{I need to do something to get my groove back after a big move so I'm going to start this idea that has been in my head for a long, LONG time. This is basically an idea I had for a World of Darkness campaign I would love to do, but I have no friends so I'm SoL on that front. Anyway. I'm just going to start this up and see how well it goes. Feel free to ignore this by the way, its more of a personal thing than anything else.}
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the World of Darkness, it is owned by White Wolf Game Studios if the vast number of rule-books I bought are correct.
The blood staining his hand and shirt proved something to Roy that he didn't want to acknowledge as he lay against the counter, staring at the monster's corpse on the floor of his kitchen, the dark fur of its stomach leaking its life giving blood from the various stab wounds he'd put in it, as well as coating the knife he'd left there. His eyes, blurry and unfocused from the pain and shock of the skirmish, idly followed the ever growing puddle of blood that was staining the apartment's floor as the sound of rain and the occasional clap of thunder filled the air. He couldn't help but think back to his day before this, back to before everything he believed and took as true seemed to just fall apart around him. Back to before he'd stumbled into the darker world he'd been blissfully ignorant of his entire life.
{6:45am, Blooming Springs Apartments. Apartment 10.}
The sound of a blaring alarm clock was the first noise that blared into the ears of the owner of a small apartment, with the next sound being the click of that alarm being snoozed as its owner tried to fall back into the wondrous world of slumber. Unfortunately, while the alarm clock may have failed to awaken its owner, it did not fail in its task with the room's other occupant, as a pair of green eyes snapped open as their fluffy owner pushed herself up and stretched before she began to nudge her bed mate, meowing lightly as she began to bat at the lump in the blankets.
"Ugh, not now Pudge... Sleepy..." Unfortunately for said lump, cats are not known for their ability to listen, and after five minutes of meowing and paw slapping, the blankets finally got thrown off with a huff, a pair of tired blue eyes turning to regard the fluffy creature that had awoken him. The eyes narrowed in half hearted anger as a hand moved hair away from them as he stood from the bed.
"I hate you Pudge." The cat, ever the smarmy lady, simply meowed as she began to lick her paw, content with a job well done. Ignoring the cat now that he had been robbed of sleep, the red headed man who owned the small apartment trudged his way to his closet and got out a set of his standard clothes, one of many spares, which consisted of a dark blue turtle neck and black sweats with a pair of black socks to cover his feet. Giving the cat one last glare, the man made his way to the bathroom to take care of some morning business.
It took ten minutes for the various bathroom tasks to be completed, he stretched as he looked himself over. His pale skinned reflection returned a nearly uninterested look as he took some time to comb his shoulder length mop of crimson fluff he called hair, which was really just him using his hands to get his bangs out of his face before he made his way towards the kitchen for some delicious sustenance, also known as eggs and sausage. He ran his hand along the wall of the small hallway that connected his bed and bathrooms to the rest of the apartment, with the kitchenette right around the left corner while the rest was a small living area with a couch, TV with attached gaming console, cat tower along with cat themed curtains.
Using his hand to hang a left though, the red head noticed that his kitchen still had its same old stove, same old sink, same old fridge and same old table and chairs. Yet he couldn't help but smile when he saw the black and white ball of fluff sitting on the table right in front of a small bowl, her tail flicking as she waited to be fed.
"Hold on you fluffy glutton, let me get my food first." The red head gently scratched the cat's head as he made his way to the fridge to get the various foods out, two eggs, a zipper bag with fish sausages in it, and a carton of juice. With that done, it took fifteen minutes to scramble and cook the eggs and sausage, with another five spent scooping something from a can that claimed it was egg and bacon flavored into Pudge's bowl. After sitting down and adding juice to a glass, the man was finally able to join his cat in eating breakfast, and for a few glorious moments all was well in the world.
Ten minutes later, both man and cat were seated in the living room, one enjoying batting at a small fluff ball on a string while the other watched the weather to make sure that there would be no surprises from mother nature. All the peace was shattered when a set of loud knocks came from the door to the apartment, and the human let out a loud non descriptive noise. The sound of the door doing its job was followed by the sound of feet before another being collapsed onto the couch next to the red head, who was glad to found out that it would be overcast, but the storm wouldn't start until well after he was to be back inside after his trip would be finished.
