Post by Grimm on Apr 7, 2016 14:20:41 GMT -5
”I need this.”
It was not a request.
As if Grimm would ever make such an appeal.
As if Non Compos Mentis would ever consent to such a preposterous notion.
No, this was a self-imposed dictate as clean and clear as he could make it, from himself to himself. Grimm had witnessed just how easy it was for someone to make a wrong turn in their soiled boots and travel down that crooked road to irrelevance after one, and only one, significant loss. And he would not allow it to happen to him. He’d hang your own teeth on your front door first. Fortunately for all those involved, that would not be necessary.
Phinehas Dillinger sat with his legs crossed one late afternoon. He listened to the tick of a clock somewhere deep within the House of Grimm. He heard the house settle, even now, under the bombardment of a spring time wind. Branches knocked out a tattoo on the windows.
And he absorbed himself in the SNICKER-SNACK of a utility knife blade as it slid in and out of its housing. His thumb on the lever, up and down, over and over. The sound sparse and sinister. The sound treating you to a new cycle of night terrors.
~~~~~~~~~
The house was untouched. A place for everything, and everything in its place. But something was very, very wrong. The stove was cold. The windows shuttered. The loom silent.
The house was empty.
Phinehas moved from one room to another, each as barren as the last, his footsteps echoing across the poplar floors, before walking out onto the porch. The sun greeted him. A lawn of mosses and fungi ran down before him, and wildflowers dotted the field and hillside across the way. A smattering of townsfolk stood on the slope of the yard. One man, Mr. MacGregor himself, fresh from tilling his own fields, stepped forward. He wrung the hat in his hands and did not look at Phinehas. He focused his attention on a honeybee clambering across one of those little white clover flowers. Maybe, his line of thinking went, it would distract him enough to keep from feeling too much agony when Phinehas leapt off that porch onto him. ‘Don’t’ shoot the messenger’ had never been standard operating procedure in All Souls Hollow.
~~~~~~~~~
He focused on it, with some intensity. One would think, as meticulous as he was in most other avenues of life, that Phinehas would keep his knife well-oiled and clean. One would be incorrect. He ran his thumb along the shameful bits dried on the blade and watched the flakes swirl down to the floor. He turned it in his hand and watched the light gyre around the room.
The Science of Eight Limbs had always served him well. He could mold it based on the situation, just as he had modified the style so as to be “horrifyingly unnecessary,” as the trade papers described it after his performance at Trauma 189. It read as a judgment against his character, but Grimm was nothing if not pragmatic. It worked against Justin Kaard and Non Compos Mentis. It worked against the very odds piled up against him. He would continue to adjust and adapt until it worked against hatpins and sorcery.
Let’s recap: Saniti (that is, Nathan Saniti, not N. Saniti) got the girl, who now happens to be free from the Black Hand and a newly crowned champion, at that. He appears to have suppressed his dark side (The id? The ego?). Saniti and Starr do not have tag team titles to worry about anymore, so that should serve as something of a lifted burden. As fortunate as all these happenstances may be, it does beg the question: what is he fighting for now? Maybe just to keep all this at bay. Maybe it’s a ruse to keep The Stranger from…complicating things for him.
Just whistle while you work…
Maybe someone – or someones, or somethings - is striving to keep him occupied for devious purposes. Whatever the reason, fight Saniti will. And Grimm will be glad of it.
~~~~~~~~~
“Ruth’s gone, Phinehas. He…he took her.”
Clouds slid in over the hilltops and blanketed the sun in a thin layer of gauze. The trees’ shadows fell across the hollow and everything, and everyone, in it. Shifting, fragile shadows danced, weaving among themselves. Mercury in thermometers held steady but the crowd shuddered as if someone had just walked over each one of their graves.
He breathed in, and exhaled the vile.
“Who.”
It was uttered as a declaration. Not a question. Phinehas’s face lay as blank as ever, even more so if that was possible, but his eyes…an arsenic white calamity passed over the irises. It lasted only a moment but everyone saw it, just as everyone saw it broken up by iron ice picks, and the blue erupted in cold hard flames. No answer was forthcoming.
“Who.”
“Edmond Mather.”
Mr. MacGregor looked up. “The witch hunter.”
And then silence. No movement. Until the Phantom of the Backwoods faded into the house. The crowd gladly dispersed. The clouds and the shadows wavered as was their nature. Only the bees came back.
