Characters: Mercy and Domizio (played by el.)
Content Warnings: Body horror.
Location: House of Grief
Mercy has interacted with people solely through the local group chat while piling up a horrid reputation for herself. Domizio, a local surgeon infected with a magical parasite, decides to pay her a visit to see exactly the type of things she does.
Mercy removes Domizio's misery and hunger, to an extent.
The House of Grief sits far away from the core of New Portsmouth, following an isolated driveway past the housing co-op, as away from the sea as New Portsmouth will allow.
Already, the atmosphere is heavy, despite the house’s nonthreatening appearance. It’s small–with grey wooden panels, a small porch, a black roof, and a humble chimney on its left side. Nothing indicates its strange nature other than the ornate wooden sign hung by the porch, marking the establishment’s name.
The lights in the house are on. The door is closed.
Domizio rolls up, aware of how close this “House of Grief” sits to their own business. “Wonderful…” he mumbles as he gets out of the car. Not wanting to have his clothing become a part of whatever cold reading this Mercy character intends to do, Domizio dresses more plain than normal. Black jeans, black turtleneck sweater, leather gloves, and a navy trench coat. It’s almost nondescript, except Domizio couldn’t help but wear their red cowboy boots. Can’t stand to be too background.
He stands on the porch, glances around to see if anything seems strange, then tries to open the door.
The door is unlocked, which would be strange if it weren’t for the fact that the main room of the house has been set up as a reception. It’s warm inside–there’s the faint scent of incense and cedarwood. The floors are decorated in different styles of carpets. Tapestries adorn the walls, all in cold tones.
And another thing. There are gemstones everywhere. Decorating the lamps, the tables, hanging off of tapestries. The room is dimly lit but still shines under the reflected lights.
It doesn’t take long for Mercy to take notice of the guest. The door to a backroom opens.
Mercy herself is absolutely nothing to write home about. Average height with a dull look in her eyes. Her clothing is dark and conservative but not utilitarian–the collar on her blouse is massive and decorated with intricate lace.
“Doctor Grimaldi,” she says, pleasantly, with the distinct voice of a chain-smoker. “Welcome in.”
“Hm…” Domizio takes in the gems and crystals around the room. “Hello Ms. Bourreau, it’s more New Age-y in here than I anticipated,” Domizio says as friendly as they can manage while setting their coat on a hook near the door. “But cozy, maximalist, I like it,” they step forward to shake her hand with their gloved one.
Mercy tracks Domizio’s movements passively from the doorway. They look like their icon in the group chat. Not much to be said in that regard.
“My budget allows me to decorate as I please. I thought it would be best to fit in with the energy of the town.”
She blinks.
Domizio: how far does your grief go? Is it tangible? At this current moment in time, how close are you to a rock bottom?
Domizio stops, eyes wider. “What-”
But the answer comes, it tumbles through Domizio’s mind.
I have caused so much suffering, taken and eaten for so long. I've hurt her and abandoned her just like I always do. My regret weighs me down and it threatens to finally crush me to dust the older and more brittle I become. I am being shown love, affection, worship I do not deserve, no matter how much I want to believe it's true. I've become fully undone, the bloody mess of a barely-still-human human being. You see it, how I yet again was a pathetic pile upon the floor. Nobody wanting to listen to me beg for forgiveness. The hunger has only grown louder and I don't know how much longer until I do something unthinkable, worse than I have ever done before. I am an insect, a bottom feeder, small and fragile. I thought I knew rock bottom before, but now, I'm not so sure. It was easier when they hurt me. Everything was so much easier when all I needed to do was feel pain.
Domizio looks pale, hand left floating unshaken. “What did you…” Domizio whispers. He feels sick.
She properly shakes Domizio’s hand right afterward. Nothing about her expression seems to indicate she just felt anything at all.
“That’s just the effect of stepping into the domain, don’t mind it. Think of it as metaphorical kicking up dust.” Neutral. She opens the door she was blocking previously. “Come on in and take a seat.”
The inside of this room is a little darker. The couches are ornate and in tones of grey. This is where the scent of incense was coming from.
Their eyes are still wide, almost afraid. “You said nothing about rooting around in my mind,” Domizio says bitterly wth a frown, but feels compelled to follow her. It’s what they ought to do, right? Why?
The smell of incense is strong, covering up anything that Domizio might… well. It’s distracting. They sit down slowly, almost expecting comical shackles to burst from the couch to restrain them. Once seated, their leg bounces nervously. “You warn me if you intend to do that again. Don’t like people digging into me like that,” they sound slightly agreeable to it, not outright yelling and leaving. Because Domizio does enjoy being dug into in certain circumstances. And they are filled with the curiosity of wondering how she’s doing it.
