Falling apart at the seams
ICly private. Also, written during a scene that will be posted shortly.
Man, I'm screwed. Or going crazy. Or most likely both.
I don't know what the hell happened. Went out to play some vids a few days ago. Pocket full of quarters, all set for the night. And this game attacked me. Nearly suffocated me. Except it didn't.
Because there was no video game there. One minute, I'm fighting for my next breath against this thing crawling out of this machine, trying to kill me. The next minute, I'm cowering in a corner, starting at... nothing. There was no game there at all.
And the losing my mind doesn't bother me half so much as realizing that I totally lost control of my powers while I was... having this mental seizure. I destroyed the floor. Managed to get out before anyone caught me. But I don't know what caused it. One minute, I'm playing games, next minute, I'm staring at melted linoleum trying to figure out what the hell just happened to me.
I need to talk to someone. But how do you say, "Hey, I'm going crazy. Want to help me pick out a loony bin?" And my powers. Jean and Scott think I've made a lot of progress. Hate to tell them we're back to square one. A month before graduation.
And then there's that whole other thing. I'm sure Jean or Prof. X would want to look into my mind. Why did I take that card?
< NYC > Rad Arcades - Main Room
Where there's Quarter Machines and machines that go Beep in the night, there's bound to be teenagers gathering. And this is where John can be found on said School night. And there's worse places to be, one supposes. He's currently huddled over a joystick, punching buttons on the panel as his character jumpkicks the opponent for a killing blow. He leans back, reaching for his coke, then deciding better, actually pulls himself off the stool to get a full stretch.
A usual spot for Jason is yawning in the corner, night or day, and the lateness of the hour and the apathy Jason feels toward beeping games (albeit he did spend a few odd quarters on Zelda) means that he is, indeed, yawning in the corner, watching the teenage movement with indifferent eyes and considering a different sort of game playing before he goes to bed. After all, in a sense, the world is his to toy with. John's movement away from the joystick marks him as a target for no other reason than he's, ah, standing up, while others are not. Hmmmmm. This may take a moment of thought.
Enough Mortal Kombat for the day, time for something else. John drops the remaining quarters back into his pocket, and begins to wander the room in search of something a bit more involved. He passes by the games with toy guns dangling from the control panels, past the dancing games, rolling his eyes at the group gathered around it. Something he's not played before, maybe.
Oh, but is there anything new under the sun? Perhaps. Jason gradually "fades out" until he's invisibly tailing John on his quest. And lo, John. Look. Tucked a bit behind the old Capcom console is something . . . different. Instead of the black-walled, anime-girled decaled thing in front of it, this console is walled blue and is otherwise undecorated, save for a title banner plastered on its front, which says Volvox Globulator and is decorated by a green round blob hovering up and to the side of the title. There is a realistic looking plastic gun in a holster instead of a joystick.
Oh ho, what is this? John turns a corner, stopping at the plain blue box which shouldn't captivate his attention as much as it does. A new game. Yaay. Should be worth a few quarters to try it out. He crosses the few paces to it, lifting the gun and running a finger along the barrel with appreciation. Finally, something that doesn't look like the Wild West meets Lazer Tag. He pulls the quarters out of his pocket, glancing around for the deposit and tosses the required number in.
Bzzt! The formerly nearly-blank screen with, again, just the title blinking across it, blares brightly green before the sudden color dribbles off the side in something that looks oddly like liquid flame and isn't nearly as pixellated as it should be. A tinny music that sounds derivitive of Jaws plays in the darkness, and then swells to a midi-ed Rite of Spring. Loud. And popping out from the center of the screen comes a series of rules, white text on black. Shoot everything that pops up on screen. If anything gets too close, you die. You have one life, and unlimited bullets. Use them wisely. The gun turns warm in John's hands.
Well, this could get exciting. John nods appreciatively at the screen, his trigger finger itching to start as he reads through the instructional text. Not all that closely, mind you. He /is/ a teenager, after all. His gaze flickers momentarily to the gun, then back to the screen. Let's do this.
The screen again goes black. The music stills. To the impatient, it might look like the game decided to break . . . but then, from the depths, comes a small green writhing blob, little more than a dot, but growing. A hard hit, although it's getting easier by the second. And almost as soon as that enters the screen, so do three others, tinier, but growing at the same rate. The music rises.
