Charles' Journey: Loss

[Laraqua]

There's certainly plenty of choices of liquor bottles and he slips it into his pocket. There's really no sign of his gun around here. Outside the sky is heavy and black and shards of smog brush past him, cloying at his lungs and making him sneeze. It smells like ash and pollution and its making him dizzy. He'll need something to help filter the particles out of his lungs if he wants to make his way much further.

[Pickman37]

Charles exits the bar and is overcome by the thick smog permeating the streets. His body is wracked by painful coughing and sneezing fits, all the more worse due to his injuries. He fumbles on his person for some form of protection...

OOC,If I do not have a hand kerchief on my person, I will tear a large strip of my dress shirt (hopefully made easier by the fact I took a shotgun blast) and douse it in some of the liquor I brought along to use as a make shift dust mask. If unsuccessful, I'll retreat back into the bar.

[Laraqua]

Charles tears loose some of his ripped shirt and ducks his head back into the bar to affix it so he doesn't just stick ash particulate into his nose and then pulls his head back and loose. His wounds bleed freshly into the makeshift bandages, pain arcing out across his muscles with every motion, but he's sure he should be in more pain from his injuries. Is this a good sign or a bad one? The difficulty now is trying to see with all of this whipping smog stinging his eyes. Goggles would be good. Shutting his eyes and feeling his way along might work. Otherwise its going to be slow going. Which way is the hospital anyway? He knows there's some sort of food place, perhaps a cafe, across the road from him and a park beyond that. Behind him ... who knows. The lake is that way. He knows that much.

[Pickman37]

Laraqua,Lol! You're killing me :lol: Must go on....

Charles considers going back into the bar but decides nothing would be accomplished that way. Maybe he could meet up with someone who could help...

He tries to find his way across the street to the cafe, blind and stumbling with the air burning his eyes with each attempted glimpse. He staggers and flails, hoping for the best.....

[Laraqua]

Luck is on his side as his normal stepping pattern means his foot is high enough over the gutter that he doesn't trip over it - though he does stumble a bit when the ground is suddenly higher than he expected. His flailing hand also grasps a telephone pole before his head would have hit it and then he is feeling along a brick wall. Left or right? Which way was it again?

[Pickman37]

With all the excitement that occurred after arriving at the bar, Charles is unsure of which direction the cafe was or even if he did spy one for sure. He goes left...

What is with all this smog? I bet they don't put this in the tourist brochures... Charles smirks behind the liquor soaked rag, attempting to amuse himself and keep his mind off the total isolation and helplessness he feels...

[Laraqua]

Charles follows the brick facing and finds he's walking past a house, his hand trailing across brick, his feet tripping briefly across a concrete porch, and hearing a sharp clack he opens his eyes for another brief glimpse and sees a front door that looks like it had been kicked in or otherwise broken so it can no longer close. It swings open and shut with the sharp winds, though it never opens all of the way, as there seems to be something blocking it from the other side.

[Pickman37]

Charles decides to take shelter in the house, if even for a few minutes. His eyes are watery and stinging from the polluted air he has travelled through and the place may offer some form of reprieve. He also decides to check for a phone, despite earlier failed attempts to call for help when he was still with Lily and Rochelle.

Charles makes his way to the door and attempts to force it open, even just enough for him to slip inside...

[Laraqua]

Charles slips inside easily enough and shuts the door behind him, though he has to use a foot to keep it held in place. His eyes are immediately grateful to him, though tears are still running down his cheeks, doubtless making it look like he's been crying. Luckily the cloth around his mouth should help cover that. His lighter can at least function in here if he needs to take a look around. He pulls out his mobile phone and finds that it's still go three bars worth of battery that should get him through the night unless he decides to drain it on the flashlight function or by making long calls. There doesn't seem to be any reception. Figures, with that kind of storm raging out there.

[Pickman37]

Charles returns the mobile to his pocket and gets his lighter. He flicks it on and looks for something nearby to prop the door closed but is also lost in thought. He is not even sure if he finds a telephone in this house, if it will work either. However, maybe he can find a phone book or a community guide that has a map of the town that he could use to find his way around. Shaking himself out of thought, he glances around at his surroundings, scouring for something to prop the door...

