Teegan Glimpses

[Rosyn]

Teegan checked her explorer, grill to bumper, before driving back to her apartment. She'd never encountered undead before. She was unsure whether or not they had the intelligence of the person controlling them, or even if anyone was controlling them at all. Though, watching the Arrows in her team work their abilities on the structures of the buildings and the flesh of beings she came to realize that the dead walked under the control of someone very powerful.

When she got to the apartment she hardly remembered the drive there. She put the Explorer in park and sat there a moment, trying to remember things. what stop lights caught me..? did I see any other cars..? did that bar close early..? was I looking at the bars..? Nothing came back to her, she just remembered the street lights passing over the windshield. One by one, like a flashing rave show in slow motion with no bumping music - just the steady purr of the big engine. Something haunted her on that journey, something behind her, but now she couldn't place what she'd seen.

She looked at the stairs of her apartment building wearily. As she readied herself to climb them she kept picturing them covered in a horrible mess of gore that must have been Bacchus. and the lights flicker...creepy, she took a deep breath and charged the stairs as hard and fast as her military hardened legs could carry her but they were tired, so very tired. Her boots had trudged through hell and back, the stairs seemed endless, but she finally burst through a door on the third floor into the comforting light.

Looking down she saw that her coat was slick and black with blood. It had to go, she opened a trash can lid and was pleasantly surprised to see the janitor had just changed the bag. small favors... She shoved her old uniform jacket into the bag and headed back for the door to her apartment. wait, there was still blood on her shirt. where the thing stabbed me.. The magic that healed those wounds made her feel amazing. She could almost feel its power rippling through her flesh, molding it shut. The scar in her side tingled and itched as it remembered. fuck it.. The shirt went into the bag, but the pants were covered in black ooze also, explain that..can't.. The pants followed into the bag.

Teegan stood outside the door to her apartment wearing only her white sports bra, white panties, and dog tags when she knocked on the door. The bag was by the side of the door, just out of sight of someone who opens it.

The door swings open a bit but is caught by a chain, the woman inside seems baffled. "Teegan?" The woman unlocked something else on the door and it snapped open a bit further so she could get a better look. "What the fuck? What happened to your clothes?"

"Just let me in ok...?" Teegan grumbles from the other side, her knees feel like giving out from just pure weariness.

Another lock snaps and the door opens completely. The girl inside has her hair tied up in a sloppy bun, it’s a plain shade of brown with blond streaks through it. She's wearing a soft looking robe with little polar bears printed on it.

"Abbey.."

Teegan, had never been so glad to see those silly little bears but she kept her calm presence. She just entered the door way, stepping closer to her, and looked down into her eyes.

With those stone gray eyes looking down at her Abbey felt confused, tired, and sorry. Sorry she bothered her friend. Teegan was a war hero, injured in battle for her country, whatever happened to her to put her in this state must have been awful, and I just plain shouldn’t have asked.. She scolded herself mentally.

Abbey closed the door behind Teegan and in a worried voice she instructs her to, "go in your room and change, I'll make you some hot tea.. You look pale.." Then she goes off to heat some water.

Teegan blankly wanders into her room and sits down on the cot she moved into Abbey's little guest room. It squeaks with her weight, welcoming her home, but she hardly notices it’s comforting call. the Abyss morphed our spells, drove Brutus insane.. She kept thinking about the electricity of all the spells being let loose in the dark building, the power surges all around her. It seemed like chaos at the time, like stabbing into the dark. what did we do wrong..?

"Hey, T-Bear! You decent?" Abbey asked from beyond the door followed by a soft knock.

"Ugh, no, hang on.." Snapping out of her daze, Teegan ripped off the plain white undergarments. She looked around her room, she was so out of it she hardly remembered where her comfortable clothes were. second drawer dumbass.. She pulled out a fresh tank top and a pair of soft cotton shorts and slips them on.

Normally she wouldn’t consider no bra as 'decent' but for some reason she opens the door to her room. "Abbey, I'm so sorry for..."

"Worrying me? It’s alright, take your tea,” Abbey reassured her with a smile.

Teegan took the little mug from her roommate’s hands and a little spilled out onto the tile below.

“You’re hands are shaking. Come on, come to the couch with me. I was watching old movies,” Abbey told her as she put a comforting arm around Teegan and led her into the living room they shared.

Teegan felt like she just couldn’t sit down with her. Normally, they hardly even talked. Just idle, “hey how’s it going,” type conversations as they passed each other on the way out. Now, her roommate was seeing this vulnerable state she was in. She stood behind the couch sipping on the warm tea, refusing to sit.