John scowls as the screen goes blank, then peers at the blob, then blobs on screen. "Man," he mutters. "So much for the cool gun. Green blobs?" Nonetheless, he takes aim, and shoots, missing the first couple shots until the blob grows close enough to target. Then his aim gets better.
Clearish goop splatters the screen with, again, realism more appropriate to more modern games. But where it died so messily, three pop up from its remains. At a nearer distance, they're not blobs so much as clusters of tenticles, feeling outward. They move more rapidly. The gun, after being shot, just gets hotter, although not uncomfortably so yet.
Eww, gross! And the gross factor, of course, draws him in, as he grips te gun in both hands, eyes darting back and forth, taking quick aim and shooting. The state of the gun hasn't quite registered yet--heat all being relative to John anyways, and right now, his attention is captivated by the colored electronic dots blipping across the screen. Bang, bang, bang.
And with every shot, three more plop into being at exactly the same place, until the screen becomes crowded and crowded and more crowded with green tentacled spheres. In fact, as they grow closer and closer, feeling through the remaining goop, some of the tentacles start to come /out/ of the screen.
Way, cool. 3D. Soon, John is just shooting randomly, as fast as his quickly-cramping finger will allow. The screen's mostly blurred now anyways, and there's that awful feeling in your stomach of knowing you're going to have to start at the beginning again. He's leaning back now, as far as the chained fun will allow, shooting randomly. Woah.
And they keep coming and coming, shoving out /of/ the screen and pressing toward John, popping and possibly splattering him when hit, the tentacles extending and extending and as their numbers grow and grow, the tentacles probably grow numerous and close enough to not only start touching John but possibly start wrapping around him. And should he let go of the chained gun, he will find his fingers too well and strangely connected to it to actually let go. Furthermore, there is a wall behind him that wasn't there before, which blocks off this from the rest of the arcade, even that Capcom game.
This is no trick of the eyes. John's heart is pounding in his ears with each shot of the gun as each explosion causes the green goo to explode across is face, slowly dripping down. He's twisting this way and that, yanking at the gun his hands refuse to let go. He can't break his gaze with the green-eyed monster on screen. Instinctively, he tries to reach for his pocket, but the chain isn't quite long enough to allow for a fingerless grip. He doesn't call out, but his breathing is beginning to sound belabored, face contorted with stress.
Dang, I mean, this is pretty intense, isn't it? And a good soldier's canny enough to keep shooting . . . only not, because we're seeing exactly how effective that was. Jason watches invisibly, his face contorting into a terribly amused grin as the huge mass of tentacled globes, apparently sensing exhaustion, crowd in in earnest, no longer making tentative overtures toward touching and restraining, but whipping now very long, rope-strong feelers around John's chest, throat, and head.
John is not contortionish, but it's amazing what the human body can do under duress. And if any observer was amused before, John's current antics will have them in stiches. Though he can't let go of the gun, he can stop shooting for the moment. And one leg is currently thrown up on the console, lifting his hip high enough to attempt to plunge the two free outer fingers into his jacket pocket. There's got to be something important in there, right? Aha! They connect with the metallic zippo, slowly sliding it from his pocket, only to have it slip from the tenuous grip and clatter to the floor. His eyes are wild, on the verge of panicked--the other side of it, of course--as reason has fallen to the linoleum with the lighter.
How interesting. A lighter? What on earth does the boy think he can do with that? Does he think the creatures are flammable? In any case, Jason looks at this as an admirable, but too weak attempt and it's only fair to move the game toward the appropriate ending, instead of leaving John in his current suspenseful frenzy. Helplessness is a rotten feeling, but at least it prompts one to lay down and stop fighting. And John is beginning to look like a horse spooked one too many times and on the verge of frothing blood at the mouth from a burst heart or whatever those race horses in dramatic sob stories die of. The masses press John to the wall, lashing him to it with less limb like and more adhesive tentacles, moving from his shoulders down threateningly toward his waist, while the limb like tentacles only tighten around his throat, mouth, and ribs. Was that a creak?
Or a crack? Ribs? It is getting increasingly harder to breath, now pressed between a wall and a soft place. He can't scream, he can't move his hands, his upper body. He slides a leg out, trying to draw the lighter back toward him, after several attempts, finally catching it under his shoe and pulling it toward him. But it's still on the floor, where his hands just won't reach. All praise be to the maker of self-igniting zippos and to the wise forethought of that investment rather than a cheap 7-11 brand. If only he can get it vertical. He kicks at one of his shoes until it falls off, leaving one socked foot attempting to prop the lighter against his shoe.
