entrancelogs | 'cause you thought you'd escaped

Entry tags:

'cause you thought you'd escaped

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]

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What the-- Sure, there's a hiss after the flash, but nothing quite so monstrous gets caught in the camera's sight. Only Philip, who tries to shield himself with the two wooden maracas in his hands as he stumbles back, and somewhat dumbfoundedly blinks the brightness out of his eyes.

"I'm pretty sure you're supposed to say 'cheese' first, I'm telling you, that one's not going into anybody's scrapbook."

Edited 2016-02-06 08:46 (UTC)

"Hi Alex!" Max calls out to him as she approaches, Polaroid already in her hands. No, she's not judging him for his cheap low-quality disposable camera (fortunately she always has her Polaroid with her), but she does notice how incredibly bored he looks.

Just to be clear, she's already sporting a Mystery Mansion necklace with the subtitle enter the mysteriosity. She's going to get heat for that but she can always pull out the "what's that cute toy camera you've got there" card.

All in all, she's actually pretty hyped up and glad to see him. "Have you gone on a tour yet?"

Ah-ha. Gotcha.

Wait. What?

Alex stares blankly at none other than - Dr. Telepath? He hadn't realized anyone else would be this deep in the woods, which is kind of an absurd oversight now that he thinks about it.

"Uh," says Alex, for the moment lost for words. He recovers admirably as his stare falls upon the duo of instruments Philip is apparently toting around, and his confused frown deepens. "Did you, like, possibly join a mariachi band in the past few days, or something?"

Someone actually bought some of Stan's tourist junk? Someone actually bought some of Stan's tourist junk. Alex finds himself pretty torn between relief in that he wasn't the only one, and derision in that oh my god she bought Stan's tourist junk. Look, he stopped keeping a camera on him all hours of the day when he found out everything he films gets scythed through with static, and this thing was a whopping ten bucks on top of it because Stan is an asshole.

"Hey," he says slowly, still processing. It's nice to see someone familiar, but, yeah, this place? So not his style. Not even close. "Uh, no. I was hoping there'd be somewhere less, um, what's the word?" He makes an exaggerated show of searching for the appropriate term, then snaps his fingers. "Shady in terms of money-spending."

So hey, what's with the covert nature photogra-- all right, sure, that question can wait. And hey look, the black spots in his eyes are disappearing already.

"Actually, I got them just this morning, and they're more than just instruments."

Philip grins lopsidedly. Oh, this will be good.

He'd held off on the gift shop at first. Sure, it all seemed neither beneficial nor harmful at first glance. But Wonderland's events sometimes liked to save a few surprises for later down the road, so Philip waited. Turns out nobody ended up cursed from their purchases. Turns out obtaining a novelty puma shirt didn't prove vital to their survival either. And after so many days it was really just exactly what it seemed: A tourist trap, which they could either take or leave.

Philip took it, in the end. He gives the prize in his hand a good shake, letting the rattle sound again.

"With these I'll be able to not only raise, but also control my own army of the undead, can you believe it?" Gosh, he can barely contain his completely genuine enthusiasm! "And that at only 180 dollars for the pair, what an incredible bargain!"

Alex packs as much raw scorn as he can into the incredulous look he shoots him. Undead-raising maracas. This is what Stan's entire shtick is. If Alex had any respect for him before (he didn't, but it's the principle of the thing), it's evaporated by now.

"Jesus Christ." He shakes his head. Unbelievable. How cruelly, stupidly incidental. "I bet that cost you every penny on top of it, huh." Considering Alex would've gotten seriously overcharged for a couple dozen disposable cameras, that's not really so surprising.

Maybe it doesn't really matter. Philip's a right old events veteran at this point, so he probably has a fair handle on what works and what doesn't. So maybe knowing the two hundred bucks might as well be worthless in the grand scheme once the event is over makes all the difference.

"I've got twenty left, thought I might haggle for a jar of eyeballs when I get back. What's that saying? You can never have too many human eyeballs."

