lostcarnival | Closed to Herbert West

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Closed to Herbert West

Who: Foster van Denend and ~~Herbert West~~ Onion Man
When: B1: Day 6
Where: The Cookhouse
What: Foster and Onion Man meet again.
Warnings: TBD, but it's Foster and Herbert, so.........

Foster has caught glimpses of the onion man--nothing more than glimpses, mind, but he remembers those glasses, and that tediously white-collar haircut. He was surprised by the man's voice over the radio, too--a bit too late to catch the name, though he remembers it was very...

... white.

And he remembers the important part.

This Carnival's new medic.

He's never hated a person from description alone more. Just knowing that he had been alone in that cavern with this man, even for a single hour, is a source of overwhelming fear and horror. Even with the onion man under the Prince's control, the possibility, how helpless he would have been--

But if Foster can catch him away from the medical tent... no, no even that's too much, that's too dangerous. No one would stop him--the onion man. He knows it. He knows they would all allow it to happen, whatever the man wanted to do to him.

So when Foster spots him by the trailers, he quickly makes himself scarce. And when he spots him again, by the cookhouse, he does the same. This time, though, there's nowhere to run. Forced to hide or be seen, he tucks himself into a corner between buildings, behind the kitchen itself. And there he waits...

He hates it, this running-and-hiding game. He hates himself--no, he hates what it is about himself that makes him... subject to this. This particular fear. What makes it so terrifying... he knows he has no choice. He can feel his heart in his throat, racing, his breath short. But from a distance like this, he can also be angry--or the facsimile of it, anyway, the awareness of how he would be feeling anger. Onion Man. He has to be afraid of Onion Man?

This... is pathetic and cowardly. He's pathetic and cowardly.

He's always been those things, though. It's only a problem because...

....because it's Onion Man.

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Taking a breath, completely unaware of the separate struggle going on behind him, Herbert finally slips the forkful of mash in his mouth.

It feels like it immediately spreads out over his tongue, thick and clinging in his mouth. Swallowing doesn't help, it's still there, a film, filling the gap of his cheeks. This was the wrong decision, he's forgotten how to swallow food, he can't swallow this median of liquid and solid. Coughing once, avoiding the gag, he remembers his water glass and manages to finally clear the mess from his mouth.

Why does this place only have potatoes, and a public eating facility? Hateful. And he hasn't even eaten nearly enough to make up for his time spent coming here.

His mashed potatoes ensure that it's not exactly a form of bliss anyway, but Herbert's ignorance of what nonsense is lurking nearby is about to come to an end.

Foster is fortunate enough to find the storeroom unlocked, and onions plentiful. It's not difficult, objectively, to obtain what he needs; what is difficult is finding a way to do it. To force his body, his awful, malignant self, riddled with hate and disease, wracked with fear and rot, to understand. To perform. He understands what he needs to do, so why can't he--

Herbert is spared that portion of this event. But the end result is purely for his benefit.

Foster, emerging out of the store room, makes a beeline for Herbert; he's composed himself in such a way that the only proof of his state is in his smile, his too-bright eyes as he reaches across the table--

And with one paw, offers Herbert

pointedly

an onion.

Edited 2017-11-20 05:10 (UTC)

By the time Foster emerges, Herbert has suffered through one more scoop of potatoes and has inserted his fork reluctantly into the pile for a third go at it.

He almost doesn't notice Foster approach, as much as he's concentrating on making himself accept the fact of his need to continue eating. But the shape is pressed into his peripheries and he has to look up.

It's... that one guy. He has his mind back and his freedom, so it's ridiculous to continue to call him a betrayer or any other hyperbolic ideas his ragged brain had come up with...but this is still the witness to his breakdown. Untrustworthy.

It's difficult for him to put Foster into context here, really. He was so much a part of Herbert's imprisonment that he still feels like an aspect of the fortress. Yet here he is, with an onion of all things. Is it mockery?

Herbert stares at the onion in blank silence for a moment before he speaks, dry but with a questioning edge all the same. "Are you asking me to throw it at you?"

Foster regards the onion man for a cold moment. "Is that what it means to you?" he asks, his claws still curled around the semi-sphere of the pungent, dry-skinned vegetable.

He sets it down on the table between them--holds it there, for an additional second. Then lets it go.

"That's up to you," he says simply.

Herbert raises his eyebrows and sets down his fork, placing his hands down on either side of the plate. He doesn't reach for the onion. As far as he's concerned, outside of its role as the vessel of his ridicule, the onion is irrelevant.

"Are you, psychoanalysing my behaviour under enslavement--who, exactly, are you intending to mock? Orrr is it that you don't deserve this onion either?"

"Why would I deserve this onion?" Foster wants to know--it's not a demand, but then again, it is absolutely a demand--one he barely gives Herbert a chance to answer. Because he answers it himself.

"You're not a slave, are you?" He angles his head slightly, regards the onion man downward. He still isn't sitting down, although he scrutinises the picked-over plate of potatoes briefly before continuing.

