interluceo | [SEMI-CLOSED MEME] MONSTER AUS

It wasn't anything, (she admits, reaching out to touch her fingers to the screen of his phone. This of course is a pointless gesture because she can't physically touch anything; it's the thought that counts.)

What... is this? (She takes a moment to read all the little titles of the squares on the homepage, then looks at the picture behind it all. The two people in the picture look very similar to each other; this must be Taako and his sister. She's laughing at the camera, her arm thrown around Taako's shoulders, their cheeks smashed together affectionately. It makes Lucretia smile, too.)

She looks like fun.

[Part of him expects her to actually interact with it somehow, like she's just suddenly going to be whole and real and-- well, she's real, he's not just living in a world where this isn't happening. Idly, he wonders if he slammed his head into the doorframe on the way in and now he's rapidly hallucinating. That's just as viable as finding a real life fucking ghost that's now baffled by his cell phone. Like. How did he even get here.]

Uh, yeah, best person in the world. Besides me. Helps we have the same face so we don't have to argue about who looks better.

[He looks at his phone again, tries to think of what to open that won't immediately be confusing. He figures that'll be all of it, so he just taps on the browser, opening up to a Google search.]

So uh, you can figure out anything you want just by typing it in here. Actually, you know what might be weird? Hang on, I can hear you. Try this.

[He presses his finger down on the home button, pulling up the voice recognition.]

Ask it something.

She looks better, (Lucretia says offhandedly, shrugging a translucent shoulder. What? She's dead, she can say whatever she wants, consequences don't exist.

Coming a little closer, she hovers precariously over his shoulder to watch him flick across the homepage screens. She's very careful not to accidentally merge into him, because she's heard that it's cold. Sometimes she passes through people that can't see her just to watch them stop and shiver, maybe rub their arms. Leaving a mark any way she possibly can.

Watching him open up different apps is so interesting and curious, but when he holds down the button at the bottom center and holds it out to her however, she immediately blanks.)

Um... (What are you supposed to ask one of these things? Lucretia clears her throat awkwardly.) Uh– how are you?

[He makes a face at her, but doesn't pick up with the jab. Whatever, he doesn't need her to be attracted to him, he has a hot boyfriend, It's Fine. But when Lucretia just stumbles out the question, he can't help himself, bursting into loud laughter. The phone does still respond, a robotic woman's voice chiming back a I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that somewhere between his peals of humor.

Righting himself from where he'd leaned back, he pretends to wipe a tear from his eye as he closes the voice recognition to reset it.]

Ohmygod, that was amazing-- no, like, it's not a person, it like, answers fact questions. Ask it like, about a place, or an animal or history or whatever.

[He resets the voice command, grinning at her to try again.]

Oh, (she says stupidly while Taako laughs, trying not to get embarrassed. How's she supposed to know it isn't like a robot, or that it doesn't have its own personality?? She's out of her depth, here! At least she's cleared whatever tension was left lingering in the space between them. At least she made him laugh.

She watches Taako reset the device, trying to think of what she should ask it. As always, can't quite resist being petty, so when he holds it out to her, she folds her arms, and raises an eyebrow.)

What's the dictionary definition of smart-ass?

[God, she just continues to surprise him. He's waiting for her to ask some technical question, but her deadpan delivery of a great zag leaves him with a hand to his chest, mocking offense at her as the phone chimes out smart-ass: a person who is irritating because they behave as if they know everything.]

Wow. Super rude. I introduce you to the wide world of cell phones and you use this power and knowledge to dunk on me. How dare.

[He doesn't actually look like he's mad, mostly from the grin on his face, but he's gotta keep the bit.]

See, you fit in just fine to this whole new age biz.

(She looks very pleased with herself, though her expression immediately shifts to astonished as the phone immediately parrots a reply to her. So it works like a dictionary? He said that it answers fact questions too, didn't he? And he's been carrying something like that around in his pocket?)

A cell phone, (she echoes, instantly curious.)

Can you tell me more? What else does it do?

