They whistle through the lonely wind

[longblueshadows]

WHO: Wendla Bergmann, Scotty Wandell
WHERE: Outside the school (building 9)
TIME OF DAY: Afternoon
POST SUMMARY: Wendla and Scotty land in the city.

Comments

[caterwaiter]

The house looks quaint and homey, or maybe it would've if it weren't so eerily empty with dust in the corners and the unnervingly cold feeling of the absence of people. He lingers in the hallway, looking at the artwork on the walls, as he tries to process first Wendla's question, then an answer to it. "Yeah, you know. Scary movies. Or maybe you don't watch them?" he asks, glancing over at her. "I shouldn't. They make me too paranoid." Especially in situations like this, but he bites his lip at that.

He moves into the space at the end of the hall with her, glancing at the desk Wendla found before he pokes his head first into the archway. Living room, check. He moves to open the door near the desk and pokes his head inside; he leaves it open as he moves away. He doesn't like the idea of closed doors, aside from the basement door, and he could try to give a reason but it wouldn't be that logically sound so it's not that worthwhile.

"Anything good here?" he asks her, turning from the bathroom and glancing over the desk; his eyes land on a very recognizable sort of paper sticking out from underneath a book; it has columns and half a picture and Scotty's heart nearly leaps at something that looks halfway familiar. "Oh -- look, a newspaper," he says excitedly, moving around Wendla to slide the paper out from under the book. He unfolds it and squints, trying to make sense out of the jumble of characters he doesn't recognize; he searches for numbers, scanning his eyes quickly over the page.

He focuses in at the top, looking for a date, and when he finds one in the corner, he resumes his search again. He opens the newspaper to look for the date inside, and he returns to the front cover, shaking his head. "No -- no this newspaper has to be old. Look at the date." He holds it up to Wendla, pointing to the date with his finger. "That has to be the date and it definitely says 1986. This has to be an old newspaper, though why someone would hang onto a paper that's 20 years old is anyone's guess," he murmurs, setting it back down.

[longblueshadows]

Scotty must have misunderstood Wendla's question, but there were more interesting things going on so she let it go.

When Scotty pulled out the newspaper she grinned excitedly -- even if they couldn't read it it was... something, wasn't it? But her expression immediately went blank when Scotty started talking about the date. She felt her heart pick up speed.

Was Scotty out of his mind?

How long had she been... sleeping?

"What do you mean?" she said weakly, not being able to form a more coherent question.

[caterwaiter]

Wendla asks weird questions. Cell phones, movies, dates. He gives her a tired look and points back at the date on the paper. "It says 1986, and that's the only thing here that could be the date, as far as I can tell. It's 2007 now so that's just about 20 years." He rubs his hands over his face and drops them with a sigh, glancing over his shoulder at the living room. "Maybe there's a recent paper in there... Or in one of the stores..."

[longblueshadows]

Wendla wanted to be annoyed with Scotty for talking to her like she was stupid when he was the one that was speaking insanity. Her first thought was that she'd been in... a coma or something, and she even looked at her hands as if to check that she was still the fourteen-year-old girl she had been when she could remember last. She'd felt like she'd lost time, hadn't she? But no, her brain was starting to jolt forward from being unable to comprehend to seeming to run a mile a minute, like her heart. "No, it's not," Wendla whispered, still completely shaken. "It's impossible. I'd be dead."

She grabbed the paper off the desk, staring at the date and paging through it as though she expected some sort of explanation -- as if Scotty hadn't just confirmed what it suggested. 1986? 2007? The years meant nothing to her, either way -- just some far-off idea. Something she never would've known or had to worry about. She half expected Scotty to go just kidding, just trying to lighten the mood, but she looked back at him and he looked completely serious.

[caterwaiter]

He frowns, worried with her reaction, and he watches her frantically look through the newspaper again. He takes a small step away from her, remembering all her weird questions, the clueless look on her face when he'd held up his cell phone, how she'd asked him about movies like she had no clue what he was talking about. He looks from her to the paper and back again, just a twitch of his eyes, and he can feel his whole body start to become weighted down.

"What do you mean? It's 2007," he says again, slowly, warily, carefully, suddenly not trusting her. "How can that be impossible?"

