multiversallogs | some die looking for a hand to hold

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some die looking for a hand to hold

Who: Wolfgang and OPEN
What: Antipsychotic medications have been known to exacerbate psychosis. There is a risk of permanent chemical dependence leading to symptoms worse than before treatment began.
Where: Badside, Mog Hill, Echomire, Brock Marsh, Raven's Gate, Chimer
When: Veerdi-Shundi
Notes: FEEL FREE TO SKIP THE OP it's me tl;dring. Thread starters in comments, if none of those work just... post whatever and I'll roll with it. Also, a polyvore.
Warnings: Medical/health care. For real. Specifically, this post touches on symptoms of mental illness, drug dependence, side effects and withdrawal, medical treatment, and seizures. Very possibly TW for suicidal ideation.

He's halfway down the block before he realises he left his body behind.

Panicked, he runs and hides, waits for whatever this is to end. It doesn't. He slinks back to his bedroom at five in the morning, watching his body sleep, pacing the length of the room and wondering if he can get back inside. Eventually, it becomes less terrifying, but it is frustrating to be outside of his body while the flesh sleeps and unable to do anything -- unable to touch anything, to speak to anyone, to even be seen. It further blurs the line between dream and reality; which is which? Which really happened?

It was supposed to get better. He was supposed to Awaken and this would stop. He'd be fine, he could stop taking the meds, he could get his life back, everything would be like it used to -- when he was young and wild and free and knew he could do anything he wanted, whenever he wanted. Only this time, he wouldn't have to be so lonely; people would understand...

Instead, it's getting worse. When he's not on them, he can't tell the voices apart, can't tell what's real and what's in his head, feels smothered under the weight of the irrational thoughts that plague him. He argues with people who aren't there in public, not realising he's the only one who can see them, or that maybe they're not there at all. He gets random pains -- swift, shock-like ones and longer-lasting muscle pain, stiffness in his neck, long-lasting headaches that aspirin doesn't fix. His hands shake so hard he can't use them. When he's on them, the side effects now outweigh the benefits. The sedative effect of antipsychotics makes day-to-day living harder when he is already sleeping thirteen hours a day. He falls asleep anywhere, at any time -- on the train, at work, in bars -- but no matter how much he sleeps, it's never enough. He is losing time. He'll sit down and the next thing he knows, the sun is much lower, or else it's dark out, and he's confused and disoriented. Once, he wakes up on the floor of his living room with a paintbrush still in his hand, and his entire body feels as if it was just tazed, just one giant, sore muscle, and there's blood in his mouth -- he bit through his cheek.

It only happens once, but it's enough to thoroughly scare the shit out of him.

Above all else, though, it makes it clear that no matter how many times he smiles and says "fine, thank you, how are you," he is not functioning. He is consistently late for work, if he manages to go at all, and when he gets back to his house, he has barely enough energy to collapse on the mattress he set up in the living room, and then he sleeps the rest of the day. He needs a drink -- or six -- just to get through the day, and if he has to go outside and socialise like a normal human being, he takes stimulants. After the incident last week, he has stopped answering his CiD, and he quits one job, gets fired from another, and stops showing up for the third. Having free time again is nice. It's not much, a few hours between sleep, and even then he doesn't use it very effectively. Does some work on the house. Reads, when he can muster up the energy, the big medical texts he borrowed from a public library.

Does not like what he finds.

Clozapine has been shown to lower seizure threshold and produce significant EEG changes. Although not a commonly used drug, both clinical neurophysiology technologists and interpreting electroencephalographers need to be aware of the effects of clozapine on the EEG...

CNS Effects of Haloperidol
Insomnia, restlessness, anxiety, euphoria, agitation, drowsiness, depression, lethargy, headache, confusion, vertigo, grand mal seizures, exacerbation of psychotic symptoms including hallucinations, and catatonic-like behavioral states...

The words keep ringing in his head, over and over. He has to read it over and over again because it takes that long for anything to sink in -- he sees the words, but he can't make any sense of them, and when he finally does, he just sits there quietly and thinks about what they mean. He is not sure how long that takes.

Maybe he should tell someone.

He thinks about that, those words still at the forefront of his mind, when he drags himself out of bed, forces himself to get dressed, and leaves the house, like maybe if he just goes out and does something, he'll be okay. He has always been able to push through this before. It has been one thing after another all year, and he thinks maybe it's indicative of some kind of personal failing that he can't take it in stride like the rest of the city. He has never been strong -- he thinks -- and ten years later he has been made more brittle by a lifetime of expectations and disappointments, by the slow reveal of an unjust world he is completely powerless in.

