![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eveglassA new story for the Call of Cthulhu game. Not particularly Earth-shattering, just a little digression into the mind of The Painter.
January 8, 1883
The Aegis train car was quiet now that Amanda Wallace had been escorted off, yet Marie was still troubled. She sat near the window, her sketchbook in her lap, her hand moving idly over the page as she thought. Wallace was in love with Jean Valliant, the vampire. The idea disturbed her. Valliant was a monster, an inhuman creature whose very being was fraught with danger. No reasonable person could love something like that.
And yet…
Marie began sketching , laying out the boundaries of her latest drawing. On the far left of the page were the monsters, true monsters like dragons, ghouls, and sea-serpents. Gods, too, went on the left side of the page, beings so far removed from mortal understanding that they would break the mind of anyone who looked upon them.
On the far right-hand side of the page were the humans: men and women of the sort that Marie had once thought were the only sort. Normal people living normal lives. Yes, some of them might act better or worse, but in the end they were exactly as they seemed to be: human. Even those men who sometimes acted in monstrous ways while under the influence of alcohol or jealousy, even they were still only human.
A thought struck her, and her hand trended slightly towards the left. Some men committed acts so heinous she had trouble thinking of them as fully human. Men like John Rackham, for instance. Images of Suzanne’s body came to her unbidden: whipped and bloodied while chained to a wall. John Rackham could not be considered fully human, could he? Not after doing something like that?
Other men were not fully human, though they may have begun that way. The cultist she had encountered in Paris, the one with too many eyes. He had been warped by his own magic until he was something else, something different. Perhaps other cultists could not be considered completely human either. Perhaps being in connection with magic changed them irrevocably. Their faces began populating the page, somewhere between the centre and the right.
And what about people who interacted with the mythos without being part of it? People like Chuck Thompson, who found himself part of an eldritch pattern without realizing it? Or Simon, who saw the spirits of the dead? Or Marie herself, whose eye saw patterns invisible to most humans’. No doubt there were others, people who found themselves mostly human, but not entirely.
Further to the left, she began drawing other faces. People who looked human most of the time, who could pass as human, but whose bodies were different on a fundamental level from most people. Batu, with his ability to heal and – more importantly – his power to transform into a massive cat. Chase, who could also heal far faster than most people, and whose scent attracted monsters and people who had interacted with the Mythos.
Elizabeth, as always, was a category unto herself.
Further to the left were more ambiguous cases: spirits, for example. They had once been human but now could only interact with mediums like Simon. For all Marie knew, they still acted like they had in life. She had never asked Simon to specify. She put it aside in her mind next to an ever-growing list of things she did not know.
Then there were vampires. They looked roughly human, though it was clear they were not. They had superior strength and speed, retractable fangs, and the ability to transform into bats, wolves, or even mist. They could not enter into daylight. But at the same time, they could pass for human under the right conditions and with the right motivation. Most people would likely assume Jean Valliant was human if he wished them to think so. She placed his picture roughly under Batu’s, only a smidge to the left.
She looked at what she had drawn: the outside of the page was sparsely populated, while the middle was full of faces that were not entirely human yet not entirely monstrous. True, Valliant occupied a space more on the monstrous side of the spectrum, but he acted more human than many of the people further to the right. And her own feelings towards Simon, while perhaps not true love, could certainly not be denied. If she could care for a man who dabbled in magic and saw the spirits of the dead, could she truly deny Madame Wallace her feelings towards a being who, while not human, acted the part? Who hated what he had become? Who would chose to be human if he could?
Marie put down her pencil. She could not fault Amanda Wallace, not without condemning herself in the process. She flipped the book closed and glanced around the train car. How many of the people aboard were truly, completely human? And did it matter?
She shook her head. That was a question for another day. She slipped her sketchbook into her bag and closed the latch. For the moment, she had her own not-quite-fully-human companion to check on.
Shades of Monstrosity
January 8, 1883
The Aegis train car was quiet now that Amanda Wallace had been escorted off, yet Marie was still troubled. She sat near the window, her sketchbook in her lap, her hand moving idly over the page as she thought. Wallace was in love with Jean Valliant, the vampire. The idea disturbed her. Valliant was a monster, an inhuman creature whose very being was fraught with danger. No reasonable person could love something like that.
And yet…
Marie began sketching , laying out the boundaries of her latest drawing. On the far left of the page were the monsters, true monsters like dragons, ghouls, and sea-serpents. Gods, too, went on the left side of the page, beings so far removed from mortal understanding that they would break the mind of anyone who looked upon them.
On the far right-hand side of the page were the humans: men and women of the sort that Marie had once thought were the only sort. Normal people living normal lives. Yes, some of them might act better or worse, but in the end they were exactly as they seemed to be: human. Even those men who sometimes acted in monstrous ways while under the influence of alcohol or jealousy, even they were still only human.
A thought struck her, and her hand trended slightly towards the left. Some men committed acts so heinous she had trouble thinking of them as fully human. Men like John Rackham, for instance. Images of Suzanne’s body came to her unbidden: whipped and bloodied while chained to a wall. John Rackham could not be considered fully human, could he? Not after doing something like that?
Other men were not fully human, though they may have begun that way. The cultist she had encountered in Paris, the one with too many eyes. He had been warped by his own magic until he was something else, something different. Perhaps other cultists could not be considered completely human either. Perhaps being in connection with magic changed them irrevocably. Their faces began populating the page, somewhere between the centre and the right.
And what about people who interacted with the mythos without being part of it? People like Chuck Thompson, who found himself part of an eldritch pattern without realizing it? Or Simon, who saw the spirits of the dead? Or Marie herself, whose eye saw patterns invisible to most humans’. No doubt there were others, people who found themselves mostly human, but not entirely.
Further to the left, she began drawing other faces. People who looked human most of the time, who could pass as human, but whose bodies were different on a fundamental level from most people. Batu, with his ability to heal and – more importantly – his power to transform into a massive cat. Chase, who could also heal far faster than most people, and whose scent attracted monsters and people who had interacted with the Mythos.
Elizabeth, as always, was a category unto herself.
Further to the left were more ambiguous cases: spirits, for example. They had once been human but now could only interact with mediums like Simon. For all Marie knew, they still acted like they had in life. She had never asked Simon to specify. She put it aside in her mind next to an ever-growing list of things she did not know.
Then there were vampires. They looked roughly human, though it was clear they were not. They had superior strength and speed, retractable fangs, and the ability to transform into bats, wolves, or even mist. They could not enter into daylight. But at the same time, they could pass for human under the right conditions and with the right motivation. Most people would likely assume Jean Valliant was human if he wished them to think so. She placed his picture roughly under Batu’s, only a smidge to the left.
She looked at what she had drawn: the outside of the page was sparsely populated, while the middle was full of faces that were not entirely human yet not entirely monstrous. True, Valliant occupied a space more on the monstrous side of the spectrum, but he acted more human than many of the people further to the right. And her own feelings towards Simon, while perhaps not true love, could certainly not be denied. If she could care for a man who dabbled in magic and saw the spirits of the dead, could she truly deny Madame Wallace her feelings towards a being who, while not human, acted the part? Who hated what he had become? Who would chose to be human if he could?
Marie put down her pencil. She could not fault Amanda Wallace, not without condemning herself in the process. She flipped the book closed and glanced around the train car. How many of the people aboard were truly, completely human? And did it matter?
She shook her head. That was a question for another day. She slipped her sketchbook into her bag and closed the latch. For the moment, she had her own not-quite-fully-human companion to check on.