“I said no details about my practise, as a matter of fact. Surely you came here with reservations, correct?” She opens her mouth to say something else and promptly closes it.
Mercy draws the curtains in the room. It is now only lit up by the dim lamps in the corners.
“The initial screening is involuntary on my part and I did not get any actual knowledge of your issues, if that’s what you’re wondering about. Only the feelings.”
She sits down in the armchair in front of Domizio’s. Nothing happens.
An eyebrow twitch, “It’s not bizarre to assume that I wouldn’t get psychically probed upon entering a building. You like what you felt? Taste good?” The knee bouncing gets a bit faster. His eyes dart around the room, trying to grasp what her deal really is.
“I didn’t eat anything.” Unlike Mercy in the group chat–who was jumping to debate with and insult people, she looks and acts calmer in person, evading most of Domizio’s attempts at getting under her skin.
She lays out what looks like an ash tray on the coffee table in front of them. It’s white and covered in shards of glass.
“My church believes that true peace is the absence of emotion. The second of blank space before the universe was created. An empty void, if you will.” Mercy starts picking at the glass, forming a shape in the tray.
“Reaching that emptiness, at least temporarily, means addressing the source of distress instead of suppressing it. You tell it to me, and all the while, I channel it here. And at the end the only burden you will carry is that of a new physical item in your possession.”
She motions to the shining, bright white gemstone on her necklace. “I do it too. My entire family does. It is a safe and old process.”
“Hah!” Domizio barks a laugh, “Absence of emotion? An empty void? I might as well be dead.” Pitch growls in Domizio’s stomach. He looks unwell again. He looks at the glass. How could such a fragile thing hold what he can hardly bare?
“But I have no interest in suppressing my… I’ll play along.” He takes off his gloves, stuffing them in a pocket, before picking at an old seam on his pant leg. His ankle goes over his knee, leans back, and tries to look casual.
“Is it as though the feeling is numbed? Taken away from me? Or is this all,” Gestures hands around the room, “For show? A sentiment or true magic?” Numb it all out. It will be for the best.
“You came here because you wanted to disprove my practises. Correct?” She isn’t stupid. She can sense a tone over text, at the very least.
“I am only answering your questions because of your interest, Doctor Grimaldi, and it is because of that that I will confirm that yes, this is true magic, if it wasn’t obvious the second you walked–” Mercy pauses. Blinks.
“–all feeling is stored within the crystal. For…non-practicioners, we don’t make them all that sturdy. They tend to shatter after a couple of days or weeks depending on the intensity of said feeling.”
Domizio frowns. It almost feels like. “I’m unsure if I would be the best person to do this with.” Domizio gets this nagging feeling that Dakota would have some strong words to say about all this. “I have previous difficulties with using substances to escape, this sounds very similar. Not fixing the issue, just displacing it.”
The problem is tossing those gross feelings into the gutter for a little while sounds sogood. Unbelievably tempting. No thoughts, head empty, any gaps filled with whatever chemicals they can make their brain muster.
“How long does it last for you? The one around your neck. How much have you kept buried in there?”
“Removing a stressor can cause you to focus on other things in your life. You may find that you obtained a solution while not thinking of it at all.” This answer sounds a bit rehearsed.
Mercy has finished setting up the glass shards in a similar teardrop formation. She looks back down at her own necklace. Blinks again.
“I fortify it every day. I’m done with the preparations. Are you ready to begin?”
It will not be bottled up so easily.
Domizio nods. Skeptical, but too curious to stop.
“I’m ready for your prodding,” they say with a smirk.
It grows darker in the room. If that’s even possible. Mercy holds up the ash tray to get it closer to Domizio.
“Tell me. What is it that pains you the most?”
Note: anything said to Mercy here will be temporarily blocked out of Domizio's mind. Roleplay with caution.
“Hah, what to pick,” Domizio smiles uneasily but it fades. In this light, Domizio looks much more like the sad old man they are.
“That I’m becoming what I most fear, the same type of creatures that ruined my life. I pushed someone too far. I’ve had my own boundaries broken so many times and I thought I’d know better.” Domizio holds his head in his hands as he looks to the floor. “I thought I’d be better than that. Instead I lost my cool, let this thing take over me…”
But when you're so hungry, why blame yourself? You only did what you must. Tearing her up into little pieces to make the feast last longer.
