Roberta’s Wednesday morning odd encounter(Roberta)
Date: 2025-07-23 06:16
(Roberta’s Wednesday morning odd encounter(Roberta):Roberta)
[Wed Jul 23 2025]
In Drama Studio/span>/spanThe drama studio occupies a spacious rectangular room with high ceilings
supported by exposed wooden beams that have darkened with age. Black painted
walls absorb most of the light from the overhead theatrical fixtures,
creating pools of shadow in the corners where old props and costume racks
gather dust. The polished hardwood floor bears scuff marks from decades of
rehearsals, with tape lines marking various stage configurations. Along one
wall, a bank of mirrors reflects the room’s depths, though some panels have
developed a clouded, mottled quality that distorts reflections in unsettling
ways. Folding chairs stack against the far wall near a small raised platform
that serves as a practice stage, while heavy black curtains hang from ceiling
tracks, ready to partition the space or block the tall windows that face the
campus quad. The air carries a persistent mustiness beneath the sharper
scents of paint and sawdust, and certain floorboards creak in a rhythmic
pattern even when no one walks across them. A door in the northwest corner
leads to Plymouth House, its frame slightly warped so that it never quite
closes properly, allowing drafts to whisper through the gap./span>/spanIt is about 60F(15C) degrees. The mist is heaviest At Thornberry and Lake/span>/span(Your target discovers a cursed object in an antique shop or estate sale that begins warping reality around them – they must figure out how to break the curse or contain the artifact before it causes permanent damage to themselves or innocent bystanders.)
Well then, with the conclusion of theatre class, Hester is just still here. The Drama Studio, the Plymouth building. A fat freshman in pajamas practicing her small talk with Roberta, Eloa, and a few older students who are too chill to make a break for it.
The hour strikes and the class ends. Plans are made for the rest of the day, but to no one’s surprise, -something- takes place unexpectedly… This is after all New Haven city.
Roberta may have missed it, but Hester doesn’t. Be that serendipity, or pure proximity to the object, a small black item is located between Hester and Eloa. It’s an ornate-looking pen that must be rather expensive, its shaft inset with gold, its nib curiously pointed, as though to draw blood, or be dipped into ink bottles, or wells.
It’s on the floor in the drama studio however, and somehow it’s been ignored up until this point.
Strange… It certainly wasn’t there minutes back. Possibly dropped by one of the other students, it lays there, perfectly innocently, unobstructively, and waiting for someone to take it.
“Okay eloa will arrange it…” Eloa’s voice trails off from the conversation she was trying to have with Roberta when her phone seems to go dead. Frowning, Eloa holds the up towards the ceiling. “Again? Really?” She grumbles as she sets the phone down. It is then that she notices the fountain pen, just lying there on the ground. “Is that your Hester?” The latina asks pointing at the pen, “Geez need remember cap it if it falls nib first pen is done for.” She points out as she starts to pack her own bags.
Given that Eloa starts whispering to Roberta, Hester glances toward the door with intent to make herself scarce. A forward lurch and a creak of her seat later, she’s stopped with eyes on the floor – having noticed a rather unforgettable style of pen, that her face contorts like surely she hadn’t missed it before. “Did Lucien drop this?” she wonders to the room, bending over to pick it up with one hand high behind. “Looks so fancy and golden..”
Eloa didn’t hear the part about someone dropping it because of her conversation with Roberta clearly. So she still asks Hester if it’s hers.
Eloa didn’t hear the part about Lucien dropping it because of her conversation with Roberta clearly. So she still asks Hester if it’s hers.
“Dropped what?” Roberta asks Hester.
Still not hhaving noticed the pen, she leans away from Eloa as they decide to do something. The latina though draws her attention, as does Hester, and once she sees it, Roberta frowns. “I don’t think Lucien could afford that. It looks pretty old…. and expensive.”
“We’ll handle it. We should check on her.” she concludes to the first, barely above a whisper.
As the pen’s raised from the ground however, the phenomenon creeps past fortune and into the abstract depths of -wrong-
Eloa finds herself unable to contact anyone, as does Roberta when she tries to answer a text. But more than that.
