gooseberryhigh | HORROR MOVIE NIGHT

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HORROR MOVIE NIGHT

HORROR MOVIE NIGHT

Micah St. Clair organizes another movie night, this time watching a SCARY movie. Excitingly, he's just received a portable projector from home, so tonight's movie will be projected IN LARGE on a bedsheet that's been hung up in the Atrium. The couches have been rearranged in front of the makeshift screen. The lights have been switched off. Popcorn is served.

As the sophomores tensely watch the plot of Sinister unfold, Casper Kim walks up behind them to ask what they’re doing. The sophomores, caught off guard, scream loudly and several fall off the couches. Ariadne Flint throws a bowl of popcorn at Casper in self-defense.

WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN

Seniors and juniors are not technically banned from movie night, but they don't get a seat on the comfiest couches. Front row admission for Micah's best friends only!!!!

The lodge is sparsely populated by staff this Thursday evening, as the teachers are having a staff meeting.

For those who have not seen the movie, HERE is a trailer, and HERE is the Wikipedia plot summary.

For the record, Sinister is less gory than the plot summary sounds, and tends cut away from the violent parts and leave it up to the viewer's imagination. On the other hand, a horror movie involving a malevolent ghost-demon that steals children away is maybe... not great?

The movie is timed to end just before 9 PM, when the lodge closes down and everyone must walk back to camp. In the dark. Remember, buddy system!

» Before the movie: Meet up with your friends, share snacks, claim the best seats.

» watching the movie: Midway through, Casper terrifies forty innocent children.

» elsewhere in the lodge: Since there are so few teachers around, is there anything else you rascals are up to? Classrooms and club rooms are all still locked, though.

» After the movie: Time to clear out and go home! Are you going to sleep well tonight?

» OOC - Questions, comments, concerns!

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"Seems like that's how they develop a taste for blood, though," Lucas says into Bash's hair. That particular scary moment is over, or, at least, Lucas stopped paying attention to the movie, again, but he is still reluctant to move. "You could be the one responsible for training the next generation of terrible freshmen. Do you really want that on your conscience?" Lucas nudges him in teasing.

"Would they be loyal to me?" he asks, chewing his lower lip thoughtfully. The curl of his fingers has loosened itself, leaving them free to absentmindedly tap out a repeating pattern. "I mean, my conscience could probably be persuaded."

Because, let's be real, an army of loyal future-Freshmen is what really matters in this hypothetical scenario.

"First, you have to ask yourself: how loyal can a freshman be, really?" Lucas quirks his head to the side. Is the evil of freshmen inherent? Were they like that last year? He can't quite remember. "If they're loyal enough, it's totally worth it." He repositions his arm to draw Bash in a bit closer. Fingertips drawing a figure eight on his upper arm, Lucas muses, "That's a lot of power."

"With great power, comes great responsibility." It's muttered quickly, as though he physically cannot stop himself from saying it, words mumbled into Lucas' sleeve. Damn it, Uncle Ben. You dead, catchy advice giving jerk. He tacks on an incredulous (at himself, let it be noted): "Fucking hell." Just for good measure.

From there, Bash drags himself back to the topic with bruising force. "They're still young and impressionable and can be taught loyalty." The results are middling in their success.

Lucas dips his head in quiet laughter. "Thanks for your sacrifice." One of them was going to say it. He's glad it wasn't him.

"So what would you train them to do, aside from the unfailing loyalty? Weird arbitrary rankings? Murder, pretend or actual?" He weighs each option with a tilt of his free hand. "Bank robberies?"

Bash spares a second to let out a noise that sounds something like a dying walrus being dragged over gravel - at a situationally appropriate volume. It's astoundingly attractive.

He visibly perks up with a speculative, "Bank robberies?" Hm. Options. "Maybe art theft? Wi-Fi installation?"

Lucas clamps a hand over his mouth, because he's not keeping his laughter at a polite, movie-going appropriate volume, otherwise. That was an amazing noise, whatever it was.

"Oh, without a doubt, Wi-Fi first," he says once he's recovered. "Maybe art forgery?"

That was a noise of tragedy. Deep and soul-crushing tragedy. But, y'know, he's okay with it. If that's the end result.

"Do you think there's magical art forgery?" Ethan Hawke may or may not still be alive at this point. Bash absolutely does not care at all. "I mean, there's got to be some crazy spellwork to pull that off."

But it was cute. In a tragic, dying walrus way.

Lucas doesn't say that, though.