And it has been following him into his dreams. The old nightmares -- memories of past lives, people he's been before. Some he's had before and some he hasn't, but they're all familiar because they all really happened, except something is wrong in them this time. The way the trees begin to curl in on themselves when he looks at them too long. The patterns of spiderwebs, reflecting rainbow from morning dew, too unnaturally perfectly round. The thin lines of clouds curling inwards, inwards.

Always in a spiral.

Every time it interrupts the dreams he knows he should be paying attention to, knocks him out of the memory and into awareness, but still dreaming. No. He runs from them instead, swinging from memory to memory like handholds, but when he sees it again he misses the mark and falls. No. This is real running, the background warping behind him and he has to get away, really away, because he's not even safe here and he can't tell if this is real. He only jerks to a stop because there is nowhere else to run, he's standing on the edge of a cliff that is wrong because there's nothing behind him except more ocean. The sea, all around. Deep, open water, impossibly grey.

There is more than one way to go. He looks upwards, but he can see the clouds beginning to move, twisting and starting to spiral, and -- No. Just one. He jumps.

Seven miles under the surface, there is no light. No sight. No sound. No smell. No feeling. He can taste salt water sometimes, but that fades eventually. Above him there are hundreds of pounds of pressure threatening to collapse or explode his body, but that fades, too, until there is nothing but this -- drifting in blackness, enveloped in it like an isolation tank. A Ganzfeld cocoon.

Safe. The only safe place there is.

But in the waking world he wanders around like a zombie, hollow-eyed, closer to broken than anything else and too tired to fight anymore. He would just go under, if he could.

This is his last-ditch effort to find a way to believe that not everything in the world is evil.

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The fox curled up in the mouth of one of the statues isn't, actually, a fox. Rather, Clio had decided she needed to get out but hadn't wanted to walk around as a human - people look at her weird when she does, the last few months showing obvious signs. So instead, a crow had flown out from the Lea's house in Flag Hill and turned into a fox once it had settled down at the gardens because she'll look less out of place here. (The forests make her skin crawl, but gardens aren't too bad).

So. Fox. One that's still distinctly malourished, but people tend to care less.

Clio had been sleeping, but she'd woken up when she feels Wolfgang's - magic? Presence? - She's never been sure how to describe this sort of awareness, but she can pick other supernatural creatures. It's easier when they're fae and it always make her more curious when they're not. She hops out from the mouth of the statue and stalks closer to him, trying to determine what exactly he is. She is not being particularly subtle.

Wolfgang is used to some weirdness from animals. It's crows, goats, and cats that come up to him curiously -- and all dogs react to him with the same aggressive terror. Wild animals, that's new, and in Baedal sometimes it's hard to tell when animals are just extra intelligent, when they're sentient, and when they're actually people. Still, his first thought when he notices a fox coming closer is that it's a fox, and whether it's the half the joint he's smoked already or the fact that it's not a person approaching him, he doesn't startle the way he would otherwise.

Instead he shifts slowly, posture open, hands visible. "Hey," he says, in a soft voice like he doesn't want to scare her, and like talking to animals is perfectly natural. It used to be they'd talk back to him; lonely children have to get creative when making friends. "Where'd you come from?"

He doesn't reach out to touch her -- if it's a wild animal that's a bad idea, and if it's not then it's just rude -- but he does hold very still. "You're skinny. I don't have any food, sorry."

Edited 2012-04-28 02:04 (UTC)

The way Clio pauses and ducks her head, sheepish, is a very unfoxlike gesture. She makes a note to remember how to sneak better - it's been a while since she's shapeshifted and it'd taken her an hour in crow form before she could even get airborne (it'd been embarrassing, flapping around Lea's backyard).

She can understand him and appreciates his reaction, but she can't respond verbally and there's a moment of indecision as she tosses up whether she wants to be people shaped. The answer is kind of 'not really', but she'd feel guilty if she kept playing as a real fox when she distinctly isn't. Eventually she settles on shifting back to human, giving a soft yip before backing up and changing.

It's a quick process, because it's magic, not physical and it also means she gets to keep her clothes (leggings, a loose hoodie and boots). So rather suddenly there is a smiling person in the place of a fox.

"Sorry." For intruding. And a potential apology in case she freaked him out.

Wolfgang stares, then -- pulls back on his mouth, furrows his brow like oh, huh. Foxes who turn into women (her hair is awfully pink), that's not even top 10 weirdest shit he's seen this week.