As Eloa, Roberta and Hester look around, the room begins to spin around them. The door has shut, then seemingly vanished. The curtains move under their own power, rising as though on a breeze.
The mirrors warp, transform and become a band that surrounds the room like a ring that begins to grow smaller perceptably, the reflections blurred.
No… Not quite blurred. More like ever changing– Moving– zipping around and around as though the three were in the center of a centrifuge, with the pen at its center.
“Oh great.” Eloa’s expression when the room starts to spin after her phone cuts off is just one of … regret. Mayhaps regret for not dashing after Lucien the moment the class ended. Who would have known? She frowns at the pen in Hester’s hand. “Maybe we should smash the nib.” She grumbles as she tries to stand up and then has to sit back down due to the spinning cetrifuge effect. “Um… This doesn’t feel like possession..”
Hester doesn’t even drop the pen after she’d picked it up and -that- happens. No, she keeps a firm grip on it, trying to get it into her fanny pack but the vertigo-inducing shift in their reality keeps her fighting for her balance. “Oh boy.. oh no.. help,” she groans, nauseated by the spinning ’til she lands rump-first on the floor. “Oh my goodness, did we get cursed? Is this the drama room ghost?” she frowns at Roberta and Eloa.
“Huh.” is Roberta’s only comment to the situation. Not that anyone can tell with her sunglasses, but she’s already closed her eyes. Smart, that.
The pen in Hester’s hand grows hot, the gold etching slithering around the shaft, the sensation painful, like repeated bee stings against Hester’s flesh.
The tip appears pregnant, almost swelling, and should either Hester or Eloa look, it’s growing red– Not heated like the shaft is as it starts to worm its way into Hester’s flesh, but as though ready to scribe in crimson droplets.
The pattering starts then. The steady drip-drip-drip, as beaded splatters of blood fall to the floor, the liquid moving under its own power as if to touch and grow… To spread into an inscription or symbol.
Lykaia opens the door, without a knock of course and takes a step inside before closing it behind herself. “Good morning, madam Bobby.” She gives Eloa a nod. She glances around. “Magic lesson?”
Seated on a seat in the circle of chairs, Eloa leans away from the pen as it starts to glow and … also drip blood onto the floor to form symbols. “Oh this is very bad.” The latina gasps and then Lykaia is through the door somehow! “Wait don’t clooo-” Too late, the door is closed and resumes spinning around them, “Lykaia come over here!” She cries out, wanting Lykaia to be further away from the spinning walls and mirrors.
As Lykaia steps into the room, nothing looks unusual in the least.
Once in however, the spectress finds herself in the center of a revolving platform with an ancient looking pen at its center.
Eloa, Roberta and Hester are in the center, the curtains are fluttering, the mirrors blurring together into a ring that is closing slowly in on the group, and from the point of the pen fat droplets of blood fall to the center of the floor, already animated and clawing at their brothers, already forming together into some arcane-looking iconography.
“Ahh-ow, it’s getting hotter,” Hester hisses as the pen begins to do its dirty tricks. Only as the shaft takes root in the chubby one’s hand does she try to shake it out of her grip, whining at Roberta, Eloa, and Lykaia, “AH! OH FUDGE, it’s eating my hand! It’s chernobyl-ing me! Awh no, help help!!” Her free hand grips tightly around her snared one’s wrist, as if to prevent the seep of poisons into her veins. The student lids eyes as though lightheaded as she watches the inscription being inked out in her own blood, as the room continues spinning.
Well, it’s probably a lesson so it does not require the sudden intervention of a neutralizer because Lykaia does not reach for one of the silver grenades hanging from the release. Hester’s request for help is pretty much ignored. “Madam Bobby. What’s it you are teaching them today?” She asks, her tone even. “Ritual chaos emergency handling? WOuld be a good lesson with all the shit that’s going on sometimes.”
The blood forms itself not into a pentagon or circle, but a triangle– Ancient magic, older than wicca, but the angles are all wrong.
The mirrors creep closer, inch by inch, though for now, Lykaia, Hester, Eloa and Roberta are safe from what ever will happen.
