· SPOOKY, COMFY AUTUMN OPEN POST (CMO) ·

[hobbitholmes]

SPOOKY, COMFY AUTUMN (CMO)

WHEN THE BATS COME OUT
THE CATS COME OUT TO PLAY
IN THE MORNING AFTER DARK

A SPOOKY, COMFY AUTUMN CMO

Welcome to the open sandbox Fall/Halloween post! This is made for sandbox shenanigans, fun, and voice testing! Prompts will be included as well as a section for TEXTING and TEXT FROM LAST NIGHT! The idea is just to have some relaxing fun and enjoy the cooler weather and as the haunts come out.

🦇 Leave a comment with your muses in the areas you want!
🦇 Remember to tag out to others!

COZY, COMFY, AUTUMN LEAVES FALL

🍁 Rainy Changes.
The seasons are changing, and the fall rains are here. The leaves are falling. Where are you? Out in the city, or maybe walking through the rain thinking about the upcoming season?

🍁 Leaf Piles.
Guess what? The autumn leaves are in piles. Time to bomb in or push someone else in!

🍁 Coffee Read-Me Time.
What better to do than curl up and read with a favorite book, forum post, or social media feed? Enjoy the changing of the seasons from inside. Maybe you'll even have some company.

🍁 Make Your Own.

Why not make your own adventure as the nights turn longer and the temperature drops?

SPOOKY, SCARY HALLOWEEN

🦇 Trick-Or-Treat.
Are you taking others out on the festivities? Giving away the candy? Or maybe just watching as the madness unfolds? Either way, it's a perfect time for a fright.

🦇 Monster Mash AU.
What if you were a vampire, a werewolf, a witch/wizard, vampire hunter, mummy, ghost, or any other flavor of spook? Time to roll the dice and see what might happen if your fate was just a bit more frightful...

🦇 The Long Halloween.
How about a horrible scary night? Locked in a scary house? Maybe someone has driven everyone mad. Maybe vampires are on the loose, or there is even a zombie invasion! Whatever is happening, the dawn is far off, and you may not survive the night...

🦇 Spirit of Halloween
Is that the Headless Horseman? Are you suddenly in Sleepy Hollow? Yes, you are. Enjoy a town that makes you feel like you walked into a living incarnation of the Spirit of Halloween store... but they're not costumes.

🦇 Make Your Own.
Why not write your own Thriller?

Comments

[hellblaze]

He took the offered seat, putting the cup down on the table. Quaint. A nice little book nerd place in the corner of Gotham. Who would of thought? Oh, well, Crane's appearance didn't bother John. Sleep was something that wouldn't always come naturally, especially when time was the essence. Although... they both had a very different definition of what was important enough for time. John was aware that his anon friend over the texting lines was not on what one would call "hero side."

Then again, most debated if he was as well.

A fake accent. Christ.

"Accent is horrible, mate, but cheers for trying." He shrugged. He understood why he was trying to hide his identity. "I wasn't aware I had gotten popular enough to the point where I was a boogeyman myself. Imagine that."

[hosannas_of_anguish]

Some spots were safer than others, and some spots were under rogue protection. Each Rogue had an area they tended to hang out in, and this was in Penguin's territory. Jonathan wasn't about to invite Constantine to the Narrows, too close to home for his comforts. Oswald wouldn't say anything sideways to him anyway, they were on alright terms these days.

That debatable side was half of why Crane was more interested in meeting him than before. Though he gave him a flat look in return, taking a drink of his coffee before dropping it, the pure southern accent came free then, letters lost and some words clipping together. "Years of a vocal coach in college and it takes you less than a minute to see through it. Color me impressed, Mr. Constaintine." Jonathan was a bit ashamed of his roots, but that came from years of bullying, the same years that lead him to crime honestly.

"Oh, you should know that us less than savory types gossip like a den of hens. I've heard a great many stories about you."

[hellblaze]

"Oh, that's a bit of my job though, innit? Seeing what most people can't. If you can't spot an accent then you're not going to spot when the walls start banging back." John gave a grin over the rim of his coffee drink. "Tell me the best ones you've heard then. I'd love to know what the rogue-types are saying in a city that I don't visit often."

He already knew what the magic people said. Especially the ones in London.

[hosannas_of_anguish]

Jonathan adjusted his tinted lenses as he closed his book to wrap his spidery hands around his coffee, best to give the other his attention. "Oh the usually, that you will sleep with anything, that you are a con, the usual. I have heard whispers of you abroad as well. My work takes me all over you see, and a man of my tastes is often confused for one who has interest in the occult." aka, a nearly middle-aged goth. Clearly, he must like dark magic? Nah, science first.

