Realistic or Modern ☾－divine comedy

[leviathan.]

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[div class=text]divine comedy.[/div]

—act one: inferno.​

[/div]

 

[primadonna.]

just as lucía lopez put the last can of chef boyardee on its rightful shelf, she heard someone giggling behind her. she had to move a piece of her fluffed up hair to see who it was, and stood about a foot away from her was a scruffy looking kid with a lollipop in his mouth.

"what?" she asked, tilting her head like a lost puppy. his eyes were focused on the golden cross nestled in the hollow of her throat, her abuelita's necklace.

in a squeaky voice, the unfamiliar boy asked, "why did you put the mini-o's next to the mini-bites?" lucía looked back at the long row of shelves she had painstakingly filled, realizing her error, then turned back to the toddler with a scowl.

"get lost, punkass." her snarl had scared him off like a nervous hare, but he still looked smug as he dashed away.

"nice one, lopez." shawn blew onto her neck as he always did, knowing it was her tick. the aforementioned girl jumped suddenly, nearly knocking down the misplaced cans behind her.

"hey, fuck you asshole! i thought i told you to knock it off." and like the prick he was, he booped her nose and pushed all of the cans back into the box, undoing an hours worth of work that nearly made her burst out into tears.

"you did," he stated, matter-of-fact. "i'm here to warn you of an upcoming danger, death is upon us." scooping the box in his arms, shawn truman gestured for his coworker to follow after him as he spoke like a shakespeare character.

"what are you talking about?" incredulous, and with a strange look on her face, lucía would've missed jerry's wave if the man hadn't cleared his throat. he got a peace sign in return.

shawn hadn't slept in over 10 hours, as told by the dark circles under his eyes. for a second, he thought he had a fever, but his choppy hair was thick enough to make the back of his neck feel all warm and sweaty. "meghan's here." he seemed to grow ill at the mention of the name.

"just what i needed. listening to her bitching and moaning while we have to work the fucking night shift." lucía was a bit too angry that fine wednesday evening.

the room suddenly filled with chanel perfume, something neither of the two could ever dream of affording. the clicking of heels purchased from a faraway land lopez would never see, a tweed jacket adorned with buttons worth more than truman's tuition. and red hair styled in a weird sort of quiff, like a bird's nest or a mountain, the middle-aged woman walked in.

oh, meghan leighforde. not so sweet meghan leighforde. she had the voice of a chain smoker, shawn would often tease lucía about her own voice dropping that low if she kept smoking marlboros. meghan was a florida graduate, though she hardly seemed like one. she acted like an english queen, and she always wore a pencil skirt.

meghan's favorite thing to do was to whine, and the fun was just going to begin. "look at this place. trash on the floor, shelves empty like we're going bankrupt. we aren't target! middle-aged women don't come here to admire empty shelves." suddenly, a veiny white hand gripped lucía's chin.

"do not tell me you're high." and meghan also didn't like the 'no touching employees' rule.

"my eyes aren't red because i've been smoking, they're red because you pay me minimum-fucking-wage to do all your dirty work while you suck your way up the corporate food chain." meghan also had to deal with lucía and shawn's backtalk without having the means to fire them.

shawn nearly started crying right then and there, burying his head in his arms and pretending to cough as he laughed. "mrs. leighforde!" jerry's voice rang out from behind the bickering group of adults. he was the mediator. "surprise visit, ey? back so soon from ohio?"

meghan dropped lucía's face, and the shorter girl rubbed the remnants of the 'claw marks' on her chin. "i am, mr. fritz. jim let me off early and i decided to stop by."

"i didn't know they were on a first-name basis." shawn whispered to lucía, referring to james newton, district manager.

"of course they are. anyone she sleeps with, she becomes first-name basis with too." shawn snickered again at this comment, but then his smile faded. what in the ever-loving fuck was that?

the man floating above meghan didn't seem very happy to be there. he was frail, sickly and wrinkled, surrounded by a faint glow that hurt truman's sensitive eyes. "i know you see what i'm seeing right now." he uttered, a bit pale. now he definitely felt like he had a fever.

"what?" a clueless lucía replied. she followed to where shawn was pointing and saw nothing but empty space. "are you high? do you have acid tabs? can i get some?—"

"no, dumbass, look!" shawn insisted, pointing once more to the spot next to the redhead. "don't you see that old man?"

"—yes, and unfortunately, my grandfather passed away a few days ago.—" he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and a cold chill run up his spine. there was no way.

"you're literally on crack. i don't see anything." as hard as she strained her eyes, lucía saw nothing. she put a hand on his forehead and a sudden, out-of-character look crossed her face. "dude, you're burning up. tell jerry you gotta go home."

 

[leviathan.]