"Or is that the cost of freedom? A year and a day, a finite servitude to a different master?"

Foster doesn't know that the Ringmaster would force a man to serve her for the benefit of being freed from the Prince, but since none of the Prince's other servants appear to share that fate... well, unless the onion man invoked her specific displeasure in some way, he's probably a voluntary contract.

"I was talking about the Prince--my arrangement with the Ringmaster is, one of strategic exchange. I...wouldn't call a job servitude. You would, evidently." Herbert's accustomed to (if not comfortable with) being taunted over the onion thing by now, but there's something about this exchange that finally requires his attention. It's hard to remember things exactly towards the end of his imprisonment, but there's definitely at least a slight difference.

"You're more coherent," he notes, leaning back into his chair a bit. He feels more steady on this topic of conversation, more comfortable. "Was your previous behaviour...situational or have you simply regained, access to medication?"

Foster stares at him as if stricken.

He feels himself, his body, frozen water pooling in his limbs, layered ice creeping around his ribs. And he's hot, so hot it's like fear--is that what fear is like, a burn under, in the skin, an inability to breathe? Or is it--

"There is no medication," he replies. "No treatment, no cure for my affliction, no preventative for my disease...! Magical or medicinal, there's nothing that can save me, nothing that can salvage me, nothing that can sustain me in the face of the overwhelming eventuality of my rot!"

He starts out cold and coherent, but by the end it's a disorganised ramble, layering words and ideas repetitively without really changing the content at all.

"I am the disease... there is nothing to me but disease, nothing but putrefaction, rotting, I was born rotting, born dead from a sickness I can't sweat out!"

Ah, so a little beyond treatable psychosis, then. The repetition of 'rot' has Herbert considering various TSEs for a moment--'born' implies something inherited, but then, he really knows better than to take much of this at face value. In the absence of death to be confronted with, as something to actively solve, Herbert turns to considering abnormal degeneration of the brain. He doesn't like to think of anything as UNsolveable, after all.

He cuts Foster off before he can keep going with a fairly bland: "Were either of your parents similarly afflicted?" He has proof that his serum can cause mutations, he wonders if he can direct those mutations correctly. His last experiment in that direction was fascinating.

Horrifying, sure, and potentially deadly if not for...whatever was done to get him out of there, but still. Fascinating. An interesting aspect of his reagent to explore.

Foster goes silent, clamming up immediately. He stays silent for a few good seconds, actually, eyeing Herbert expressionlessly with those startling blue eyes.

His claws are pressed into the table.

"No--no, no," he says, apparently done with whatever internal procedure was required to understand he was being asked a question. "No, this disease is unique to me. Not contagious, not heritable, a curse borne only only in me. A fate of death, invisible in my brain, growing as I grew, eating me alive until there will be nothing left! A destiny to die... a purpose, pointless, worthless by design."

But he's not done, his countenance switching on a dime--or whatever equivalent currency either of them have, really.

An onion, maybe.

"I already know what you think you want to do to me." He turns his head away, regards Herbert out of the far corner of his eye.

"I already know what you want. Crack open my skull, dig your fingers into it, there's nothing but rot that remains... all you'll find is trash That's all I am! Just living garbage!" He's drooling already, flecks of visible saliva on his lips and chin.

Edited 2017-11-24 04:09 (UTC)

The drooling, Herbert is inclined to take as a sign. The reagent does best applied to the brainstem. Now, what exactly would he have to change about the reagent? No, convincing first, this man is obviously averse to treatment, he has to try and find an angle.

"I can fix that," he says, confident and eager, "I'm a scientist. I specialise--" He'd need something to rejuvenate as well as reanimate, foolish, he should have thought of that before, what better way to solve the issue of brain degeneration after death?! "--in reanimation. I've returned the dead to life with my reagent, with--" Maybe an extract? From some lower life form, a lizard, perhaps, or an amphibian. "--some adjustments, experiments and tests...yeees, l see no reason you shouldn't be able to defeat your disease!"

He's gotten a bit too excited and tangential but it's too late now. He leans forward again slightly, trying to make eye contact. His voice trembles earnestly. "We can bring your brain back to life." This is the next step for his reagent. He can feel it.

The look on Foster's face is somewhere between disgust and horror--it's probably not the first time Herbert's gotten that reaction from someone, but the thing is, this is the better outcome.

In no small part because Herbert did not call himself a doctor. But in much larger part because instead of talking about medicine, Herbert caught Foster off guard by instead talking about... raising the dead. Which makes it mildly less panic-inducing (if Herbert only knew how close Foster was to losing it), but no less offensive.

"Why... would I want to do that? No. No." He is visibly distracted, distressed, but his lip curls, showing the sharp edge of a prehistoric plate. "You will not take from me what I have for your... your science."

This completely confuses Herbert. He thought he was doing a good job of translating but apparently not?

"I...wouldn't be taking anything--I'm talking of healing you, you prefer your 'rot'? You prefer brain death?" No, he needs this. This man is the perfect subject for the eventual advancement of his reagent. He doesn't want to have to wait for total brain death to test whatever he comes up with for his serum.

