tramitem_log | The Holiday from Hell

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The Holiday from Hell

Who: Alec, Anthony, Ellie and Fell
What: Going on a house sitting holiday to ~~terrifying~~ jolly old England.
When: 09/20-09/30
Where: Across the Pond.

Alec squinted at the house as it rose on the horizon. He was tired and jet lagged from the plane. Tired and sore from the long ride over bumpy roads in a small cab, crowded against one window by Ellie who was smushed in the middle with Anthony on the other side. Fell, being the guest, took up the front seat and was probably cramping Anthony's legs all to pieces with how much room he left which Alec felt strangely justified in.

Anyway, that house held memories, both good and bad and, mostly terrifying, but he was oddly looking forward to it. After all, everything was a little bit frightening until you knew its secrets.

---
Info on Abaddon House and the environs

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"Its not freezing... At three in the afternoon?? It's as warm as it will get!"

He took a few steps forward, splashing into the cool surf as he moved into the deeper waters to snag what looked like a cluster of shellfish making a nice home on a length of old abandoned rope.

Why was he going deeper? Alec tried to tell himself Anthony could swim, but he also had visions of pulling his baby cousin's lifeless body from the water. He made a face as Anthony pulled a slimed up rope from the water.

"Don't touch that, you don't know where it's been. What are you even doing?"

"Its been here in the water collecting clams, that's where it's been!"

And quite a lot of them too! Anthony managed to pick nearly two dozen from the slime covered rope. Each was deposited into his bucket which he let sit on the shore rock he was nearest to as it grew heavier from the added weight.

"I'm gathering a shore dinner. Mussels, clams, cockles... maybe some crab if I can find them. How do you feel about--..."

The slimy rope had been sitting on a slimy bottom rock which acted very banana peel when Anthony accidentally stepped out onto it. His foot flew so quickly out from underneath him that he didn't even have time to curse before he hit the water.

"Shit." He runs toward the water, heart in his throat. A pebble shifts under his foot and his ankle wrenches but he ignores it, hobbling into the surf, the water rushing cold around his ankles. What if he hit his head? What if he'd knocked himself out? What if he swallowed too much water?

"Anthony!"

The water wasn't that deep even with the waves crashing in around them. Still there was power in those and Anthony was washed slightly back to shore by the churning waves, surfacing again nearly at Alec's feet.

"Alright... Now its feeling a touch chilly."

He looked up, eyeing Alec's expression carefully.

"You alright? You've gone white as a sheet."

"Christ." He nearly sat down in the water, but somehow made it to shore and sat on the wet sand instead, resting his forehead on drawn up knees. He felt like an idiot even as relief washed over him.

"I told you to be careful, you great wanker."

He frowned alone in his ocean puddle before finally getting up and sloshing his way over to flop next to Alec in the damp sand. He thought about protesting that, one little misstep in shallow water, he wasn't likely to drown in such shallow water... but that one word stood out in his mind.

"Was that what your newest memory was about, another drowning?"

"No, it was basically how I was a disgrace to the uniform which isn't really that surprising." His voice was bitter but then he sighed and leaned against his cousin's bony shoulder.

"I know, I'm an idiot, I just don't want to lose you some stupid way. Death can happen so suddenly."

Wet and slightly chilled boney shoulder, though Alec was welcome there regardless. Anthony's frown was that cool sympathetic one he tended to wear whenever some one he cared about was upset and he was wanting to make it better but uncertain about the best way to go about it.

"I've been swimming around here before. The riptides are the most trouble around dusk when the tide goes out. I might be a little careless but I did think to check. I'm not planning on dying anytime soon."

Did that help? No? He leaned just a touch closer to see, brushing some of that scruffy hair out of his cousin's eyes.

"And... If it helps at all..."

He drew in a breath, trying to add a touch of levity with a shallow laugh.

"I was a disgrace to the uniform too. Must run in the family."

Well he was slightly chilled too so they matched. He grunted Anthony's confidence, really he believed in him and that he wouldn't easily drown, but him going under had been a shock.

The levity did help in a bittersweet sort of way and Alec smirked.

"Aye, well I'm not surprised, aren't demons supposed to love spooky things? Haunted places? You catch sight of a ghost and run off in a different direction."

