Work Text:
“Spyrosz.”
Rowell narrowed his eyes, blinking twice more to ensure he wasn’t hallucinating the carmine-outlined figure in front of him, seated lazily at a bar table. “Fuck, it’s you.” He glowers, hand darting to his pockets for any semblance of self-defense, finding no familiar shape of a multitool nor the boxy hilt of the sword. Well, this was a magnificent beginning . “Of all people to lucid-dream about…” He grimaces.
He almost laughs to spite the other when the other scowls at his friendly greeting, sarcastically answering. “Your sentiment is shared. To whom do I owe the pleasure of seeing your undeniably tangerine face here? Dead already?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Mister Lawrence. I sure didn’t come here of my own will considering you murdered everyone.” Rowell looked down to inspect himself, and unexpectedly, he found himself emanating a sharp orange glow, all the color of what should be his dark-gray hoodie he threw on before bed now replaced by even more ochre as if he were a spirit himself.
Now that was confusing. What could this be? He never thought lucid dreams could ever feel this real, nor had he ever dreamed about what was most likely his base-spirit form. Even with some concentration, Rowell couldn’t wipe away the smirking old murderer patiently awaiting some sort of reaction from him nor the rather inviting yet unnerving backdrop of a robust, vintage bar that trapped them both within red brick walls, he calculated.
So, it's not a normal lucid dream...
Wait a minute… He turns to look up at Lawrence, who scoffs knowingly. “Where am I?”
“My personal hell, I suppose, and you’re having a wonderful time outside your physical shell.” Lawrence hums, gesturing at himself and Rowell. “If you haven’t noticed or remembered already, you killed me successfully, unfortunately.” He toothily grins. “Congratulations. You’ve stopped the West Coast Killer and blocked me from exacting my useful and wondrous plans of freedom from that god. Quite an achievement, is it not?”
Rowell sighs. “And yet I see you here still going insane over some delusion, the irony. Should I stab you again or something?”
“Ah, if you think this is a sign I survived that blade of yours, you’re wrong. In fact, if Miss Martinez pulled off that stunt of hers again at this moment, I suppose it’d not be too far of a stretch to expect what remains of my soul would disintegrate into nothingness.” Lawrence summons a glass out of nowhere and pulls out a bottle of bourbon from a cabinet. “I suppose your dear mother and father never told you about it, did they?”
Rowell’s glare hardens as the spirit pops the top off the bottle, and pours himself a glass. “Well, they could’ve if you didn’t murder them as well.” He seethes, and he notes how Lawrence cocks his head to the side, as if confused.
“Spyrosz, I assure you, your parents weren’t of my doing.”
“Well, explain why my parents crashed into a Wyvern Industries truck? ” Rowell snarls, stepping closer to the man.
“The sideswipe crash was intentional.” Lawrence spoke, tone steely. “However, the death itself was not.”
“Well, why would you crash a vehicle into someone if you weren’t going to kill them?”
“The crash was to immobilize them, if you didn’t know, me and your parents are in…ah, what would dear Aimee say?” Lawrence ponders for a moment. “...Ah, in cahoots with each other, even before I killed them if you insist on that truth.”
“Then why?”
“Why, dead people don’t tell secrets!” Lawrence chortles, capping the bottle. “But in all sincerity, your parents were a riot to work with even before we started arguing with each other…” He stares off into the distance, gaze almost melancholic. “The argument was quite childish, in my mature opinion. But a well-timed car crash to keep them from running is much needed when you need to ensure all parties are secure from betraying the bloody little secrets we keep, don’t we?”
Rowell stares at the crimson-outlined figure in front of him, incredulous. So the reason his parents died in the first fucking place was because Lawrence wanted to make sure his parents kept quiet about his murders? It made an awful lot of sense, now Rowell had fully run the thought through his head. But a car crash just to keep the two of them in the same room as the fucking murderer?
“You’re insane.” Rowell hisses. “You went out to threaten my parents’ life just so you can make them sit down and talk out an argument with you? And in the process kill them?”
“Yes, and the murder was completely unintentional.” Lawrence takes a sip of his bourbon as if he didn’t expose his insanity moments earlier to the son of the people he murdered. “Trust! I purposefully calculated the entire encounter to just make sure they had to stay in the hospital for a day or two, just enough for me to break in and converse with them in a civil fashion.” He cracks a demented, cruel grin, which quickly falls as he continues. “Did you not see the deviancy between the cause of death and the actual crash investigation?”