Foster actually rises from the bench, his uninspiring 5'10" frame suddenly a little bit less pathetic; then again, most things can become a little bit more effective when they try. There are some extremely terrifying chickens in the world, for example. An emaciated man with bear arms and startling blue eyes, his chin running with spit, looking ready to spill over into some other state of being--

"Brain death? No--death itself is meant to be my fate, and my fate is my purpose. This is what I deserve! Everything I do, everything I am is meant to rot. I was born to death, born to die. That's why I live!"

Herbert has already seen Foster rip a hole in his jacket in the Cave From Ipanema, he's already as intimidated as he's going to get. Which is: slightly but not enough that it will stop him from anything he's intending to do. He deals with incredibly strong aggressive undead on the regular--one who only sees himself as dead is just the same.

He still leans back a bit more from the table in response, looking slightly wary. He hasn't completely lost all of his instincts.

"Why are you motivated to, stay alive at all, then?" he asks. "What drives you if your 'purpose' is to die?" Herbert, you can't outlogic someone with brain damage. "Everyone is always, dying--why not take the time to be certain your brain rots at the same pace as the rest of you?"

"Take time? Take time? There is no such thing as time. There is no future save for that designated by time's illusion." It's so contemptuously obvious that Herbert isn't listening to him that he actually deigns to explain this most basic of things--much as one impatiently answers the nine-hundredth repetition of a toddler's 'why.'

Well, assuming you had nothing but loathing and disgust for toddlers.

"Time is the illusion of safety, of a reality one can ignore--I have no such illusion to myself!" he actually almost snarls, but for the fact that it's impossible to call anything paired with such excitement a 'snarl.'

"My fate, my purpose is every second, every inch of rot before my life is void, my use completed. My body is whole only to feed that purpose with blood. It cannot be saved, nor my mind, not my self."

Edited 2017-11-26 01:54 (UTC)

Alright, this is tiresome now. Herbert rolls his eyes at Foster, sighing in exasperation.

"It can be saved, you're incorrect. Your 'fate' may as well be to rot until meeting me, an expert in the fields of reanimation and neurobiology. If you don't want it for yourself I, want your brain and I will use it for my own purposes." He's hushed but still intent. He's given up on reason. Nobody will believe Foster anyway.

^YES._NO.

Yes--?
No--!?

~~Wait~~

Foster falters, blinks once at Herbert; the absolute enthusiasm of delusion is collides with the totalitarianism of fear. Never have his instincts been so utterly split. Never has he been so confused about how to be. Who, or what, those are ambiguous and ever shifting, but--

The deadlock is not so much broken as balanced when a third emotion--if one can call it and 'yes' and 'no' emotions to begin with--rises in him to set the scale.

Doubt.

He lets go of the table. Steps back, uncertainly--eyeing Herbert, sideways, clearly uncertain. Dubious. Suspicious. Neither willing nor afraid. But nor either unwilling or unafraid.

Finally, there's nothing else for him to do but put on a smile.

So he does.

Edited 2017-11-26 06:36 (UTC)

Herbert really isn't sure what to make of Foster or Foster's reaction but he's decided not to care, and so, he doesn't. As far as he's concerned, one cannot argue or reason with the man, so he is a patient who doesn't know what's best for him. And what's best for him is experimental brain therapy to be invented by Herbert at a future date.

"You've been the one responsible for the abundance of test subjects, correct?" His voice is louder again, now that the questionable aspect (or at least the bit he's aware is questionable) has been dealt with. "I'll require some personally and individually, preferably with similar brain damage but if you can't manage that I'll see to it myself." He's confident again, none of his confusion making it through into his voice.

Foster is still silent--eyeing Herbert, mute and unreadable.

He knows what it means if he says yes, knows that he will be contributing to his own destruction, his own downfall, his own--

"......"

But he won't refuse. He won't. He can't. It is not... his right to decide. He has... he has to fulfill every requirement, and let fate itself decide for him. That is... what his suffering is for. To achieve, to absolve, to allow, at last, the mechanism of fate to turn for him, to unlock the power behind divine apathia, divine aphasia, and reveal his purpose at last...!

So he doesn't refuse, but he finds himself trembling. He's shaking, he's shaking and he doesn't know if it's fear or excitement or both, some terrible chemical reaction of joy and despair--!

"Yes. Yes. I..." He can't finish the sentence. He can't finish it. He can't. He's. Fuck. Fuck. He needs to go.

"Good," he says, pleased. Foster is shaking but he has agreed, so Herbert will have to trust this will work, and perhaps ask questions to those who have dealt with the man longer. Already, he's lost in thinking of ways he might develop the reagent in this new direction. It's almost a struggle to force himself to continue to attend to the moment, to Foster still there and staring at him.

"I'm in Trailer 16, deliver the specimens to me after hours." And then he picks his fork back up again. He'll let himself leave after just another four mouthfuls. That will be sufficient, with the reagent helping.

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Closed to Herbert West

Cw: disordered eating? Maybe?

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