nightlogs | ❅ SHITTY LITTLE TOWN ❅ PART 1

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dan sagittarius

❅ SHITTY LITTLE TOWN ❅ PART 1

SHITTY LITTLE TOWN ❅ PART 1

Each year in this town, the winters seem to get harder and the summers seem to get hotter, and this was no exception. After several months of sweltering afternoons and sweaty nights, fall is finally starting to break the town’s fever, although with the cooler weather comes the death of the horseflies, leaving many of the town’s flat surfaces coated in bug carcasses. The sky is overcast, the air remains humid, and in the distance thunderstorms can be heard almost every hour of the day.

During the day, people go about their usual routines, working primarily at the slaughterhouse or mines during the weekdays, vegetating in front of the television on Saturdays, and sitting straightbacked and paranoid in the pews on Sunday, fearful less of the wrath of God than the ire of the neighbors. Evenings for the average person are filled with drinking at Nog’s or Auntie’s or peering at the TV until bedtime.

This is where our heroes find themselves, waking with a new lifestory that integrates them into this, the shitty little town.

PROMPTS

a) NOG'S

Nog's bar is the preferred haunt of most of the miners and slaughterhouse workers in this town, who meet to drink their woes away, complain about their supervisors and speculate on the personal lives of the people around them. Despite Mr. Goluboy's constant harassment, Nog has managed to keep his liquor license, and as such is one of the few successful businesses in town on account of all the stress-induced alcoholism. While one won't find fancy cocktails here, if they're just looking for a beer and some scuttlebutt, this is the place.

b) AUNTIE'S

"Auntie's" is the name of the old-school, 1950's-esque, 24-hour diner in the middle of downtown, with big red pleather booths, checkerboard floors and a jukebox. Typically, the only difference in clientele between Auntie’s and Nog's is that the people at Auntie’s wanted a burger or a stack of pancakes alongside their beer – but unlike Nog's, Auntie’s is only barely hanging on, constantly getting ticketed for waterspots on the silverware and not having enough napkins. Thankfully, one can get a full breakfast meal at Auntie's any time of day for a few dollars.

c) THE DOCKS

The town is alongside a lake, and once upon a time there was enough fish to sustain a modest fishing economy and a river that allowed for trade by boat with other nearby towns. However, with the mines' pollution, fish are no longer considered safe to eat, and only the water immediately adjacent to the springhead on the Warren Family Farm is safe to swim in. Draining from the mines has lowered the level of the river enough that it's no longer navigable. Residents will still occasionally use the lake for boating recreation, but fees at the marina keep going up (into Goluboy's pocket) and mothers are increasingly worried about letting their children get wet in that water.

d) THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE

The other major employer, owned by Ms. Cygne. Most of the locals who don't work at the mines work at the slaughterhouse, where the work is disgusting, dreary and grueling. Sometimes people get promoted out of the trenches and into admin. Yay.

e) BIG TOP CIRCUS COFFEE

Dick's Coffeeshop is in the bottom floor of an apartment building, and many locals have no idea how it hasn't been shut down yet, given that the owner is famously generous with his resources in a way that clearly irritates the city council. Dick offers jobs to those who Goluboy and Cygne won't hire at the mines or slaughterhouse and frequently sneaks day-old pastries to the hungry. The coffeeshop is one of the few areas where artists tend to converge, usually at the weekly open mic night; however, whatever one expresses at the coffeeshop is likely to be picked up by the town gossips, mocked relentlessly, distorted and spread around.

f) THE FARMER'S MARKET

Because Mr. Goluboy's malicious prosecution of small businesses has essentially shut down any legal avenue for a farmer's market, a few of the residents of the town have established a black market for homegrown fruits and vegetables, small-batch soaps and candles, and other small products. Words gets out through a whisper network, and a few times a month everyone in the know meets in a parking lot, opens their trunk, and does some bartering and selling with each other until they get found out. Sheriff Mallard and her deputies have arrested many people at these pop-ups and confiscated their products. By now, these pop-ups have around forty people trading and selling at a time, and the city council has announced that out of concerns for food safety the sentence for being caught vending homegrown produce will be increased to a misdemeanor with jail time.