[longblueshadows]

"Because it wasn't 2007 when I left," she said frantically, "left" behind the best word she could come up with for their weird appearance. She looked back at the newspaper, her eyes scanning the pages one more time as if to make sure she hadn't missed any vital information, before folding it haphazardly and dropping it back down on the desk. Wendla turned to look back at Scotty, leaning back against the desk and wringing her hands. How did she even begin to explain? To her it was just... "I'd be dead," she repeated.

The color drained from her cheeks as a feeling of dread seeped through her. "Unless I am dead," she chirped. "I told you I swore I was dying -- and then I was here. Maybe this is the afterlife. Or maybe I was... brought back to life." Wendla was getting panicked now, though it wasn't as though figuring out how or why she was here changed things much more than they'd been only minutes before -- and it didn't explain Scotty.

"I'm not crazy," she said suddenly, standing up straight. Just a moment before she had thought Scotty was crazy and she must sound completely insane. What if she was insane? God, how would you know? But if she was insane she was an insane person with a very good imagination.

[caterwaiter]

"What are you talking about?" he asks because that's the only thing he can think of to say. Wendla's talking nonsense, and Scotty takes another small step back away from her, holding his hands out slightly from his sides defensively, though that's just impulse. How fitting that Wendla mentions the crazy thing before Scotty does; her denial makes her look that much more guilty, and he narrows his eyes at her.

"You sound crazy," Scotty says carefully, watching her closely. "And you're not dead, okay? Stop saying you're dead; that's freaking me out." It isn't the only thing that's freaking him out, but it's the most problematic because it sounds the most like a scary movie, and that is not okay. "I'm not dead. Definitely wasn't dead when I went to bed, definitely wasn't dead when I woke up. So this isn't the afterlife, okay?"

He backtracks through the crazy things Wendla just said and settles on the most concrete one; he tries to focus on logic and not running away from her. "What year did you think it was when you left?" he asks, trying to calm himself down.

[longblueshadows]

"Well, to me you sound awfully crazy!" Wendla said defensively, absently running the fabric of her skirt between her fingers. "Because the last I knew it was 1892 and you don't just faint and wake up a hundred years later!"

Wendla hugged her arms across her chest, chills running through her. "And I don't like to think I'm dead either," she added bitterly. "It's not like I was asking to die. I'm just saying. You may be certain that you were fine when you went to sleep, but me -- I wasn't falling asleep. I can't help it if that's the last thing I swore I knew for certain. I can't be alive now -- not one hundred years after I was sure I was dying." She gave a frustrated sigh but it was hard to appear too annoyed on top of this feeling of dread and fear. "But I'm here, aren't I? Somehow. Same --" She frowned, pushing back the sickened memory of the circumstances of her death and finding it all too easy to just forget. It felt like far away. "Almost the same I was yesterday. So I don't see why it should bother you so much. I'm not a ghost, after all." She stepped forward, finally breaking the distance between them to reach out and prod his arm, satisfied to feel him there.

Maybe she was crazy, but she had no way of knowing, and no way of proving to him or herself that she wasn't, except that it didn't seem so unbelievable on top of everything they'd seen.

[caterwaiter]

Scotty jerks away from her reflexively and takes another step backward, holding his hand out in front of him. "It matters because it's really creepy. We just show up at this place and you think you're dead, walking around and talking? Yeah, it matters if I'm stuck here with a corpse," he tells her warily, not trusting her much at all now, not when she's convinced she's from -- what was it -- 1890?

"You're right; people don't wake up 100 years later. If you're from wherever you say you're from, can you prove it?" he asks her doubtfully, raising an eyebrow. "I can prove I'm right." He takes his cell phone out and opens it up, pointing at the date in the display. "See? And you wouldn't have cell phones in 18whatever anyway."

Maybe he's being mean but she's scaring him and she's proving to be insane and that's an important issue to take into consideration. Maybe she isn't like Scotty; maybe she's some plant sent here by whoever sent Scotty here to lure him into the house or something.

[longblueshadows]

"What does creepy matter!" Wendla argued. "This house, this whole town, is creepy. Why does it even matter anymore?" She resisted the urge to stomp her foot in a childlike manner, instead crossing her arms and rocking on her heels some more. "I'm not a corpse," she added, glaring, as though she had been personally insulted somehow.

