It was probably a few days after Kal visited me, that I was standing in front of a train platform, looking at the ticket covering my phone’s screen, a ticket to Arkham on my phone screen. Kal told me that the longer I go without seeing or even talking to Aden, the pain will only get worse, the pain will only intensify, get much more carnal and start making me leave my human form and the longer I keep resisting, the more I’ll lose myself to the magic. I did ask Aden if I could drop by, that I needed to tell him something important and he said it was alright and to just come by his office. I adjusted my mask as I pushed my hands into my jacket’s pockets as the train squealed into the station, I was back enough that the water that sprayed from the rain collected in the tracks only got onto the concrete. There wasn’t a lot of people on the train luckily, people weren’t really that excited to go to Arkham, so the handful of people were probably going to the stops before or after Arkham. I stayed standing despite the emptiness of the train: in magical areas, I can use a little heat magic to sanitize it, but…this is a nonmagical train and the people were humans and not magical, so I couldn’t magically cleanse everything. So…I stayed standing, resting a gloved hand around the metal pole as I stayed close enough to keep myself on my feet, but far enough that I didn’t have to touch it more than just having my hand wrapped around the post. I kept my mask raised and my other hand was wrapped around the bottle of hand sanitizer I kept in my coat pocket.
My cousins are extremely good with my germaphobia, same with work, but…there are sometimes where people were like “but you’re immune to all germs, poisons, toxins an’ shit, how could you be afraid of germs when they pose you no threat?” to which I explained, “You don’t know my mother” She is…probably the root cause of my OCD and phobia, at least according to my therapist, well…my old one, still need to look for one around here, I’ve tried to see who could provide online sessions and not having to go in, but…I just don’t have the time. Even as an elf, Mom is immune to diseases herself, but…something happened at one point before I was born, Dad and her never would tell me what happened, that basically…broke my mother. She became terrified at the idea of getting sick, kept the house absurdly clean, I remember getting made fun of at school for being the cleanest or for panicking when I would get mud or something on my shoes only for their bullying to get…weird when I would start crying as I claimed Mom was going to kill me for getting dirty, that nothing was allowed to be dirty, nothing could exist dirty. I don’t recall what happened, but…something happened that made a curtain stained and she spent days trying to get rid of it, but when all her tricks and ideas wouldn’t work, she took the curtain into the backyard and burnt it. Aside from her absurdly extensive phobia to things being dirty and germs, she was a perfect mother, but…the smell of her magic: bleach, burnt sage and toasted grains…forever are integral to my memories: from coming home from school where she would all, but power-wash me with bleach or some form of cleaning chemical, to not being allowed a pet of any kind because they’re filthy, not being allowed over at friends’ homes or having friends over because people are filthy, not being allowed to go anywhere that she couldn’t be with me to ensure I wasn’t being riddled by bacteria. The most I ever heard as to what made Mom like that was that was a brushed over quip from Dad when he said, “it’s all in the past”, wither he meant my Mom’s childhood or something or literally like history…I know nothing.
Within the first couple of stops, the vast majority of people had gotten off the train, but there were still people so I couldn’t sanitize a spot for me to sit down, but luckily the train ride was only about twenty or so minutes, so I didn’t have to stand for long. I could see the city passing through the sliding wavering tunnels, the spots where it rose past the ground showing the tranquil coast or small fields and meadows before dipping back underground.
The train squealed and screeched as the brakes were flooded as it rolled into a smaller station than the previous few stops, the scrolling sign above the doors said Arkham across it. I walked from the train and nearly felt myself shiver in disgust at the idea of having just been on public transport, even if I was on there basically alone and I can keep this scalding hot aura of cleanliness around me.
I sighed as I looked up a little, the station was central to this…quint little town: though like a lot of smalltown America there was something distinctly creepy about it, the entire town looked like it stopped progressing in the late 1800s, maybe early 1900s by some of the buildings and things, the roads while paved were edges in these tall lamp posts that reminded me of Victorian England, the white glass spheres adorned with hanging bowls of trailing creeping vines, pendants and bunting of rich greens, purples and dark jewel-tones wrapped around street signs and light posts as all sorts of little shop fronts filled the main drag of the town do to the fact that mainly the town was just this…novelty location from what I saw online, all dedicated to that author Zavi mentioned. Sleek gabled dark roofs in pale siding adorned buildings. Lots of gardens and areas, but there was this…overshadowing, overhanging air of…creepiness to the town, not just in the extreme quiet of the sleepy town, but there was a gift shop I passed that had these plushies in the front of some sort of strange creature with what looked like an octopus for a head and all sorts of strange things, based on what I could see…this was offseason for the town, though…it’s hard to place when exactly the season for here would be. As I looked around the town seemed to be just…pushed between this much stronger river to the north, the water was so dark it nearly looked black, though the sleek black stones that piled up along the banks and covered the floor wouldn’t help as the rapids crested white caps across the largest stones in the river, there was this elongated thin island down the river where a large statue of a winged woman was set. There was…a weird amount of church like buildings I could see…plus from the magic I have being the child of an archdemon…there were at least three graveyards in this town. Based on what I could feel on the air, there was at least three or so churches too, churches give people like me and my cousins some…just weird energy, save for Zavi who as half-angel feels nothing. The smaller hill was to the east of the train station where I saw the streets softly sweeping up along the very gradual maybe ten-twenty-foot rise, two churches set cattycorner to each other almost on one of the streets at its foot. There were signs that pointed up the hill that said French Doctor’s House Gardens and Teahouse. Another sign pointed deeper into the town that had Witch House on a much more noticeable sign compared to the others on it. Along the central street of the town every so often were…directories like the town was fucking mall or theme park, there was large building that was called St. Mary’s Hospital…there was a thin creek that curved along the backside of the train station and towards the western edge that came from a spring at the top of the other hill which was…ominously marked as Hangman’s Hill with a small forest on it with a spot marked as the Wooded Graveyard. There was an old cemetery plaza on the main street and the third cemetery was to the eastern side of the train station, close enough that you passed by it on the train. I did see a single building that was marked as Miskatonic University, but…it looked too small on the map.
“That fuck is this place?” I whispered to myself…
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