Strangetown Asylum, part six
I could feel the heat between Melissa and my husband. Husband.
Between Melissa and Ripp. How could they not sense it? With their lycan traits, could they be oblivious to it?
Perhaps it was the Asylum that dampened their senses, or the madness that threatened.
The madness that was everywhere, that constantly ate at their thoughts, seeking to control them.
I found myself drawn more and more to the greenhouse, where the plants flourished. Especially those ones that I'd never seen or heard of before. They seemed almost alive, sentient.
I didn't understand them, but I knew I didn't need to. I just had to nurture them.
Just like I had to nurture the residents. With the horrors they'd seen and experienced, it was no wonder that they were reaching new lows. Poor Vidcund took to talking to the plants, when he could rouse himself out of his stupor.
Kathryn had shaken off her demons, and was able to help in the kitchen again.
Ripp's mental state continued to fluctuate, and while I tried to help him as much as possible, I didn't want to play favourites.
I could only help them as much as they wanted to be helped.
And even though I had lost far too many of my charges; even with my link to the Asylum and from there to my charges;
with all I had to do in the Asylum, I couldn't always be there for them.
I knew how conflicted Ripp was, trying to assimilate who he was before his breakdown, to who he was in here...to being married. Which, to his knowledge, was as serious and as binding as any other marriage.
Yet his nature rebelled at such constriction. His love for me and his attraction to Melissa tortured him.
My free time - when I wasn't tending to the garden, the cleaning or the residents - was little. Inki refused to try to improve her mental state. She hovered on the brink for most of the day, ignoring my pleas to stop, to try to focus.
Leaving them was painful. It was literally painful. It felt like I was running away with a rope tied around my waist, that stretched just far enough to let me go to work, but that could snap at any time, jerking me back.
But I had to leave them, I had to be able to pay for their needs, to ensure that they wouldn't be cast out onto the street. I couldn't let that happen.
I couldn't leave them in the state they were in. I needed to help them. I wanted to cure them.
I wanted to get out, to go, to leave...but I couldn't.
And if I was tied to the Asylum, then so were they.
I couldn't believe what I felt, what I knew. I was working hard, trying to earn enough money to keep us afloat.
And Melissa was making her move.
I'd never felt such jealousy, such anger, such fear in my life. It reared up unexpectedly, and I made a mess of it at the restaurant, knocking over stacks of freshly cleaned dishes, and trays of produce. My boss yelled at me, humiliating me.
But I could only focus on my anger, and their exquisite pleasure. Because it was good. So very, very good. It was Ripp doing what he did best, how could it be anything but exquisite?
Now I was conflicted.
Who was I to be jealous? I had only married Ripp to bring him out of the depths of insanity. Certainly, I was attracted to him. I might even love him. I certainly lusted for him, and liked him.
But it wasn't real...was it?
The smugness of Melissa's behaviour grated.
They continued to flaunt their desires while I finished my shift.
They didn't care if the other residents saw...and I knew that. I couldn't tell what hurt more. Knowing what they did, or knowing how they felt.
Jamie was in distress, and I had felt that, been aware of it, but her needs had been overshadowed by those carnal urges.
She had sunk even lower than what I thought possible.
I ached for not being able to help her. I didn't know if I could help her if I was there, but not being able to be near her, not being able to help her, it gnawed at me. I needed to get home. But given my poor performance, my boss docked my pay for the day. I couldn't risk losing the job by leaving early.
I felt some vindication when I could sense Melissa's pain. Even though she wasn't upset about what she did, I bitterly cherished her sadness.
I was glad to not be there, however, when the change took place again. Being outnumbered by hungry, desperate lycans was not something I enjoyed.
Inki could no longer fight the power of the Asylum. She had struggled against it, but now the full power of the lycan came over her.
However, that was no help against the dead.
The lycans could not fight the need to howl any more than they could fight the need to breathe.
But that need to howl sent them over the edge. During the day, they had been teetering...but one howl was enough to tip the scales. The constant howling kept them in a state of terror, and the need to howl grew stronger, pushing them into a downward spiral.
I needed to get home, to help them, to save them. But I couldn't.
Only Vidcund seemed immune to the terror night could bring, and lost himself in exercise, as the others lost themselves into insanity.
I did not know how to explain Jamie's collapse to my workmate. I just flubbed some line about heatstroke. What could I say? My workmate didn't want to know, I could tell. She didn't even want to turn the engine off as I got out. She let the car idle, and then drove off quickly, swerving around Jamie.
I couldn't blame her.
Now I was back, I didn't know what to do. I couldn't let on that I knew what happened. They couldn't know about that connection.
So I let my actions speak, letting Melissa know that Ripp was mine. I might as well have peed on him, as I was marking my territory. As a lycan, she'd surely understand that.
He was mine.
I knew I had his attention, so there was only one other thing to do, to re-establish myself in his thoughts. As the leader of this little pack.
I needed to rebuild that bond, that connection. I needed to make a new one. I knew that it wasn't the wisest thing to do. I knew that I shouldn't. But I needed to.
I loved him. The realisation nearly floored me.
I knew there was no turning back. I had committed myself to him in ways I had never expected, never planned on.
And he didn't know it.
But it felt right.
While I slept through the night, content in my love,
the terror continued.
And I did not care.
Notes:
- Melissa! You naughty minx! You set out to seduce him, and you did. At least you waited until I'd left the house. That was quite cannily done, I've got to say. She and Ripp and both unrepentant about, and my sim knows nothing about it.
- Jamie just can't seem to get out of the red. And she hates the howling. It doesn't help that all the things she wants, she can't have, either. I thought the car might run over her, but I had to move it to the other side of her so it would go.
- Vidcund spent pretty much all day doing ballet. He just wanted to keep earning skill points, so he did.
- All through this, I kept getting pop ups about Ripp and Vidcund having a birthday the next day, that Ripp had lost a grade because he'd skipped school, and the school bus turned up. I used insim to make their ages adult (even though they already were), but that didn't fix it. cindyanne1 told me that Vidcund is borked a bit when you use inteen, and to spawn their biological clocks and then put them away to fix it. And that seems to have worked - hooray! Still, it was funny watching the bus pull up. I was tempted to let Ripp go to school, using the theory that he was so desperate for attention he would hit on high school girls. But that's a little creepy. Besides, he's not allowed to leave the house, mwahahaha.
- My sim stayed naked after the shower and macked on Ripp all by herself, too. I like how she did that in front of Melissa.
- Lampshades and flour babies EVERYWHERE. Constantly.
- I have another update ready to go tomorrow, and I might do a bloopers post for these guys too. Though I might save that til the end, we'll see.
- I only had to tweak these guys a little (after the great computer fail of '09), because I hadn't played them as much as my other neighbourhoods, so I only had to fix it a little to get it back to where it was meant to be. I really don't know if I'll be able to get all that data back from that drive, so I might try to recreate/rebuild the sims and lots that I need in Dear Diary/House of Trouser, though Dear Diary will have some plot changes, I think. Anyway - more of that soon, I hope!
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