locus of control (r)

[armand pontellier]

SOMETIMES I FIND IT HARD
• to believe there's someone else who could be •
JUST AS MESSED UP AS ME

Whenever Armand found his wits about him this early in the morning, he enjoyed sitting below the old tree in quiet contemplation until he figured enough people were awake and would backtrack to amuse himself with them before he felt bothered and thusly moved on to better things. And today being such a day, Armand systematically fell out of his bed in a tired, quietly raving stupor (as he so often did when visited by those bothersome, nightmarish phantasms the night before), and went about his usual routine in the half-asleep way that made him clumsy and far more prone to shouting angrily in a strange mixture of colloquial French and basic English. This always went on longer than any normal male might have spent on his appearance or on fussing over things that were both inanimate and harmless because their shadows bothered a tired psyche. But it was always a complacent routine that made Armand feel less disconnected from the outside world, standing before a mirror, drinking in the changes between the scraggly teenager and whatever he had been now. And sometimes, just sometimes, he would stare long and hard into the reflective surface and complained about his old life as if it had been just yesterday. About his mother with her petty laughing, his father and his lazy Southern ways, his sister who reminded him his family was fucked up, his little brother and how every single one of them, even himself, poured their hopes for the future in him, and finally of things he couldn’t bother speaking of even in his own company. Thinking back on it, he was glad it hadn’t been just yesterday.

By the time Armand had satisfied himself with looking presentable, the stars had been washed away by a dull gray sunrise, the sultry night fighting the pastel in a languidly moving battle that seemed as though neither particularly felt like winning. But it was tempered by a gentle breeze and rolled in with a thin, low fog that made things feel hauntingly ethereal as it set. Armand seemed pleased enough with it all. And when he made the trek through the dew-laden grass that made up the grounds leading to the old tree, he contented himself by posing the hypothetical of if he were treading on egg shells, then backtracked in his little game and tried imagining burning coals. This would continue on until the sun had began climbing high into the heavens, making the crisp morning air feel hot and stale, and by then Armand was in a far better mood than he had been earlier. And in this improved mood, he decided against turning back from his original plans of returning to the main building now that the sounds of life picked up; it was so much more fun here now, even if he was still playing very much alone.

The moment his fingers feathered out along the bark of the tree, however, his manner changed to the reflective, sedated way he normally was when he made time to enjoy the shade and indiscriminate ear of the ancient tree. Armand intended to climb it to observe the goings-on and endear himself to the rush of slinking onto thin branches and jostling them to see if his reflexes were still dependable enough to catch a lower branch when he fell. But now, he wanted to settle against the broad trunk and, oddly enough, sleep a bit more. Despite the warming air the ground beneath the growing shade was still cool and far more inviting than were the hard branches beaten down by the sun and the discordant screaming of the birds beginning to roost in them, their eyes watching him even when he turned away from the branch he had intended to use as leverage. They only quieted when Armand sat with his back pressed into the tree, his head bowed as he watched small insects carry on around him. Their actions fascinated him and occasionally he would insistently press his finger against one or two who may have stopped what they were doing to observe or gather information, intent on watching them crawl languidly along in some uniform line to what could only be to fulfill some mission only insects seemed to know or commit to, commenting quietly that the heavy matters of the conscious was too complex for pea-brained bugs to understand anyway and that if nothing else they should at least continue whatever their purpose was. They didn’t seem to care what Armand thought, and continued on when they tired of his voice grating on whatever auditory organs they may have had or when he pressed them on in his boredom.

Eventually they began to bore him entirely, and Armand’s mind wandered to what he did not wish to think about earlier in front of the mirror. Armand thought of his daughter, and wondered how many of her birthdays he had missed, how many she would celebrate before he would see her again, if he ever would. He doubted it. Mrs. Pontellier had seemed proud enough of her granddaughter during her visits early on when she felt it was a mother’s duty to cling to the hope that her son was here by mistake, having slid him a picture of that child and her mother for him to see what he had missed. Armand had thrown it away—he didn’t want to think of either, and it seemed alien to have associated with either at any point in his life. Thinking on it now however made him rake his hair in some irritation of his choice, but taking a look around him simply made him knock the back of his skull into the trunk and merely laugh both at himself and at everything in general. The birds broke into their screams once more at the sound, and for the longest time they seemed determined to drown out the manic, broken sound that roused them. Why would he think about such things now? Being overemotional had become silly way to sign a death warrant to him, and such random bouts of such disturbed him nowadays.