“I left the rent on the counter before I left. Did you see it?” Teegan desperately tries to take the attention off her bewildered state.

“Yeah..T, I saw it..” Abbey sighs heavily and sits down on the couch, curling her legs up under her comfortably. “Seriously, sit down, before you spill that hot tea on me.”

Teegan was staring blankly at the paused screen on the television, thinking about nothing. Her brain just felt numbed by all the sensory information it had just taken in that night. She wanted to process it, understand it, but she just couldn’t. Not right now at least. So she sat down next to Abbey, took another sip of the tea, and set it down on the little coffee table that she still remembered picking out with Abbey a short few months ago.

Abbey just bought the place with out really thinking about other expenses so it wasn’t very furnished when Teegan moved in. Usually Teegan avoided stores like Bed, Bath & Beyond or whatever that Swedish megastore's name was, but Abbey asked. She wanted help picking out the furniture and for some reason Teegan just couldn't say no to her.strange that I remember that like it was yesterday but what happened tonight is so distant…

Abbey was staring at her; she hated seeing that little line appear on her face, the frustrated line. The concerned one was so much sweeter.

“Ok, I felt bad for asking about the clothes but I’m just too confused. What happened to you?” Abbey finally asked. Teegan just looked her over in her cold, expressionless fashion.

Abbey could see the soldier’s chiseled muscles outlined by the gray glow coming from the paused movie on the screen; she could see those particularly cold eyes staring blankly back at her.


“Please..T-Bear, you’re acting so strange..”

Teegan could hear sniffling from Abbey’s side of the couch but her roommate’s face was in shadow. It took her a moment to think about the sound. All she could see of her friend in the light was a bit of thigh that was exposed when Abbey’s robe got twisted up by the way she curled her legs. It looked soft and beckoned her touch, but there was that sound.

she’s crying…She finally thought, and it’s over me, I’m making her cry…

Teegan started to wish she could be invisible again and creep through her apartment halls just as she had around the undead soldiers. She’d only ever used that ability in practice before tonight, never in battle. Now she was thinking of using it for escape.

“Abbey, stop, please. I’m sorry, I can’t talk about it right now,” she tried to say but the sniffling sound just became worse.

you know you can’t comfort her..

Teegan moved herself across the cushions over to Abbey. She leaned her bald head against Abbey’s hair. It smelled like roses. Herbal Essence.

“You smell awful,” declared Abbey and they both started laughing together.

When the uncomfortable silence fell Teegan began to feel like she needed to tell her something. anything, just give her closure on her weird night. even if mine never really will…

“There was an accident. I pulled over to help them and there was blood everywhere, I took my clothes off and stuck them in a garbage bag outside the door. I didn’t want them to scare you.”

Teegan had no idea if that was the right thing to say, it just popped out when she was struggling with what to say. It didn’t help that her mind wanted to concentrate on her roommate’s gentle movements against her chest. She felt each of Abbey's breaths without the bra.

“Oh, god that must have been horrible,” Abbey whispered sadly.

..it worked?

Abbey turned to Teegan and gave her a big hug, pulling her in close. Teegan was tense in her arms, the defined muscles flexed and hard. Abbey could feel Teegan's heart beating quickly against her breast. All the stress of the night still had her body on alert, her systems were still ready to run or fight.

Abbey knew how to calm her down, she’d seen the blatant glances her roommate gave her body unconsciously throughout their time together. She put her hand on the back of Teegan’s neck, little stubbly hairs tickled her fingers. It reminded her of a past boyfriend’s hair, a tough guy. She rubbed her fingers over it then pulled Teegan in for a passionate kiss.

Eventually Abbey made Teegan get in the shower, the smell on her was unbearable – for both of them. When she got out Abbey was on her bed. Teegan never had such an involving encounter with a woman. They took care of each other, and it was loving and gentle.

Afterward Abbey just left for her room leaving Teegan relaxing amongst her army green sheets. The robe with the little polar bears was hanging in the corner and it made Teegan smile to herself in the dark. She got up and put it on, enjoying the light scent of some sort of body spay Abbey must spray on her robe after showers. It was so soft; she thought that she should buy something nice for herself. instead of guns? don’t be crazy..it’s not worth it. She went to the window in her room and opened it, sitting there for awhile, trying to remember what it was she was driving from.

something in the rear view..the whole way home.. was it eyes? undead eyes… Yellowed and rotted, watching her drive from the back seat. Just an illusion of the mind, your way of thinking changes in stress situations.. that’s all.

