necroslacker | room 216 ; saturday afternoon

Current Mood: cynical

Entry tags:

room 216 ; saturday afternoon

Sam wasn't sure if he'd ever get used to the fact that it was mid May and felt like it was January outside. It'd been chilly ever since he'd arrived but today was just downright cold. That made for a convenient enough excuse to stay inside so that's what Sam was planning on doing. He'd called home and talked to Frank for a few minutes earlier. Frank had provided updates on Ramon (the were-bear exposure had taken him awhile to recover from but he seemed to be doing okay) and Brid (still hot, still completely out of Frank's league) and Sam had told him a little about the school here.

Once the phone call ended, Sam went about doing something he'd been meaning to do since moving in. He slowly unpacked his record player and settled it carefully on his desk. This should have been one of the first things he'd done but he'd forgotten. He'd almost left the record player in Seattle but then images of Frank smearing mustard and ketchup or god knows what else on it had popped into his head and he'd hastily packed it up.

Shaking those horrific images out of his head, Sam put on one of his favorite records and turned it up. It was nice to be doing something familiar in a place where he was still new. He half expected Brooke or Ashley to pop up and insult his music but the spirits were quiet. Sam sighed and stood up so he could start unpacking the rest of his things. Slacker meant slow. He'd get there at some point.

[Door & post are open]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Butters was returning to the room after God knew what in the world he'd been out doing, singing, naturally.

"Just dance! Gonna be okay! Do-do-do-do-do-d--"

But the last do was cut off when he realized there was already plenty of music going on inside the room. "Oh, hey, there, Sam! Is that a record player?"

"Yep, that's a record player," Sam confirmed, glancing over at his roommate before unpacking a few odds and ends out of one of his bags. "You don't sound that surprised."

Usually people gave him a look for choosing vinyl over everything else.

"Oh, sure, I'm a little surprised," Butters admitted with a chuckle. "But I think that's neat-o! What's this you're listening t--"

But he narrowed his eyes a little as he started to pick up on what was playing, and he seemed to frown a little in disapproval. "H-hey, wait a second, Sam. Why, this...this isn't Pink Floyd, now, is it?"

"It is." Sam caught the frown on Butters' face and couldn't help an answering frown from crossing his face. "What's wrong with Pink Floyd? Rogers Waters didn't convince you the world had ended too, did he?"

It was kind of hard to tell what Butters might say so Sam just guessed something he knew had happened.

"Er, well, no," said Butters, fiddling a little; his eyes were slowly drifting around the room, as if he expected something...let's say a talking towel...to emerge from one of the corners or out of a shadow or something. "But, well, I mean, isn't that what people listen to when...when they're getting

"As a kite," Sam said dryly before rolling his eyes. "The walls are bleeding colors, the pencils and pens on my desk are talking to me, and I swear I just saw a ghost float by."

Well, maybe that last one had actually happened. That wasn't a symptom of being high, just being a necromancer.

"No, I'm not high. I just like this music."

Butters considered this, leaning forward a little in an attempt to get a better look at the whites of Sam's eyes, but, finding them not to at least appear very bloodshot, settled back, satisfied. He headed over to his bed, to sit so he could take off his shoes.

"W-well, good," he said. "Getting high is bad. You'll turn out a big old loser who doesn't do anything but...but get fat and worthless and forget all sorts of important things and just be a real drag on everybody else."

And possibly a towel.

Sometimes, Sam really wondered how poor and seemingly innocent Butters had survived the place he'd come from. The kid was resilient as hell, apparently.

"Trust me, I'm not into drugs and if I were, I wouldn't do them in a room I shared." He had some sense of courtesy. "Thanks for your concern though, I guess. Had some experience with drug users?"

"A few," said Butters, who had put his shoes very neatly on the floor at the foot of his bed; they were perfectly aligned and he looked at them a moment. "Plus, my parents once hired some guy to pretend to be my future self, and, well, after a while, I just got to thinkin' it would be best to just avoid all of it all together, save everyone a whole lot of trouble."

"From what I've heard," Sam said, dropping a box on the floor so he could take a seat on his bed, "you're not missing anything by staying away from them."

Wait. There was something else in that statement that made Sam frown. "Why would your parents do that? Some weird punishment?"

"N-no," said Butters. "Not that time. That time, it was just this group called Motivation Corp, where any parent could get someone to play their kids' future self as a way to deter them from takin' drugs or try to get them to stay in school and things like that. Mine had to take liver medication, on account of ruinin' his kidneys with too much to drink, and Stan's parents hired one, too. Stan's a camper here, too. He's the one who found out that our parents were just...just gosh darn dirty liars."