"Sup Soul-less, how's it?" The far to chipper for this time of day voice made him glance in the direction of his couch mate. The person was a lightly tanned, though whether it was from birth or sun bathing he still didn't know. The person also had bright and obnoxious pink and purple hair, yellow eyes that were almost certainly that color from color contacts, and a far too tight rainbow tank top that showed that this person was female, cause no man had tits that filled out a shirt that well, with her lower body somehow forced into skinny jeans with 'fashion tears' at the knees. He was also glad to see that her bedazzled sandals had been left at the door.
"Nothing much Rose, nothing much at all." Flicking the TV off, the red head stood up and gestured for the girl to lead the way out of his apartment. The girl gave him a grin as she obliged him, bounding out of the small living space as the red head turned towards his housemate.
"Take care of the house while I'm gone Pudge. No crazy parties either." With his farewell said, the door was closed and locked, eager to get his day started so it would finish faster, giving him more time to spend alone with his cat. The blissful days that he was sure would last forever.
{8:00am, Mistress of the Night Dance Club.}
"Sup Smokes, this is the guy! The computer wiz I was telling you about!" As Rose introduced him to the lady who would be paying him at the end of the day, the woman regarded him as he did likewise. The woman was of the tall and thin variety, with her hair dyed a smoke grey color as her pale skin, though perhaps pure white would be more accurate, was mostly covered with a black dress with a single leg covered by white frilly bits. Her feet were covered by a pair of slightly heeled shoes over black and white striped stockings.
"Roy Higham I presume?" The woman's voice had that husky quality one would usually associate with seduction, experience, smoking, trying too hard to sound cool etc. etc. The red head simply inclined his head as he pulled a hand from his pocket to wave.
"Yup, Annabeth Shroud?" The disbelief of the name must have shown on his face, because the goth looking woman sighed as she said something that she had clearly repeated a lot over the course of her life.
"My parents got a name change before I was born, never found the time to change it." Before he could stop himself his mouth had spit out a certain word that caused the woman to nod.
"Edgy." As the red head followed his temporary employer to the area he would be working, he noticed Rose heading to the back, he briefly wondered if she was helping out as well before he was led to a room with a various bits of tech attached to a computer. Taking a seat at said computer, the red head got to work starting it up as he began some basic questioning.
"What am I looking for exactly? What happened?" The pale woman shrugged as she leaned against the wall.
"I don't know, one moment everything was working great the next the lights suddenly cut out, our tech guy tried to figure out what happened, but couldn't figure it out. Lost a lot of working hours cause of it too." Nodding at the woman's words, the red head began looking through the computer for any sign of what might be wrong, and since this woman was a friend of friend, he also took the time to clean up a few things to speed up the system as a whole. As the red head began to follow a small lead on the problem with the lights, he noticed the woman jump slightly before heading out of the room, giving him the universal finger sign for phone as she did so. Seeing as how he was a temp worker, he merely shrugged and got to work, a smile crossing his face as found a lead to his problem, leading to him moving to a large electrical table as he began to fish through the wires.
{7:00pm}
"And then I said, fuck you lights." With on final adjustment, the red head smiled as he noticed the lights burst to life, going the gambit of colors before they were turned off, or at least had their colors set to standard white so he could get down. It had taken far too long to get to the actual problem he had been hired to fix, he'd go from one pointless problem to another, which he fixed because he was cool like that, ended up with him checking basically everything in the club before simply getting a ladder and just getting up to the lights themselves and going through each and every light bulb. It finally ended when it turned out that one of the lamps had been hooked up wrong, leading to taking out its friends in a giant suicide attack, and while it was a bit annoying to fix from so far off the ground, he finally managed to get the lights working again in all their multicolored flashing glory, even if it had nearly caused him to fall from a very tall ladder.
"Thank so much for this Roy, I greatly appreciate it." He smiled as he accepted the envelope that contained the money that would contain his living expense for the next two months.
"No problem yo, but seriously fire whoever set up those lights. It was a simple problem!" His eye twitched as he glared up at the light in question, "You can't let shit like this slide, you got lucky you only had to worry about a black out rather than bulb shards raining on your customers."
He noticed the woman cringe as she nodded as he set about to do a few last checks to make sure nothing else was wrong. Nodding in satisfaction when he noticed none of the other lights were having a similar functional problem, he gave the woman a thumbs up. "If you ever need me, you know how to get in touch. For now though, I'm heading home. Later Rose, Ms. Annabeth."
{8:00pm, Blooming Springs Apartments}
With his job done and his life set for the next few months, Roy couldn't help but think about how close he was cutting this storm as he approached his home, just barely starting to feeling the rain as he pedaled just a bit faster. However, as he noticed the building coming into view, a sudden cold feeling ran up his spine. Shaking off his sudden fear, he quickly moved his bike to it place in the garage before making his way to his apartment.
