Tessa’s Saturday morning odd encounter(Eric)
Date: 2025-11-29 11:10
(Tessa’s Saturday morning odd encounter(Eric):Eric)
[Sat Nov 29 2025]
In Den
Done all in weathered hardwood sanded to velvetine smoothness and dyed in dark, earthen tones, this den remains an inner sanctum of comfort cocooned away from the world without. Thick rugs span the floor underfoot in a layer of somnolent softness, each and every footfall sinking into the plush give of tawny manticore hide or the fur-feathered depths of griffon hide, carpeting the space in the promise of comfort from wall to wall. At the far eastern side of the den, an enormous stone hearth suffuses the area with a drowsy, all-pervasive warmth,, the flames at its heart crackling merrily away to themselves in cascades of lambent sparks. Eschewing more traditional furnishings, a heaped pile of cushions and furs rests before the fire, offering a comfortable place to rest bathed in the golden glow and fortifying heat.
It is about 50F(10C) degrees. The mist is heaviest At Thornberry and Lake
(Your target is abducted in their sleep, waking up alone in a locked room. They need to either escape or draw attention to them so their allies can come and provide assistance.
)
You awaken from a night of troubled sleep, and it does not take long for you to realize why. You are no longer in your bed, snuggled between your two lovers. You are alone, bound at hand and foot, blindfolded in darkness. The musty scent of old stone and concrete surrounds you, and the floor you lay upon is chill against your cheek. There is the slight murmur of sound just on the edge of hearing, though it is not within whatever chamber you reside in, and would require further attention to decipher.
Tessa sighs, loudly, then, raising her voice, she calls out, “For fuck’s sake, Thomas!” She tugs at the chains, checking, about her, for any spirits, entirely expecting to have been kidnapped and chained by her boss – not an entirely unreasonable assumption, really.
The ropes bite into your wrists and ankles, coarse and fibrous. No chains here, just the crude ties of lesser material, hemp, perhaps? Your shout echoes slightly, but it is a cramped echo, giving you an impression of a boxy room, or at least a room with very little open space. No sign of Thomas, nor of his ghostly goons, nor ANY ghosts, for that matter. All that returns to you is the fading resonance of your own voice, dying away to nothing in the chill and the dark.
Tessa waits a few, long moments, silent, before concern sets in. Eyes flick about the room, listening as best as she can, as she tries to pick up anything, at all, rubbing the stones of her rings against the ropes idly. Neither are sharp enough to cut through, but it’s something to do.
The rings do little against the ropes, they’re sturdy enough to be sure, biting into your wrists and ankles unforgivingly. Your struggles echo in the dank room, though it stirs nnobody but a singular rat skittering away into the shadows. All the while the sound at the edge of your hearing comes and goes, akin to surf, louder one moment and near silent the next.
Tessa mutters to herself, “Note to self…. knife ring,” before she quiets her breathing, focusing on the sound, ignoring the rat, the cold, he bite of ropes. Simple enough for her, really.
It is not difficult to distinguish the sound once you focus on it. Something seems to almost funnel it down to where you rest, perhaps a corridor or tunnel, or stairway? You can’t be sure. The sounds of people tantalize your ear, going about their lives with everyday aplomb. “G’day Jim,” comes the distant call of one man’s voice. “Don’t forget your lunch, Sarah,” comes a motherly chiding a few minutes later. It’s people, people, people, just your average street conversation.
Tessa takes a deep breath, holds it, then she screams. Truly, what else would a woman with no sense of self-preservation and an innate feeling of cosmic importance do? She would try to find a solution, even if it’s risky, because… she doesn’t care.
There’s a pause in the noise from outside, then after a moment a hushed babble of voices. Another long pause followss, and then footsteps are moving closer, then away, several different voices calling out inquiries. “Is anyone there?” “Hello?”
“Hi, um, people!” Tessa calls out, from her place. “Some weirdo has me tied up, and, uh, it’s not for fun things,” she adds. She tests the range of movement she has, to see if she can either break the anchor point or just twist and bend to get a bladed earring in hand.
