'cause you thought you'd escaped

[rosswood]

Who: Alex Kralie and anyone/everyone
Where: All around Gravity Falls
When: February 5th-9th (specify which day in the subject header)
Rating: Let's say PG-13. Alex is a foulmouth
Summary: Fairies and gremloblins and tourist traps, oh my!
The Story: beneath the cut!

February 5th and 6th; Mystery Mansion

God, he is so bored.

Alex thinks he might be starting to have an allergic reaction to how much obnoxiously fake stuff there is scattered all around this place. And people actually buy this crap? He turns over the price tag on one of the dubiously-named "attractions" and snorts. What a scam.

But man, he can't remember when he last had two hundred bucks in cold hard cash to just spend however he sees fit. Ordinarily that'd go to a savings account, or to chip away at those student loans, or would be added to his private stockpile devoted to the Production-Level Movie Equipment Investment Fund, but he sincerely doubts the money will linger past the event's end. So, with a sigh, Alex submits to the thrall of capitalist purchase. He might put forth some money for a tour just to see what all the fuss is about. He might even buy something other than a disposable camera, just to shake things up. He's gotta use up this cash somehow, right?

February 7th; Fairies

Of course, what should he walk into within five minutes of venturing into the woods but a swarm, a literal swarm, of winged little pests? He swats at them furiously, stumbling blind through the semi-thick woodland, practically snarling under his breath as those bright fluttering pains in the ass dodge every clumsy swipe of his hand. This place had better not have poison oak, or Alex will have words. He'll have angry words, furious words, as soon as he gets - these - things - off - his -

Crash.

That's roughly the point in time where Alex trips over a root and faceplants, possibly onto a rock or sharp object of some kind. You might trip over him as he lies there, surrounded by a dancing halo of colorful chirping lights, wondering where in his life he went so wrong.

February 8th; Gremloblins

"Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, HOLY SHIT - "

Running at breakneck speed through the woods. Yep, this sounds familiar. Only instead of some ghostly-thin spectre-like faceless nightmare, this thing is a hulking, lumbering, snarling...well, he doesn't really have a word for it. He just knows it apparently doesn't like cameras or bright flashes, and it's currently fixated on him and mad. Oh, joy. Too far, Alex. You went too far, and now you're going to suffer for it.

He barely manages to duck a swipe of the thing's massive claws just as its jaws part in a furious roar.

"For the love of - help! Can anyone - " The rest of that sentence is lost as Alex once again has to devote the rest of his attention to keeping those wickedly curved claws from taking a sizable chunk out of him. No other choice here but to keep running and hope he crashes into someone who knows how to kill or maim or otherwise get rid of this thing. Dignity be damned. Pride be damned. He lost all claims to pride the minute he started shrieking to help at the top of his goddamn lungs.

Speaking of which -

"Help!?"

Alex Kralie, the only man who can manage to make a desperate entreaty for aid sound utterly and deeply sarcastic.

February 9th; the Hide Behind

He's been camped in the same spot for hours. His palms are slick with sweat, his tongue stuck out between his teeth in concentration, hunched in scattered underbrush as he waits for the telltale rattle-hiss of the thing he knows is after him. Stalking him.

"Come on," he whispers, eyes narrowed at the empty air in front of him. "Come on, you stupid son of a bitch. I know you're out there. I heard you. I heard you. Come on out."

And so it goes, a quiet, ongoing litany as he waits and waits and waits and waits for the thing behind him to show its goddamn self. He's had enough of things he can't see. He's going to chase this one down, wallpaper every tree in the forest with its ugly mug.

There it is. The rattle. The click-clack-click of the beast drawing near.

Alex grins faintly, poised to spin around and catch it in the click and flash of a shutter. 1/500th of a second. That's all it'll take. Come on. Not so mysterious now, are you, Mr. Monster?

[ooc: prose or brackets are good, will match accordingly]

Comments

[rosswood]

Yee-awn. Alex already has shit haunting his nightmares, and he's already doubting that anything here will ever hold a candle to that kind of spook. He surveys the interior with mingled disbelief and amusement. Stuffed monkeys stitched together with fishtails. Jars packed with plastic eyeballs. Plaster busts of creatures he can only assume are meant to be regarded as utterly terrifying.

He leans over one of the stuffed figures and pokes it. What's that? Do not touch? Pshhhh.

"Wow," he says in slow, deliberate monotone. "A jackalope. How thrillingly original."

[charlastan]

When Stan catches Alex touching the specimens, he prods him in the side with his cane.

"No touchin' the merchandise," he says. "And obviously you don't know a thing about jackalopes. Sure they look cute and cuddly, but those antlers'll gouge your eyes out! Jackalope hunters gotta wear stove pipes around their legs just so they don't get their ankles gored."

Not that anyone actually hunted this jackalope, since Stan clearly made it himself by gluing deer antlers to a stuffed rabbit.