g) THE LIBRARY

The library, once well-stocked and indulgently funded, is now kept alive sheerly by the passion of the one paid librarian, Aziraphale, and the volunteers who work there. There is no interlibrary loan program and there have been no new books in years. The library is reduced to loaning damaged copies missing pages, and story hours or public events are difficult to organize due to the complete lack of resources. The city council has also forced Aziraphale to put up a sign against loitering or using the library "for any purposes besides the borrowing of books." An organization of local busybodies drops in frequently to comb through the stacks for "objectionable material," which is then destroyed at Ms. Cygne's behest.

h) WILDCARD/NEW LOCATION

Feel free to set things around town anywhere you want or make up new locations.

i) THE SPOOKY WOODS

Outside the town, there are foggy, dense woods, difficult to navigate by foot due to thickets and brambles that come up to a grown man's waist. The city council has done what they can to ban people from going into the woods, and the gruesome animal maulings are a compelling disincentive.

Note: Let the plot mods know when your characters are going into the spooky woods.

OOC DETAILS
❅ OOC Plotting: Here. More locations can be found there. You can also ask the players running the plot questions there.

❅ Event Length: This part of the plot is to establish CR and characters' roles in town. It will last about a week and half before future parts that allow the characters to start digging into the mysteries of the town.

❅ New Characters: If your character is introing at this time, assume they arrived just in time at the location the plot takes place in to be caught up in the magic drawing everyone in. They would have gotten the Man in the Moon's spiel from the welcome page right before being magically sucked in.

❅ Opt-out: Anyone that doesn't want to play in the plot can handwave their character didn't go on the mission that put the characters in the location where they were sucked in. You can thread your characters back at the Pole or send them on another smaller mission with other characters.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Yeah, just direct me at any appliance or fixture that ain't working." Dan doesn't want to go poking around by himself because he's worried about that looking like hunting for something to steal. He doesn't intend to rob Miguel, but he is leaving himself open to the possibility of grabbing toiletries that look unused if he finds them.

Dan considers his belongings behind Auntie's; the only treasured possession he has is his gun, and that's stashed in a waterproof bag in the woods. He wasn't going to risk having it confiscated. "No, I'm fine. I'd hate for them to hassle you a second time."

And Dan has no doubt that they would. "I take it Goluboy's about as good a boss as he is a landlord."

He nods. Straight home it is, then. The engine rumbles in response to the extra pressure on the gas pedal, getting them going towards the residential area near MineCorp HQ. More rain starts to sprinkle down, leaving Miguel to wonder if it'll be nuisance enough for the deputy to leave him alone for giving a roof to the town pariah.

"Not a lot of engineers around, so he needs my expertise. The worst I get are 'ambitious' timeframes and expectations, which is a problem I've found everywhere."

He is careful about his wording and what he reveals. Dan might be able to read between the lines of his office politics to glean that he was too soured on his work overall to focus his scorn on Goluboy in particular.

"It's not ideal. But if I don't do it, then the job will be passed on to someone else who's sloppier."

Dan snorts. "Deadlines. He don't seem to have been told 'no' very often in life, so why shouldn't might time reorganize itself to suit his preferences?"

Dan doesn't have personal beef with Goluboy, not really, but he can't ignore the way the millionaire's contribution to the town isn't job creation so much as penalizing small businesses for the audacity of existing and keeping the rent increasing at a rate that forces everyone to tread water. The people's in Goluboy's buildings don't have enough left over to save, and they never will; whatever small boost in income they get, Goluboy swallows up.

But he does read between the lines. The whole work is rotten. Dan isn't surprised.

"We couldn't might do with that. Before you got here, they were sloppy enough that they killed basically all the fish in that lake and turned it into a sludge pit." Which is a tragedy for many reasons, both macro and micro, but one of Dan's concerns is the petty one that fishing for food could have been a means of sustenance for him.

Edited 2024-09-01 20:17 (UTC)

In this town, Miguel is cautious not to badmouth Goluboy directly (they worked too closely together) but he does nothing to defend him. Even if he wasn't struggling quite as much, he saw how it affected the people he talked to every day. Goluboy was quite vicious in his quest to line his already full pockets.

"It's not impossible to reverse the damage. But you need money and time to clean it up. It's a worthwhile investment if you want to develop the land here. Everyone benefits, I think."