He does shift a little, physically leaning into the conversation with enthusiasm. "A living portrait forgery would be so weird. Do you think the portrait would just rat you out? Or, what if you didn't get the personality right because you didn't know the subject? And your art forgery den was just full of portraits of the same person that are just slightly wrong?" These are the important questions. Who cares about Ethan Hawle's conspiracy board and murder home movies.

This is great. This is normally the point in most conversations when people look at him like they know that he's about to jump off of the conversational cliff and they're a bit wary about his ability to not die tragically at the bottom. But, nope. Lucas has gone and shoved the whole topic right the hell off this time.

And Bash - Well, Bash kinda wants to kiss him on the face? But he settles for leaning in and grinning like an absolutely unholy thing.

"Exactly." He nods, chewing on the pad of his thumb. "I mean, do you just research well enough that the portrait doesn't even know that it's lying and thinks it's the real deal? Or would forged portraits be inherently dishonest in the first place? Like - they're in on the con?" His nose wrinkles. "And what do you do with a whole bunch of slightly wrong portraits? They're sentient - what's the ethics on decommissioning a sentient portrait?"

Something big and bright bubbles up in Lucas' chest when Bash wrinkles his nose. Laughter? No. He's not sure what it is, but he bites down hard on his lower lip to hold it back. The hand he's draped against Bash's arm gives him a light squeeze.

"It's gotta be a rough line of work." Lucas says, breathless. After a sharp inhale, he dives back into the topic, eyes wide. "Probably takes its toll on you, having to dispose of so many not quite right portraits. Maybe you could organize them into a choir, instead? Take the show on the road." He mulls over this detour in the narrative. "Although I guess now you're out of the art forgery business."

"That's okay. I mean," his hand raises, gestures toward himself vaguely, before returning to its former position of tapping out an increasingly excited pattern against Lucas' ribs. "Not really much for subterfuge." Understatement like whoa. "But if all my portraits are of the same person, you think we're gonna have enough range to cover all the parts? Do they even want to sing?"

This is exactly why Bash is never going to finish a coherent Senior project. And he looks completely delighted by it. There's clear and visible effort going into keeping himself quiet.

"And you kinda got to wonder. In general. How long before portraits start making decisions for themselves? How much growth do you put in paint? Like - would a portrait be the same if it was hanging in the Pope's living room versus hanging in, like, Ted Bundy's living room?"

"I figure at least one of them has a quirk like, 'accidentally a baritone,' or 'trained soloist,' so..." Lucas lets the thought trail off, gaze dropping to Bash's hand. Carefully, hesitating, he twines the fingers of his free hand into Bash's own. To stop the tapping. Totally.

He feels a bit like he might pop if he stops talking, so Lucas goes on hurriedly. "Nature-nurture for sentient portraits," now that's an ethically questionable experiment. He tilts his chin up to stare thoughtfully at the dark ceiling. And also because he needs to take a deep breath. "Maybe one of them will learn to be a criminal mastermind? Then you could hand the criminal organization off to one of the portraits to run in your stead? Now you're starting to build an empire."

Oh. Hey. That's happening. Huh. It's probably really good that the room's all dim and there's probably something at least mildly intriguing going on with Ethan Hawke's murder house, because that sort of shudders its way all up his spine and everything goes sort of kettle-bubbling in between his ears.

"Gotta pick the right kind of criminal, then." he muses after slightly too long of a pause, fingers squeezing tight for a moment. "Cause I don't want to be responsible for any Ted Bundy-inspired portrait shenanigans. Not that - can portraits kill each other? I mean, they can go for walk arounds, can't they?"

"An artsy and non-violent one, for our purposes." Flustered and unable to help himself, Lucas laughs again. He has to tuck one of his legs under the other to keep them both from shaking. How on earth did you get here and how are you not messing this up? Is the refrain in his head. Lucas does an admirable job of ignoring it.

"Y'know, I'm not sure?" He runs his thumb over Bash's fingers as he considers the logistics of portrait homicide. "Maybe a living portrait serial killer is just really annoying. Murderin' Steve from down the hall ineffectively stabs everyone else whenever he drops by, so he doesn't get invited to poker night, anymore."

There's a moment where Bash attempts quite valiantly to be the sort of person with more maturity than his very-nearly-sixteen years on earth have granted him. But then his lips twitch and he needs to snag his hand back in order to better press the both of them over his mouth. (It helps. Ish.) His eyes crinkle at the corners and thunk goes his forehead back onto Lucas' shoulder, the line of his own a shaky thing.

"Dude." A snort. "Murderin' Steve," he gasps, near-silent and disgracefully squeaky. "What a dick."

Edited 2017-06-17 20:25 (UTC)

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