This fellow has a truly odd obsession with lighters. Jason furrows his brow, and then the grin returns. The pressure on John against the wall only increases, with somewhat more weight and oomph. You can almost count the seconds you have remaining to have your sternum still seperated from your spine and not squashed together like the halves of a half-cooked pancake. Yes, count them on your fingers. Heh heh, let's see what lighter boy does, if he doesn't black out first.
John's vision is starting to blur around the edges. Thankfully, in addition to his other talents, he has excellent tactile sensation in his toes. Or at least enough to finally flip that lid back, sending that tiny, hopefully life-saving, flicker of flame at his feet. Which is just enough for John. The flames swirl around his legs, leaping up in a fiery whirlwind. Pity, those were nice pants too.
Did he just . . . light himself on fire? Jason is actually reduced to a gape, until his brain catches up with his first reaction and he realizes that unless this fellow commonly wears gasoline embedded in his clothing, that is much too much of a bonfire to be natural. Jason is torn between letting this possible mutant win (assuming he has not just . . . incinerated himself) and crushing him against the wall. John's brain might not be able to tell the difference enough to -- but Jason doesn't want to die here from a mere misunderstanding. The tentacles and the masses behind them swell and pop and sizzle into foul smelling steam. This is all accompanied by a high pitched alien screech, of course.
It's working, it's working. And man, if this ruins his jacket, John's going to be mad. He might sue the owner. Then again, he might anyways. Or at least such thoughts /will/ run through John's head in about an hour's time. Right now, it's gasping for breath, gagging at the odor, and whacking at the remaining tenticles with the butt of the gun--all the while, the linoleum at his feet begins to melt and peel back under the heat.
Jason's eyes are doing their level best not to bug out. Well, well, well. Pop pop pop pop. The popping becomes all the more rapid under the heat -- which Jason can well feel over where he is, even, until there appears to be nothing left but a series of swiftly evaporating puddles and the gun in John's hand. Which will now come out of . . his hand.
John drops the gun like a--well, not a smoldering iron, because that's obviously not bothering him. But like some other distateful and painful thing, nearly throwing it at the console. The flames around simmer down as he closes his eyes and collapses against the wall behind him, the effort of quenching them nearly more than he can handle. And as awful as the machine is, for the moment, as the last flames die, John can only sit there, huddled on the ground, trembling. Then, reason does begin to overcome axhaustion and he scrambles several feet away, leaning back against some other arcade game and staring at the dread blue box.
Jason doesn't recognize his own discomfort until he catches himself breathing hard. He quickly flattens out his breathing. He, after all, has no reason to be breathing hard. That was, he must, however, admit, a lot of fire. And while any damage to John wouldn't have been real, the warped and blasted linoleum is. Jason begins to slowly fade out both the wall and the blue box. Just a panic attack. You didn't actually see anything. But man, look at this . . . mess. Jason begins breathing a bit rapidly again. Ah well, who knows why?
As the illusion begins to fade, John's eyes peer all the harder at the blank space beyond and the charred remains of the floor. His body is beyond trembling, shaking as he sits in the corner. By some miracle (or demonic influence), no one has yet to come over or notice. Except John, who is staring at the melted floor, and the exposed cement, in wide-eyed horror. What the hell. His head drops to his hands, the smell of smoke filling his nostrils as he attempts to take deep steady breaths.
Jason picks himself up, silently, his discomfort only rising when John sits like . . . that instead of leaving in a huff, or even frightened as Jason expected. This is all starting to be too persistently grounded in reality, as he supposes Sabby would insist it was. He supposes this would count as playing games with people's lives. Still. A little scare. Can't be that big of a deal in the long run. Maybe the kid will avoid playing video games for a while, so what? That's probably good for him. Jason strides out of the arcade, although he can't quite resist a couple of queasy glances over his shoulder. Well, too late now.
Not too many moments later, John pushes himself up off the floor. Have to get out of here. The remaining quarters jangle in his pocket as he slips between the machines toward the door, grimmacing as the bell sounds as he pushes it open. In a moment, he's out on the street, walking away from the place as quickly as his legs can carry him without looking obscenely suspicious.