He frowns a little about the condition of the lake, having repeated the same thing to Goluboy many times. He liked lingering around there, walking along the marina. It was the closest thing to the ocean that he could find.

They drive uphill for a time, distancing from the downtown area to a slightly more secluded residential street flanking HQ. The graceless, squat building was like a monument to impenetrable company heirarchy, lit up at night even when it was completely empty. Only a few rows of empty rentals and a thin line of trees split the two.

"I hope someone takes it up on themselves to invest in it."

Dan wrings his hands as he watches out the window to a part of town he's never been. It didn't occur to Dan that this was a 'company town' for the employees. Dan's heard enough about scrips and company stores to know it's a loser's game, but surely Miguel already knows that.

It's depressing. While Dan's in no position to judge anyone's living situation, there's an emphatic lovelessness emanating from the building strong enough to seem like a scent. Dan wonders if it's just a matter of the designers not caring about comfort and aesthetic or if it was a purposeful effort to strip the hominess out of the residences.

"Do you like your neighbors?" It's hard from here to even tell if the rentals next to Miguel's are occupied.

"It's just us. The company planned out this block with an overly optimistic view of the town's prospects."

Goluboy's influence, no doubt. There was the vision of the company town full of pet intelligentsia mingling and making money happen, somehow.

By the time the truck pulls up to the driveway of the small garage, there's a healthy sprinkle overhead. Given how easy he was to brush off the ticket, it was a simpler lodging than one may expect. The house from the outside looked recently touched up. Old construction done up with a new coat of paint. Motion lights he installed himself flick on to illuminate the path to the front door with overly-bright LEDs.

Taking his bag out from behind the driver's seat, he leaves the truck, fishing for his keys in his pockets on his way over. Once he's sheltered under the eave over the front door, he looks back to see if Officer Early Bedtime was satisfied with following them this far.

He should probably wave, or something.

“That seems to be a running theme here. Folks come in optimistic and then they just get wore out.” Dan sighs. “This town’s sick that way.”

Dan doesn’t say that with any hint of moral condemnation. He says it the way someone would describe the rapid decline of a beloved family member, as if it’s some tragedy that begs for a reason and finds none but bad luck.

He holds his breath as they get out and wait for a response from the deputy. Dan’s fully braced for her to find a reason to punish Miguel for sheltering him - harboring a fugitive or something, maybe some ridiculous residency violation about having unrelated strangers over without the landlord’s approval. He even sees her start to get out of the cruiser and he gets tense, but he sees her pat the top of her head to look for her hat and then get back into the vehicle. Whatever punitive nonsense she was planning isn’t worth getting wet.

He exhales when she finally starts driving away. “I was about to feel worse than guilty for bringing trouble to your home.”

Miguel does end up giving a cheeky little wave to the officer as she drives off. If he's going to get shit for this later, he'll worry about that tomorrow. For now, it seems like they'll be left alone. Saved by the rain.

He catches Dan's sigh of relief, releasing the nervous tension in his body. It was like he'd been conditioned to always expect to be terrorized. It hurt to think about how Dan must be scraping by in his day-to-day.

"Well, it looks like we're clear." he reminds him. "Not that you should feel guilty for a decision I made."

The locks on the door click open and he opens up his abode. From the first step into the living room, his obsession with tidiness is immediately evident. He made good use of every square inch of the place. Walls and nooks are bedecked with clever cabinetry, every side table and open corner seems to be organized for some extra hidden utility. The walking space is left open and airy by comparison, with little to no decoration. During the day, it must look like a sample catalogue for a micro-apartment given more space than expected.

The exception to this all this tightly-controlled order is the opened cardboard box allowed to sit askew on the coffee table, opposite to the sofa. Dan might be able to recognize some of the tamarind and mango candy as very much being from outside this town. A recent package?

"Shoes go there." he gestures to the shoe rack next to the front door. The small carpet beneath the rack leaves some room for guest shoes to sit. Not that he had many guests. He leaves his own work boots outside to avoid tracking in mud and grime from the site.

"I can't say the all-in-one works as well as a proper washer and dryer, but you can run your clothes overnight and it'll do the job."