As she sat there, looking down into the little gardened court yard of her apartment building her mind started to rationalize everything she saw that night. All the power flowing from the Tapestry and the Abyss, drawing in their spells or changing them completely. She had managed the Abyss, but just barely. At first she didn’t view that as skill, just luck, but when she saw the effects of letting Paradox free she knew better. It was skill, there was something more to her than just a soldier; there was a mage.

That realization made her feel at peace with the magic she had seen. Not just the spells of her friends but also a vague understanding of the Death magic that animated the dead. Her Pattern felt more in tune with the Supernal Realms. She knew that after this she would be more confident with her ability, perhaps even more potent.

Teegan fell asleep above the covers sometime around 7 AM with Abbey’s polar bear robe wrapped around her.

[Rosyn]

Refrences

Bodies in the Basement - Bum's Rush

“Well, you did it.”

Teegan grumbled as her small but plump, grey haired, mother plunked down next to her in their tiny second class seats on the airliner.

“Esta feliz madre?”

The little woman, dressed in bright colors and wrapped in a shawl sent from their relatives in Mexico, takes a stern tone in her high pitched, heavily accented, voice.

“Oh hija! Is it really that bad? You get to see your familia. What is more important than that?”

Teegan turned her head away from her mother and stared into her own eyes in the reflection of herself in the window of the plane.

“A lot.. Not that it matters. I couldn’t concentrate on it anyway. Are you going to tell me how you got my phone number now that you got me on this plane?”

Her mother had called her right in the middle of exploring the town with a few other members of the Adamantine Arrow. Orphan was ordering a hot dog and inquiring about a homeless man with a touch of Fate about him when her phone chirped.

Before she could even get the phone to her ear it exploded with a whirlwind of angry Spanish in a high pitched female voice very familiar to her but completely unexpected.

After Awakening, Teegan returned to her home town of Sacramento but avoided coming to visit her parents. Not wanting to bring them close to harm’s way was the main reason she didn’t visit but she also feared they would sense the changes in her and ruin their blissful Sleeper naiveté.

It made her nervous to think of how quick her mother found her. If it was that easy who else could do it?

“I knew you were trying to hide from me. That’s horrible hija it really is.”

The disappointment was palpable.

“I know I’m the worst daughter ever. If it’s not the military taking me away from you its handsome football players, right?”

Their plane came in an hour behind schedule at Guadalajara International Airport in Mexico and she and her mother made their way through the gates to pick up their bags at baggage claim. Then they got a cab out to the hotel they would stay at for the night.

Guadalajara was one of the most beautiful things Teegan had ever seen this side of the Veil. The city was much larger than her home, Sacramento, and Iraq was nothing but a never ending sandbox with tanks and bombs instead of toys. This city was a perfectly blended mix of five hundred year old history and modern glass sided skyscrapers. They even got to stay in the city’s third tallest building. Since they were only staying in the city for one night before traveling to Lake Chapala to meet the relatives. Her mother had spent the extra pesos to get them a room in the Guadalajara Hilton, only twenty minutes from the airport.

“You know that they say this city is the mother of Mariachi music and tequila,” her mother told her as they got settled into the hotel room.

“Well, I’ll have to test that tequila theory then,” Teegan replies as she throws on the jacket from her old army uniform - a desert colors camo jacket with the name ripped off the front and rank patches missing.

“No, no, no hija you mustn’t do that! You have to be bright eyed and bushy tailed for your Grandmother tomorrow. You know she turned ninety-two a week ago and you didn’t even send her a card? She misses you hija!”

Teegan ignored her and moved for the door, stopping only to grab a key card on the way out the door.

“How do you think she lived so long?” She slipped in before the door to the hotel room slammed behind her.

It turned out her mother had been correct about her Mexican city lore. The city prided itself on its Mariachi and Tequila. While out on the town Teegan saw a twenty man Mariachi all dressed in black and reds with long puffy sleeves and pants and all sorts of instruments. They’re music was delightful, not like the trumpet laden crap they would claim was Mariachi back in the states. Then there was the tequila! She drank herself stupid in more bars than she could count. Each one with its own fine liquor the likes of which she couldn’t have compared to anything tasted before. It was rocket fuel with a worm and a lime.

The end of the night consisted of non-stop drunken laughter shared by her with a handsome Mexican man by the name of Juan. He challenged her to a drinking contest and lost miserably. The two of them spent the rest of the night joking and horsing around. It was refreshing to meet a guy in the bar that wanted to have a good time more than take a girl home. He paid for her cab ride back to the hotel as penance for losing their drinking game as well as having to give up his cowboy hat.

The next morning Teegan’s mother awoke to the sounds of her daughter vomiting in the hotel room’s bathroom - the walls in these places are always paper thin.