As he reached the floor that had his apartment on it, that same feeling raced up and down his spine once again. Only this time it didn't go away. He gulped as his hand reached to his pocket to pull out his self defense weapon. Said weapon was a large folding knife with blade that was larger than his hand with a straight blade that led into a handle with a rubber grip to aid in holding it and making sure it wasn't dropped.
As he grabbed the handle of his door, he noticed with horror that it wasn't locked. Worry for his precious pet filling his mind, the red head managed to hold himself back from simply throwing open the door and instead gently pushing it open just enough to slip in. It was just as he made it to the end of the small entryway that he heard the sound of something noisy, similar to a very sloppy eater at a buffet, from his kitchen. Carefully peering around the corner, he barely held back his scream at what he saw in the light of the appliance.
The … thing at his fridge was large, its limbs were long, thick with muscle and covered in thick brown-ish fur with its chest and stomach holding a lighter color of said fur. Its hands were a sickly white with long black nails, though most of said hands were covered in the red of the various meats it was eating raw from the ice box. Moving to its head, he almost wanted to vomit as he got a good look at it. The creature had a vaguely wolf-like face with a pair of twisted horns sprouting from behind its ears. The reason he was so sick was because he could see the way it was eating, the way its razor sharp fangs ripping through the meat with little effort. He could almost see that creature tear him apart and feast on his own meat.
Shaking his head, he scanned the rest of his apartment and hoping beyond hope that Pudge was safe. He let loose a sigh of relief when he saw the small green eyes poking out from the cubby of her cat tower. It was shortly after that he froze when he realized something, the sound of the creature's eating had gone silent. Turning slowly back to the fridge, he paled when he saw that the monster was looking right at him, and it still looked hungry.
Deciding to make the first move, the ginger rushed forward with his knife in as firm a grip as he could manage and threw himself at it. The monster, proving itself to have at least basic intelligence, moved out of the way of the red head's charge, though it clearly wasn't used to moving on two limbs as it end up stumbling over its own feet and landing on the floor on its back. Taking advantage of the creature's position, the man used both hands and all of the strength gravity could give him as he drove his knife into its chest.
The creature screeched in pain and bat the man away and into the counter across the room, its wide hand catching him in the chest and carve four bloody lines in his chest, tearing through the shirt like wet tissue in the process. Groaning from the pain in his chest, along with his now sore back, the red head began to push himself up only for the beast to slam him into the cabinet once again, though this time it was hold him there with one hand as it began to sniff at his face with the other.
Just as he was certain the creature was about to rip his face off with its fangs, a fluffy missile suddenly slammed into it in a blur of yowling and hissing fury. The creature let up on its hold as it bat at the cat clawing its eyes, and with a yowl of pain the cat was sent flying away as the creature landed a solid hit on it. That was the last thing it ever did however, as in the instant Roy was on top of it, the suddenness of his tackle and the rage fueled strength allowing the red head to get it on its back as he began to drive his knife into its flesh over and over, painting his hands, face and the remains of his shirt in the beasts crimson blood.
The beast had gone still long before the red head was done, though when he was, the man barely had the strength to push himself up, and only managed one step before he lost his balance and falling back against the counter.
{9:30pm, Blooming Springs Apartments, Apartment 10}
He was suddenly brought back to the present by the feel of something flopping onto his lap, and he managed a smile when he saw the form of Pudge rest on him, looking relatively fine except for the favoring of her right foreleg as she seemingly passed out on him. Another loud clap of thunder filled the air, though this time it was followed by what sounded like a voice calling for him. As his consciousness began to fail him, the last thing he saw was something that looked like Rose with small antlers on her head before he gave up the ghost and passed out, joining his furry friend in forced slumber.
{Done and done. That felt good, finally just sitting down and putting words to digital paper like this. Don't know how many of you are going to read this, but for those who do, here's a little back ground on the setting, which I'll probably get more into in the next chapter. Anyway, this story is going to take place in the fictional [hopefully] city of Blooming Springs, Rhode Island, a place fictionally know for its friendly people, pleasant Italian Ice shops, and the fact that people claim is a place where monsters gather. The last one is said to be nothing more than a vile and unfounded rumor by the governing bodies and the press of the city. With that said, I'm done here. Enjoy Life Readers.}
