-- Edited by Alter on Monday 24th of August 2009 04:41:01 PM

"What was the grafitti?" Frank asked curiously.

"I wasn't doing the reporting on that case and I don't normally go out back here. Not freaked out I jut hate Gas Station rest rooms with the firey passion of ten thousand Foremen Grills." Morris will say with a shrug. "Should we check out the office or the bathroom first?"

Secretly Morris favors the office, bathrooms in the places always stink no matter how often they are cleaned, it's like there's a law or something.

Frank opens the Bathroom Door with one of the Keys there's a Cabinet in there as well. the Bathroom is one of those ones that is always being cleaned but never seems to get clean with a partly pained cement floor.

There is a slowly dripping tap the pipes are exposed below it. the toilet looks like it has only been cleaned when unclogged and there is no toilet paper.

Viveca wrinkles her nose and says, "no kidding. I think I'll hold it - indefinitely if this is my choice. I'd rather take my chances with the bushes out back."

Still, she steps in - if the lights don't illuminate the room clearly she turns on the flashlight to check the grimy corners for monsters, or anything video-game shiny.

"Vinegar?" Frank blinked at Morris. "Y'know. I'm never going to be able to eat pickles again without thinking of that, thanks a lot."

"Aside from my murder of your taste buds. " Morris tries the cabinet. "You wouldn't happen to have a key for this thing would you?" The cabinet seems to be locked.

Viveca snorts faintly to herself as she waits outside the bathroom for the boys to deal with the cabinet. If Frank does decide to open it with an axe, she has no intention of impeding his swing.

Morris takes the note into his hand and reads it out loud, "Wow. Rodney always seemed like such a happy mild mannered boy, Him going off seems so amazingly weird." Morris says re-reading the note. "I mean he complained about his job but no more then anyone else."

-- Edited by Morris Strub on Saturday 29th of August 2009 02:32:08 AM

The Video take goes backwards and the group can see themselves wandering around the gas station.

After them they see a deserted gas station, but then the picture goes fuzzy and there's a kid sitting at the counter, the tape goes fuzzy then there are dark shuffling shapes outside the window you can barely make them out but there's something sinister about them.

the take goes incredibly fuzzy and someone moving around can be barely made out until the tape ends.

"I'm not sure. However that looked like a fairly board Rodney reading a Magazine I don't see any footage of him leaving or entering the gas station." Morris will say and scratch his chin.

The blurry figure inside in the static does start out from backwards at the country where Rodney had been sitting oddly enough.

As the tape goes backwards more blurry figures seems to join and then there is a very clear image of a tree gray branches reaching up for the sky it has figures hanging from the bare branches, bodies too small to be adults, handing bodies swaying with the tree, children, then another burst of static and the empty gas station shows for the rest of the tape.

The tree itself is familiar, the Tree outside the Orphanage, though it only showed for a split second.

Viveca makes a face and shudders but doesn't look away from the tape until it's finished. The choppy backwards motion of high speed rewind display makes it a little more remote, a little more distant - but it still makes her twitch to see children hanging from the tree.

Viveca looks over at Morris, frowning slightly. She remembers a few weeks before, getting a call from a frantic Morris who had just woken from a horrendously vivid nightmare - of a tree hung with dead children and a girl in a white dress asking him to stay and be her 'friend.' Viveca reaches out and puts her hand on Morris's back, just below the shoulder.

"That is... very messed up," she says, dropping her voice to ask, "you okay Morris?"

-- Edited by Viveca Moody on Saturday 29th of August 2009 04:24:11 PM

Viveca feels the urge to try to lighten the mood with a joke, but she bites her tongue - she doesn't think anything she might think of to say would be terribly funny right now and she hardly wants to upset Morris further. Tossing Frank a quick glance she steps a bit closer and wraps her arm around Morris's shoulder, giving him a sideways sort of hug and offering silent comfort - and a slight change of topic.

"What I don't get," she says quietly, "is earlier... whatever, later I guess. You kinda see the attendant kid, but... you don't see him leave or enter, he just is there for a while then he's not." She looks over at the guys, asking, "does this mean he's been here? I mean, this foggy, 'shadow' world copy of the place he works? If so, how did he get back out? Or... is it just that the place 'copies' things that stay in one place for long enough?" If so, what does that say about their being in this weird world? She shivers as well, not sure she likes where that line of logic goes. So much for less creepy topics.

"Maybe it's mocking us showing us a glimpse of normal life. Ha ha want it can't have it, like a vindictive child." Morris takes in a deep breath and then goes and ejects the take yanking it out and putting it on the shelf like it's hot. "Hope you guys don't mind I don't want to watch it forward in normal speed."