Well hey, Sam could relate to parents lying to their kids since his mom had done the same thing. The subject matter was a little different but he was still sure the feeling had sucked for them both.

"Were you pretty mad when you found out?" Sam asked curiously. "Or did you forgive 'em because no harm, no foul?"

"Well, sure I was mad!" said Butters, balling up his fist a little. "Stan and me, we even went to Eric Cartman to help us get back at them, and so we smeared poo all over the walls in the house."

Hey. He was eight at the time, okay?

"But, why, golly, then they came in and they realized how wrong they were, and it was all okay again. Well, after I cleaned all the poo off the walls, anyway. Boy, that sure was stinky."

"That's gross, Butters," Sam said, pulling a face before he laughed a little. "You're, uh, not gonna do that if you get pissed at me, right? I wouldn't even bother with the making you clean it off the walls, I'd just leave."

Ew. Just ew.

"Well, gee whiz, Sam," Butters, glad to see Sam laugh, laughed a little himself. "I wasn't really plannin' on it, but now that you've mentioned it, why, maybe I'll have to!"

But he couldn't say that and pretend he meant it. He waved a hand dismissively. "Aw, who'm I kiddin', Sam? I don't think you'll piss me off, you're too nice."

"Thanks," Sam said, chucking lightly. He wasn't really sure if he was nice or just anti anger but that wasn't a bad thing to hear. He'd have to brag about it later to Ramon who would inevitably insult him somehow.

"You're pretty nice yourself so I suspect our walls will remain poo free." Thankfully. "And I'm not gonna hire anyone to pretend they're you either. Kind of seems pointless. And like something out of work actors would do for a meal."

"Or several," Butters admitted. "Mine lived with me for a few weeks before I figured it out, and that was only because Stan got one, too. It just seemed too much of a coincidence that we both had Future Selves, and so he investigated. He's real smart like that, though he's not too great in school. You should meet him someti---"

But then a thought crossed Butters' mind and he frowned.

"H-hey, it's a pretty big coincidence that we're both goin' to this here camp, too," he realized. "You don't think maybe our parents are trying to teach us another lesson or something again, do you?"

"Uh." The easy answer was just to chalk it up to coincidence especially on a weird island like this but after hearing some of the stories Butters had, Sam realized he couldn't rule out his parents being assholes.

"What lesson would sending you and your friend here teach?" he asked instead. "How to dress warmly in a month that's usually reserved for summer?"

"No," said Butters, shaking his head. "We're from Colorado. We only have about a month of summer anyway, and it's usually pretty lame."

"Well, I'm tapped out." Of course, he hadn't really tried but still, he had nothing. "You feel like you're here for some big moral reason? Had any urges to smear gross stuff on walls?"

"No," Butters was glad to admit. "Not lately. I'd almost think it was that, but, well, that was six years ago, so they would have really have planned ahead for that one. I'll just have to talk to Stan; he can usually figure that sort of thing out."

"Maybe the answer's the obvious one," Sam pointed out, shrugging a shoulder. "Just a coincidence or something. There might not be any malicious intent behind it or anything. It's not a bad school, right? No uniforms, no corporal punishment, no classes on the mating rituals of frogs."

Butters had to make a face at that last one; he knew nothing about the mating rituals of frogs, for the most part, but he had to assume it probably wasn't pretty.

"Gosh, no," he agreed. "It's a great school so far! Much better than a lot of the other places I've gone to, so I sure hope you're right, Sam. That would be nice, if it was just a regular old place and I got to come, why, just because."

"If anything, it gets you away from that Eric guy, doesn't it?" Even if Sam had only heard the name or time or two, it hadn't ever been associated with anything good so maybe this would be a vacation for poor Butters.

Butters had to chuckle at that. "Y-yeah," he said wryly, "you'd have to go to a whole 'nother state to get away from Eric, that's how fat he is."

"He sounds...fun." Sam did not mean that. "You or Stan didn't tell him where you were going, did you?"

Sam could just imagine opening the door to his room and finding some guy torturing poor Butters just because he could.

And that imagining would not be too far from what would often be the truth, either.

"Aw, heck, no," said Butters. "At least I didn't. I didn't even know I was goin' here until I was on the way. Although, with both me an' Stan gone, he'll probably figure it out anyway."

"Yeah, but where did you say you were from again? Colorado?" Sam asked, hoping he'd recalled the right place. "Even if he does figure it out, he's gonna have to find a way to get here and most kids just can't go halfway across a country without someone noticing."

He obviously didn't know how Eric's mother was.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

room 216 ; saturday afternoon

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject