Into the Blue

T

Tazmin

Guest
Original poster

Angelo was bored. Disturbingly so. He was a person who was used to always being on the move, his hands busy trying to bring life to canvas. He checked his fingers and marveled at the fact that they had absolutely no paint on them. For the last couple of days, they had been a distorted blue color, sometimes light, sometimes dark. The painting had drained him. He moved around the room until he reached the object of his thoughts. It was his latest work and was supposed to be a masterpiece but...it seemed as if something was missing. He frowned as he tried to figure it out but ended up being frustrated. Where was his muse when he needed it?

The painting itself seemed beautiful. It was of a long winding road with a junction at some point. Trees, wild in their magnificence seemed to sway to the beat of some invisible music that only they could hear. There was an aura of magic, of life in it's most simplest of forms...pulsing, breathing. The sky itself was the most amazing part of the painting, it was a deep blue that seemed to lend an azure cast to the whole atmosphere. But something was missing.

Angelo fell asleep with that on his mind. This was the only time he appeared at peace, his energy somewhat diminished. He had an interesting face, with arresting brown eyes and a beautiful mouth. His hair was brown and short so that it wouldn't get in his way. He hated distractions. Angelo jerked awake when he heard a sound coming from the vicinity of his painting. He scrambled up, heavy with sleep and moved towards the canvas. What he saw made him frown. There was a woman in the painting. She wasn't there before. Her back was to him so he couldn't see her face.

When he tried to touch her, something else happened that sent him inwardly reeling with shock. Her skin seemed to ripple...to move. But the closer he looked, the more he realized that it was actually him who was moving...INTO the painting. He removed his hand away quickly. That must have been some strong weed he had taken earlier. He went back to the couch, tried to fall asleep but he couldn't get what had just happened out of his mind. At some point he found himself back near the painting. It seemed to be calling to him. And although this time he was a bit prepared, he was still shocked when his fingers went right through the canvas...and then his whole hand...

The painting was bigger than him so he momentarily considered the idea of just walking right in. But that would be crazy, wouldn't it? The more he thought about it, the more appealing it became. Abruptly he decided that he was going in. And he did.

Into the Blue.
 
Into the blue.

He waited at the edge of the frame. He had short blonde hair, and a pair of aviator sunglasses that slipped down his long, straight nose. Some well kept stubble lined his chin. He was a decent looking man, but there was something crawly about him. Something that was under his skin, under those sunglasses. A black cigarette dangling from his lips, blue smoke curling from the tip, like languid brushstrokes. Todd was everywhere these days, it seemed. Everywhere, from paintings to stories to fairy-tales to mysteries to the real world. And in this case, Todd was in the painting. He was standing infront of a grove with a pocket-watch held in his hand. He had borrowed it from The Boss. The Boss probably needed this pocketwatch, in retrospect, but Rocko had been able to procure it for him. Of course he could. But now, Todd waited.

He clapped the pocketwatch shut, looking up at Angelo. His subject. Who he had been waiting for. He was a handsome man. How Todd loved handsome men. They always came to him in the end. They were his loyal, genuine, subjects, more real than any other part of Todd. He adjusted the sunglasses on his face, grinning slightly. He had a perfect set of teeth. They were unnervingly white, with the black cigarette clamped between them. He approached the handsome man.

"Yer late." He had an accent that seemed hard to place. It was tinged with a British lilt and lull, but was older than that. There was something predatory in his voice, but also gentle. It ebbed and it flowed. He gestured to the painted landscape, "I assume yeh were lookin' fer ah woman. Dere's always a woman, ain't there?" He blew a cloud of blue-ish smoke.
 
A laugh, as the ‘woman in the picture’ turned around, smiling slyly. Her body was lithe and thin, and yet she swayed her hips with much force as she walked towards the two men, almost making them appear as if they’ll break if she moves them a mere millimetre more outwards. Her eyes were covered by large sunglasses, showing only the perfectly plucked eyebrow above them, and her generous lips below the straight nose on which they were perked. Lovely, and yet a hint of feral hid under the skin, hinted by the curve of her lips as she smirked, by the sharp features of her face, and by the simple chill one received at first glance.

