by a route obscure and lonely, haunted by ill angels only...

[ushered]

[Open to threadhopping, but no Roderick tags, please!]

The Kashtta is deteriorating. The signs are everywhere, and have been-in the way the walls seem to be cracking more each day, the paint fading and flaking; in the floors that creak and moan; in the air itself, so dank and foul, just hanging in every open space

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[princerat]

Steel grey walls boxing him in, dripping with blood. The bloody wall becomes a red velvet curtain, pulled aside. Out there is the audience-- blank-faced human-shaped automatons dressed in Victorian clothing. He lunges into the aisle between the seats, tries to run out the fire exit. Metal hands grab him, drag him down through the floor, strap him onto a table. Robot doctors using early 19th-century medical instruments tear him apart and replace his various pieces with metal limbs. He feels every cut and tear. Through an orange portal he's tossed, onto a hamster wheel, and he runs and runs and runs while her voice plays overhead. He coughs up blood from his mouth onto the wheel and he just can't seem to stop slipping on it.

------

Saul got his nightmares in the early evening, and woke somewhat later. He needs to move, to work the dreams out of his head. He leaves the sewer for the Kashtta at around eleven, carrying with him a parcel he intends to store in his room there. It can't stay in the sewers with him, and this is as good a time as any to get rid of it. It's a large box which once housed a very large espresso machine, taped up shut.

This is the first time he's been back to the Kashtta since he disappeared. Here, it's been six weeks. Where he was, it was six months. Right now, it looks like it's been sixty years since his return. All's decrepit and falling apart. The place makes his skin crawl, and hackles raise. But he keeps that emotion off his face. He might seem relatively unfazed. Really he's still in shock, and has been that way for days. Spending about six months being tortured by an AI will do that, and the nightmare didn't help. He won't break down tonight. That will happen much later, and he'll be alone.

He'll be in the kitchen before he heads up to his room to stash away the box, making a cup of tea. "The fuck is all this, then?" he asks for anyone in earshot, becoming visible for them as he does so. He decides to stay here tonight, awake, and keep an eye on things.

Later, he'll listen to the screams of people suddenly woken by night terrors. If they so happen to wander into the kitchen, bleary-eyed and haggard, they might be offered a joint or a beer.

[[For anyone who doesn't already know about Saul, he's invisible until he speaks. His voice is kinda demonic. He looks homeless. His eyes are all black, they have no whites to them. ...And this is my last attempt at making this text small. :/ ]]