[Laraqua]

His lighter sends flickering caricatures from the shadows across the hallway as the wind whips through the gaps and makes the flame dance. Currently keeping the door from ever fully opening is a mess of rolled up fabric, bunched up almost like a human being, and stained with old blood and sweat. There's no telephone in the hallway. Perhaps in the kitchen? The only things in this short hallway is a set of stairs going up and a set of faded black and white photographs of happy families with a very stern looking eldest son.

[Pickman37]

Charles extinguished the lighter and with both hands, attempted to pull the rolled up fabric, despite its appearance, closer to the back of the door to get it to close further and prevent any of the smog from seeping into the house.

Laraqua,If he cannot move the fabric then he will leave it at its present location and carry on.

He turned back towards the hallway, re-lit his lighter and began to look for a doorway that led to a kitchen or living room. As he passed the photographs, he could feel an air of eerie familiarity, despite not knowing the people in the pictures. The hair on the back of his neck began to stand up and he averted his eyes away from them, instead focusing on the walk ahead...

[Laraqua]

The fabric has a disturbingly disjointed weight to it, as though it held something within it, but there's no firmness inside it which makes the weight feel misleading. To his hands its like its just a heavy dampness inside it but to his muscles it has the kind of weight that a blanket-wrapped body should have. It shifts readily enough and the door shuts, though not without allowing in some more of that miasma through the gaps around the door jamb. At least there's a lot less of it now and it's already starting to settle on the floor. There's stairs heading up, two doors on the left, one on the right, and one under the stairs.

[Pickman37]

Charles began moving down the hall amidst the flickering shadows created by his lighter. Still averting his gaze from the photographs on the wall, he made his way to the first door on the right. Holding the lighter in his left hand, he freed up his right hand by placing the tire iron under his left arm then tried the doorknob...

OOC,Sorry I forgot about the juggling act I should be doing with the tire iron I was packing :oops:

[Laraqua]

It leads to a living room with a big overstuffed couch covered in teddy bears that are bathed in the flickering snowy light of a static-filled widescreen television. There's something about the static that implies that there's actual images there that he can't quite make out.

[Pickman37]

T.V.'s on but no one's home... Charles thinks to himself. He considers calling out to see if anyone responds but then figures if the front door was open then most likely no one is here.

He puts the lighter out to cool it and save fluid, opting to operate in the dancing light of the static offered by the television.

If that thing is on, there must be power. Charles checks the wall for a light switch while glancing about for a lamp or some form of light. He's been in the dark since the bar and is hopeful to change that...

[Laraqua]

There is a floor lamp but the plug has been chopped in half. The light bulb overhead has shattered at some point in the past. Inside, however, even in the flickering light, things feel calm and quiet. Almost safe. The red plaid curtains block out any sign of the ash and other than the wind howling against the eaves and the occasional clatter of grit against the window glass, he could almost pretend that everything was normal.

Perhaps a place like this might have a flashlight.

[Pickman37]

Finding himself strangely relaxed in the solitude of the room and the flickering white noise of the television, Charles scans the room for other furniture, besides the couch...

[Laraqua]

There's a display case filled with plates. A lamp with a frilly pink cover. Thick curtains. A shelf containing metal toy trains that look relatively realistic. A dog bed and scratching post beneath the curtains. This really does look like someone's home. It's not one of those posh display model homes that look fantastic in an empty magazine sort of way that Charles' parents lived in nor the impressive sort of pad that he owns. Just by taking a glance around you can see that someone lived their life here. No, that they nested here. It just has a big sensation of home. There's even a knitted lap blanket laying on the couch.

[Pickman37]

The calm that has descended upon Charles is urging him to take a spot on the couch and close his eyes but then he snaps to attention. He is still injured and any nap could be his last. Seeing no drawers or cupboards to investigate, he checks under the teddy bears on the overstuffed couch, not really expecting to find anything...

I better keep moving on...check out the rest of this place...