Approaching the two men, her smirk still ever-present upon her face, she gave another laugh. “Of course there is always a woman darling. You know they wouldn’t come if they didn’t see me.” Her voice had the slight twinge of what could almost be a French accent, the softer sounds almost lisping the ‘th’s…but not quite. Nor was the accent quite French, but to the untrained ear, this was not very noticed. After once reading a novel, she began to compare her voice to the jingle of money, clicking up and down in that sound that all wished to hear. Of course, this was her metaphor for her voice, but she didn’t really care what others thought.
But what an interesting one we have here Toddy! Just look at him… Ever so… lovely.” She rpractically purred, another laugh escaping her lips. "Can I keep him?"
 
Being transfered to another world wasn't as easy as Angelo thought it would be. He thought it would be a matter of just jumping to the other side and Bam! There. But it was different, so painfully different. It felt as if each molecule of his body was fading away slowly and being reconnected at a speed too dizzying to comprehend. At one point he thought he would pass out from the pain but then it mercifully ended. This should have been the point where he woke up from his dream, or rather the nightmare it was turning out. However the tiny droplets of sweat making tiny rivulets down his neck and the slight pain in his chest told him that this was reality, or as close to reality as he could get. Or if it was actually a figment of his imagination, he had never had one so vivid. His blue dress shirt clung to his back in patches and his jeans seemed too tight all of a sudden. He felt stifled.Angelo looked around the place, took a breath of surprisingly fresh air. That's when he noticed the blond guy with sunglasses. It was now becoming weird. That's the instant when he started regretting entering the painting. Even just thinking it sounded retarded. He wondered what he would tell his room-mate Sloan, 'Hey Slo, I took way too much weed and sorta entered my painting. Pretty crazy, huh?' The thought brought a slight smile to his face but it disappeared instantly. Would he even ever go back? He was jolted out of his thoughts when the man spoke. What he said made Angelo frown in confusion and not a little bit of fear.

'
Late? What for?'His voice was a tad soft but audible. His mother had always told him that it matched his sensitive fingers and if she were to give it a color, it would be a deep brown. Would he ever see her again? That's when he heard another voice. The woman who'd had her back to him. Now he could see her and he noted that she also wore sunglasses. In a crazy moment, he wished he'd brought his as well. Then maybe...maybe...God, what the hell was he thinking? These people totally freaked him out, especially the woman. He was slightly affronted by the fact that she was talking about him as if he wasn't there and he felt like a stray dog when she asked the man, (Toddy?) if she could keep him. He needed to leave, pronto.

'What is this place?' He asked. He kept a fair distance from the two. He'd seen enough horror movies to be a bit wary, no way was he becoming anyone's supper.
 
Todd looked at the similarly attired woman and laughed. She was not him, and no real part of him, bu yet she dressed like him. He supposed he was one of his agents from a long time ago. Perhaps he'd done his duty with her once. He couldn't remember ever doing business with her, but there had been many years and many Todd's, all of them a small part of the current accumulated whole. Todd. Todd the Enjamber. Todd, embodiment of an idea. Todd, the Monster. He looked down at the woman, "Yeh know, madame. It'd be beneficial tah me, if 'e tried to keep yeh. Tried tah make yeh 'is." He grinned, "In the en', 'e'll be mine anyway. They always are." Handsome men, he thought to himself, handsome men always came back to Todd.

Todd then looked at the young man, walking up to him. His head moved slightly, and even though his eyes weren't visible, he was eying the young man up and down, trying to figure him out. He supposed he knew a little about him. He had desired, for a brief moment, and that was enough for Todd to get his name from the man.
"It's a meetin' place, Misteh Angelo. The meetin' place between lotsa thin's." He grinned, catching fear in his mind. Fear and desire let Todd know who people were. He could identify them by that alone. If they never desired, and if they did not fear, Todd was nothing.