He'd have to lend Dan a set of his own in the meantime and hope it isn't too ill-fitting.

Dan marvels at the organization; it reminds him of when he was living in his car, utilizing every inch of that tiny space, keeping track of everything with series of containers and bags and dividers. It speaks to home more than the anonymized nature of the building's exterior. It speaks to use, and therefore it speaks to habitation.

"Is that mango chamoy?" Dan grins as he takes off his shoes and places them on the rack, not wanting to touch anything he doesn't have to until he's showered and cleaned his clothing. It wouldn't do to leave his host things to clean. "I really appreciate you letting me use your shower and laundry machine. I don't get this unpleasant to be around by choice."

The casual swap between English and Spanish that he's doing is a habit he picked up from traveling with his daughter. At one point, she determined that he'd learned enough of her mother tongue, and just stopped at random speaking to him in English entirely. After the immersion cemented his fluency, they just kept doing it.

"Is the chamoy a gift from your brother?"

"Ah, si. Buen ojo. No hemos tenido muchas opportunidades para reunirnos, pero mientras tanto nos enviamos cosas."

'Oh, yes. Good eye. We haven't had much chance to get together, but we send each other things in the meantime.'

Miguel seems a little warmer and more casual in his other tongue, spoken with friends and family rather than the colder relationships at work. The fondness then turns a little bittersweet. It was nice, having company. Miguel doesn't quite realize how crushingly lonely the last few years had been until he suddenly found himself with a guest under his roof. Even if the guest was roughed up from living outdoors.

"Puedes probar unos caramelos después, si quieres. Mandó bastante, te digo, demasiado para una persona."

'You can try some of the candy later, if you want. He sent quite a lot, too much for one person.'

He unzips the coveralls, stripping down into a more breathable layer of clothing. Just as eager to wash himself off, he invites Dan to follow him deeper into the house. There were two doorways at the far end of the living room: one leading into the kitchen and the other turning into a hallway that led to a pair of opposite-facing rooms.

"La lavadora está en ese clóset. Hay un baño para visitas en la puerta izquierda del pasillo."

'The washer is in that closet. There's a guest bathroom in the left door of the hallway.'

He explains the space methodically, pointing to the laundry closet in the kitchen before he steps into the hall and directs Dan to the shower. The leftward door opened to a room that Miguel used as a work space. A little chaos was allowed to live there, so there is no room for a bed between computer racks and a work bench. But he would find the restroom itself to be just as well-kept as the rest of the house.

"¿Por qué no aprovechas del baño y te dejo un cambio de ropa en la puerta?"

'Why don't you get started on the bath and I'll leave you a change of clothes at the door?'

Edited 2024-09-06 00:51 (UTC)

"Thank you. I definitely will help myself to some. It's been a few years since I've gotten to have some."

He can tell that this is a home that doesn't receive much company. Everything has the air of a single person's patterns and preferences, and Dan's got a good eye for those sorts of things, the absence of flat surfaces and extra furniture for many guests to rest themselves and their things, the way grooves in the carpet betray that only one of the chairs next to that table ever gets pulled out. It eases his mind a little bit at accepting the kind offer, thinking that maybe he's livening up Miguel's evening a little bit.

"Thank you. I'll do that."

Dan doesn't want to luxuriate too long in the shower, but it isn't often he gets to fully clean himself up, and getting clean means scrubbing through all manner of dirt and unpleasantness. As the grime whirls down the drain and scabs get waterlogged and slough off, the actual injuries become more obvious: bruises from being roughed up by officers or just angry, depressed men in town looking for someone to kick around, sores from cuts and scrapes that got dirty and didn't get clean enough to heal, red streaks of chafing and hives from damp and moldy clothing. When Dan gets a glimpse of himself through the fog in the mirror, gaunt and battered, cleaning himself up has certainly made him look (and, critically, smell) more presentable, but doesn't mask that he's been in dire straits for a while now.

Miguel's t-shirt on him - Dan can't read, but can see it's a generic MineCorp t-shirt based on the logo - goes down his thighs far enough to give Dan a little modesty, but he isn't upset to have sweatpants either to keep him warm. He slips open a cabinet and doesn't see anything small enough to be useful to him and unnoticed to Miguel, then cringes at himself for having considered pilfering goods when Miguel's being so generous with him.