Man, I'm screwed. Or going crazy. Or most likely both.
I don't know what the hell happened. Went out to play some vids a few days ago. Pocket full of quarters, all set for the night. And this game attacked me. Nearly suffocated me. Except it didn't.
Because there was no video game there. One minute, I'm fighting for my next breath against this thing crawling out of this machine, trying to kill me. The next minute, I'm cowering in a corner, starting at... nothing. There was no game there at all.
And the losing my mind doesn't bother me half so much as realizing that I totally lost control of my powers while I was... having this mental seizure. I destroyed the floor. Managed to get out before anyone caught me. But I don't know what caused it. One minute, I'm playing games, next minute, I'm staring at melted linoleum trying to figure out what the hell just happened to me.
I need to talk to someone. But how do you say, "Hey, I'm going crazy. Want to help me pick out a loony bin?" And my powers. Jean and Scott think I've made a lot of progress. Hate to tell them we're back to square one. A month before graduation.
And then there's that whole other thing. I'm sure Jean or Prof. X would want to look into my mind. Why did I take that card?
< NYC > Rad Arcades - Main Room
Where there's Quarter Machines and machines that go Beep in the night, there's bound to be teenagers gathering. And this is where John can be found on said School night. And there's worse places to be, one supposes. He's currently huddled over a joystick, punching buttons on the panel as his character jumpkicks the opponent for a killing blow. He leans back, reaching for his coke, then deciding better, actually pulls himself off the stool to get a full stretch.
A usual spot for Jason is yawning in the corner, night or day, and the lateness of the hour and the apathy Jason feels toward beeping games (albeit he did spend a few odd quarters on Zelda) means that he is, indeed, yawning in the corner, watching the teenage movement with indifferent eyes and considering a different sort of game playing before he goes to bed. After all, in a sense, the world is his to toy with. John's movement away from the joystick marks him as a target for no other reason than he's, ah, standing up, while others are not. Hmmmmm. This may take a moment of thought.
Enough Mortal Kombat for the day, time for something else. John drops the remaining quarters back into his pocket, and begins to wander the room in search of something a bit more involved. He passes by the games with toy guns dangling from the control panels, past the dancing games, rolling his eyes at the group gathered around it. Something he's not played before, maybe.
Oh, but is there anything new under the sun? Perhaps. Jason gradually "fades out" until he's invisibly tailing John on his quest. And lo, John. Look. Tucked a bit behind the old Capcom console is something . . . different. Instead of the black-walled, anime-girled decaled thing in front of it, this console is walled blue and is otherwise undecorated, save for a title banner plastered on its front, which says Volvox Globulator and is decorated by a green round blob hovering up and to the side of the title. There is a realistic looking plastic gun in a holster instead of a joystick.
Oh ho, what is this? John turns a corner, stopping at the plain blue box which shouldn't captivate his attention as much as it does. A new game. Yaay. Should be worth a few quarters to try it out. He crosses the few paces to it, lifting the gun and running a finger along the barrel with appreciation. Finally, something that doesn't look like the Wild West meets Lazer Tag. He pulls the quarters out of his pocket, glancing around for the deposit and tosses the required number in.
Bzzt! The formerly nearly-blank screen with, again, just the title blinking across it, blares brightly green before the sudden color dribbles off the side in something that looks oddly like liquid flame and isn't nearly as pixellated as it should be. A tinny music that sounds derivitive of Jaws plays in the darkness, and then swells to a midi-ed Rite of Spring. Loud. And popping out from the center of the screen comes a series of rules, white text on black. Shoot everything that pops up on screen. If anything gets too close, you die. You have one life, and unlimited bullets. Use them wisely. The gun turns warm in John's hands.
Well, this could get exciting. John nods appreciatively at the screen, his trigger finger itching to start as he reads through the instructional text. Not all that closely, mind you. He /is/ a teenager, after all. His gaze flickers momentarily to the gun, then back to the screen. Let's do this.
The screen again goes black. The music stills. To the impatient, it might look like the game decided to break . . . but then, from the depths, comes a small green writhing blob, little more than a dot, but growing. A hard hit, although it's getting easier by the second. And almost as soon as that enters the screen, so do three others, tinier, but growing at the same rate. The music rises.