The curtains rip from their mounts,shooting across the room, only to be ping-ponged back and forth in chaotic patterns, and all the while, that impossible triangle grows more pronounced, more insidiously unsettling.
In the center of this mess, Roberta has her eyes closed. She’s visibly missing the majority of this, answering Lykaia. “Just theatre, actually. Hester keeps ending up in trouble like this.”
Eloa is also a goth!
“Um….” As more of Hester’s blood leaks out onto the ground, Eloa gets up onto the chair and stands ontop of it like she doesn’t want to be standing in Hester’s blood just incase it’s contagious or something. Of course, she will just say she didn’t want to risk ruining the ritual, but the worry in her eyes are clearly there as she gets up on the seat like it’s the top of a sinking ship. “Uhhh we should probably stop this ritual before it drains Hester dry..” She calls out the others, “Uh….” Well the woman with naturalizer grenade is naturally looked at. “Um… Maybe we grenade and remove pen from Hester and smash it?”
“Affirm.” Lykaia answers, but keeps herself by the door for the moment. She crosses her arms over her chest and leans heavier on her left leg for a moment and looks to Eloa when she asks “Negative, Eloa. Can’t interfere with madam Bobby’s lesson. Exception would be if your life was at danger. Hester probably got plenty of blood anyway.”
Yes, it’s just Hester doing Hester things, the jinx that she is. Her threshold for pain is really tested here as more blood is outlined in a triangle, of all shapes. But the freckled one knows what it is. Horrified and near drowning in her gasp of shock, she ugly-cries at Roberta, Eloa, and Lykaia, “Awh fudge- the Illuminati is here! It was watching us the whole time and it knows we know their theatre secrets!”
The longer she goes, unaided, the feebler she looks. Although she’s still shaped like a supersized chicken nugget, she slumps to the floor dead weight and shivering, while her hand is put to use by the damned pen.
“Oh, that’s actually a good idea…” Roberta consedes, already reaching for her revolver– Shooting things always works. She stops though; Maybe shooting a student wont fix this.
Eloa’s suggestion gets its attention though… The pen almost appears to squirm, the room lurching, shuddering, dust falling from the ceiling.
The curtains fall to the floor, the mirror reflections stretch, warp further and split, hands projecting from the shimmering surfaces, reaching for Roberta, Eloa, Hester and Lykaia.
A high whistling begins, almost like an old-time kettle on a stove top, and it grows in volume and pitch until it vibrates teeth and bones alike.
As Hester slumps to the floor, the pen begins to draw Hester’s arm forward, and in the large one’s blood, it continues to ascribe its unnatural arcane runes and glyphs.
From behind Lykaia, two hands stretch. They are clawed, jagged, as though forged from jagged shards of glass– Eloa is on to something. And what ever this is, the mysterious force behind it does not like it.
“Ooooh this is just a class? Oh Hester must be acting then! Good acting!” Eloa suddenly seems alot calmer at Lykaia’s words, nodding her head as though Hester must be putting on a performance and will end up perfectly fine because this is all supposed to teach them stuff! “Oooh that is cool special effect.” She tells Roberta as glass shards start coming in towards them. “Hmm well how would we solve this with ritual… Eloa can try… counter ritual?” She asks as she pulls out her cross.
takes a step forward, and when glass shards do surround them, Lykaia draws up one of the silver grenades. She removes its pin, but keeps holding onto the back of it to keep it from exploding, with the pin slid into another pouch. “Madam Bobby… The glass shards look like they’d be a problem. Stop the ritual, please? Got to make sure my liege’s not suddenly going to get stabbed.”
Surely, Roberta’s class has not ended, and there is more within the armoire. Poor Hester can’t even make her case as she’s dragged about heavily by that pen-fused hand, her consciousness weakening in its grip on reality.
“We finished the class a little back.” Roberta corrects Eloa and Lykaia Apparently, what ever is happening is fabled to be. Someone is surely enjoying Hester’s missfortune.
Roberta finally opens her eyes then, sees the slumped student, reaches for her revolver again, and checks the chambers. The albino doesn’t look paniced, but if the gun’s out, things are either going very well… or very poorly.