As you twist and flop about on the floor, the voices recede further away. THey can clearly hear you, but can’t locate the sound particularly well. Your frantic motions do dislodge one of your earrings however, the tiny blade tinkling away on the stone. Magic as they are, the tiny bauble stands out to your eye even in the darkness, a darker patch of shade against the pervasive black. It lies just out of the reach of your bound hands.
You manage to slide your body across the cold stone, grasping, stretching, and finally the tiny athame comes to your fingertips. Bound as they are, it’s difficult and time-consuming work, but eventually you maneuver the blade into a position where you can saw at the ropes. Awkward as it is, it takes a substantial amount of time, but once your hands are freed cutting the ropes abgout your feet comes much faster. You sit at last, free, if still in darkness.
Tessa slips the earring back into her ear, and she stands, tapping a button, a second, then her jacket is brightly lit, not the most useful flashlight, but enough to distinguish, maybe, something in the darkness.
As you pace the room, you bump your knees and shins on many wooden edges, and exploring them with your hands you discover low tables and chairs, stacked haphazardly about the space. Working your way through the maze, you eventually trip on a protrusion from one of the walls, the base of a short, recessed stairway leading upward.
Tessa drags the toe of her boot against the steps, feeling for railings, if none exist, settling for leaning into a wall, jacket casting obnoxious light.
You reach the top of the stairway with no trouble, it’s only a few steps up from the floor before you reach a… Completely mundane wooden door. Stout, to be sure, but there are no bars, no bands, not even a lock. It’s just a door. With a knob.
Using all the fire-based safety that Tessa was taught in elementary school as a 90’s kid, she presses her hand’s back to the knob, feeling for flame. And, if it’s not hot, she turns it, and pushes it open.
The knob turns easily, and light floods in, directly into your eyes. You’re facing onto, well, an entirely mundane New Haven street, in a completely average residential neighborhood. People pass, trees sigh and rattle in the winter wind, and nothing much else happens. In fact, a rather pudgy old fellow waves companionably to you as he passes.
Tessa is fucking blind, apparently.
You depart the house, and as soon as you do, the door behind you disappears. It’s just gone. You look back, and all you see is a shady alley between two houses, with a few scraggly plants clinging on even in the chill. The stones underfoot are a bit strange…
At the very center of the alleyway, a circle of stones presides, barely noticeable amidst the otherwise unremarkable concrete and gravel. Bulbous and wide, they resemble a ring of mushrooms, though as you watch even this fades from your perception. Before you know it, you’re staring at a blank space of concrete, on a residential street, and you honestly remember nothing at all of how you got here. How strange. You shrug, dismissing it as just another weird phenomena of New Haven, and head home.
“Fucking Fae…” Tessa mutters, side eyeing where the fairy ring was.
(Your target is attacked by a dream stalker who subjects them to their greatest fantasies in the dream world in order to keep their body passive while it’s energies are fed upon. They need to, possibly with the help of allies entering their dreams, resist the temptation long enough for other allies to find them or for them to wake up.
)
Morning dawns on Eric, birds chirp, his girls are curled in with him, cozy, content, warm. There’s a quiet titter of birdsong outside, the weather is lightly cloudy and a comfortable temperature. It appears, by all accounts, to be a perfect day.
Eric yawns, stretching his arms over his head. He pecks the sleeping Tessa and Meri on their cheeks, before sliding out of bed and padding across the room on bare feet, heading to the kitchen to make coffee.
Tessa waddles out after him, her tanktop riding up over her baby bump. She leans against the bar beside Eric, kissing him softly. “Hi, handsome. What’ve you decided for us, today? Since… I want to focus entirely on what makes you happy today, since you always make us so happy,” she says, smiling warmly. Her shadow stands still behind her, as though it were fixed from the corruption it is.
Eric turns to take Tessa into his arms, nuzzling his face into her hair. “Some hunting today, babe? Kill a few leechies?” He scoops her up off the floor with ease, settling her, baby bump and all, against his broad chest. “I’m not hard to please,” comes the amused murmur, his lips at her ear.