When Scotty pulled out the phone she moved backward, bumping into the desk. She leaned forward to peer at the screen before leaning back again, shaking her head. "I don't even know what that is," she said defensively. "What do you want from me? I'm sorry I didn't think to put a calendar from 1892 in my pockets before I left!" Wendla grabbed at her skirts to emphasize that she didn't even have any pockets to begin with and marched past Scotty and into the next room. As if she needed to feel more alienated in this place she had the only... the only other person at all here accusing her of being... crazy or a liar. Wendla had no choice but to put up with this reality but she did have a choice of whether she was going to deal with that.

[caterwaiter]

"It matters because you're here talking to me, because you're the only other person here, and I want to know that I can trust you!" he snaps at her, though he falls silent as she backs away from the phone. It could all be an act, just an act; she could be pretending she doesn't know, or she could be crazy and really doesn't know on a conscious level. He snaps his phone shut and turns it over in his hands, then strides into the next room.

"Well, tell me how I'm supposed to believe in time travel," he asks her, sounding more calm, but his tone still strained. "How am I supposed to believe that you're from the past? That's even crazier than all of this." He slips his phone back into his pocket and then looks around the living room; he spies something that looks like a TV Guide on the TV stand and he snatches it up.

It isn't hard to find dates in TV schedules, and he flips through page after page of days in 1986. He pales and starts to feel sick and confused because who keeps old TV guides with the TV and the remote? He swallows thickly and holds the book out to Wendla.

"I think... It's 1986. I went to bed in 2007. When did you say... you're... from?" he asks, uncomfortable with the sentence.

[longblueshadows]

"I can't help it if it's true," Wendla retorted, ignoring Scotty and staring at some trinkets on a shelf though she wasn't really taking in anything she was seeing.

When he spoke again, she turned slowly, hearing the change in his tone. She resisted to urge to snap that she wouldn't be alive in 1986 either before she really took in what he was saying. "1892," she repeated.

[caterwaiter]

Scotty looks at her for a long moment and decides just to drop the insanity of her claim for the moment because slowly he's starting to wonder if maybe she isn't the only crazy one. He finally looks back at the guide in his hands, shaking his head as he flips through the pages again. "I mean... A newspaper and a TV guide aren't really definitive proof of anything but why would anyone have an old TV guide with their TV?" he asks her, watching her closely for signs of comprehension or misunderstanding. If she's from 1892, do they have TVs? He bets not, though even beginning to accept that she's right is impossible and insane.

[longblueshadows]

"I don't know what that is," Wendla replied uncomfortably, looking away from the discomforting intensity of Scotty's stare and fidgeting. And Scotty kept telling her she was talking crazy. After a moment she cautiously approached Scotty and sat on the arm of the couch. She leaned back a little and could see her reflection in this thing Scotty kept calling a TV -- she couldn't imagine what it was for. "Is it really so important?" she said quietly, her eyes darting around the room, along the ceiling, not sure what she expected to see.

[caterwaiter]

"Is it really all that important if we're... time travelers?" Scotty rephrases her question in a tone that clearly implies he thinks it's a silly one, though he isn't being mean or skeptical of her anymore. Not when this is so... insane. "I remember it being 2007. So far I haven't seen anything else..."

He trails off, something wrong with what he had been about to say. There was something he'd overlooked, something he didn't really notice though he'd seen it; it just got filed away in his mind without much alarm. A calendar. There had been a calendar in the kitchen, hadn't there? He hadn't thought to look at it because of the fridge and eerieness; he'd been distracted, but now -- now he remembers it. He looks at her, excited and nervous, and he sets the TV guide back.

"I think I saw a calendar in the kitchen. I didn't think to look because it isn't like I'd be able to understand the months, but I didn't think about... the year. Come on," he says and heads off for the kitchen, not sure if she'd follow him and not sure if it's necessary.

[longblueshadows]

"Not important to our survival at this moment," Wendla retorted, looking at Scotty pointedly. She wasn't particularly excited about the calendar either, but as Scotty walked out of the room, a growing curiosity and a fear of being alone made her hop off the couch and hurry after him.

The calendar, at least, was something that she knew from her time, and she peered at it curiously. It felt strange to touch anything, but she snatched it off the wall anyway, closing it and looking at the cover. "1986," she said, looking at Scotty curiously. "What if it really is... 2007. This place is empty, after all, goodness knows how long it's been empty -- but that's a very long time apart."