With a sigh of half contentment, half disquiet Armand resolved to look around once more, too restless to take on the task of sleeping now, careful to observe everything within his range with a new and critical interest of movement and the sounds swirling ‘round and ‘round now that most of the Alabaster House’s occupants were either awake or on the verge of being awake. It felt like a normal day now, with the sky’s endless blue curtain littered with shreds of cloud cleaved by the sun and limited by the ugly, comfortably out of place look of the high walls. And like the ugly dawn, the listless night, and the lethargic afternoon, Armand came to accept these moments of uneasy peace as a part of his life, just as Alabaster itself was.

TAGGED ! Vicky. B) /creates more work for Nat.
WORDS ! Good question. 1,159.
MUSIC ! Je Me Perds - Jena Lee.
LYRICS ! Sometimes by Skillet.
TEMPLATE ! PANIC! ITS LAUZ @ CAUTION
NOTES ! What is this…I don’t even…

[victor riddle]

i feel it deep within, it's just beneath the skin

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i must confess that i feel like a monster ![/b][/size][/font]

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Victor never really slept. Not like most people did, anyway. He didn't sleep for hours at a time, instead just separating his rest into various catnaps he spread throughout the day. Why? Because, despite all his confidence, he was paranoid. He never wanted to be caught off guard or in a state of weakness. He even picked very secluded areas to sleep in and had a knack for disappearing whenever he was in the mood for a nap. He despised early mornings, however. Even when he didn't sleep very often, he didn't enjoy the groggy feeling that seemed to hover over him whenever he stirred at an early hour. The lethargic sensations vexed him, so he usually prowled the hallways of the house at odd hours, thinking to himself and stretching his long limbs to rid them of the obnoxious feeling. Today was no different. He'd already unfurled from his bed and had even taken a cold shower, always prefering to do so in privacy. So in the quiet of dawn, the man had taken up his usual habit of wandering, only pausing briefly in the kitchen for a lazy cup of tea before resuming his prowl. Sometimes, he just enjoyed passing the rooms and listening to the soft, gentle noises people made when they slept. So snug in their beds, so caught up in dreamland... oh, it was just too precious for words. He delighted in observing humans in a state of weakness; loved drinking in the sights and sounds of creatures that were vulnerable, particularly once he had reduced them to it. But sleeping victims were of little interest to Victor. He prefered his prey awake, wide-eyed, and aware. He wanted them to look into his eyes -- wanted them to know who had owned and discarded every inch of their body.

On that cheerful note, the man decided to have a look at the sunrise. He fidgeted slightly as he approached one of the windows, tugging on the sleeves of his long, black jacket. His face bore an apathetic expression as he stared through the glass, unimpressed with the shifting of daylight and the sounds of birds roosting. There was no beauty in it. When he'd been little, he'd often berated his twin for being so infatuated with nature. The boy had often tugged at Victor's hair to get his attention, only to point in delight at the sky or at an animal sneaking through foliage. Perhaps it was through some twisted sense of humor that Victor had gone on to kill neighborhood pets and hide them beneath his brother's bed and in his school bag. It was as though to say, "ha! Nature? I own nature and I own you." Whenever his brother had brought home a potted plant, Victor had shredded it. Whenever he'd caught a butterfly in a jar, Victor had plucked off its wings by the next morning. Constantly had this progressed throughout their childhood until, finally, the boy finally snapped. Victor was... the victor. He'd triumphed over the one person who had ever threatened him by actually understanding him... and so, forever more, he was the alpha male. Or so he had claimed. As sweet as it was to savor such memories, he hated reminiscing. He was not fond of revisiting images, faces, and feelings because this suggested that they had connection and influence over him. And so his lips would stay sealed. As long as his brother stayed in some mental hospital far away... and as long as he kept the will to keep his stories hidden and forgotten, Victor would remain as cool and collected as ever. The megalomaniac mastermind was all too close to claiming his throne over this warped kingdom of disturbed inmates to falter now.

The corner of his mouth began to curl upwards as he noticed someone stirring outside. All he saw was a head of pale hair, but that's all he needed. Victor had been keeping an eye out on most of his fellow HOLiCs; surveying them carefully through the guise of indifference he wore so well. He knew who it was with pale enough hair to rival his own and let his grin widen along his mouth as he moved away from the window with a subtle swish of his coat. Armand Pontellier. Ah yes, the bratty Frenchman. Victor couldn't claim to be very familar with him, but he'd kept an eye on him as he'd gone about his own business, wondering, vaguely, what it'd be like to slither beneath the young man's skin. But Armand was just like everyone else; an insect so very unworthy of his divine attention. But Victor felt like mingling with mortals today. He was a god, wasn't he? Why, of course he was. And, sometimes, gods would walk amongst men... just to humor themselves. Despite his unwanted trip through memory lane, the sociopath was in the mood to toy with his food. Might as well make the most of a morning he'd be wasting anyway. So he stepped through the door and headed outside, one hand playing with the prongs of the pendant he always wore proudly around his neck.