Edited 2020-09-28 21:58 (UTC)

"I wasn't a demon when we were here as kids."

But given the torments he had seen in Hell, goo dripping from the ceiling, angels skewed and transformed into horrible monsters with flies for constant companions... people licking walls... It did seem like it ought to be silly to be afraid of a stupid house.

"I must still be more human than demon."

That made him shiver from far more than cold. He hated this talk. He hated how it followed them. How it was a part of their lives now and they never could quite escape it. He swallowed and flopped an arm around Anthony's shoulder to pull him closer in a half hug.

"I hope you're always more human than demon. You're my stupid baby cousin no matter what anyone says."

"Tch."

The syllables were hissed as that had to have been one of the softest things he had ever heard Alec say. It was touching and brought a sort of warm glow to his chest that definitely had nothing to do with being a demon and this was best acknowledged by sending a small shower of ocean droplets splashing Alec's way.

"I will! So long as you're around to make sure I don't give into the darkside."

As if he would ever. It wasn't in Anthony. He was too soft. Even if he was a brat by spraying him with water.

"Everything has it's time, you know? That's just the way life goes." Which he knows Anthony won't accept but it is what it is.

"Anyway, that's what Fell is for, him being an angel and all."

"Time..."

The word was an obstacle.

"There are moments when I feel like it's nothing. Like if I concentrated really hard I might be able to stop it."

His gaze stared out into the vast blank ocean with it's lapping waves but nothing ever slowed or stopped. Enemy time kept marching on.

"Anyway I gave Fell the tool to stop me if it came down to that... Why are you so convinced you have to die now? You could die in ten, twenty, forty more years with any luck! Why does it have to be now?"

"Brat. Time is there for a reason. If it weren't the world would be overrun. And maybe I do have that kind of time, aye. Maybe I'll outlive you." What a terrifying prospect.

"But the end will come when it comes and there's no stopping it, just accept it."

Terrifying? He smiled at that idea. Alec outliving him! It would be better than all this death talk!

"Kind of unfair, isn't it? Bring together a group of people who need each other and then slowly rip them away from each other? I don't see why it needs to be that way... Not if God built everything. Couldn't She just design an infinite world? Put everyone back into the garden only without the clearly marked, obvious trap, and the weird obsession with people not knowing what good and evil is? Makes you wonder what its really all about."

Oh, so they were onto theology now? It was fitting, he supposed, and he was surprised Anthony was so willing to talk about this-- to listen to what he had to say. He was willing to indulge in it. He didn't have much to think about God. He... or She or they were somewhere far away and largely unconcerned with human affairs.

"Choice. What we do for good or ill. Humans learn and grow from choice and wasn't it the tree of Knowledge? The tree of knowing your options, of choosing bad ones. Choice is how we reshape the world and make it interesting." For better and for worse.

The line of inquiry didn't seem strange or out of the blue to Anthony but then he had been thinking about this for a while, a few months or several millennia depending on how you looked at it, and he valued Alec's opinions even if they didn't always agree.

"But why design a creature without freedom of choice to begin with? She didn't do that to any of the others. The lion never woke up one day with a serpent whispering in his ear, 'oh hey, you better go and eat that forbidden giraffe in the center of the garden. It'll be great, promise'. You know sometimes I wonder if there is a plan at all or if God's just winging it."

"Who knows? Who can really say. And in the end, what does it matter? What is is." There are other things to worry about than the great mysteries of the universe that weren't going to be solved anyway. That was the point of mysteries.

He frowned at what Alec had said and then at the waves that rushed in to lap around his feet. It seemed like he had heard that before.

"At least you didn't say it was ineffable."

"Maybe it is." As soon as the water surges he's on his feet, backing up a few steps. It's a childish fear he knows, but it's lodged in him somewhere, swept out, drowning, unable to move or breathe.

"I'm going in." He swallowed, rubbed his arms. "Be careful, Anty."

"Yeah."

He would be careful. Anthony's hand lifted in silent goodbye and he stood up himself and began the slog back out to his bucket of sea life on the rock.

"I'll save you a crab."

"I hate seafood." Anything that lived in the water just made him feel slightly ill. The onlyt thing he barely tolerated was fish and chips but really only for the chips.

Not that he could have that anyway.

"Just come back in one piece."

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The Holiday from Hell

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