[mypartnerintime]

"Yeah Alex, don't you know anything about Jackalopes?" she whispers to him, rolling her eyes at his ineptitude. Come on, man! Get yourself together!

[rosswood]

"Wow, gee," says Alex, folding his arms. "What a shocker. What new and exciting information."

Look, he's not touching the merchandise. Happy, Stan? Are you proud?

"What else you got in your Cave of Wonders back there, huh?" Come on, Stan, impress him.

[charlastan]

Stan can't help twitching a little bit. This guy is such a pain in his ass.

"You want original? I'll give you original!"

He puts his showman grin back on and heads over to one of his most famous attractions.

"Behold! THE SASCROTCH!"

It is exactly what it sounds like.

[mypartnerintime]

WELL. Excuse her as she tries to stifle a fit of giggles and bite down on the wide grin that threatens to spread over her face. She ends up making some sort of choking sound and having to bring her hand up to cover her mouth in embarrassment.

She has nothing to say to this. It's so much better than she had hoped, worth every dollar.

She is literally speechless.

[rosswood]

Alex is stunned into similar silence for a long moment. Several moments. He raises his eyebrows skeptically. Is this for real?

Oh yeah. It's for real.

This day might not be such a waste after all.

"Well," says Alex lightly, after those several...minutes it takes to process. "It's certainly different."

It takes some concentrated effort to keep a straight face as he turns and looks at Stan with as much innocent curiosity as he can possibly bring to bear. "You glue that dong on yourself, or did it come preshrunk?"

[charlastan]

Unfortunately for Alex, Stan has reached an age where absolutely nothing embarrasses him anymore. Was he expecting Stan to stammer and get flustered over the mention of fake dongs? To not want to talk about it in front of the other guest? Does he really think he's the first little shit to ask about dongs on the tour?

Stan grins darkly.

"Actually, every dong in this museum's been generously donated by a combination of previous trouble-making visitors to the Mystery Shack and a number of my greatest enemies!" He laughs in that showman way, like this is actually a part of the usual routine. "Or at least, that's how my legal team says I oughta spin it, but what do they know?"

Without missing a beat, Stan continues the tour from there, gesturing to another abomination. "And over here we have the six pack o'lope! The buffest of all nature's creatures!"

[mypartnerintime]

How scandalous. Max doesn't hide her eyeroll at the dong talk, but does fight down her grin. Regardless, she has to admit that Stan knows his tour stuff, and does a good job at keeping people entertained. She hastily grabs a picture of the 'Sascrotch' as they push forward with the tour.

She raises an eyebrow at the six pack o'lope, an amused smile on her face. "I'm pretty sure it skipped leg day, Stan," she says dryly, intending it more as a well-meaning comment than a heckle.

She makes no remark on whether or not it looks real, though, because she'd like to at least pretend it is. Though that's actually pretty impossible.

[rosswood]

Really? Nothing? All right, so Stan's stone cold in the face of low-blow snark. Noted. Maybe Alex would find that admirable, if he didn't find the rest of this to be so eye-rollingly obnoxious.

"You are really scraping on the bottom of the barrel here, aren't you?" Alex remarks mildly, then decides to take a leaf out of Max's book. He starts snapping pictures, completely without any regard for framing and what have you. More like he's just making a racket to make a racket.

"Hey," he says, as if the thought's just occurred to him. Click. "These exhibits - " Click. " - aren't photosensitive - " Click. " - are they?"

Click click click.

[charlastan]

Max is a much more pleasant customer, and her comments are more entertaining than offensive, so Stan is quick to laugh and play along.

"With abs like that he can skip all the leg days he wants!"

Alex, meanwhile, is more annoying than anything else. It's like he's giving a tour to Max and a horsefly decided to tag along and buzz obnoxiously around them.

"Oh yeah, they're incredibly photosensitive," he says, dryly. He rolls his eyes. "That's why I sell disposable cameras, because I want everyone destroying my exhibits and ruining my business."

He laughs, proud of his own sarcasm. "Pretty sure you're the one who's scrapin' the bottom of the barrel now. I've seen a lotta hecklers in my day, but this is just sad."

[mypartnerintime]

Is this becoming like a flame war or something? Max looks between the two dudes, unsure now about what exactly to say. But whatever, let them work it out, right? As Alex prepares whatever retort he has in mind, taking up Stan's attention, she turns and notices a mirror labeled as The Most Hideous Creature Known to Man.

Say whatever you want about Stan, that's pretty funny. She grins as she holds up her camera and frames the shot for a few seconds so that both she and Alex are in the picture. This is one for her picture wall, to commemorate the amazing tour - there's a snap as the shutter fires.

[rosswood]

"What's sad is that people are eating this crap up with a spoon," Alex snaps, his cool momentarily dissipating. Here he is trying to be properly irritating, and Stan's apparently way too used to this kind of thing. The sound of a shutter going off jars him back into remember oh right, Max is here, and he shakes his head, turning away from Stan scornfully.

"Whatever man. What's next on your list of overpriced horrors?"