That's definitely the saying. Definitely a thing. Granted, probably he'll hang on to the last of his magical event cash, just to see if it'll disappear the way he expects. Usually should, though who knows, perhaps it'll keep, and the moral of the story will be that he could've had 200 dollars to his name.

Eh. Not worth the grief, not here. Wonderland's got them more than covered, and he's got his own resources to barter with the merchants if and when need be. Right, but enough of that now. He scales down the chipper shopper's pitch in the transmission of his voice.

"So, what are you doing out here, anyway?"

--Other than the usual perhaps, but he decides not to add that. It's been-- long enough since their last meeting, right? He's probably checked the regular forest out by now. And the previous event's forest. Annnnd this one now.

...Looks like it's theme season again, huh?

Assuming they literally are human eyeballs. At this point Alex wouldn't be surprised if they happened to be marbles painted over with ~spooky designs to look like human eyeballs. Still, he did buy the camera from the Mystery Mansion in the first place, so it's not like Alex has a moral high ground to stand on.

"I thought I was checking out a, uh, a thing." He gestures vaguely with one hand. "Something that keeps making a rattling noise, 'cept it's not a snake. You haven't been following me for the last couple hours or so, have you?" he adds casually, because it would be just his luck if he was inadvertently stalking a maraca-toting Philip this whole time. Alex is usually much better at this, all right? Well, no he's not, but he likes to think he is.

"Shady can be fun," she says. Fake-creepy stuff can be really entertaining, like bad b-movie effects. And who doesn't like bad b-movies? "I'm totally going to take a tour. I don't think the money will matter much after the event anyway." She gestures at the camera in her hand. "And this is my first event with my actual camera."

Be careful, Alex. In about a minute she's going to invite him to take a tour and he better have a good excuse not to if he doesn't want to disappoint her. Besides, who doesn't want to see the world famous Outhouse of Mystery?

Alex grunts in reluctant agreement. Not like money has any real value in Wonderland, anyway. He has a hard time believing that any event would fork over a monetary advantage without some serious caveats, those being that it'll all probably be like leprechaun gold - there one minute, gone the next. Joy.

He shoots a dark look at the stupid dinky camera he managed to haggle off Stan for a fraction of his event funds. Maybe he should've just gone and blown it all on cameras, but he'd never give Stan the satisfaction.

"Must've left mine," he says, giving his camera a little shake, then raises his eyebrows skeptically. "You're actually going?"

She notices his look, and wonders how annoyed he must be at the disposable camera. It does make him look like some cheap tourist with no appreciation for photography or film. There's a slight temptation to offer to let him use her camera for a bit, but that's probably not a good idea. Hey, if she's standing this close to him, does her film start getting affected? Or is it just video? She guesses they can find out. Man, it would suck if all her shots from now on are wacky though.

And this is a good opportunity right? When else will they get to see such... unique photo subjects. "Hell yes I'm going!" she says, as though it's surprising he even asked (though it's not). "You should come too. We can be like Dali and get all the weird photos."

"W-w-welcome!" squeaks the girl behind the register. She bows to the newest guest, clearly nervous. "P-Please enjoy yourself... if there's anything I can do, p-please let me know!"

"Make it an ~art statement," he says with an exaggerated wave of a hand.

Such earnest and enthusiastic agreement. Anyway, if he can piss Stan off by laughing at all the cheap shit lying around, it's worth it. Sell the artfully framed photos for ten a roll, why not? Rile Stan up and make a buck on top of it.

So he shrugs. "Better than standing around and doing nothing, I guess."

Alex doesn't really register that he recognizes the girl behind the counter, or much of anything, because he's still swiping at the empty space behind him, glancing around nervously as he waits for the next cloud of insectlike lights to swarm him with their high-pitched chittering voices.

"You got any fly swatters," he says flatly. "I need like ten."

"Y-Yes, right away!" Unable to detect sarcasm, she quickly runs out from behind the counter, running to a shelf. Those flyswatters may or may not be made out of actual newspaper. She carries as much as her arms will allow, and heads back to the counter.