Rubbing a hand over her more sizable bump, Tessa tilts her head, asking sweetly, “Are you sure I can’t tempt you to relax, let me feed you, let me take care of you?” She steals a slow kiss, nails raking along his jaw.
Eric flushes, a slow, inevitable climb of color suffusing his cheeks. His hand settles possessively over Tessa’s own on her belly, and he leans into the kiss, biting at Tessa’s bottom lip. “That sounds nice too,” he agrees, voice gone low with gravel. “Could do with a day… At home.” The last two words are a lazy drawl, and his lashes lower as he surveys Tessa, near-hungry in his perusal.
There’s a pause in Tessa’s response, an awkward moment of hesitation, before she smiles slow. “Of… Of course, my love,” she says, voice chipper, a sweet lilt that comes off gentle. “What would you like for food? Steak, perhaps?”
Eric clears his throat, setting Tessa’s feet back on the floor. “Bloodier the better. Maybe some eggs? Are you sure though, babe? I can cook for us real quick.” He’s already moving towards the stove, the urge to take care of Tessa already overriding his blatant interest.
That strange moment of Tessa’s hesitation, out of character for her in the face of Eric flirting with her, seems to have passed. “Oh, no, don’t be silly,” she chides, shooing him with a laugh. “It’s my job as your wife.” She shoos him out of the kitchen, or at least away from the range, no apron on, and she sets to making eggs, steak seasoned and left aside.
Eric flops down in a chair, watching Tessa fondly as she works. “Something the matter, babe?” He asks the question only after a long pause, nostrils flared as he inhales, eyes still keen on her frame. “Something bothering you?”
“Oh, not at all,” Tessa dismisses, her smile that sweet, warm one she uses – the fake one. In fact, keen as his attention is, that familiar perfume, coconut, jasmine, that she loves covers up the scent of someone else. Not bad, but Natural, just not his future wife. The mimicry is almost perfect, but she’s literally famous, many, many videos available online of her, and the perfume brand is one she’s sworn by for years, one she’s talked about in videos. “You’re being silly,” she chides him, steak tossed into the pan.
Eric explodes up from his chair, crossing the kitchen in a bounding stride to seize her, one hand darting for her wrist, the other for her throat. He slams the entirety of his weight into her, driving her sideways and back to pin her against the range, all implacable force and the sweep of braids trailing in his wake. If he catches her, he pins her there, bending her backwards by the grip on her throat, sniffing at her from closer at hand. “Who are you,” he growls, voice gone from playful to dangerous in a breath.
Tessa yanks her arm out of his reach, back hitting the counter, eyes wide. “Eric, what the actual fuck?” she asks, brows knit. That hint of someone else fades, and it smells… right. It smells like her, perfectly, like every memory of morning Tessa, and the look she’s giving, more authentic to her off-screen, is like he has six heads and she’s debating which to bap with the spatula. “Are you… Are you high?” she asks, squinting at him, like HE’S the crazy one.
There is a faint pain at the base of his skull, that lances through his brain, gone as fast as it came.
Eric blinks confoundedly at Tessa, stopping in his tracks. “You don’t… You don’t smell like you. You smell like someone else…” He holds out his hands, palms up, backing away from her. “I don’t know what’s happening.” He stumbles as the back of his legs hit the table, and he nearly tumbles over, steadying himself with a hand thrown out.
As far as Eric can tell, that hint of something else, someone else, must’ve just been caught on the wind, maybe someone’s perfume she hugged, because, well, people don’t briefly smell like someone else, then figure themselves out and smell right, right? And now, she’s stepping forward, hands raised, concerned, trying to help him upright. “Baby…. do you need help? Take a seat, I’ll… get you hunting cola, or a glass of water….” She turns her back to him, flipping the steak as if reflexive – Tessa-coded – then she brings him a glass of water, fresh from the fridge.
Eric considers the water, but he only sniffs it before setting it aside. “Cmere, babe. Sit with me a minute? THat’d make me feel better.” He settles into a chair, patting his lap and opening his arms to her. “Just us, just chill a minute, you know?”