(He should have been able to tell -- but he's tired, he's preoccupied by the mess he currently is emotionally, and he's old and magic doesn't come to him the way it used to -- all of those are less hurtful explanations than there just being something wrong with him, so he'll take them right now.)

"This city," he says, his tone the verbal equivalent of a Kanye shrug. This city indeed. His mouth quirks upwards, lopsided, but it's there; it's not a condemnation, there's amusement there. He breathes a cloud of smoke away from her. "It's all right. I should know better by now."

Her smile brightens considerably when there's no freaking out on his end, "It's something to get used to." This city. Although the adapting she's had to do has been the other way around; at the Estate it'd been a large percentage of supernaturals, or at least people who were okay with it. (Lea had mentioned the Candlelighters, and they sounded worringly like Numen).

"I thought maybe you'd been able to tell," Both in that he talked to her like she could understand - not that some people don't do that with regular animals - and because he feels so magic. Clio's not sure exactly what the etiquette is in Baedal, regarding other 'Xenians', so she figures gently prodding at the subject is the best option.

He thinks a moment about how he wants to answer that, inclining his head side to side. "I guess not," is what he comes up with, which... while not an admission is a tacit acknowledgement that he's not strictly normal. Not xenian because he's still human, but... not normal.

Now that she's closer and he's paying attention, he still can't feel a difference. Maybe if he really tried, but -- he's not going to, that would be invasive. Probably. Someone should write an instruction manual for magic.

(They do, actually, it's called mentorship.)

"Wolfgang," he offers.

"Cliona, but Clio is fine," When she'd first gotten here, she'd contemplated using a pseudonym, but Lea isn't bothering, and that's where Clio is taking her cues from.

She cocks her head slightly, eyeing the joint with obvious amusement, "It's been a long time since I've seen one of those." Even longer since she's indluged, but she keeps that to herself.

He holds it out, offering if she wants some. "It's everywhere here. Surprisingly." Baedal inspires that in people. There's a street here that's not only sentient but it communicates back with people. Things like that.

He also doesn't really look the type (typical fashion sense notwithstanding), but it's medicinal, okay. It's also probably a bad idea with what else he's on and what he might be, but... fuck it, it's better than clonazepam.

After a moment of consideration, Clio accepts the joint, but only takes a small drag before passing it back - it has been a while, and she'll break herself back in gently.

"Something else to get used to. I had a friend who grew her own for a while, but that was a good six years ago," And she's dead now. Thanks, apocalypse.

Wolfgang accepts it back but doesn't take another hit just yet, taking it easy for now. He's just taking the edge off, not trying to get stoned, not that he probably could off of one joint. "It's pretty good everywhere here. Except this..." He coughs. "Dry crap. But it's cheap, so, eh." Not that it's ever expensive.

"The eternal dilemna," Buy cheap or buy good. Not that she's had a problem like this for a while. If Joseph's people ever found stashes of weed, they never passed it on to the people in the estate.

"I'm fairly new, so I've been reading up on what the laws are like here. Checking drug laws didn't really cross my mind," Her expression and tone doesn't seem to convey any feelings about the other laws of the city. She's keeping that under wraps for now.

(She hates the militia already).

"Oh. We're in the same cohort then." Wolfgang hasn't been checking the network over the past week, so he's not surprised he missed a few new arrivals. Then again, not everyone introduces themselves that way. "Yeah -- good news, no one really cares... unless you're importing. Then they care. Um, a lot." His left hand twinges; he ignores it. "Or, like... selling crack to kids or something."

Yes... don't do that. Good life advice from Wolfgang Einhorn.

"Oh!" A brighter smile; she's been looking over the network a little, but hadn't seen Wolfgang there, "It's extra nice to meet you." There's an awareness at the back her mind that she'll probably adopt the cohort as her family and start predicting for them. But that's later, not now, and she doesn't want to think too hard about it.

The way he mentions importing it has her curious, but she let's it pass, "Mm, it's probably for the best they don't let kids buy crack, they're bad enough without it." A joke? Sort of.

"It's nice to meet you too." His expression is friendly, because he does mean it; it's good to get to know the cohort in person, and it makes dealing with the city less daunting.

"Hm. Especially the ones here. Little monsters." He's not quite smiling (he doesn't seem to very often) but he sounds very affectionate -- Wolfgang adores children and he spent a lot of time early on in Baedal working as a babysitter, up until his reputation was too shot to continue. There are still some families in Bonetown that like him, but he doesn't accept money from them anymore unless they literally hold him down and shove it in his hand. "So we're not a... lawless oasis, I guess. Thankfully."