John scowls as the screen goes blank, then peers at the blob, then blobs on screen. "Man," he mutters. "So much for the cool gun. Green blobs?" Nonetheless, he takes aim, and shoots, missing the first couple shots until the blob grows close enough to target. Then his aim gets better.
Clearish goop splatters the screen with, again, realism more appropriate to more modern games. But where it died so messily, three pop up from its remains. At a nearer distance, they're not blobs so much as clusters of tenticles, feeling outward. They move more rapidly. The gun, after being shot, just gets hotter, although not uncomfortably so yet.
Eww, gross! And the gross factor, of course, draws him in, as he grips te gun in both hands, eyes darting back and forth, taking quick aim and shooting. The state of the gun hasn't quite registered yet--heat all being relative to John anyways, and right now, his attention is captivated by the colored electronic dots blipping across the screen. Bang, bang, bang.
And with every shot, three more plop into being at exactly the same place, until the screen becomes crowded and crowded and more crowded with green tentacled spheres. In fact, as they grow closer and closer, feeling through the remaining goop, some of the tentacles start to come /out/ of the screen.
Way, cool. 3D. Soon, John is just shooting randomly, as fast as his quickly-cramping finger will allow. The screen's mostly blurred now anyways, and there's that awful feeling in your stomach of knowing you're going to have to start at the beginning again. He's leaning back now, as far as the chained fun will allow, shooting randomly. Woah.
And they keep coming and coming, shoving out /of/ the screen and pressing toward John, popping and possibly splattering him when hit, the tentacles extending and extending and as their numbers grow and grow, the tentacles probably grow numerous and close enough to not only start touching John but possibly start wrapping around him. And should he let go of the chained gun, he will find his fingers too well and strangely connected to it to actually let go. Furthermore, there is a wall behind him that wasn't there before, which blocks off this from the rest of the arcade, even that Capcom game.
This is no trick of the eyes. John's heart is pounding in his ears with each shot of the gun as each explosion causes the green goo to explode across is face, slowly dripping down. He's twisting this way and that, yanking at the gun his hands refuse to let go. He can't break his gaze with the green-eyed monster on screen. Instinctively, he tries to reach for his pocket, but the chain isn't quite long enough to allow for a fingerless grip. He doesn't call out, but his breathing is beginning to sound belabored, face contorted with stress.
Dang, I mean, this is pretty intense, isn't it? And a good soldier's canny enough to keep shooting . . . only not, because we're seeing exactly how effective that was. Jason watches invisibly, his face contorting into a terribly amused grin as the huge mass of tentacled globes, apparently sensing exhaustion, crowd in in earnest, no longer making tentative overtures toward touching and restraining, but whipping now very long, rope-strong feelers around John's chest, throat, and head.
John is not contortionish, but it's amazing what the human body can do under duress. And if any observer was amused before, John's current antics will have them in stiches. Though he can't let go of the gun, he can stop shooting for the moment. And one leg is currently thrown up on the console, lifting his hip high enough to attempt to plunge the two free outer fingers into his jacket pocket. There's got to be something important in there, right? Aha! They connect with the metallic zippo, slowly sliding it from his pocket, only to have it slip from the tenuous grip and clatter to the floor. His eyes are wild, on the verge of panicked--the other side of it, of course--as reason has fallen to the linoleum with the lighter.
How interesting. A lighter? What on earth does the boy think he can do with that? Does he think the creatures are flammable? In any case, Jason looks at this as an admirable, but too weak attempt and it's only fair to move the game toward the appropriate ending, instead of leaving John in his current suspenseful frenzy. Helplessness is a rotten feeling, but at least it prompts one to lay down and stop fighting. And John is beginning to look like a horse spooked one too many times and on the verge of frothing blood at the mouth from a burst heart or whatever those race horses in dramatic sob stories die of. The masses press John to the wall, lashing him to it with less limb like and more adhesive tentacles, moving from his shoulders down threateningly toward his waist, while the limb like tentacles only tighten around his throat, mouth, and ribs. Was that a creak?
Or a crack? Ribs? It is getting increasingly harder to breath, now pressed between a wall and a soft place. He can't scream, he can't move his hands, his upper body. He slides a leg out, trying to draw the lighter back toward him, after several attempts, finally catching it under his shoe and pulling it toward him. But it's still on the floor, where his hands just won't reach. All praise be to the maker of self-igniting zippos and to the wise forethought of that investment rather than a cheap 7-11 brand. If only he can get it vertical. He kicks at one of his shoes until it falls off, leaving one socked foot attempting to prop the lighter against his shoe.
