well of course you do! The odd mental image was of trying to outline the entire jaw. I'm sure they don't but I imagine the newly dead have a bit of a learning curve with figuring out how to draw everything on
It's tricky when you first wake. Disorienting. But it's something everyone's gone through so there's a lot of people ready to help you on your feet. And if you already have family on the other side, you get to meet them and spend time with them again which probably helps even more.
I think some people just do fake nails, like in the living world, or paint their bones.
Well, I mean, I wouldn't really know for sure. I didn't have family on the other side. I was an orphan kid, no last name or anything. If I had dead family, I wouldn't have been able to find them.
[But, given that he hasn't the faintest idea who they were, if they were counting on his memory, they were long forgotten.]
All of my family was in the land of the living, so, I was on my own for a good while until I moved to shantytown.
Look, I know it sounds bad, but it's not like that. They're good people. We're all dead, so no one's starving or suffering. We stick together and we're a family. It's no stupid colonial tower but we're set up by the water and by the ruins and we're the first to see the sun rises, you know, it's nice.
[Sorry, Garrett, he's a little sore over how often people snub his home and the people there.]
It is nice. The community part. We all call each other tío or cousin or whatever fits for us. And they're probably some of the best people I've ever known.
[And now he's back to stalling on the hard parts.]
I don't know if I'd say it's for anybody waiting, exactly. More that they've stopped waiting.
My afterlife doesn't last forever. It's based on memory, connection. It lasts for however long you're remembered in the living world and if your stories are passed down. If anyone's still putting up your picture after you're gone. When people are no longer remembered, our energy fades with the memory. If there's nothing holding you in the living world and you have no family in the land of the dead to go to and stay with, then, you go to shantytown. And then everyone's your family.
[Ahyup. Here it goes. He sucks a breath through his teeth. He's almost glad this is horrifically awkward because it's a nice change from horrifically depressing.]
I was disowned. Yeah.
They never put up my photo so I couldn't visit on the day of the dead and they didn't talk about me so Nobody knows who I am.
My wife lived until sometime in the seventies and I waited for her and she did not want to see me. For obvious reasons when more of the family crossed over I did not meet them. But, I was already being forgotten, so, I was already living in shantytown anyway.
My daughter's still alive. She's very old now. She Well Like I said, my afterlife is over and that's why I'm here. I'm forgotten.
[If u listen carefully u can hear the sound of Garrett's mental screaming all the way across the hotel, piercing even the bitter cold that has half the community shut down. Just. Scream.
There are so many parts of that he wants to yell at- like the foremost obvious travesty of Héctor "I love my wife and my beautiful daughter" Rivera being disowned by his family. Or the question lurking in his mind about whether Garrett misjudged him- but no, no, that's impossible. Then there's the entire horror of fading out of existence as people forget you, but-]
how could anyone forget you? you're
[Too good for any of these terrible places, and too good for the people who rejected him. Probably.]
[He doesn't know what Garret has in mind for the end of that sentence but things his own mind supplies are less than flattering.]
It's pretty easy. You know. I died young, everyone thought I was a deadbeat walkout, my family and my murderer aren't speaking my name, who knows where he buried me, everyone who might have known me otherwise dies out over time... ninety six years later and there you have it. No one left alive to remember me. Honestly, it's kind of a miracle I got that far along.
But, no. I'm not going to fade away here to my knowledge. You remember last time? I was here with poisoning damage and all that? Well, back home, that killed me. Something about Hell is like...a limbo. I'm held together just enough to be here. That's my guess at least.
[everyone thought I was a deadbeat. Ah. And just like that, Garrett's "stab on sight" list gains another name. It takes a special kind of bastard to kill someone in the fucking afterlife, too.]
So I'm guessing that there's nothing anyone can do to hold you together a little more.
[They knew him when he was alive. Sort of...? Shit, was he even alive? Would it even matter?]
I don't think so. It doesn't feel like anything's different here, even with people knowing me. This is technically a realm of the dead and it's not really connected to the living world, my world.
It's alright. I'm not getting better but I'm not getting worse. I think I'm going to stick around Hell.
[At least for a while. Unless he decides oblivion is better. But, he has the sense not to say that.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Pity for the ones who like long nails
[ he's decently drunk right now. ]
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It's tricky when you first wake. Disorienting. But it's something everyone's gone through so there's a lot of people ready to help you on your feet. And if you already have family on the other side, you get to meet them and spend time with them again which probably helps even more.
I think some people just do fake nails, like in the living world, or paint their bones.
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[Héctor has family, everyone knows that. What the...]
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[But, given that he hasn't the faintest idea who they were, if they were counting on his memory, they were long forgotten.]
All of my family was in the land of the living, so, I was on my own for a good while until I moved to shantytown.
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Look, I know it sounds bad, but it's not like that. They're good people. We're all dead, so no one's starving or suffering. We stick together and we're a family. It's no stupid colonial tower but we're set up by the water and by the ruins and we're the first to see the sun rises, you know, it's nice.
[Sorry, Garrett, he's a little sore over how often people snub his home and the people there.]
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but he's still Suspicious]
is it a common place for people without family waiting? having a community of your own sounds lovely
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[And now he's back to stalling on the hard parts.]
I don't know if I'd say it's for anybody waiting, exactly. More that they've stopped waiting.
My afterlife doesn't last forever. It's based on memory, connection. It lasts for however long you're remembered in the living world and if your stories are passed down. If anyone's still putting up your picture after you're gone. When people are no longer remembered, our energy fades with the memory. If there's nothing holding you in the living world and you have no family in the land of the dead to go to and stay with, then, you go to shantytown. And then everyone's your family.
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W H A T ]
so
wait
nobody was
what the fuck
[ wHAT HAPPENED TO FAMLIY ]
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I
was disowned.
Yeah.
They never put up my photo so I couldn't visit on the day of the dead and they didn't talk about me so
Nobody knows who I am.
My wife lived until sometime in the seventies and I waited for her and she
did not
want to see me.
For obvious reasons when more of the family crossed over
I did not meet them.
But, I was already being forgotten, so, I was already living in shantytown anyway.
My daughter's still alive.
She's very old now.
She
Well
Like I said, my afterlife is over and that's why I'm here.
I'm forgotten.
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There are so many parts of that he wants to yell at- like the foremost obvious travesty of Héctor "I love my wife and my beautiful daughter" Rivera being disowned by his family. Or the question lurking in his mind about whether Garrett misjudged him- but no, no, that's impossible. Then there's the entire horror of fading out of existence as people forget you, but-]
how could anyone forget you? you're
[Too good for any of these terrible places, and too good for the people who rejected him.
Probably.]could that happen to you here?
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It's pretty easy. You know. I died young, everyone thought I was a deadbeat walkout, my family and my murderer aren't speaking my name, who knows where he buried me, everyone who might have known me otherwise dies out over time... ninety six years later and there you have it. No one left alive to remember me. Honestly, it's kind of a miracle I got that far along.
But, no. I'm not going to fade away here to my knowledge. You remember last time? I was here with poisoning damage and all that? Well, back home, that killed me. Something about Hell is like...a limbo. I'm held together just enough to be here. That's my guess at least.
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So I'm guessing that there's nothing anyone can do to hold you together a little more.
[They knew him when he was alive. Sort of...? Shit, was he even alive? Would it even matter?]
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It's alright. I'm not getting better but I'm not getting worse. I think I'm going to stick around Hell.
[At least for a while. Unless he decides oblivion is better. But, he has the sense not to say that.]
Might as well, right? I've even got a house here.
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[he's so fucking glad for something to talk about that doesn't cause a distant screaming sound in his head.]
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