"Do you mean that literally?" Her smiles twists a little, wry. She doesn't think he does, but it was an easy joke to pick out in Baedal. Where there are, probably, actual monster children.

There's also a comment about lawlessness and the law here on the tip of her tongue, but it seems a bit too - much to say to someone she just met.

"Well, 'xenian' is polite." And much less cumbersome a word than 'cruorvore,' which he's still not certain he even pronounces correctly.

Vampire babies, though: alarming!

He brings his cigarette to his mouth and takes a long drag, holding it in and then releasing slowly. It's nice here, quiet and empty, and maybe sometime when he's less sad he'll come back and it won't be such a downer.

"I've heard," And that wryness shifts into something else, a little more bitter but it doens't last long because she's not sure whether broaching that topic is appropriate. She doesn't know if it's something he's open about. Instead, she clarifies, "It was a joke, though, I wouldn't call anyone a monster just because of what they are. And I've dealt with a baby Drake."

Tiny fire faerie: also alarming!

Edited (forever edits) 2012-04-29 15:45 (UTC)

Wolfgang looks appropriately alarmed. "A baby what?"

He can guess, yeah, because... Baedal, land of weird.

"Drake, they're a fairy that can turn itself into a ball of fire. Forunately the younger ones can't sustain it for long, but it was never much fun during a tantrum."

The perks of living on an estate mostly full of supernatural creatures. Clio sounds more fondly amused than anything, though.

"I hope you're fireproof." Firebaby might be where he draws the line when it comes to cuteness... but maybe not. Wolfgang loves all babies.

He's quiet a bit, considering. "There's a family in Aspic, they've got baby vampires. Twins. I sat for them once or twice. They're awfully cute, but at that age, they're starting to learn to use their... mind powers, um. Not fun for their parents." Which is why they tend to hire babysitters immune to receiving mental commands like 'ice cream for dinner'.

In lieu of an answer, Clio shows her hands to Wolfgang, which are marked by assorted small burn scars - none of them are too serious, mostly due to the fact if she got badly burnt, someone would heal them for her. Clio loves all babies as well, and never let a little fire hold her back.

That makes her smile, a little wry, because she can imagine how that would be, "That would have been an interesting experience. I don't have very much experience with vampires, but a lot of fae have a knack for persuasion. Fortunately I am fae proof."

Wolfgang winces sympathetically at her hands -- scars are annoying (he will never admit to exactly how vain he actually is, although he kind of likes the scar on his head; he thinks it makes him look tough) but more than that it probably hurt.

He shifts, sitting on the ground with his knees up to his chest, no fucks given about grass stains. "That's useful. I imagine. There's a lot here, I think."

After a moment's consideration - for whether he might want her company rather than concern about grass stains - she joins him in sitting on the ground.

"It seems so, I've felt a significant amount fof them, just walking around," There's a bit of a frown in her expression, because sometimes other fae look back at her like she's dangerous. Which she isn't, people are just naturally distrustful of someone who feels a bit like death, "They feel very strange, sometimes, if they're not a kind I'm familiar with."

Some of the fairies in Baedal feel completely different to anything Clio has ever experienced. She's attributing it to the fact the worlds are so different, but it's still a little unsettling.

"What do they feel like? Usually." He's curious and the slight sympathetic tinge to his tone is probably because he's aware of how difficult it is to put that kind of feeling into words -- if someone asked him to describe what an aura looks like, for example, his answer would be a lot of weird similes verging on nonsense -- but he's curious nonetheless. If it's not something he can do now (he suspects it's something he needs to re-learn how to do), then maybe he can figure it out later.

Knowing what people are before talking to them is useful for many reasons. He's thinking of some of the nicer (read: more naive) ones.

"Ah-" There's a considerable pause as she thinks about how to answer that question. She appreciates the sympathetic twinge, because it is extremely difficult to explain.

It's even harder to explain what death feels like, so there's that.

"If they're sidhe, like I am, they tend to feel like waiting on the edge of something. That moment of apprehension before you cross a threshold into something important?" Her voice goes up at the end slightly, to indicate that it's partly a question; an unspoken do you know what I mean? "I can also get a sense of what they are - the first person I ever found was a selkie, and she felt like crashing waves."

Clio misses being able to go into the sea.

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some die looking for a hand to hold

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