This fellow has a truly odd obsession with lighters. Jason furrows his brow, and then the grin returns. The pressure on John against the wall only increases, with somewhat more weight and oomph. You can almost count the seconds you have remaining to have your sternum still seperated from your spine and not squashed together like the halves of a half-cooked pancake. Yes, count them on your fingers. Heh heh, let's see what lighter boy does, if he doesn't black out first.
John's vision is starting to blur around the edges. Thankfully, in addition to his other talents, he has excellent tactile sensation in his toes. Or at least enough to finally flip that lid back, sending that tiny, hopefully life-saving, flicker of flame at his feet. Which is just enough for John. The flames swirl around his legs, leaping up in a fiery whirlwind. Pity, those were nice pants too.
Did he just . . . light himself on fire? Jason is actually reduced to a gape, until his brain catches up with his first reaction and he realizes that unless this fellow commonly wears gasoline embedded in his clothing, that is much too much of a bonfire to be natural. Jason is torn between letting this possible mutant win (assuming he has not just . . . incinerated himself) and crushing him against the wall. John's brain might not be able to tell the difference enough to -- but Jason doesn't want to die here from a mere misunderstanding. The tentacles and the masses behind them swell and pop and sizzle into foul smelling steam. This is all accompanied by a high pitched alien screech, of course.
It's working, it's working. And man, if this ruins his jacket, John's going to be mad. He might sue the owner. Then again, he might anyways. Or at least such thoughts /will/ run through John's head in about an hour's time. Right now, it's gasping for breath, gagging at the odor, and whacking at the remaining tenticles with the butt of the gun--all the while, the linoleum at his feet begins to melt and peel back under the heat.
Jason's eyes are doing their level best not to bug out. Well, well, well. Pop pop pop pop. The popping becomes all the more rapid under the heat -- which Jason can well feel over where he is, even, until there appears to be nothing left but a series of swiftly evaporating puddles and the gun in John's hand. Which will now come out of . . his hand.
John drops the gun like a--well, not a smoldering iron, because that's obviously not bothering him. But like some other distateful and painful thing, nearly throwing it at the console. The flames around simmer down as he closes his eyes and collapses against the wall behind him, the effort of quenching them nearly more than he can handle. And as awful as the machine is, for the moment, as the last flames die, John can only sit there, huddled on the ground, trembling. Then, reason does begin to overcome axhaustion and he scrambles several feet away, leaning back against some other arcade game and staring at the dread blue box.
Jason doesn't recognize his own discomfort until he catches himself breathing hard. He quickly flattens out his breathing. He, after all, has no reason to be breathing hard. That was, he must, however, admit, a lot of fire. And while any damage to John wouldn't have been real, the warped and blasted linoleum is. Jason begins to slowly fade out both the wall and the blue box. Just a panic attack. You didn't actually see anything. But man, look at this . . . mess. Jason begins breathing a bit rapidly again. Ah well, who knows why?
As the illusion begins to fade, John's eyes peer all the harder at the blank space beyond and the charred remains of the floor. His body is beyond trembling, shaking as he sits in the corner. By some miracle (or demonic influence), no one has yet to come over or notice. Except John, who is staring at the melted floor, and the exposed cement, in wide-eyed horror. What the hell. His head drops to his hands, the smell of smoke filling his nostrils as he attempts to take deep steady breaths.
Jason picks himself up, silently, his discomfort only rising when John sits like . . . that instead of leaving in a huff, or even frightened as Jason expected. This is all starting to be too persistently grounded in reality, as he supposes Sabby would insist it was. He supposes this would count as playing games with people's lives. Still. A little scare. Can't be that big of a deal in the long run. Maybe the kid will avoid playing video games for a while, so what? That's probably good for him. Jason strides out of the arcade, although he can't quite resist a couple of queasy glances over his shoulder. Well, too late now.
Not too many moments later, John pushes himself up off the floor. Have to get out of here. The remaining quarters jangle in his pocket as he slips between the machines toward the door, grimmacing as the bell sounds as he pushes it open. In a moment, he's out on the street, walking away from the place as quickly as his legs can carry him without looking obscenely suspicious.