video | un: NAILS

[nichocolatine]

[ the video begins with badou wearing one of his usual tees, carefully setting his phone down so the camera angle can spot him sitting on his living room floor surrounded by an array of dresses. affixed to his wrist is a little cloth pumpkin, stuck full of needles and pins. he's without his usual cigarette, instead sucking on a lollipop that stains his lips bright red. last time he made a post on the network his neck was bruised and bandaged — this time it's the same thing, but the bruise is angrier, spreading across his neck and shoulder, disappearing under a bandage and gauze that looks about ready to get changed in an hour or two. ]

Evenin'.

[ he picks up the skirt of one of the dresses, flipping it inside-out to access the pocket he'd been working on attaching. ]

So I'm sittin' here, mendin' dresses — as you do — and I nicked myself pretty good and I'm thinkin', well, shit, that's another one I gotta wait on, y'know?

[ he lifts a forefinger, displaying a bandage that looks an awful like like dora the explorer, and wiggles it in the direction of the camera. ]

It got me thinkin'—

How many of us here are just regular ol' humans? Or whatever. I'm talkin' no magic, no special augmentations, no fancy shamcy abilities that got you doin' better than the average guy.

[ he pauses to finish off a stitch, making a knot with his thread and cutting the excess with his teeth. ]

See, where I'm from, that ain't the norm. But that doesn't seem to be the case around here.

[ oh, one more thing— ]

And if you are one of the special ones, go ahead and tell us what you can do. Why not, right? What else do any of us got to hide at this point?

Comments

[deathoftheauthor]

Socially? That's a far more individual matter, I think. One can find people who believe wholeheartedly in almost any kind of supernatural element, be it ghosts or witches or visitors from outer space. But the ones who insist upon proving it are typically considered— what's the word? "Crackpots"?

[nichocolatine]

[ a soft chuckle. his brother was never called a "crackpot" (the terms tended to be far more colorful) but he can definitely imagine it happening easily enough. ]

Well, believin' it and bein' it are two different things. Where do you fall?

[deathoftheauthor]

Ah. Well. I myself am a vampire, though that has given me less insight into the supernatural than one might expect.

[nichocolatine]

No? Why's that? You new at it or somethin'?

[deathoftheauthor]

Not at all. The simple and disappointing truth is that I was brought into this life with no more natural knowledge of what I was or where we originated from than any human being.

[nichocolatine]

Shit, sounds like you had a terrible teacher.

[deathoftheauthor]

( He laughs quietly. )

I certainly thought so at the time. I resented him terribly for it. It wasn't until many years later that I realized how very little he'd been taught himself. The blind leading the blind, as the saying goes.

[nichocolatine]

Doesn't seem all that thought out. Ain't that an easy way for your types to die out? If no one knows what the fuck they're doing.