❝ act i. ❞ — ✰✰✰

northern oregon was a fucking dead end shithole of a region, as always.

nothing had changed since the last time he was here, virgil mused, chewing on the end of an unlit cigarette. and that was back in 1973.

the taste of synthetic paper and the acrid blend of nicotine and cotton filled his mouth as he gnawed off a piece of filter and swallowed. the lady at the bus stop was full on staring at him now, but he was too lazy to go invisible. let the bitch gawk. he leaned far back on the cold railing of the bench, contemplating his circumstances. his head lolled over with the ciggy loosely dangling from his chapped lips. ahhhh, hells. why wasn't he living it up in nassau again?

he frowned. that's right.

he's out of a job.

he abruptly sits up, startling the hag beside him damn near out of her mind, but virgil pays her no mind, tipping his head back and stuffing the entire cig into his mouth, chewing.

it tasted nice, but it did nothing to improve his mood.

if he knew hell was a bureaucracy, he'd never have signed over his afterlife. but then again, he should've caught on when they showed him the fine print on the contract.

there was a rumbling as a great, ramshackle beast of a public bus scraped to a stop by the curb. lazily shouldering out the people at the front of the line with his supernatural strength, virgil made his way to the back of the bus seat, softly humming a tune, the taste of arsenic still on his gums.

maybe it's because i'm a londoner,
that i love london so,

he sat back on the cheap moquette seats as the vehicle lurched into motion, somehow staying fixed in place as the rest of the passengers scrambled to grab an anchor to avoid stumbling into the aisle.

the scenery outside the dirt-flecked windows sped by, squat buildings and grey grass fields, burnt yellow blue sky and pine.

maybe it's because i'm a londoner
that i think of her wherever i go,

cascadia was a bad place for the infernal. most of it was too empty for things like him.
virgil knocked his head on the windows, forming a hairline crack in the reinforced glass.

was a bad place for holy too—the true opposing force of heaven wasn't hell (virgil had learned the hard way), but the void, the hollow flat empty.

and oregon country had it in spades. nothing country.

nothing country in a busful of nothing people heading for a nothing town to find...

something.

virgil couldn't help it. he let out a sharp bark of a laugh, hyena-light and twice as sudden. the kid in front of him started bawling in shock & the mother couldn't seem to be able to meet his eyes to shoot a death glare.
he wiped tears from his eyes, uncaring of the weird glances of the empty nothings on polyester seating.

seriously, seriously, his fucking afterlife was a joke. a cosmic one.

because who expects a demon to be fired from hell?

a snort, then silence once more, knifelike. and then:

maybe it's because i'm a londoner...
that i love londontown.

-

the first job he could find at short notice was from a small time witch in some backwater forest coven in fuck off, washington somewhere. there was a disturbance in the pacific ley line or something of that nature—virgil doesn’t bother with wizard shit—and she had traced it back to a even more backwater logging town due south in oregon.

millfield.

somewhere near the park reserves, apparently. and she wanted virgil to do something about it.

the sign welcoming any poor stragglers passing by was at least three years in need of replacement, obvious water damage round the letters, welcoming the viewer to the TWN O MILLFLD. the place looked like some shitty replica of twin peaks, gas station small town wired with flickering neon and surrounded by evergreens.

as the bus sputtered to a standstill at the only stop in town, virgil quickly elbowed his way out of the dismal interior and into the equally dismal night air.
the only place anywhere near open at this hour was a run-down walmarts in an empty, depressing simulacrum of a plaza. virgil wasn't picky though. he could use a pick-me-up, and he didn't really care where he got it at this point. he slipped into invisible and headed for the entrances.

as the sliding doors opened after a little fiddling—at this point in his demonic career, virgil knew that electronics don't usually behave when he's hidden from human eyes—the cool superstore air hit him the same time the flickering seizure of the fluourescents did.

it was just like any walmart's he'd been in since the 60's. america changes, sure, but wal-mart is forever.

he made a beeline towards the register, grabbing two bottles of wine from the spirits aisles along the way, and snatched seven packs of berleys from the rack and started to make for the doors. he'll get to work in a minute, but the misery of being in fucking oregon had to be alleviated somehow.

✰✰✰ — ❝ VIRGIL. ❞
​

by leviathanthekid​

 

[primadonna.]

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[div class=tag]interacts[/div] lucía lopez, some idiotic shoplifter.
[div class=tag]tags[/div] leviathan. .

[/div] [/div] [/div] [div class=right] [div class=scroll] "hey, hey, i'm fine." shawn dismissed lucía briefly, swatting her hand away from his face. "i'm not going to get a cut from my paycheck taken out because of some fever."

"some fever, huh?" before the young woman could berate him further, the doors slid open and no one walked in. "why does it keep doing that?"