[Nice, she's got more questions he can answer, she's back on top. Surprisingly, he's kind of lost most of his worry that he's here talking to a ghost at this point. Sometimes, you roll with life's punches. Sometimes the afterlife exists and it's ghost houses that backsass you with your own Siri. That's just how it is.]

I mean, all sorts of things. Calls people, uh, sends texts, takes pictures... there's like, games and shit. Man, you have no idea what Twitter is, huh, this is more than I thought it was.

Okay: what doesn't it do?

(She really wants to just– take it from him and look at it cuz he's wavering it all over the place as he talks, gesturing with his hands. She can't hold anything though. Nothing material, in any case. It's so frustrating.)

Tell me what Twitter is, (she says, loudly and clearly. She's trying to ask the phone. When nothing happens, she quickly adds,) please.

[He snorts, still chuckling a little as he brings the phone down again.]

Here. Can you like-- tell me if this is weird, but you can't like move my hand or something, right? It's gonna be really hard if I have to keep doing this. Like, if not, whatever, I'll keep being your weird internet shepard.

[He lays the phone out on his left hand, and pokes at the button for his twitter feed with his right. It opens up onto his timeline, which he scrolls through.]

See, each of these is a person. You pick whose stuff you wanna see, and then at any point you can view their thoughts or whatever info they put out. So you can tell everyone in the world about the dope food you just ate, or how much this movie sucked, or like, that I'm explaining Twitter to a ghost I guess?

[Is he gonna have to explain memes soon?? Shit.]

I... think so? Hang on, I'm testing something. (She's never tried to make people move before, she's polite?? Still, she gives it a go, reaching out to rest her hand over the back of his with a little hesitation before she wiggles her fingers down into his skin.

Haha. Feels like nothing. If she concentrates she can make his hand move in the direction she wants it to though, waveringly, like she's some kind of drunken puppet master.

Honestly, it's kind of slow and janky. She's concentrating really hard too. After he's finished explaining about Twitter, and alluding to the existence of memes, she makes his hand kinda wobble over towards a circular pictures and tap it. It opens up a new page with a header image at the top, and Lucretia pauses to read the words.)

'Magnus Burnsides'... who is that? (He has a lot of pictures instead of thoughts. Wooden carvings, wooden furniture. A lot of chairs.)

[Taako just watches with his mouth slightly agape.]

This is the most fucking insane thing I've ever seen in my entire life.

[He's just?? Letting it happen though??? Lup is literally never going to believe him. He honestly needs to convince her to play a trick on her when he brings her though because it will not be worth it if he can't convince his dear sister he's been possessed by a ghost. And a ghost that actually exists. What the fuck.

Her question kind of brings him back in, though, and he's back to watching his hand move when it's not his hand. It feels kind of tingly? Like he's been texting too long. Are ghosts the source of carpel tunnel?]

'Ss a friend of mine from college. He works with dogs and like, makes furniture and shit, I dunno. I don't get it, but he's really good at it so I'm not gonna stop him.

Does it feel weird?

(She makes his fingers wiggle when he doesn't protest, and then she makes him flip himself off because she can. The more she gets used to it, the easier it is to bend his fingers, flex his wrist. He's just letting her do it too which is kind of wild, but she appreciates the opportunity to remember how exactly to do this.

Anyway, the phone.

Magnus Burnsides looks like a pretty nice guy. He makes furniture and works with dogs. That's pretty cool. Lucretia scrolls through his tweets for a bit, chuckling every so often, and then she gets bored of that and hits the back button.)

Are you still friends? Are you friends with everybody on this? (She's scrolling through the timeline, looking at various photos whenever they pop up. It's... like a scrapbook. It's like taking notes and scribbling in pictures to match except everybody can see it. Does that not get nerve-wracking? Eventually she finds how to get to Taako's profile, and reads through his little flavour text with interest.)

'Sizzle it up with'... are you a chef? (Wait, is he famous?? The little number atop the word 'followers' is much, much larger than Magnus' had been. Lucretia stares at it, wide-eyed.)

Kinda feels like my hand is falling asleep. You better not be stealing my muscles in there.