“ay,ay,ay hija I told you not to!” Her mother called from the other side of the door. That high pitched voice tearing through Teegan’s pounding headache like a crack of a whip on lacerated flesh.

They ordered some room service and a bit of toast got Teegan back on her feet again.

Adorned in her army jacket and the cowboy hat she had won from Juan she arrived at her relative’s home in Lake Chapala after a long cab ride out of Guadalajara. The city is on the edge of Mexico’s largest lake where many Mexican businessmen and upper class have weekend or summer homes. Her family owned a large house here all year round that several generations of her mother’s side of the family shared.

Teegan had requested the time for the trip from the Adamantine Arrow in Sacramento to get her head straight and worried that she came off as a little PTSD-ish to West when she talked about not being able to sleep lately. In the warm, not hot, weather with the breeze off the lake blowing away all chance of humidity Teegan felt like it was all worth it. The food was fantastic, her relatives loving and glad to see her. The trip seemed to be just what Teegan needed to forget about the death back home and began to feel as though she might actually be able to stay for the intended two and a half months crammed into the community house on the lake.

It was completely uneventful until the end of October, when all of a sudden the house filled with bustle and busyness. The children all spent their days decorating, picking flowers, and running errands for the adults. Teegan’s grandmother, aunts, and her female cousins were all fighting for space in the kitchen baking and cooking all sorts of traditional foods. They found it hard to keep Teegan from walking off morsels of homemade deliciousness.

The entire change of pace, Teegan found, was for the Dia de los Muertos festival- a two day festival celebrating the lives of those who no longer had one. On further investigation into the subject she found from her much younger cousins that here in Mexico the indigenous belief, before it was settled by Spaniards, was that the soul did not die with the body but rather that they continued living in Mictlan, a special place to rest. In this place, the spirits rest until the day they could return to their homes to visit their relatives. The introduction of Catholicism brought in by the Spaniards changed a few things about the celebration but mostly all the rituals stayed the same.

November the first brought in the first day of celebration. The bells on the town’s Cathedral rang loud and long in the morning in honor of the dead and the relatives gathered lots of fragrant food in baskets and took it down to the local cemetery. Three of the girls in the family were chosen to dress in all white representing some type of angel. Teegan asked for an explanation of the celebration and all she learned was that the first day was meant to honor the souls of children. All around the town the streets were decorated with bright yellow flowers, native to Mexico, and alters were erected with photos of the deceased.

Teegan found it all very sad. So many children lost before they had time to live and the parents who had to bury them. The worst part was that these Sleeper parents were fully convinced their child’s soul would be drawn to the alter and would feast upon the aroma of the food offerings.

The next morning she awoke to find the whole main room of the house had been transformed into an alter for her passed relatives. All the elements were represented on it and offerings had been left. The offerings included stuff from their life, plates of food, candles, and a type of flower Teegan learned represented death.

Everyone in the house had made sugar skulls with each other’s name on it and her grandmother brought her one with her True Name written boldly on it in bright colors.

The frail woman kept repeating something to her in Spanish but Teegan could only understand it as, “eat your death,” which didn’t sound quite right to her. Either way she ate the sugary skull quickly to dispose of the evidence. Normally everyone just called her hija, the Spanish word for daughter, like her mother does but her grandmother surprised her with this unfamiliar tradition.

While standing in the main room looking at the faces of her dead relatives in photographs one of the youngest children came up to Teegan. They taught English in her elementary school and already she had as firm a grasp on English as she did Spanish,“do you want to make an alter for anyone you know? We have lots of flowers. Everyone makes the one’s for friends outside so the wind will blow the streamers.”

“Actually, I do want to make one,” Teegan said and followed her out to the front porch where everyone was carefully piecing together alters worthy of holding a person’s soul closer to Earth.

The little one loaded her down with all the essentials of a fine Dia de Los Muertos alter and spent some time teaching Teegan all about the rituals based around their construction. She learned that the altar usually included four main elements of nature — earth, wind, water, and fire. Also, that the soul is hungry and thirsty after its journey from the spiritual realm so food and water must be present.

What she ended up with was an alter with was a plate of tasty flautas next to an ear of corn to represent earth/ feed the soul, a bowl of water and a shot of tequila to represent water and to re-hydrate thirsty spirits, some blue tissue paper to represent wind, and lots of little red candles for fire.

The little shrine was decorated with yellow and red flowers and since she didn’t have photos of the dead she decorated skulls to represent them. One was a skull with a big smile, heavy eye lids, and a carefully drawn out an Alien Workshop logo on its tiny baseball cap. The other just simply had a traditional skull face and a B with an Arrow drawn through it.