"The most bizarre, did not come from Gotham, but from Russia. That you once gambled the devil himself for a handful of souls, simply to power more of your magic." He had a feeling that one wasn't true. "The Rogues here mostly have strange rumors on who you have slept with and if you are even real. As I said." Someone's heard a king shark rumor and doesn't buy it either.

[hellblaze]

He half-shrugged. "I do have standards and respect for the people I sleep with. Conman, that's not too far off the mark." He glanced over at how Crane was dressed. "You look a bit like you'd hang out in those wanna-be occult circles, mate."

Russia. Interesting.

"I gambled with the Devil for my own soul. Won, by the way." He took a sip from his coffee. "Ended up doing another gamble with another devil for the souls of children in Hell. Won that too. They're all free now."

King Shark is a shark and that was another Constantine.

[hosannas_of_anguish]

Jonathan shrugged then, lifting the coffee to take a drink as he listened to Constantine talk. "I assumed as much, one doesn't become as infamous as yourself simply scraping the bottom of the barrel." That was how Jonathan gets by, he doubts a man like Constantine has that issue, not that he himself would ever say as much aloud. He prided himself on never kissing and telling. Another shrug passed his shoulders at the assessment. wild half messy ginger hair, bright orange glasses that were actually sunglasses that looked like a lot like his normal glasses, and those long nails black of his didn't help. "So I have been told, many times, a darker outlook on life does not an interest in magic make. While yes, I might have a mild interest it is simply the scientific aspect of how can it be explained."

Waving one of his hands then as if dismissing it. "While the skeptic in me wants to call bullshit, I am of all things a complete athetiest, I have seen enough in this city to know there is more out there. So, I wont laugh as I might have years ago. I am more curious to ask where those children's souls would go then?" Sitting back to get comfortable expecting a good story of it, even as Scarecrow whispered in his mind this man was a crock. He was more curious than not.

He had a feeling the King Shark thing was bullshit, he's seen King Shark, that logistically made little sense.

[hellblaze]

"Well, I wouldn't say that I haven't seen the bottom of a barrel. Maybe a few of them." He chuckled at that. Bottles, rather, but he had been with some that weren't lookers. When you were depressed, down on your luck, and wanted to forget? You would take what you could get. "You definitely don't have the sense to be a mage. Probably for the best too. Half the bastards out there have no right havin' magic, yet here we are. Yourself included."

That topic went over better than he would of expected. Huh. "Heaven, of course. Unless they really were damned already through their own means. Takes a lot for that to happen though. Children got a natural innocence to their souls; usually absolves them of most things."

[hosannas_of_anguish]

"I did say simply, we've all had nights where the bottom of the barrel is the only choice." He shrugged some as he said it. Not really judging there, after all, he'd brought that up. "I never said I did, it was an empty threat, I care far too much about science to humor the idea."

Which lead to him sitting his drink down reaching over for a beat up messenger bag at his side and putting it on the table between them. "Which, fair is fair, these are the books from that sale. All of them." About 7 in total, the Key of Solomon right on top. If there was any chance of the books being legit, better to get them out of Gotham.

Gotham may be a hell hole, but he liked this hell hole and didn't want some asshole breaking into his place and opening a hell mouth, if old TV was to be believed. "...So heaven and hell are both real." There was skeptisim in his voice of course, hell he could handle, hell in his mind would always be the Keeny farm, but heaven, that was where he got skeptical. "So, you know what question comes next I'm sure."

[hellblaze]

There's an unfortunate look that crosses his face, saying that he agrees. Horribly so. Who would of thought he would agree with Jonathan Crane, good ol' Spooky Scary Scarecrow himself? What a world. He takes another drink of his coffee and suddenly wishes it had whiskey in it.

"Seven? Bloody hell, did the person who own this estate keep a spooky pale bastard with crazy hair in the basement too?" John is actually serious about that question. Not that he expects Crane to know or understand what he's getting at. He sets the coffee aside and reaches for them, looking over each one in total. "Of course they are. I never understood why you lot have a hard time accepting that concept. You'll accept that Batsy is real and that someone is stupid enough to dress as a bat, but not the concept of the Devil and God."

He raises his head. "Ask me the question anyways, mate. I can tell you're dying to."

[hosannas_of_anguish]

The world was a cruel and unusual place. One that allowed both these strange man to meet in such a strange way.