Hm. The outdoors always tasted stale to him. He inhaled the air as he strode through the gardens, both hands in the pockets of his jacket at this point. It wasn't that he disliked the outdoors... he just didn't seem very impressed with any of it. He did not revel in the taste of fresh air or the sensation of a breeze teasing his hair. It was all just tedious detail he didn't care to acknowledge. Which was funny, perhaps. He was such a cunning strategist and thinker; a man who thrived off detail. But he'd always considered himself so above the mud and the earth... A god atop a lofty perch where he could glance down at the desperate little insects of the world and crush them with his finger should it so suit him. Beneath his grins, eloquence, and smart-talk, however, Victor was even less of a man then most. He was an animal... a beast... a monster. And, despite his god-complex and narcisissim, he seemed to have accepted this and flaunted it without hesitation. Or perhaps he only saw what he wanted to see... Not a monster -- no, never a monster -- but a new breed of something that could not be indentified. He did not realize how primal he was... how bestial and animalistic he had become over the years. He really was the alpha wolf; the beast who would dominate everything and anything to solidify his role. Should anyone stand in his way... Well, he'd just bite, claw, rip, and tear until they were shreds to be cooked in a stew and served with old French or Italian wine. This big bad wolf has class, after all.

It didn't take long for him to find Armand. The young man's laughter had led him to his little secluded spot easly enough. For a moment, Victor just stood there and stared at him. There was still that devious half-grin curving his mouth, but little else to tell of any wicked intentions that might have been stirring just below the surface. He tilted his head slightly, as though curious, and raised an eyebrow expectantly. But what did he expect? It was difficult to say. Victor just always expected his underlings to entertain him with something. "Armand, you're scaring the birds," he said in disapproval, though he didn't seem too broken up about it. His dark eyes were trained, amused, on the Frenchman's face, reading each detail carefully despite the nonchalance with which he rolled his lean shoulders. "But you probably don't have anything else to do with yourself. Poor dear. Are the inmates getting to you? What a shame, what a shame. Weakness is so disappointing." He said this with a click of his tongue as he slunk closer, draping an arm along one of the lower branches as he leaned against the tree and kept his eyes calmly on Armand. "The weak are eaten alive, you know. Natural Selection is merciless." Eaten alive... Yes, well, that was only a figure of speech... wasn't it? With Victor, the phrase was ambiguous. It certainly sounded that way as he purred the words with a chuckle, eyes lighting up momentarily before resuming their casual observation of the man he'd sought out to entertain himself with. Mustn't get ahead of yourself. One step at a time...

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THIS THREAD IS finished.
AND IT’S FOR armand~ <:
AS FOR WORDS, WE HAVE 1416.
THE LYRICS ARE FROM monster by skillet.
MUSE IS THANKS TO don't fear the reaper by blue oyster cult.
ANY LAST THOUGHTS? sorry to keep you waiting. ): better posts on the way, btw.
THANKS FOR THE HARD WORK template (c) - bethasaur ftw . of CAUTION 2.0

[armand pontellier]

SOMETIMES I FIND IT HARD
• to believe there's someone else who could be •
JUST AS MESSED UP AS ME

Armand was hardly on guard, in fact, one could say he was quite careless in his inobservations at the time; staring off into the sun that always stood more resolutely than what was around him now, little stones tossed at the endless horizon with a mutter, occasionally speaking loud enough to mockingly challenge it to the race most of his mind had already lost or humming contentedly at the tranquility the eerie scene cast. He looked on and whistled his taunts and jabs, kicking off of his perch with a sneer as he further personified the skyline as something bold enough to accept his challenge, laughing at the silly thing. Did it not know how firmly controlled it was? It desired to run on forever in the way it circled endlessly along with the great blue ball, but much like anything else in life, something could beat it. And whether or not he saw himself as such a god-like thing did not pass his thoughts, however the thought flickered that beginner's luck was as much a factor as skill and strategy. But just as easily it amused him, it began to bore him, wasted energy and made him feel rather childish, and even though the sun never set forever on Alabaster House, home beckoned all the same at the great gas ball's discretion. Not that Armand could say either way if he was quite contented to stay and idle such precious time away in the comfortable silence or not. But nonetheless, he didn’t have that tranquil condition long, delicate hearing picking up the faint sounds of footsteps and the sudden tremors of the ground produced by a body leaning delicately into the element that would consume it indefinitely. And while Armand held no intent to do anything but occupy space and observe, he inclined his head and made a small effort to languidly look about for the source.