Teegan didn’t know if the souls of other Awakened would be honored by her silly little offering but she felt like making it helped her feel less guilty.

When dusk started to fall the teenage to middle aged family members dressed in creepy skull masks and bright ponchos and took to the streets.
Teegan forwent the outfits but went with the teens anyway, intrigued by this odd celebration of death.

The small lake city’s streets were teeming with people. It seemed that groups of families would make their own parade groups and walk the streets in all different directions dancing, playing music, singing, chanting death poems and acting scary. Teegan associated their behavior with Halloween back home only much more lively in contrast to the sad, dark tones Americans had about death.

Tired of all the hustle and bustle out in the streets she found a little hole in the wall bar to take refuge in. They had all sorts of skulls and a little alter of their own near the door but for the most part she could take some time off thinking about the dead. Without ordering the bartender set out two shots of tequila and motioned her over.

“¿De donde eres senorita?”

Teegan sat down at the bar and took the shot before answering.

“America ¿Hablas inglés?” She says shuddering as the first tequila shot of the day kicks her in the gut.

“Si, but not well,” the bartender says to her then pours her another shot.

“So, que paso? What es wrong? Celebrate!”

Teegan groans as he says this and knocks back the next the shot.

“I came here to get away from the dead shit.”

“Ah, si, si, you Americans always take death too seriously. It es a better life than this one senorita,” he replies, his accent making him very hard to understand.

Teegan almost asked him just to switch back to Spanish but she was enjoying talking in her native tongue for awhile.

“Well, keep those drinks coming then. I want to get to the afterlife in a hurry.”

The man just laughed and put the bottle next to her shot glass, took some pesos, then left her to her drinking – taking to wiping down the bar.
Half way through the bottle she started rambling pointlessly to the Mexican bartender. Certain that most of what she said he couldn’t really follow. Using Sleeper safe terminology she talked about coming to Sacramento to help the city out and meeting all the new people that she had met when she came back and all their looks and personalities. The guy just nodded along like he understood with a little smirk on his face probably thinking that the bald female gringo was right out of her mind.

When the tequila was gone her nice bartender friend helped her stumble on out the door. She was laughing and calling him Juan even though she never caught his real name.

Walking home was confusing. She didn’t remember the path she took to get there and now the streets were mostly empty except for a few other drunk partiers singing and dancing their own ways home.

It wasn’t very long before she realized through the haze of tequila that she had gotten completely turned around. She was in a system of tight alleyways that went in-between homes and businesses that she was unfamiliar with.

Walking aimlessly through the dark small alleys began to remind her of being trapped down in the basement of the building in Granite, the rotten smell of the living dead all around her. Someone or something was chanting a death poem that her mom had said to her when she was young somewhere in the dark. It’s the same poem that her mind wouldn’t stop reciting as she crawled through the dark tunnel in the basement of the Granite Park building. The sound echoed off the walls of the buildings all around them.

“Yo soy la muerte...Que tu temes...La muerte que vetes a noche...La que corrieres con,miedo...Nomas porque te deje, tu tiempo viene a fin...No corras de mi...Que no vas a escapar de mi...Ven a mi...Y arrasa me, que te voy a borrar tus heridas, tu miedo, y tus lgrimas...Ven conmigo...Ven a la muerte...Ven a tu fin de vida...”

The voices were getting closer, she could see shadows of movements around her, and as the poem ended the cackle of mad men broke out all around her. Their breath stank of a liquor so strong that she could smell it over the tequila.

Suddenly one of them lit a lighter near his masked face and howled like the dead right in front of her. In the light she could see all three of them but her alcohol soaked mind they were zombies animated by a powerful mage and sent to finish the job they failed at in Granite. Certain that from one of their rank ponchos Brutus’ shot gun would appear and blow her away she pawed inside her jacket trying to get her M1911.

“Te voy a matar,” she threatened, the barrel of the gun pointed directly between the painted eye sockets of the main ghoul.

They all back up when they see the gun but laugh at her riotously again.

Taking her opportunity she turns and runs as fast as possible in the other direction. She dashed through the city back toward the lake until more, pale zombie faces appeared out of the darkness making her scream and fall to her knees.

“¿Hija?”

Teegan woke in the room she moved into for the first month of her vacation with her mother standing over her, looking rather concerned. Blinking her eyes, she reached for the cup of water her mother was hold and took a nice long drink before talking.

“What happened, ma-ma? How did I get here?”

“Rosa and her friends found you. She said that you passed out as soon as you saw them. You smell like a brewery, probably drank too much like I asked you not to,” her mom was pissed. Just what she needed at a time like this.

“Yeah well, I think it’s time for me to go back to the States…”