When he asks, she turns off the heat, letting the residual warmth finish cooking the steak, more concerned about Eric than she is the food, but also not wanting to burn her whole brownstone down. She settles into his lap, same as she does nearly every day, the weight, the feel, the chill, all familiar, soaking in his warmth, nuzzling his jaw, biting it, murmuring, “Are you sure you’re okay? You’re white as a paper ghost.”
He notices, slowly, that the more he picks out holes, things that aren’t right about her, the more that pain in his head shoots through, and the more perfect, the more like his Tessa, this woman seems to be. It’s not excruciating, but it’s sharp, like a particularly irritating migraine.
Eric scowls harshly, rubbing at the nape of his neck, at the base of his skull. “It hurts,” he almost whines, resting his head down on Tessa’s shoulder. It’s only a ploy, of course, so he can seize her fully in his arms, lifting her feet free of the ground. “I know you’re not real,” he snarls, taking purposeful strides towards the still burning oven. One fist seizes her hair in an unyielding grip, and with the meticulous precision of one moving with care, or perhaps savoring every detail, he tilts her head towards the scorching metal. “Tell me. Now. I’ll burn you to ash, if it gets her back.”
claws at his arms, significantly weaker than him, and she kicks, pushing at him, trying to scratch at his face with the quartz ring on her hand, while struggling to grasp a handle, left nearby, of a silver knife. “Stop, you fucking psycho!” Tessa sobs, the knife stabbing into him, but… strangely, it hurts, though there’s no blood. There’s not even a wound. There’s just shooting pain, the burn of silver, his fiancee sobbing, screaming, hysterical. But… no gore. No injuries.
Eric glances down at where she stabbed him, blinking. He doesn’t relinquish his grip, but it does loosen a bit in his bafflement. “This, isn’t real,” he concludes, finally stepping back and letting her go. “This is, a dream? An illusion?” He pokes her hard in the chest, as if testing for solidity. “You’re not Tessa, so quit pretending. What are you?”
drops the knife, blood, where it should be, spattering his side, the knife, the floor when the knife bounces a little. Still, there’s no lasting injury. She pulls back from him, hands to her face, speckled in his blood, looking horrified. “I… I stabbed you,” she breathes, eyes wide, gone pale. She stumbles, and falls to her ass, back against the counters. She looks vulnerable, terrified, and she sniffles. “Hellhound…” she mumbles. It’s… both a very Tessa reaction, but also, not at all helpful.
Blink. Eyes open. Blink again. There’s a familiar skylight above his head, and a blood spattered Tessa standing over him, a knife in hand, but… it’s not the silver one on the knife strip in the brownstone. It’s her amethyst handled one, and she’s half-dressed, as she is usually for bed, knife driven into the lung, from the back, of a scrawny woman. “Bitch,” she spits, furious, sadism coming out.
Eric lurches up, pawing sleep from his eyes, swiping his hand furiously at the woman in a gesture of denial. It mostly just drives her back further onto Tessa’s knife, and there’s a short aborted yell of startled fury. He flops and tumbles out of the bed, landing with an almighty crash in the blood puddling at Tessa’s feet.
“And that’s why you don’t fucking break into my house to use my fiance’s energy for your fucking bullshit,” Tessa growls, driving the knife in deeper. If it wasn’t going to kill the woman… well, it will, shortly. “I use his energy, not some shit-tier dream stalking cunt,” she insists, drawing her knife back, wiping it off on the other woman’s clothing, here it’s not gone black with deep red blood. She smiles, that sadist’s smile, at Eric, telling him so sweetly, “Do clean that up, won’t you, love? I’m feeling a bath,” before she heads downstairs.
Eric just lies there, watching the sway of Tessa’s hips as she strolls away, blinking owlishly. “Hot,” he mutters, blushing a bit even through the blood, then he’s rising to drag the dead woman by one ankle to the window overlooking the porch. He opens the glass, calling down to the street below, “Dinner!” Then he pitches the corpse unceremoniously down to feed the mist creatures of Redstone lurking in their moat.