The hands of glass stretch. They are trailed by arms. The triangle begins to glow, sapping Hester’s very life force.
“Yeah…” Roberta admits. “I have no idea what’s going on and was just waiting for Eloa to fix the problem or for Hester to die so I could get on with my day…” Callous… of course Roberta is callous. “Maybe we should take the pen away from her?”
“Oh this isn’t class? Uhhh maybe use grenade.” Eloa tells Lykaia as the glass starts to stretching inwards towards them more. “Eloa no want be porcupine today.” Picking up another chair – weakly, with it kindof hanging down because of noodle arms, Eloa tries to hold the chair between her and Lykaia.
“Wait so hester isn’t just acting?” Eloa calls out looking towards the lump of a woman on the ground.
A slow exhales comes from Lykaia. “Okay.” She says, throwing the neutralizer at Hester. “Let me guess. It’s another curse. Another weird sit that got one of them doing what it’s doing.”
Hester uselessly swabs the deck as the pen continues its ancient, unholy work. Her eyes have rolled into the back of her skull, with the ginger’s bandaged head tipped back as a choking noise grinds out of her throat like gravel.
That high pitched sound almost whispers. The voice– If that is what it is– is almost on the edge of hearing. It’s not made for mortal ears.
Roberta claps her hands to her ears. The force doesn’t like that suggestion either, and acute hearing is a disadvantage now.
Lykaia drops the grenade. It hits Hester Just another abuse to pile upon all of the others. The eleectronic buzz, and all supernatural energy is banished from the room.
The almost whisper-whistling abruptly stops. The pen is not immune to this numming of power either.
The shards disburse, shattering across the drama room floor with the sharp sound of exploding windows.
The scribing stops. Shrapnel flies in all directions…
The pen rolls free of Hester’s hand, and without a source from which to draw, it goes still.
As Roberta, Eloa, Lykaia and Hester breath– As they blink, the room returns to normal.
The irrors have not moved. The circle of chairs return. The curtains are where they should be. The glass is gone, a shared delusion, and all that remains is the triangle rit in fabled blood, te quivering student, and Lykaia, Eloa and Roberta with bated breath as things assume normality.
“Maybe we shouldn’t pick the pen up?” Roberta suggests, inspecting the footwear of everyone here. “Maybe Ly should stamp on it and break it?”
At least Roberta is bothering to help now, even if she’s waited until after the threat passes.
“Nooo Lykaia would have to touch pen to stomp it! Why don’t we just uh… here use chair to bash or shoot it?” Eloa asks as she offers the chair she’s holding towards Lykaia because well.. her arms are getting rather tired.
And that’s exactly what Lykaia will attempt next. She picks up a second silver grenade all the same to have it at the ready while moving. She tries to pick it up and crack it. “So… I’d say whether this breaking the pen works or not, we GTFO anyway. Tell the ritual staff to get this shit sorted instead.”
“Better idea.” Roberta agrees.
Standing, Roberta takes up her opera cane, raising it and smashing it down to smash the pen.
There’s a shiver that runs through the room. The pen screams in agony, ink leaking like blood in its death throws… Then… Everything falls silent.
The situation is now resolved conclusively.
Over the next few days, rumors abound of an antique pen that was stolen from Sidny Antiquities, but the story is never large enough to grow main stream.
A student is finally caught, having been the cause of a number of -petty- thefts, and day-to-day life resumes for Hester, Roberta, Eloa and Lykaia.
Hester’s hand gives a jerk as the pen unlatches its aberrant hooks out of her skin. And, well, now she is covered in shrapnel. It’s really not her week.
It’s with a grogginess that the ginger’s eyelids even return the view of the blurry world to her. “.. everything hurts,” is her weak comment. Such is the fate of such people – the types who’d faint in a crowded elevator, for no one to bother helping.
Roberta gets to the pen first with a sharper item and handles it. “Best to report anyway.” Lykaia says before looking to Eloa “Liege. Time for us to gtfo. This way?” She says, moving towards the door that leads out of the theater class room.