"What are you working on in there?" he asks as he comes out, gesturing with a flick of his head to Miguel's work space and coming down the hall to load the washer.

The response comes a minute late. It appears that Miguel did opt to luxuriate a bit as he rinsed off the day's troubles. He still had a mop of wet hair when he pokes his head out of his bedroom door.

"¿Donde? Oh."
'*Where?'

He catches Dan as he's making his way out the hall, and figures he must mean the work room. He mulls over which language to best explain himself. His voice need only be raised a bit to reach the kitchen in a semi-muffled state.

"Computer vision. I want to fix up a drone that is able to navigate the obstacles in the forest."

As if that were sufficient explanation, he disappears back into his room to finish fixing himself up. And so, he enters the kitchen with some cozy-looking clothing akin to Dan's, albeit more fit to his proportions, rubbing at an ugly bruise on his temple that had gotten agitated with the flush of steaming hot water. That bastard old man could really throw a punch.

"I have leftovers if you're hungry. I was going to heat something up."

It felt odd that they had reached this point. At the same time, though, Miguel didn't find himself minding as much as he expected. He fishes for an ice pack from the freezer and sets it on his face. If the day hadn't been so miserable, he might have offered to properly cook something.

"That sounds wonderful." Dan puts his things into the washer, taking out the few belongings he has from the pockets, which mostly is a half of a pack of cigarettes and a small sewing kit that's supposed to fit into a wallet. Dan doesn't carry a wallet anymore, but the deputies haven't seen fit to confiscated his needle, thread and thimble, and he's been using them fairly regularly to keep his clothing from entirely disintegrating. Everything else has either been lost, stolen, forfeited, stashed in the knot of a tree in the woods or damaged to the point of disuse.

"You got cucumbers? Not for eating, but for..." Dan taps his temple, mirroring where Miguel got hit in the face. "It'll keep it from bruising much worse. Not sure why. Something about constricting the blood vessels."

If he could do something more helpful, he would, but there isn't much else to be done about someone getting clocked like that. Now that he's all clean, he takes a seat on the couch, although he still has a sense that he doesn't want to touch too much. He's felt that way a lot going into people's homes these last few weeks. He's started to see himself as a contaminant.

"You know, I spend a lot of time in the forest. What are you looking for in there? Just exploring?"

"Cucumbers, really?"

Miguel has managed to mostly avoid physical fights up until this point. He wouldn't know. Dan seems to be a bit more worldly in that regard. He gingerly swaps out the ice pack for the vegetable and gets to work reviving some meal prep from the week. The microwave beeps a few times and hums as he nukes the plates. Some water is boiled in the electric kettle at the same time to arrange some tea for them. Herbal, because anything caffeinated will keep him up and he wants to pass out on the bed, this time.

He assembles two plates of rice, beans and shredded pork (decent quality pork was one of the few things that was easy to find in this shitty town). Slow cooking the meat had worked to compensate for whatever seasoning he couldn't find. The vegetables were a little sad when he didn't know about the Farmer's Market, but it's nothing a bit of hot sauce or residual pork stew can't fix. A decent bottle of sauce is another gift his brother did not forget to send, if Dan looks in the box.

"Something like that. The aerial footage can help with surveying the mountain. The lake, too, if Goluboy can be pushed to look at a proposition for it. There's still fresh sources of water that could clean it out over time."

He sets the plates down on his breakfast table, just large enough to accomodate the both of them. Miguel feels stupid holding half a cucumber to his head, but he indulges the experiment to see if it'll make the throbbing slow down as he seats himself.

"Mind bringing the package over? We can open up that new bottle."

Edited 2024-09-06 05:52 (UTC)

"Really. I've been beat up a lot over the years. Cucumbers are the only thing that keep me looking handsome." Dan listens for the sound of his clothing in the washer, but it seems like it isn't a very quick cycle, so he may as well stay cozy in Miguel's spares. He smiles at the tea, too. Herbal teas have always been part of his life, since foraging in the woods has been a reliable way of supplementing his income.

