Day 64: Intercom, Evening

[damned_intercom]

When the cheery jingle sounded over the speakers, the Head Doctor could be heard humming a song that suspiciously sounded like pieces of "Superstar" from today's movie. Then, as if realizing people were listening, he abruptly cleared his throat.

"Good evening, patients!" he greeted after a quick recovery. "I do hope everyone had a pleasant day. And what better way to end things than with a scrumptious steak dinner? We'll be including fries on the side, as well as offering our usual assortment of water, milk, and juices. Of course, we also carry vegetarian options for those of you who don't eat meat. Enjoy!"

The intercom turned off, leaving the nurses to escort patients to their rooms.

((Please make all dinner threads under this post with your character's room number in the subject line. For updated roommate assignments, refer to the latest Lounge Post. Thanks!))

Comments

[skeletonenigma]

Skulduggery's head tilted at the Scarecrow's reply. This man was either whoever had played the role of the Scarecrow and delusional - as well as decades out of his time - or stark raving mad. Or placed there by Landel as another altered perception of Skulduggery's. But given his uncanny similarities to the character on screen, and the sheer extent of Landel's apparent powers, Skulduggery had to admit none of those options really made any sense.

He'd seen the film when it first came out, back in a time when color movies were just beginning to be the next big thing. He'd never felt a particular affinity for the storyline, but you couldn't live in this day and age without having seen The Wizard of Oz at least once.

"From Oz?" he asked after what seemed like an age of just looking blankly at the Scarecrow. His tone took on a slightly musical upbeat. "If I only had a brain? Following the yellow brick road?"

And it suddenly hit him where he'd heard the name 'Jack Skellington' before. Valkyrie had mentioned it. Apparently, Skellington was a talking skeleton from Halloween who thought that Christmas was the best thing ever, and yet Valkyrie seemed to think he was like Skulduggery. She'd talked about it a couple of times, usually around Christmas or right in the middle of a crisis, but Skulduggery had never given it too much thought. Until now.

Fictional characters. Sora said he knew one, the Scarecrow currently standing in front of him was another.

[scarefaux]

"You've heard of it, then?" the Scarecrow asked, getting excited about the prospect of meeting someone who had at least heard of his homeland. Of course, hearing of it and believing in it were two very different things. Many he'd met thought it sounded too fantastic to exist, that a place with witches and talking animals and where a strawman could be king was somehow out of the realm of believability. With his short life in Oz and his time at Landel's as his only experiences, the Scarecrow had no real basis for comparison of what could and couldn't possibly be.

Others had heard of the name, but thought it was all a part of the movie and only existed there. He had to admit that the one he'd seen certainly had been a good imitation of the real thing, but the very concept of people not believing Dorothy's story when she came back home didn't sit well with him at all. It may have been true that it showed people what Oz was like, but why make it all seem like some figment of her imagination? That her adventures and the friends she'd made weren't real? Had he not been told otherwise, he'd have wondered if the whole movie was something Wizard Landel concocted, some kind of elaborate ruse much like the Great and Powerful Oz had been. It certainly sounded like one of his plans.

[skeletonenigma]

Skulduggery was silent again as he tried to figure out how to respond. I've heard of the movie didn't really seem like the best way to proceed, especially if this guy really was the Scarecrow. Did he know he came from a movie? Or a book, possibly? Did his very existence mean that all works of fiction had their own alternate reality somewhere?

This was very, very strange. Not quite taking-on-three-dark-gods-at-once strange, but it came quite close. It was certainly the most interesting of everything Skulduggery had learned so far.

"Yes," he finally answered, opting for the safe answer. "It sounds like a nice place." Different versions of the story described everything in different ways, so he wasn't quite sure what else to say. "Only accessible by balloon or house-carrying twisters, I hear. Of course, this makes my first question more important. What language am I speaking?"

[scarefaux]

Though a smile crossed his face immediately as Skulduggery so perfectly described Oz— including how to get there as Dorothy had, which was something the Scarecrow filed away to ask about later— it faded with the confusion that colored him.

"Language?" That was right- Skulduggery had asked that, hadn't he? The Scarecrow had to admit he'd never really put any thought into what tongue he was speaking, or even how he'd learned it in the first place, given he didn't have a brain at that time. He'd just simply known. "I don't know, to be honest. The one I can understand, though I haven't met a person here I couldn't."

[skeletonenigma]

Alright, that fell in line with what Yomi had said. And while the original movie was in English, the actual language spoken in Oz had never really been made clear. Some kind of fantasy language, presumably. There had never really been a reason to think about it until now.

"You probably have a brain here." Skulduggery glanced back down at the steak in front of him, and then finally pushed it away with a sigh. He didn't really feel like attempting to eat it when swallowing some tea had nearly killed him. "I do, and I didn't before."

Speaking of brains, the headache that had plagued him all day was gone. The realization caused an instinctive rubbing of his temples, which somehow gave him an idea. "Do you understand this?" he asked in French.

[scarefaux]

"Oh, I know I have a brain here," he replied quietly, a hint of nervousness coloring his tone. He scratched at his arm again, wondering why it rattled him so- it had been a long time since the night they took him for his sleep study, and ages since he'd concerned himself over the clever little thing they'd implanted into his human brain. Perhaps it was Depth Charge's disappearance that renewed his discomfort with the entire event- his roommate had come to his rescue, after all. Then again, it might have been the illness his nurse kept telling him about. She did make it sound like whatever was wrong with his body was affecting his mind.

He was distracted until Skulduggery spoke again, this time in something he didn't understand at all. "I beg your pardon?"

[skeletonenigma]

"Is that what the doctors told you?" Skulduggery asked, his head cocked to one side. "Or did they show you?" Would there be x-ray machines or MRI's in a mental hospital? It wasn't a particularly important question; he could feel the organs inside him, even without the confirmation of medical photographs. But if there was any kind of clinic in the building, it would be worth looking into later. Just like the morgue, it might hold the secret to how he was brought back to life.

There were many times, upon setting out to try something, when Skulduggery didn't quite know what he was expecting until it actually came to pass. The Scarecrow's answer to his question was one of them. "Never mind," he answered with what he hoped was a smile. "Just testing a theory." He stood up, walked over to the bed, and sat down with one arm stretched straight out in front of him.

On the surface, making sure everyone understood each other seemed simple enough, but Landel seemed to be twisting it into something more complicated than it needed to be. The Scarecrow understood his English, but not his French - or probably most other languages. If Skulduggery had spoken French to Yomi, would she have understood?