Viveca can't help laughing a little at Frank's display of maturity and grace, but at the same time she appreciates it - hoping that it does help Morris's mood a little bit.

Thoughtfully her fingers tap the tape she has through her bag - but after the display with the tree she doesn't necessarily want to put it in. The last thing they need is something to upset Morris more. He's been through enough strain what with being stuck here for far longer than either of them.

"Anyways. I believe we had another door to deal with down here?" she says, offering a bit more thorough a change of topic than before.

"Keyguy to the rescue, then." Frank went to unlock the office.

Viveca peers past Frank's shoulder but doesn't push past - neither the hall nor room are suited to doing that without being pretty damn rude about it.

"Someone needs a filing cabinet," she observes dryly.

"No wonder they keep their security stuff in the sh*tt*r." Morris says having decided not to call that room they where in a Bathroom, he will turn around to watch the hallway.

There are various office things there. Prophets made by the store and employee records, a small note admitting that he's not firing anyone because at least Rodney does work and the other employees are basically bodies to stand behind the counter and take money.

Hard enough for the money they pay to get someone who won't steal on a good night let alone someone who is going to actively work.

There is also a box of handgun bullets and something else.

It's wrapped in a washcloth and it has in it a spoon and a bottle, what's in it is a liquid that's white, it could be easily mistaken for several things one of them humorous and vile however Vivi and Frank knows what it is, that's White Claudia oil.

"If they're tribal or in the religion, that stuff's legal." Frank shrugged.  "If they're not - they're stupid to have it or use it.  You do it wrong, you are in a world of hurt..."  Frank paused suddenly.

"Do you ... know what that stuff does?" Frank looked around them.  "Were either of you involved with people who were selling that illegally... or using it illegally, at least?"

"Yeeah, somehow I don't think 'in the drawer in the office of a gas station' qualifies as sacred ground to anyone," Viveca says to Frank's comment about legality. She shrugs at his question.

"I know the textbook, and I've arrested - or taken to hospital - a few users who have done it then wandered out in public. Why?"

Viveca frowns, the frown deepening with every word Frank speaks - but she doesn't speak up or object until he's come to a pause.

"Actually I wasn't about to tell you it was impossible. Truth be told it's all too disturbing a possibility - whether you think it connects you to the world of spirits or a shared hallucination." Her expression grows slightly sickened as possibilities play through her head, then she shakes herself.

"However - there's a few arguments against it. Leaving aside how we all would've gotten it into our systems, or how it would've lingered for weeks in Morris's... in general I've never seen White Claudia actually remove someone from normal reality. If I have actually been wandering around in a drugged haze... I'd be confined to a hospital bed by now. The three of us have only encountered one 'person' so far - the maneater out there that you just mentioned."

The disturbed expression comes back, but not as strongly as Viveca continues, "I was feeling queasy for a moment thinking about her. If this was a shared hallucination and we're all in the normal world but think we're not... we probably just killed a person, a real person, and to hell with what she - or he - looks like to us. Problem with that is that if this were a hallucination, I like to think Dad would've gotten us all into straight jackets by now. He might be a small town sheriff, but he's had to deal with his share of weird and horrifying in his job."

it's not a flash back there is nothing flashy about how it enters Frank's mind it more so seems to sneak up on him almost like a cat or a child who has gotten through a door that was once closed.

Frank had been a child and she was the whitest women he'd ever seen, her hair was a pale yellow and her skin looked like it had never been tanned before, she wore a yellow dress that had been popular in the 70s, and white boots that almost touched her knees.

Around her neck was a golden pendent with that symbol on it the one Frank had seen at the Fire Station. She sat down on frank's grandfather's couch her pale blue eyes scanned the room.

"You seem very nervous sun beam." Frank hears his grandfather say bringing the women a cup of tea, maybe she's a little young to be a women however teenager always look ancient in the eyes of a child.

"Is that because you only know me by reputation or because you almost killed a man?"

"It wasn't my fault."  The women says through clenched teeth.  "I couldn't help it it wasn't my fault."

"You think I'm going to react like the white Order folks?  You think I'm like Strub?  My beliefs don't take too kindly to burning little girl's alive willing or otherwise."

"To force God's return doesn't summon God but the Devil."

"Good that's close to sense as I've heard from an Order member in some time now as long as Strub's in charge and you can't help them powers you got, you're in danger."  He shows her a small bottle of white fluid. "This comes from the white Claudia flower.  Girls like you can bring other people into the spirit world."

"I'm scared."

"You don't have to be it's a gift."

"It's a gift."

"A gift."

The phone in the office is ringing and will snap Frank out of his thoughts.