"You guys have a hell of a mosquito problem here," says Alex, who's still flinching despite being completely bereft of bite marks of any kind, "you know that?"

And what the fuck is this. Newspapers? Seriously?

After placing the flyswatters on the counter, she returned to the register, resuming fidgeting. "I-I'm so sorry!" She gulped out loud. "I-I'll see if I can catch any mosquitoes and get rid of them! Please don't let them sully your image of the store, Mister Pines w-works very hard!"

"Right, obviously, a thing."

He huffs a small laugh. No, no, not to worry, he knows better than to press.

"You were skulking around with a camera again, thought some music might brighten the mood."

Too much? Too much. Philip shakes his head.

"--No, I haven't been. At least not deliberately, or with music. Came from the 'Mystery Mansion'." Damn right you're getting air quotes, you ridiculous thing. "Just wanted to see how far I could walk here."

And which fun and exciting and allegedly harmless creatures he might raise an eyebrow at along the way.

"I mean, it's not like it's done anything," he's quick to add. Because it hasn't. It's just been real damn annoying, is the thing, and reminiscent as it might be of certain other horrors that will remain nameless, nameless damnit, it's seemed pretty much harmless. But snap a pic he wants to, and so snap a pic he will. Probably. Hopefully. "It just keeps following me, driving me up the wall."

Maybe.

"'Course you came from the Mystery Rip-Off, who hasn't?" Yeah, Alex still isn't over the fact that he had to fork over ten whole bucks for a shitty disposable camera. Fuck you, Stan.

"Wh - " Hang on, Alex's mouth just caught up to his head and he's realizing he recognizes this girl. She's the sarcasm-deficient nurse person, right? Oh, shit. He's probably raising kind of a racket. Whoops.

"Um, shit, lemme just - no, uh, it's okay." He holds up both hands, palms out, suddenly a bit off-guard. Does she work for Stan? God what a nightmare. Much as he might detest the guy, that doesn't mean he should go taking it out on his hapless employees. Alex has been there, man, he's worked retail, and it's no fun for anyone. "Seriously, it's fine."

As they had mostly spoken through texts, Mikan was taking much longer to recognize him back. But at least she relaxes as he seems to 'no longer be angry'. Though she folds up inside of herself, shifting weight from one foot to the other, back and forth.

"Um... is there anything else I can help you with?" She asks as she watches him expectantly.

He's seen her video around - it's not his fault he can't respond in anything but text, after all. He looks at her blankly and eventually comes to the logical conclusion that, based on that, she doesn't know him. Whoops. Nice.

"I'm Alex." He raises his eyebrows, tone rising with the pitch of expectation. "Alex Kralie? Text-only-guy. Didn't know you worked here."

A gasp. "Alex! I'm so sorry I didn't recognize you!" This was despite the clear fact she couldn't have possibly have known it was him. But things were always her fault. That was just the nature of her life.

"P-Please forgive me! I'm so sorry, I..." In a desperate attempt to earn his forgiveness, she took one of the flyswatters, and held it out. "T-Take this for free!"

"Uh, it's not like I've ever put my face on the network - " Mikan's distress is kind of alarming, and like a gentlemen, Alex has no fucking clue how to deal with it.

But hell, he'll take the flyswatter if it ends up pissing Stan off. He holds off on it, eyeing Mikan warily. "Don't, uh, don't worry about it?"

Yes Alex, do it for art, not for any desire to annoy Stan. Actually she's pleasantly surprised that he agreed without her having to pester him about it, though she has no idea about his ulterior motive. She smiles and starts looking around for Stan. "Okay. We'll have our photoshoot extravaganza."

"You know," she adds, still looking around, "so far all the events have been okay." That is to say, all two of the events since her arrival have been amusing and generally not dangerous. She still doesn't know that Alex went out into the forest during the last one.

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'cause you thought you'd escaped

February 9th

February 5th

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Gift Shop - 7th

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