Domizio’s grip on their hair gets tighter, knuckles white. “It doesn’t stop. Anything I could stand to gain from it, I don’t know if I’ll last long enough to see it through.”
Your expectations for yourself. For your own self-restraint. Your fear of becoming what hurt you in the past. The knowledge of your imminent doom.
They all float away and make themselves at home in the crystal forming a shape on the ash tray.
You feel a blank space where the memories of these events and hardships should be. What is there to be scared about? Who did you hurt? Who made you the way you are? You don’t remember anymore.
Suddenly, almost like a punch to the gut, the space and shape of those memories are gone.
I hurt-
He does not remember Mallaidh’s name. He does not remember Ronan’s smile. He does not remember the beach, or the ooze, only feeling a bit peckish at the moment.
More than what must have just been some rowdy seal barking at him on the beach, Domizio does not remember her. He does not remember-
“I-” Domizio looks up again. His eyes are dark brown and confused. Hands lower from the sides of his head, he looks around the room. “What… wait, what were we doing?” Why does my throat feel so tight?
...
“You were seeking my therapeutic services. We just wrapped up.” Mercy places the crystal, an angry dark red, onto Domizio’s hand. “Keep this somewhere safe.”
She stands.
“That should be all. Shall I escort you outside?”
Domizio furrows their brow, extremely confused, and looks down at the crystal. “Surely- surely there’s something more.” Domizio stands, grabs for the wall feeling light headed.
“You said…” Their mind is cloudy. Most things make sense, but nothing seems quite right. “What was it, an emotion, a memory, stored in here? Do they always look so…” It’s as though a roiling red cloud storms below the surface. Domizio frowns, “Scary?”
Why do they feel so hungry? They had lunch before coming here… Their skin feels strange.
“Not always.” She’d be inclined to believe something is severely wrong with Domizio. Beyond her magic’s reach. But what does she know, anyway?
She escorts them out the back room, to the lobby.
“I hope this helped whatever research you were intending to do on me, Doctor.”
Domizio keeps turning the stone over in their hand. It’s like lead, far heavier than it appears.
What could have been so terrible to make it look this way? Why do they feel so-
Domizio turns back to her in the lobby, concerned, “I feel empty. How much did you take out? There’s… maybe decades gone, I can’t quite…” Almost a headache, their eyes shut tight for a moment.
How could there be decades, Domizio? How old are you really? Why, you’re just a remarkably youthful 40 or 50 something that has a strange grasp on flesh magic! A patchy childhood after moving to the Sardinian countryside, farmlands, cattle. None of it must have been that eventful or important, the next thing you remember is moving to the United States, going to college. You can’t remember what you looked like as a child.
“It all comes back, when the stone breaks, so does the spell? How long will it last if I leave it alone?” Despite the dreary weather, and some alarm, Domizio feels… good? Like they’re excited to start the next day, maybe go out for a second lunch because… why do they feel so hungry?
Mercy answers no questions except for the initial one. She looks no different than she did when Domizio walked in.
“When the emotion reaches a tipping point in which it is stronger than what was initially cancelled out, the stone will shatter on its own. You may revisit at any point in between.”
Looks like she’s ushering them out the door…
“And for what it’s worth, I also do happy memories.”
“A tipping point…” Domizio mumbles. Why would Domizio ever reach a tipping point? They’re happy. They have friends, no matter how strange or terrifying they might be at times. They have a cute situationship with a large bear that is dying to see them once he gets back from his trip. They recently saved a man’s life. Sure, they might have made some mistakes, even if they don’t remember them, but doesn’t everyone? They have plenty to be proud of, to be content with, and to celebrate.
Domizio smiles, “You know, I might actually recommend you to people. I don’t know what was eating away at me. If this stone is any indication it was absolutely awful.” He chuckles, but as he starts to head out the door… a pause. A sniff at the air.
“This is very odd to say, but you smell very familiar. I can’t quite place it… Ah, probably nothing. I’m truly humbled today, so thank you.”
If Mercy were any more petty inside her domain, she would start waving this in Domizio’s face. But instead she just smiles, amused.
“Glad I could be of service. Come back anytime, Doctor Grimaldi.”
Sure, Domizio was proven wrong. Why were they so quick to be so dismissive of her? But they allow themself to be humbled, take their coat, and wave before leaving.
“Ah, now. Food.” Domizio gets in their car and drives off to a local diner, Ray’s something or other.
Why do they feel so hungry?
...