"doing what?" shawn turned his head and watched a lanky figure slink in.

in the distance, meghan screamed about something stupid. "opening by itself."

"some guy just walked in." there was no use in arguing with him, clearly, shawn truman was living a fever dream. with careful eyes, he watched the man snag a few bottles of alcohol and a shit ton of cigarettes. he didn't seem to be stopping at the cash registers, and that was confirmed when he walked towards the doors without batting an eye.

"hey, asshole! you gonna pay for that?" shawn was sure lucía would tackle him or throw a shoe, but she was silent. well, when he turned around with an expectant look, she was gone.

guess he had to do this himself. he wasn't a confrontational man like his friend. he was what you would call 'all bark, no bite' which is only half true. he was a spindly football player who had lost all his muscle, and he wasn't as feral as lucía, so he'd get his ass kicked even if he tried.

as he neared the man, who looked younger than him somehow, he did his best not to snicker at the dumbass who just decided to walk out without even concealing what he stole. "some shoplifter you are, ever heard of hiding what you take?" [/div] [/div] [/div] [/div]

coded by shady.

 

[leviathan.]

❝ act i. ❞ — ✰✰✰

virgil was moments away from turning around and carving up the face of the jeering burnout behind him (there was about 3 meters between them, but virgil could make do with a heartbeat) and leaving the wal-mart a little filthier than when he entered it—but not by much.

then it registered.

how the fuck could this guy see him?

a Sighted human in a town like this? it was almost too unusual to believe. he whipped his head around, eyes zeroing in on the man behind him.

fairly normal looking, as far as wal-mart's employees go—sleep-deprived and reeking a little of stale dreams, but virgil's learned not to trust appearances.

he crossed the distance between them in a blink, getting real up into the guy's grill. may not have been the best decision if he turned out to have hidden...talents, but before virgil was fired, he was 8th circle, and when you're 8th circle, you have a justified arrogance in your ability to get away unscathed.

anyway, the guy smelled human, but in new america, that didn't count for shit. mortals had an annoying tendency to shoehorn themselves into where they don't belong, and he's dealt with many a mortal witch-hag and megalomaniac sorcerers to know that humans can be dangerous, as hard as it was to admit.

after all, he was one once.

he looked into the human's dull brown eyes, glassy from late-stage retail burnout and a baseline tired sadness. time to pull rank. virgil let his pupils dilate sharply, eyes going straight black in a beat. if the employee (scrawny, tall as babel now that he's up close, smirking like he knows something virgil didn't, which is rude and stupid and probably a lie) didn't flinch, he'd give himself away. if not, and he's just some regular dude, he'd piss his pants.

a win-win either way.

"oh man, that sounds too smart for me, sir." virgil simpered, completely insincere. "waaay above my pay grade."

he widened his eyes in a show of innocence—his all-black scleras now obvious—and bared his shark teeth in a semblance of a coquettish smile.

"mind telling me more?"

✰✰✰ — ❝ VIRGIL. ❞
​

by leviathanthekid​

 

[primadonna.]

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[div class=tag]interacts[/div] some idiotic shoplifter.
[div class=tag]tags[/div] leviathan. .

[/div] [/div] [/div] [div class=right] [div class=scroll] it sounded rather overbearing in his mind when the thought first occurred. you know, we all have that friend who thinks they can dissect an off-hand comment and understand the foundations of your personality. shawn certainly didn't think that way. but when this wretched tiresome man stepped up into his personal bubble, the faint voice in the back of his head spoke up.

maybe, just maybe, he's trying to make ends meet. a wrong-side-of-the-tracks teen turned addict, hopeless and melancholic, with shriveled dreams trying to soak everything in like the cheap sponges they sold in aisle twelve.

or maybe he was just describing himself. if it weren't for how close the guy got, shawn would've laughed at his own self-righteousness. wherever that annoyance went, it surely wasn't in his voice anymore.

alas, shawn was shawn. he was a 'young adult' as clarified in health textbooks. on the brink of actually having a place in society, but still an adolescent at heart. and what do adolescents do? they don't shut up. "above your pay grade? that's ironic, don't you think? you clearly don't have one in real life if you're just gonna steal."

oh, if lucía were here to see him now. 'you sound like a white mom.' or 'hey, watch your caucasian.' now it was just shawn and shawn the consciousness, who was harping on the fact that the dude's teeth looked abnormally sharp.

"listen man, my supervisor is here. and nobody wants to mess with my supervisor. just pay for the stuff or give them to me." the tired teen was oozing out of his near-pleading statement. he already felt like shit and saw a ghost, shawn certainly didn't want any more trouble. [/div] [/div] [/div] [/div]

coded by shady.