"I wouldn't know, I never went downstairs, but I am sure Robert Smith is safe wherever he is." Probably a bad joke, but actually enjoyed the Cure. As if his look didn't scream so. He was certain the strange pale man from Arkham had been a hallucination from insomnia.

"The Bat has broken four of my ribs multiple times. I know for fact he is real. I fight him at least once every six months." Batman can make him feel fear, nothing else does anymore, but he'd never go to Joker levels to get the Bat's attention. "Religion I have a harder time accepting, growing up in the bible belt does make for quite the skeptic, add in my love of science and why would I ever? Yet, I must ask, likely the worst and most over asked. If god is real why would he throw out his most beautiful angel over a spat but demand we all be forgiving?"

Sitting back he lifted his coffee again to take a sip. He was certain Granny was spinning in his shallow grave at him blaspheming with such questions, good.

[hellblaze]

He chuckles at that. "Not quite the spooky man I was thinking."

Although, John imagines Morpheus may not have nice words to say to Crane. Nightmares are part of the Dreaming--maybe not the same way that Crane's little fun left people. Not really his scene or his place to comment though.

"It's not all what the good book says. Wait till you talk to an angel or a demon. That's when it gets a bit wild." John reached into his coat to pull out a cigarette. "If you want to chat about Lucifer, we can. He's a bloody prick with his stupid nightclub."

It sounds asinine but it's entirely true.

[hosannas_of_anguish]

"Now you have me curious, Mr. Constantine." He replied with ease, as he took a drink of his coffee, watching as John pulled out his cigarette. Jonathan had been trying to quit again to keep someone off his back about it, but after a second he fished the pack of reds out of his jacket hanging off the back of the chair and the zippo from his pocket to light up as well.

The lady behind the counter looked less than pleased, but she knew better than to bother the ginger, she realized who he was ages ago. Calling the cops would just cause more damage than she cared to deal with.

"Alright, I want to hear this. A nightclub? I suppose it would be a din of sin, yes?" He asked genuinely curious and with joy, only one who was tormented by religion would have. The scientist in him screamed it was bullshit, but Jonathan wanted to hear it.

[hellblaze]

"Oh, I'm certain we all know about a certain fellow that most know as the Sandman."

John didn't bother to give more details than that. Namely because he didn't want Morpheus showing up at his door again with a frown, booming voice, and unhappy that he might of steered Crane of all people towards the Dreaming. Honestly, he was surprised that Crane hadn't heard of it before.

"Den of Self Indulgence more like it. Not much of a fan of the music he chooses to play. Or his taste in dancing material." John smirked over the rim of his cup. "It's down in LA if you wanted to visit. Named 'Lux.'"

cw; mention of drug abuse.

[hosannas_of_anguish]

A thoughtfully confused look crossed over Crane's features a moment as he let the name jingle around his mind, before taking a draw from his cigarette. "Mmhmm." He let it go because that made him question his already questionable sanity.

Crane didn't need that to be real. He already caused far too many unpleasant dreams. Granted, that was before he destroyed his fear response by abusing his own toxins until he broke part of himself. He no longer feels fear like a normal human.

"...Short for Luxury, I assume? A shame I hate California, I would love to see the supposed devil himself." After spending half his youth being called the devil, well it would be nice to see the real thing. Though part of him, what lingering bits of true sanity remain were very much against that idea. "I would have assumed the devil to have fine taste in music, do they not say the blues and rock and roll came from him?"

[hellblaze]

He chuckled at the reaction to the idea of the Sandman, Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams himself. Some parts of the world were too much for people to handle. Fair enough. The state of reality was maddening and some people were simply better left not knowing.

"I didn't ask what the nightclub name was for. Not a fan of Lucifer myself." John said simply with a shrug. He took another drink of the coffee. "That doesn't mean it's good to dance for and get people to divulge in sin in LA, mate."

[hosannas_of_anguish]

That chuckle really made him question it but they pump him so full of drugs at Arkham he can never be sure what is Scarecrow fucking with him, what's real, or what is the meds.

Ashing onto the empty plate his cup had been on like a heathen, Jonathan took another drag off his cigarette sitting back again, the little plate in hand just in case. "I would assume you wouldn't be, no. Yet, curious all the same. Forgive me skepticism, I believe you on a base level but the logical part of me has issues with it. One is not raised on backwoods southern baptism without having a fair bit of skeptic in them." He spoke with a shrug. "Well, what's the point in Christ's sacrifice if we don't sin, Mr. Constantine?"