The strange blonde haired man shook his head,
"We ain't gonna eatcha. Least, I ain't." He shrugs his shoulders slightly, and folds his arms across his chest, "Tha'was more of my associates thing. Nah mine." His grin restores itself upon his face, "Nice to meetcha Meester Angelo. I'm the Todd. Though really, just Todd works jus' fine."
 
She pouted slightly, like a child who had just been driven by Disneyland and told they couldn’t go. Still, her mood was not dampened too much, for here she was, in front of Todd the Monster; yet another one of the famous ones, unlike herself. But she knew she would claw her way up, until everyone knew her name; Alice the Enchantress, as she liked to refer herself as. She wanted people to know it as well, no better! than they knew of Todd the Idea. “But Mister Toddy, if it’d be beneficial to you, why can I not have him! He is such a lovely one this time, perhaps you should share your prizes more often!”

Pout suddenly replaced by her usual smirk, she looked back to the man. “Monsieur Angelo huh? Like the name of an Angel,” She giggled. “Angelo darling, have no worries, I would not eat you… At least not in the way you would believe.” Another smirk; she really did enjoy toying with these lost people. She eyed him, taking in his lovely lips, and the brown of his eyes. Definably an eye pleaser, but that lost kind was usually beneath her. Holding out one of her sharp, perfectly manicured nails, she pricked his cheek as hard and quickly as she could, while making it look effortless. Gathering a drop of the blood, she brought it to her mouth, “But you are a tasty one. Try to not tempt me.”

Laughing at the look on his face, her smile widened, showing a small bit of her teeth, “Of course, you may call me Alice. I would have taken care of you, you know, but Mister Toddy here won’t share!”The pout returned once again, and Alice crossed her arms with a huff, her emotionsd once more flaring from happy to sad in the blink of an eye.
 
Everything was suddenly too overwhelming, spinning. He suddenly couldn’t concentrate and even breathing became a bit more difficult. The trees which had appeared as amazingly beautiful before, took on an eerie cast, the branches seeming to stretch as far as they could, to touch him, to take something from him. Something he didn’t even know he had but wanted desperately to protect. Angelo closed his eyes for a moment, acutely wishing it was a dream and simultaneously cursing his curiosity. It did kill the cat after all. From what seemed a very long distance away, he heard the man speak. He couldn’t even think of him as ‘Todd’. It seemed such a harmless…human name and this guy was anything but. And why did everyone seem to want to possess him? What did they want from him? Angelo tried to hide his surprise when the man addressed him by name. It would do to mask his emotions and thoughts as much as he could because it seemed these…creatures could pick out on the subtlest hints of agitation.

When the woman spoke, it got Angelo thinking. It seemed he was one of the many poor fools who’d run into such a trap, and apparently each one was a prize. Was it some sort of competition? And her shifts in mood were amazing and not a little bit easy to follow. She was capricious, this one. That’s when she pierced him. He wondered how she’d moved that fast, one minute she was over there and then…she wasn’t. It was so sudden and unexpected that Angelo stayed stock still and quieter still when he saw her lick his blood. Beneath his fear, there was fascination. Who were these people? He touched his cheek and then stared at the slight red on his fingers. He definitely preferred blue. And he had some questions.


‘How could this be a meeting place? This is my painting, I created it. How could it be possible that other people have been here before me? And most importantly, what do you want? I don’t have anything that could be possibly of any use to you.’

His eyes were wary, looking from one to the other. What had he gotten himself into? And who was the lesser of the two evils?
 
Todd grinned like a wild thing, smile seeming to stretch too far up the sides of his mouth. The boy had touched on the questions. The big ones - where I am, who are you, and what do you want from me? Todd had heard them asked countless times. He always told the truth, if he could. He wasn't forced to. He didn't have to. There was no reason not to tell the truth - it wouldn't make him any less of a reality. He was real, afterall, not Angelo's deranged fantasy or anything of the sort. It would be arrogant to even assume that. He adjusted his sunglasses on his face, and then, turned to look at Alice the Enchantress.