“You crashed into them at full fucking speed- ” Rowell steps forward.
“I barely crashed into the back. And I’m fairly sure that the speedometer read 30 miles. ” Lawrence shrugs.
“You incinerated the entire backseat . ”
“That would be an insult to the results of actual incineration, which was much worse , the truck barely flattened half of the backseat. ” Lawrence takes another sip. “ Plus, the autopsy said both of their hearts just- stopped , no jutting bones to cut through the tissue, no head trauma, no history of heart disease or any medical complications, that small, little blood-pumper simply stopped and never got back up. How peculiar. I wonder if a simple crash to the back when neither of them were in the backseat, having air cushions activated in the front and the front side of the car unharmed and untouched could-...cause a miraculous case of cardiac arrest?”
Rowell simply resumes his sharp glare, arms crossed tightly into his chest. “You tell me.”
“As someone who wasn’t in medical, most likely not.” Lawrence tips the entire glass straight into his mouth, resuming after swallowing the burn he must be feeling in full force somehow . “So, shall we talk about our original topic of conversation or shall I sing and yodel praises of your parents until you wake up in a cold sweat?”
So this is a dream … a dream that somehow the murderer had hijacked into. Rowell grimaces. “Fine.” He concedes. “What about the sword that even the almighty serial killer who figured out immortality and how to walk as a demented red ghost whenever the heck they want can’t get up from one stab?”
Lawrence raises his eyebrows at his string of comments. “Peculiar way to compliment a man. Regardless, since I can’t, as you say, get up in the future, I might as well inform you, in the stead of your parents.” He pats the bar stool that stands next to his. “Sit down, I’m tired of seeing you stand there like those detectives did in my earlier questionings.”
Can I really trust this? Rowell eyes the seat with much suspicion.
“You look doubtful.”
“Well, why wouldn’t I?” Rowell snaps. “You were a horrible person to Inka- hell, everyone in general! You even murdered your wife !”
“I never respected Ms Izayoi regardless.” Lawrence replied blandly. “We were arranged, not only that, she was a hoe . A dirty, betraying bitch at that.”
“That does not justify killing someone!”
“I shall reiterate-” Lawrence taps his finger on the rim of his empty glass. “-dead people don’t tell secrets.”
“What about Inka then, huh? How do you justify abandoning your own daughter after using her?”
“What is between me and Aimee does not concern you, Spyrosz.” Lawrence puts down his glass with a resounding thunk. “There were circumstances that caused me to make mistakes in the past that, surprise surprise– I regret from the cold depths of my nonexistent heart.” His expression was nigh unreadable. “Now, shall we get on with the topic, or must we engage in questioning my mortal sins one by one wasting time before sundawn?”
Rowell squints, before reluctantly sitting down.
“Wonderful.” Lawrence snatches up another glass from nowhere, was it a party trick of some sort? Rowell wonders, but knowing the murderer he could do anything at this point and he wouldn’t be too shocked out of his mind. “Fancy bourbon?”
“I’m barely 19.” Rowell raises an eyebrow.
“Do you think I care?” Lawrence nudges the glass towards him. “German 7-year-olds drink alcohol like it’s water. Don’t be a wuss.”
“This is textbook peer pressure.” Rowell scrutinizes the glass with suspicion.
“It happens all the time, well, might I tell you a little secret: don’t start stabbing people because you got peer pressured.” Lawrence chuckles. “Do it just because you can.”
Silence. Awkward, awkward silence.
“You’re fucking messed up.” Rowell scrunches his nose. “...Do you have beer?”
“Plenty.” Lawrence reaches into the same cabinet again, and Rowell stretches to peer into its innards but finds only the void staring back at him. “Any particular taste?”
“Corona?”
“You’re disgusting.” Lawrence shook his head, pulling out a bottle regardless and placing it onto the bar table, sliding it towards him. “Help yourself.”
“Where do you even get this much alcohol? Thought this was hell.”
Sarcasm dripped from his dark tone. “Guess our god wants me to drink myself into a stupor, or whatever.”
Rowell swiftly catches the careening bottle, and eyes Lawrence distrustfully when he rummages for something else in the cabinets, hooking the side of his sneakers on the corner of his seat, eyes trained on the other’s every movement, ready to bolt at any moment-
“Don’t you need a bottle opener?” Lawrence shines the metallic round handle in the air seconds later, and Rowell silently breathes out a sigh of relief and re-dons his unperturbed facade without fail.