It was not a request.
As if Grimm would ever make such an appeal.
As if Non Compos Mentis would ever consent to such a preposterous notion.
No, this was a self-imposed dictate as clean and clear as he could make it, from himself to himself. Grimm had witnessed just how easy it was for someone to make a wrong turn in their soiled boots and travel down that crooked road to irrelevance after one, and only one, significant loss. And he would not allow it to happen to him. He’d hang your own teeth on your front door first. Fortunately for all those involved, that would not be necessary.
Phinehas Dillinger sat with his legs crossed one late afternoon. He listened to the tick of a clock somewhere deep within the House of Grimm. He heard the house settle, even now, under the bombardment of a spring time wind. Branches knocked out a tattoo on the windows.
And he absorbed himself in the SNICKER-SNACK of a utility knife blade as it slid in and out of its housing. His thumb on the lever, up and down, over and over. The sound sparse and sinister. The sound treating you to a new cycle of night terrors.
~~~~~~~~~
The house was untouched. A place for everything, and everything in its place. But something was very, very wrong. The stove was cold. The windows shuttered. The loom silent.
The house was empty.
Phinehas moved from one room to another, each as barren as the last, his footsteps echoing across the poplar floors, before walking out onto the porch. The sun greeted him. A lawn of mosses and fungi ran down before him, and wildflowers dotted the field and hillside across the way. A smattering of townsfolk stood on the slope of the yard. One man, Mr. MacGregor himself, fresh from tilling his own fields, stepped forward. He wrung the hat in his hands and did not look at Phinehas. He focused his attention on a honeybee clambering across one of those little white clover flowers. Maybe, his line of thinking went, it would distract him enough to keep from feeling too much agony when Phinehas leapt off that porch onto him. ‘Don’t’ shoot the messenger’ had never been standard operating procedure in All Souls Hollow.
~~~~~~~~~
He focused on it, with some intensity. One would think, as meticulous as he was in most other avenues of life, that Phinehas would keep his knife well-oiled and clean. One would be incorrect. He ran his thumb along the shameful bits dried on the blade and watched the flakes swirl down to the floor. He turned it in his hand and watched the light gyre around the room.
The Science of Eight Limbs had always served him well. He could mold it based on the situation, just as he had modified the style so as to be “horrifyingly unnecessary,” as the trade papers described it after his performance at Trauma 189. It read as a judgment against his character, but Grimm was nothing if not pragmatic. It worked against Justin Kaard and Non Compos Mentis. It worked against the very odds piled up against him. He would continue to adjust and adapt until it worked against hatpins and sorcery.
Let’s recap: Saniti (that is, Nathan Saniti, not N. Saniti) got the girl, who now happens to be free from the Black Hand and a newly crowned champion, at that. He appears to have suppressed his dark side (The id? The ego?). Saniti and Starr do not have tag team titles to worry about anymore, so that should serve as something of a lifted burden. As fortunate as all these happenstances may be, it does beg the question: what is he fighting for now? Maybe just to keep all this at bay. Maybe it’s a ruse to keep The Stranger from…complicating things for him.
Just whistle while you work…
Maybe someone – or someones, or somethings - is striving to keep him occupied for devious purposes. Whatever the reason, fight Saniti will. And Grimm will be glad of it.
~~~~~~~~~
“Ruth’s gone, Phinehas. He…he took her.”
Clouds slid in over the hilltops and blanketed the sun in a thin layer of gauze. The trees’ shadows fell across the hollow and everything, and everyone, in it. Shifting, fragile shadows danced, weaving among themselves. Mercury in thermometers held steady but the crowd shuddered as if someone had just walked over each one of their graves.
He breathed in, and exhaled the vile.
“Who.”
It was uttered as a declaration. Not a question. Phinehas’s face lay as blank as ever, even more so if that was possible, but his eyes…an arsenic white calamity passed over the irises. It lasted only a moment but everyone saw it, just as everyone saw it broken up by iron ice picks, and the blue erupted in cold hard flames. No answer was forthcoming.
“Who.”
“Edmond Mather.”
Mr. MacGregor looked up. “The witch hunter.”
And then silence. No movement. Until the Phantom of the Backwoods faded into the house. The crowd gladly dispersed. The clouds and the shadows wavered as was their nature. Only the bees came back.