[He just lets that one pass though, watching her idly navigate and reacting with a little 'hey' or a laugh when she does something particularly henious. But she's still asking questions, so he guesses he's in kinda deep to not answer them by this point.]

I mean, I know 'em, or like most of 'em. Some are just people I think are funny, or celebs and stuff. You don't have to know somebody to follow their work.

[But then she gets to his profile, and he grins, because she has just enough of a knowledge now on how this platform works to be impressed. Which, frankly, perfect.]

I'm a man of many talents. Told ya, I have a paranormal show with my sis, but Sizzle was my claim to fame. People loooove that shit. Told you, I'm kinda a big deal on the internet, babe.

You'll never know.

(Like, maybe she is and maybe she isn't. She definitely isn't, but it's fun to have a one-up on him in some regard. He might know all about... phones, and life outside of this house, and tweeting- or whatever- but Lucretia knows about being a weird ghost much more than he does so... there.)

Right, right... (For a while she scrolls idly through his follower list, as if somebody might jump out at her, but nobody does. It's all the same, really. Some people have funny jokes as their display names, some people have their real names, some of them have a photo for a picture, some have art. Seems you can be as anonymous as you like, on the internet. Neat. If only she'd had something like this around when she was an author, it probably would have been really handy.)

It's Lucretia, (she says pedantically, without looking up from his phone,) not 'babe'– and you run a successful paranormal show, but I'm the first ghost you've ever met? I thought to become famous you had to be good at something.

[She has more up on him than she can imagine just by being a freaky ghost. Thankfully, Taako is the king of compartmentalization, meaning he can sit on the floor of a broken down building and let a ghost steal his hand and it's chill. Super chill.]

At least leave my bones then, jeez.

[But uhh moving on--]

And hey, I'm really good at things. See, the point here is that ghosts don't actually exist to like, almost anyone. Everybody thinks it's fake, but nobody can like, prove it. Not that I'm saying you're not real but like, wow Luce, this is a whole experience right here.

[See, not babe anymore, just. Splitting the middle.]

It's Lucretia, (Lucretia mutters again, but with less conviction this time because if he insists on calling her something other than her name she'll take 'Luce' over 'babe' every day of the week.)

And I'm pretty sure that I'm real; unless I'm the product of a mass hallucination or... something?

(She glances down at herself for a moment, then shivers, and the motion ripples right through her form. It shakes her control of Taako's wrist and she watches, slightly amused as his hand smacks dully onto the screen of his phone, then slides off it to drop by his side.)

... That was kind of cool.

[Luce is the closest she's probably getting, let's be real here. But the rest of it is more interesting than any nicknames she could pass out. Even he snickers a little as it ripples through, though that feeling does cause him to try and jerk his hand back to his chest.]

Eugh, that felt so fuckin' weird. Still have no idea how this is happening, bee-tee-dubs.

[But regardless, he'll go back to the first point.]

And look, like, you seem pretty real, but also you're the first ghost I've ever met and this is kinda my job. So the other ones are either real good at hiding orrrrr there's probably some big conspiracy? To keep like regular-ass people from finding out about it. At which point you've blown the whole cover of every ghost everywhere and I'm gonna have to go into their houses and, uh, mess stuff up until they troll my twitter feed.

Maybe other ghosts are intimidated by you, (she points out,) especially if you're loudly encroaching upon their territory and trying to find them so you can film them for a show.

(Lucretia's spit balling here: she has no idea what other ghosts think. She's never met another ghost before. She hasn't been able to leave the house, and as long as she's been in charge nobody else has had the foresight to go and die here. Perhaps she's been the only one.

Quite rude of them, actually. She's been alone for so long. For a moment she's caught up in the thought of that, wondering about her fellows, feeling unsettled by how little she knows.)

If... if you meet any that are able to roam, will you tell them to come and visit me?

[He honestly wouldn't care if other ghosts didn't like him. Plenty of other people don't like him. But apparently he's found the Cool Ghost, or at least a ghost desperate enough that she isn't complaining. Good enough for him. But she mentions the last part, and he can almost feel the sadness coming off her in waves.]