“No.” Rowell smirks. “Because I-” He picks up the bottle flippantly, spinning its cold, fragile shell in his clammy grasp, riding on the momentum of how the glassy surface slipped and slid in his loose grasp, before stopping it right-side up and jamming the edge of the cap on the sharp edge of the hardwood table in a smooth motion, the bottle cap flying off with a ping! “-can do this.”
The small, metallic seal landed perfectly on the table, rolling, spinning, before tipping to the side and falling dead with a dull clunk at the end of its impromptu pirouette. Certainly, a stylish way to crack a cold one, old sport!
…Do not look at me, Alexander. Go back.
Rowell glances at Lawrence in confusion, watching as he glares at something over his shoulder, and for a moment he can catch the other man’s expression in full light, without the usual shadow covering his eyes or his spirit exuding so much cumulative evil and malice the shadows oozed from his very being like a parasite of some sort, his eyes were always, under his expression, slightly russet, but from his observation they were a sickly, highlighter scarlet that shone like blazing spotlights, sharp, relentless and definitely unnatural. His eyes steeled, focused, and promised a violent end for any who crossed him. It almost felt like gazing at a natural predator’s side profile as they recoiled to pounce on their prey with pure, seething, animalistic rage-
What was this poor excuse of a murderer?
Rowell looks away before his everpresent, uncomfortable death-stare shifts back onto him, feeling an odd nausea bubble in his gut. “...Certainly a modern and fairly dangerous way to crack a beer.”
“Don’t knock it till you try it.” Rowell shrugs, pushing up his glasses from their precarious position on his nose, struggling valiantly to keep his voice steady as he examines how the orange glowing aura seemed to bounce and reflect in the glass. “So, are you going to tell me what’s the deal with the weird black sword I skewered your body through the chest with?”
Lawrence refills his glass, seemingly breaking out of whatever the heck of an episode took over the man, before swishing the gold-russet liquid in the clear container in contemplation. “That weapon of yours, or rather your parents’, dear Nyssa Vernon and Thomas Spyrosz, is a sword made with metal that is nigh-incomprehensible, harder, and more durable than diamond.” He takes a sip, still absorbed in his ramble, not noticing Rowell faintly choking on the burning liquid running down his throat at a very rapid consumption rate at the thought of a material even harder than diamond . Wasn’t that shit of a shiny rock the hardest material on earth? Wikipedia better update their sources when he wakes up.
Lawrence continues through another mouthful of bourbon, and through his grimace, Rowell could almost feel the equal burn in their throats, though the beer wasn’t as potent as the shit the murderer was choking down on. “By some peculiar reason, that blade, even when we found it battered and fragmented in the forests, somehow had the ability to slice through non-corporeal forms like our souls right now, and destroy their souls from the inside out .”
“So you’re telling me,” Rowell’s eyes widened. “-I could’ve disintegrated you and not have this conversation right now?”
Lawrence frowns.“Correct, grave miscalculation on your part, Spyrosz. Instead, you’ve gotten a hang of its other ability- to gather and channel spirits.”
“And how does that-”
“Why else am I here talking with you?” Lawrence inquires. “Or that… rather whimsical siren spirit that shows up now and then.”
Rowell ponders the question for a moment longer. “I always thought it was whatever hold you held over the spirit world…”
“You severed it.” Lawrence grumbles, his voice edging on a childish pout, but his face remains a stoic moue. “I’m not capable of that unless I work on my killing game even beyond death for the next foreseeable 50 years, then perhaps, maybe I could.” He seems to relish in his own disturbed grimace, before turning back to his drink.
Rowell takes another swig, sighing at the subtle, watery burn the lightness of the alcohol scored on his virgin throat. “Can you though? Kill beyond death, I mean.”
Lawrence hums. “Perhaps. If you’re willing to work with me-”
“Heck no!” Rowell recoils, setting down his bottle. “I may tolerate you being around and giving me expository and all, but a partnership is a hard no. ” He hisses. “Especially when it’s about murdering innocents.”
Lawrence eagerly interjects. “How about we pick off people from prison then? Twin Towers Correctional in L.A., your fancy mayhaps?”
