effigy
Legacy Name: effigy

(modern urban magic/horror verse)

What is in your character's refrigerator right now?

A jar of cockroach wings, an old carton of milk - the dye on the labeling is faded, cracked in the manner of something that's been soaked and re-dried. The lip is open, frayed slightly, and the bottom of the container is beginning to stain. There's a dark, sticky residue coated down the side, burbled out from the cardboard spout.

It's not milk.

On the shelf above it, there's a package of ground meat, the once vibrant muscle gray and spoiled. The cellophane covering it is loose and frail, like skin without elasticity, and clings to its own edges where its been torn and chunks of hamburger removed.

The bulb is broken. He doesn't notice.

Look at your character's feet. Describe what you see there.

A pair of old, black oxfords. The laces are loose on the right foot, and the toe of the left one is slightly scuffed. Just below the hem of his trousers, his socks are plain and navy.

Although it isn't visible, they're held up by a pair of sock garters.

Your character is doing intense spring cleaning. What is difficult for them to part with? Why?

Books - books on the floor, books on the shelves, on the windowsill, stacked beside doorways. He has a millennium of literature and pressed paper knowledge in his shop, and though he sells them by trade and loans them by whim, he's yet to meet a scroll or illuminated script he didn't covet or yearn to possess.

It's Saturday at noon. What is your character doing? Give details.

He's sitting behind the counter of his shop, reading the weathered pages of an old novel. The door is left partially open, its heavy wood warped with age. Every now and then, along with the breeze, the sounds of pedestrians and Saturday shoppers flutter in.

Dust motes clutter in patches of sunlight, scarce though they are through heavy curtains. There is only one window in the shop. It's a bay window, pressing out into the street, with a bench that's too crowded with reading material to be used for anything else.

The rest of the illumination comes from a few domes on the ceiling, antique and prone to flickering.

On the mahogany counter with the cash register, a single desk lamp keeps the gloom from taking over the pages of his book.

Despite the busy day and crowded street, he doesn't receive many visitors.


---

from his character notes:

merchant with a smile that's too big and that creeps onto his face, who moves like a spider and is the embodiment of the thing scuttling across your floor in the dark

he's not the lurching, immediate scare of a recognized predator, but rather a slow dawning of discomfort - as if his very existence serves to remind you that there are worse terrors out there than hungry things with teeth

i also like the idea of him being able to contort, to be able to turn his head so far to the side that you almost expect to find yourself staring at him upside down - these sort of casual, split second reminders as he talks or tries to sell you things that there's something alarming and unnatural about him, even for a verse that welcomes the strange

another trait i can't shake is that he eats bugs LMAO which sounds silly, but that seems extra creepy when i focus on the imagery of him pulling these writhing, clicking insects out of jars with stained fingertips, and the leer he gets just before biting down