It was very plausible that this sociopath could have taken note of Armand quite some time before the boy himself took any interest in the scene; and this was no doubt the case. It wasn't because he was particularly incapable of caring, but rather because there was no tendril of reason in his distorted head at the moment to take caution in Victor’s presence, and so it slipped undetected by his divided attentions. Nevertheless, Armand ultimately felt an absence where rage would normally have burned holes in his organs and instead an accepting numbness more befitting of a machine than a being of flesh and blood filled him with a quiet indifference to being interrupted. And with that end-all instinct seeping into the coils of vague necessity, Armand stared upward to his quarry, the cocoas and sepias of dirt clinging to his clothes as if in pleading, unheeded defiance of the atrocity one of them was sure to commit should either have lacked the sense or ability to leave the situation be. But for now, pale eyes swept keenly over Victor like he happened to be ice and his sights the skates, an inward, contemplative smile creasing its way across his masked face - primarily for the hellion himself. There was nothing particularly malicious about the gesture, no invisible threat to snap forth and pull this interloper's face from his clean skull, but is was unsettlingly creepy all the same, and if Victor felt at all violated by the look, it would be about as surprising as fear in phobics.

When the words caught in his ear, Armand continued to stare slightly without oral response, an itching desire to fidget crawling beneath his skin. Armand did not like to sit still when people watched him with any sort of lingering attention. And what had made this monster so cocky was thus far a mystery like the rest of him - perhaps a mix-up of breed somewhere in the family line deemed him less pure of lineage than some would have liked to believe? Whatever it had been, this nonsubtle brand of intimidation was further compounded by the way the tyrant would present himself to the ‘common folk’, to anything that drew breath; and it was such an unshakeable menacing the paranoid boy cracked under. And Armand could certainly feel it when he stretched his off-white limbs and he rolled his thin shoulders, low, resonating sounds rumbling almost imperceptibly in his throat – just meaningless noises, like the wind. For all the times Armand took the time to notice Victor, he had come to the conclusion that the man was destined to perpetually look like a sneering leviathan with dead eyes. A space-case corpse. But Armand wouldn't let this agitate him. And it didn’t—not really—he just hated sitting still, and he hated the noises and the feelings imposed on him every second of every day. Yet... he could still be "well-behaved" when necessity called for it. Good? No. Just well-behaved. Alabaster sometimes taught control to the uncontrolled - Armand knew for the most part how not to cause trouble if he wasn't supposed to. And so he merely broadened that plastic smile, regarding Victor in the way anyone would regard a persistent animal. ”My mind isn’t so fragile as to be overcome by their humdrum deficits.”

And while it was fairly clear that Armand was nowhere near as deep as many wished to assume of a person who had ventured off on their own to lie curled up in the low branches of an ancient tree, higher up as if in regard to a certain superiority they commanded or felt they deserved, or as if brooding on some complexity of life or gentle muse—much like what he usually was thought to do. No, Armand was mainly out here because at his distance, he could hide his sneering of severe distaste as the deluded locals droned on and on about their tiny, unimportant aspirations like the hopes and dreams of an insect, or even the staff once he'd finally grown weary of their silly words, expressions and teeth. And though he was an unprofessed lover of attention, such empty heads at times outweighed their benefits from his remaining in their company. And girls, females in general really, were absolutely insistent on rambling in place of a few choice words... not that the boy had any room to complain, but it tended to be only himself that he wanted to hear talk. He wanted to hear his thoughts, his ideas, his plans, and the sound of his own voice blending with the chorus of Alabaster House’s birds and breezes – not the peers, not their families, not anyone else. ”What do you even want, Vicky?” Armand didn't bother letting his presence be known as wary or particularly antagonistic as he cleared the next choice words. ”If you didn’t notice, I was trying to enjoy my peace and quiet, alone.” He emphasized the word ‘alone’ in hopes that Victor would catch the hint Armand was trying to force him to take. This Victor was no savant in his eyes, although he did appear to be very in-tune with the primal aspects of life and after the Frenchman had actually picked up on his fellow inmate’s presence, the former could certainly tell that Victor, if only to find something to use to be belligerent, had been listening for the past few moments or so. ”And I’m not someone you come to for a little tête-à-tête.” He stated blandly, clearly unwilling to waste his own time entertaining this man. He murmured a low sigh, unable to remain comfortable now.

Why was Victor showing his face just when Armand had gotten a chance to sit down in his favorite place to actually enjoy his own company?

[/justify]

TAGGED ! Vicky. |D
WORDS ! 1,286.
MUSIC ! I Wanna Be Your Dog – Emilie Simon.
LYRICS ! Sometimes by Skillet
TEMPLATE ! PANIC! ITS LAUZ @ CAUTION
NOTES ! I had no clue where I was going with this. )8 Uh.