the otherwise smooth flow of the metal pipe. Distance was hard to register in that state, so I went until I started losing steam, then yanked myself back.
My mind slammed back into my body and I lurched upright, shaking the pins and needles out of my hand and blinking the spots out of my eyes. “Congratulations, Biff. You’ve got a bunch of things I think might’ve been roaches and silverfish, and a good few rats, but no snakes. At least, not in the pipes that I explored.”
His shoulders went slack. “Good. Good. And hey, you didn’t pass out.”
“Yeah. I’m still rotten, but at least I’m not entirely a failure at Senyan life.” I pulled my glove back on.
Biff watched, then asked, “What’s it feel like when you do that?”
I glanced at him, trying to hide my surprise. Normally, Biff never asked me anything about the things I did, as though he took a perverse pride in his own lack of curiosity. “Oh, it’s totally cosmic. I feel one with the universe and all the life in it.”
He raised an eyebrow.
I flexed my fingers to get the fit right, then let my hand fall to my side with a sigh. “It’s unpleasant and I don’t like doing it. You don’t realize how much stuff is rooted in your body until you get ripped out of it—or maybe that’s just me being too incompetent to do it properly. It’s complete sensory annihilation, except for random lurches and stops as you get caught in the minds of other things, most of which give you nothing but the odd urge to eat garbage or burrow holes. You feel yourself losing bits and pieces of yourself along the way, and then right as you start to forget the core tenets of yourself, you get slammed back into your body and have to fit in it properly again.” I shrugged. “Apparently some Senyan back in the day forwent bodies entirely and just exhibited as energy that inhabited random objects and beings. It was a sort of sacrifice for the good of the clan. But I’m nowhere near that skilled. I’d fizzle out and leave a comatose body within five seconds.”
“It hurt?” He asked.
That required a bit of thought before I answered. “No,” I said finally. “That’d imply you can feel something. It’s more like being dead.”
He grimaced and turned away. “Glad I ain’t you.”
“Yeah, well, hey, at least I never have to live in fear of hypothetical snakes in my grotty pipes.” He left the bathroom and I tailed him out. “Hey Biff?”
He grunted.
“How come you never ask me about the stuff I do?”
He looked at me as though incredulous I’d never figured it out. “Cuz everybody asks you that stupid shit. Like you got nothing better to do than talk about what a freak you are.” He flapped one of his hands, mimicking the unthinking wagging of jaws. “Fuck, I get sick of it, and I don’t even talk about it. Why wouldn’t you?”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“Jeez,” I said. “All this time, I just thought you were profoundly uncurious.”
He snorted. “Nah. Just… shit. I don’t like being asked, sure as hell don’t wanna do it to you—”
“You asked me this time, though.”
He shrugged and waved a hand derisively. “I slipped. Here, you can ask me a dumbass question now, pay me back for it.”
I actually didn’t mind questions about the things I could do (I would’ve been a psychoelectric Special Ed kid on Della, so it helped brace up my faltering ego) but I wasn’t about to let an opportunity go. “Okay. How’s it feel when you do illusion?”
He thought the question over for a few seconds, rubbing his lower lip. Then he admitted, “When I was a kid, I thought it was God talking to me.”
It was an unusually personal answer, so I didn’t badger him about it, just nodded. “I got hit with a taser once. Were I a theistic sort, I definitely could’ve seen that as a religious experience. That or the Senyan equivalent of the best sugar overdose ever.” I sighed dreamily. “Too bad it wasn’t someone I liked doing it; that actually could be really fun…”
Biff snorted, but he nodded knowingly. “That’s it.”
“You don’t use your illusion nearly as much as you could, you know,” I remarked.
He shook his head. “I don’t believe in God no more.”
There wasn’t much I could say to that. And while we were on the topic of stupid questions… “Why’re you scared of snakes?”
“They slither. Why you hate needles?”
“They’re pointy.”
“Well, there ya go.”
And then we spent a nice, mundane rest of the day not doing anything paranormal.