“You’re sick.” Rowell glowered, thoughts and even more questions to follow chasing each other in a rapid rat race, cycling endlessly and frightened amongst a haze of confusion, not even sure if the fog in his brain was because of the out-of-body experience or because of the alcohol. “This fucking weapon is as messed up as you, what-why– how can a simple black metal sword literally push and pull at ghosts-”
Lawrence places down his glass, his face now terrifyingly blank and devoid of anything. “It’s not from this world, simple as that. It’s beyond human comprehension, as it shouldn’t exist in our world at all. It’s a glitch, like the rest that followed.”
Rowell stutters, pulling away from the man as he weasels out of the chair space, making distance between them. “W-what are you talking about-”
“From the very beginning, we were never free, Spyrosz.” Lawrence spun around on his chair, glare fixated on his barely-concealed terror. “Freedom is an illusion, in the end, we are guided by our own beliefs, morals, and goals by the nose. But in this case, even who we are is an elaborate creation . Our world is a lie by a sadistic god who thinks it is in her right to trap us in an unfinished HELL. ” His usual pitch-perfect alto-baritone voice exploded into a booming atonal mess, threatening and cloaked in a sentiment that desired vengeance at all cost.
And that voice, Rowell felt sharp prickles of icicles under his skin, chilling him to the bone as his body froze up in the face of an active danger. It was so close to how this monster had sounded when he tore a new rift in them back at the house-
“You’re not making sense!” Rowell squawks, every sense of paranoia and self-preservation clamoring and yelling desperately in his ears to run, but his logic rears back, they were out of their physical body, in a domain unfamiliar, trapped within a red brick box bathed in rustic light with the murderer of his parents and every other spirit he met before, and the father of his best friend. “What in god’s name are you talking about?!”
The static sound of howling wind that seemed to deafen his ears since the tension exploded from Lawrence seemed to calm for a split second as if to allow the man to speak without any more strain to his voice. “See for yourself, Spyrosz.” He growls. “You will have to return to Canada.”
“C-Canada?” Rowell choked out the name of the country he had always felt an inexplicable urge to avoid, still mired in fright, he never harbored any sort of ill memory within the territory of his country’s neighbor in the north, heck, the American had vague memories of being there, however, it was just a…dreadful gut pull of sorts.
“Go back” That blazing, poisonous gaze burned and scorched like fire in his head, it was a strenuous task to even consider focusing and firing back. “Fuck off and don’t you dare show your face around me until you find that journal in the cupboard.”
Rowell’s voice dies in his throat, or rather he didn’t know if he was even screaming, making noise, or not, something was swarming around him, static noise and a high-pitched wail trying its best to drown out what the man sat steadily before his flickering consciousness in apathy was attempting to convey to him, but as he swayed, Lawrence simply sighed, pulled another unreadable expression, before simply muttering, voice low, lips pulled to form a taut grin, one that promised nothing but sinister from the man.
“For now, farewell until then, Rowell Vernon-Spyrosz. I look forward to our reunion, second protagonist .”
The world snaps to black, red brick walls bidding adieu as they slowly fade and disintegrate into an empty void, as if the stage spotlights had snapped out in an instant leading to the next scene, gracing him with a blackout as he was caught in a limbo between the frames. His mind spun dazedly, and it seemed like his mortal functions had decided it’d be best to shut down to negate the damage instead, as in the eye of the storm, he had been given this rare chance where he couldn’t fight back against the exhaustion of his mind, sank like a heavy stone into the quiet and calm waters of unconsciousness, in this quiet moment before the torrent returned its violent attack on his psyche once again, of lies, and perhaps of truths he failed to recognize, he didn’t know, he didn’t want to know. He didn’t ask for this, and yet here he was, fingers digging into the mysterious, unidentified steel handle wrapped with foam tape, wielding this damned cursed weapon that brought him before his enemy, despite receiving vital information in return.
Harboring this legacy that led him to the poor souls that he guided to reconciliation and to whatever beyond they went after moving on, to his best friend who was probably still waiting for him at home, to Inka, whom he met in the dark, dank alleys of Los Angeles…
The memory almost felt bittersweet, but oh so far away, knowing the girl herself was somewhere jailed within the same metropolis he met her in.
However for once, like the shoreline to the ocean waves, Rowell didn’t dwell within his head for too long, begrudgingly welcomed the silence with open arms in favor of his exhaustion, and fell deep asleep.