"Thanks so much," he says, bringing over the package and setting it down next to the breakfast table. He sees the sauce and puts it out on the table. If it wouldn't be gauche he'd ask Miguel if he has some beer they could share or some other form of alcohol, because Dan does get the shakes overnight these days and the deputy did take his break-seal-in-case-of-emergency bottle, but it would be gauche, so Dan figures he'll either just deal with it or snoop after Miguel goes to sleep and see if he can't at least take a few slugs of mouthwash.

The humbleness of Miguel's abode - not poverty, not deprivation, just humbleness and utility - makes sharing the treats feel more intimate and meaningful.

"Probably might could map it better than anyone's had a chance to in a while. The fog in the woods and how deep the undergrowth is makes it hard to get far in. It do make it easy to track, though. Fog means humidity means mud means tracks, and undergrowth breaks when animals move through it." He runs his fingertips over his lower lip as he thinks. "The animal maulings don't make sense by my reckon. There ain't nothing big enough to maul folks to death that comes anywhere near the edge of town, I'd have could seen't sign of it. Might could your drone solve that mystery."

“Oyeee - Ese viejo terco también tomó su palazo.”
'*Hey. That stubborn old mule also took his lumps.'

Being 'beat up' made it sound entirely one way! Miguel has one light attempt to defend his honor in him, not wanting seem too enthusiastic about wailing on a guy approaching tragic greybeard status. Still, fuck that guy, a little. As the two of them scoot up to the table, he remembers his manners when Dan thanks him.

"Yes, well. Buen provecho."

It's been a long time since he's had a reason to welcome someone to his table. He peels off the plastic seal on the bottle and opens it up, sprinkling some of that goodness onto his vegetables before handing it over to Dan as he speaks of the forest.

"We have a few black bear sightings up on the mountain, maybe a bobcat. Nothing that aggressive. The animal maulings sound like some other fairy tale ground through the rumor mill of this place, if you're asking me."

He digs in.

"Noted. I get beat up, you get into tussles." Dan grins, pours on a small amount of sauce and also tucks in, making a groaning sound of satisfaction. It's the first hot meal he's had in days and definitely the most nutritious. For a moment, he just enjoys the satisfaction that accompanies having a need so fully met.

He takes a sip of tea. "You reckon law enforcement here know they're peddling a theory that don't hold up?"

Dan doesn't think much of the deputies' or Sheriff Mallard's intellectual prowess, but possibly he's just being resentful. He doesn't think law enforcement is killing people, but perhaps they're covering it up. Perhaps Cygne and-or Goluboy are part of a conspiracy.

"Because the deaths are definitely happening, but like we both said, it don't make much sense. The black bears don't come down here, the catamounts and fishers and bobcats ain't aggressive enough, and that would have could had to be one prolific wolverine to be killing about a person every two months." Dan raises an eyebrow. "But hey, we got a curfew in this town, so law enforcement's doing everything they can."

The sarcasm is thick.

"Just the one, hopefully."

Miguel does not plan on returning to the Hooligan Convention in the back of the Waffle House.

But he hears the satisfaction of his guest and finds himself feeling... happy? Elated? He even feels the pull of a smile a little, glad that he could share something enjoyable with this near-stranger. In truth, Miguel was used to a livelier home than the drab solitude he ended up with. He likes this.

"Pretty sure they'd think the fear plays to their benefit. Corruption would be the least surprising thing to find in this place."

He gestures through his thought process with the tip of the fork.

"I'd attribute whatever it is they're doing to incompetence, first. A mauling makes for a dramatic cover story, and it's not like people are going to check the records. They can hide whatever it is they screwed up on."

"I reckon we can safely assume there's at least a little corruption. Ain't surprising the sheriff's the kid of one of the only two folks in town with any power."

Dan drinks his tea with another satisfied huff. He's trying to pace himself, not just gorge just because the food's there and hot. He still can't figure out if Cygne and Goluboy are working together or against each other, but he does believe they both have agendas they aren't sharing.

"Never a bad bet to think police are just incompetent instead of doing something shady and coordinated. You ever consider doing a little digging yourself?" He takes another drink of tea. "I, ah, I can't read well. At all, really. And folks don't like talking to me and don't like letting me in places. So there's only so much investigating I can do."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

❅ SHITTY LITTLE TOWN ❅ PART 1

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