Power hungry. Seductive. Vicious. All these words described her. Todd, on the other hand, was only seductive and vicious, seeing no need to be power hungry. He already had the power. He was the embodiment of an idea, and had been around as long as that idea. Which was, in the course of human history, a very, very prevalent idea. He had a feeling in his stomach that Alice wanted to be what he was. Take over his job, perhaps, and attempt to become him. But there was a gap that couldn't be filled. Something that just made Todd...well, Todd. The blonde smirked away, and even laughed a little at the prospect. As to what he was really thinking about, it was anybody's guess.

"
There'sa lotta paintin's in the world, Meesteh Angelo." Todd shrugged, taking off his sunglasses for one moment, rubbing them clean on his white dress shirt. He had sharp blonde eyebrows and very watery blue eyes beneath the glasses, "Think'ah yer paintin' as a gateway. A gateway to the collective paintin'." He replaced the glasses on the bridge of his nose, "Ever'yehboy's gotta potential fer me, Angie. Boys, girls, especialleh 'andsome men like yerself. I tend tah employ people like yeh." He spat out his black cigarette, grinding it to dust under his foot. "Though don'tcha worry yer pretty little 'ead about it. You'll do it on yer own, without any pokin' and proddin' from meh."
 
Angelo listened to 'the man' as he had subconsciously dubbed him speak. Nothing he said seemed to make any sense, at least not to Angelo. What sort of employment was he talking about anyway? He didn't even want to think about the form of payment he'd get if he ever agreed to do anything. And there was no way he'd do it, at least not on his own. He was definitely the type who needed poking and prodding. And even if the reality was setting in that this surreal setting was actually reality, there was still a secret hope that maybe it was a dream, otherwise if Angelo totally accepted this, he feared for his sanity. He'd always felt that he'd had a loose hold on it anyway, often getting lost in various daydreams and completely losing track of what he was doing, a little something the normal people called ADHD. But that was when he was younger.

'Why me? And what if I choose not to do anything?'

Another unspoken question that was niggling at the back of Angelo's mind was why they had chosen this particular painting. He had created numerous works and for a second he remembered the one he'd done which basically depicted hell and all it's trappings. At least I ended up in this one, he thought morosely. Trying to find the silver lining to this cloud was like trying to find a needle in a haystack, he didn't even know why he was trying.
 
The woman, as tempting it was to interrupt and say her part, remained silent as the two men conversed. Having listened to the whole cheesy ‘who are you?’ routine, followed by all the other questions asked a thousand times over, she sighed silently and let the Idea take care of it. It really was quite boring, and always the part that made her want to take a snooze. Todd gave the whole speech he had probably memorized from countless repetitions; she herself could recite every word she used in her own explanations without a second thought. </SPAN>

She listened, rolled her eyes a few times, and gave a few more silent sighs from boredom. “Why you? Why you? Well, look at yourself. You, like so many others, can go into this painting, become a living part of it. We want every single person like you.” She smiled slightly as she looked around. “This one is a lovely painting, so blue. Not like where I entered.” She mumbled the last part to herself, remembering that fateful day where she was found by someone, but had become just another one of the hunters instead of the victim. She continued like her first sentence had never ended. “You may choose to not do anything, but that does not mean your will shall be respected. Look, you are stuck here, with no idea how to get out. It is smarter to just go along with us.”</SPAN>
 
"Stop. This ones mine." The boss walked toward the three positioned in a triangle. She placed a ice cold hand on Angelo's cheek, pressing with the force of 1,000 bricks. "This one is special." she removed her hand, a luminescent handprint remaining on Angelo's face. She grinned, turning her snowy eyes to Alice. Even amidst the mutual anger for The Boss's power, Todd and Alice kneeled in her prescience. "Now just what am I going to do with you?" she purred, circling her prize. "Perhaps sentence you to slavery? Throw you into a dungeon? Nothing appeals. What do you suggest, Todd?" she asked, wrapping her arms possessingly around his neck, breathing warm cinnamony words into his ear.