So you like... can't leave at all?

[Taako's not one to obey rules well, even if they're set by someone who can't control them. If this is gonna become Ghost Heist, well... maybe it's gonna become Ghost Heist. You don't know. He doesn't know. It's not like she's another mouth to feed.]

You couldn't be like, tied to a piece of it and then go if someone brought that?

No. I can't exist outside of the house.

(She's tried several times, but she just starts to fade away. Not in a good way, like the way she sinks into the floor and becomes part of it. She just ceases to exist, until she finds her way back to the boundaries of the house. It doesn't feel very pleasant. Lucretia shivers lightly, glancing about herself self-consciously.

At his next suggestion, her mouth opens slightly in surprise.)

I... don't know, (she says eventually, blinking.) I've never tried anything like that before. (She's never had the opportunity. She closes her eyes for a moment, taking stock of the house, filling every corner of it with her mind until she locates a bit of splintered wood, jutting off of a window frame in the bedroom upstairs. That would work.)

Come this way? (She can't touch it, but she can lead him over to it. She rises up the stairs, pausing mid-'step' and glancing down at the rotting wood before ascending to the stop.)

And be careful.

[He's excited she's even thinking about it- this is obviously new ground, but there's something in him that does really want to help her. If he was trapped here, alone, and lonely enough to talk to his dumb ass, he'd want someone to drag him out too.

She starts moving and he stands, pocketing his phone as he follows. He's not sure how he feels about getting higher up in this place, but... well, he's full in now.]

This better not be your plan to kill me. Like, I get up there and fall through the floor and die, and then you can escape and I inherit all this. Watchin' you.

[But he follows, keeping his eyes mostly on the ground so he doesn't put his foot through somewhere unstable. It's trickier than he thinks, but he stays close.]

So am I just gonna take somethin', or?

I'm not going to kill you, (she reassures, helping to point out places she can tell the wood is weaker, mapping him a safe path to the top of the stairs.)

If I wanted to trap somebody in here with me I'd at least pick somebody who shared a couple of my interests. (The splinter of house she was thinking of is in plain sight the moment they hit the doorway; she glides over to it, half out of the wall and half in, and points.)

There. Take that, and... um, I'll go in it, I guess. (Oh, the reality of this plan is hitting her now. What if it doesn't work, and she's got her hopes up for nothing? The disappointment will crush her; Taako won't stay here forever to talk, after all. She doesn't want to go back to being alone for another eighty years, or whatever.

... But what if it does work? She's staring at the little piece of wood, frowning, uncertain.)

[He has little choice but to follow her lead, this late in the game. Like, he's up a floor, he probably wouldn't die falling through the wood here but if he broke a leg and landed on his phone he'd be pretty fucked. But he's willing to go along with this, because-- well, fuck, why not? What harm do they have in trying? Taako's not a philanthropic kinda guy, but he is deeply curious and kind of excited. They're charting new ground. And ultimately, he has nothing to lose. So why not try?]

Alright, uh-- hang on.

[He walks over, still careful of the way the floor creaks beneath him, and reaches up to the doorframe. It comes off easily and he stumbles a bit with the force from his pull, like he expected it to be harder. It fits in his palm, slightly damp from years of mold and getting chewed on by god knows what, but it's there.]

So... now you do your ghost thing? Chill in there? 'Ss it gonna be cramped or does that not matter?

I don't know, I haven't inhabited something so small before.

(She's still looking at the little bit of wood; she reaches out with her subconscious to gently poke it... the ghost equivalent of dipping your toe into a pool. Hmmm.

And then she just jumps right in, disappearing from his field of view until she's fit herself into the sliver of house resting innocently on his palm. Okay, this isn't so bad. It's cramped, sure, but in a cozy way? And if this actually gets her outside then it will all be worth it. Maybe if he puts it down somewhere she can come 99% of the way back out of it and loophole the haunting laws that way, or whatever.)

Okay, (she says, and then,) can you still hear me?

(Her voice feels smaller, a bit muffled.)

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