RuneScape Forum Archive | ~* Yrolg's Omnibus *~

Yrolg

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The rumbling of the wretched cloud
which hold the skies as grey
Is reaching houses, bold and loud,
And making night from day.
The raindrops pooling on the ground
make wisps of hope die bleakly,
And with that trembling, awful sound
The sunlight entreats meekly.
But is it not the raindrop's trade
To dim that hope's dear light?
To turn it into wretched shade
and make from day the night?

06-Apr-2008 01:17:36 - Last edited on 17-Jun-2012 22:46:18 by Yrolg

Yrolg

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DUE DILIGENCE
Composed as a challenge from Praxis Compositio
Yes, I was dreadfully nervous. How was it they had found me? I had made sure that my neighbours knew nothing of my history; I had been vigilant in guarding my secrets. Yet still they had found me, and I had been forced, like a fox from its smoke-filling den, to run into the open. My only solace was the sloppiness with which they organised the hunt, but even this was merely a rationalisation of happiness to prevent the edifice of dismay from crashing down upon my consciousness. I had to reserve every ounce of my mental faculties for the feat that loomed -- escape.
It had been almost three full years since last the Monteguez had picked up on my trail, and I was just becoming comfortable with the life of aloof secrecy that I had constructed. Everything, it seemed, was just settling into place when Sarcosa, God bless his undying soul, appeared in the sable of night, whispering into my ear that Esteban had picked up on the clue. Before I could ask anything of him, we was gone; in seconds my life had turned from one of acclimation to the all-too-familiar flight of fear. Very nervous, indeed.
Immediately I opened all of the drapes, setting them so they couldn't blow shut. Drawing from my necklace's locket a small key, I unlocked a long metal box underneath my bed, removing from it a suitcase a duffelbag. If my years on the run had taught me anything, it was that preparedness is the grace of prevention. It had been only slightly after 2:00AM when Esteban dropped the cue, yet somehow I was locking the door to the lit apartment and dragging my suitcase down the precarious staircase before 2:30. I had a sort of pride in the sad expertise I collected over the years in disappearing into the night; this time was no different.

06-Apr-2008 01:19:57 - Last edited on 10-Feb-2013 04:30:50 by Yrolg

Yrolg

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Descending the stairs, I stopped at the second storey, tearing the corner off of a blank piece of paper and surreptitiously slipping the remainder under one of the doors. I put the corner in my breast pocket and moved forward, knowing well that I had few moments to spare with such courtesies. I reached the ground level, slipping out the service exit to see an innocuous-looking van careen through the alleyway. Its hissing tires echoed throughout the bricked buildings. I picked up the suitcase, carefully closed the door, and crept behind the green dumpsters. As I manoeuvred the two bags through the swathes of rubbish, I thought again on how they could have found me after so long: I had been impeccable -- or so I thought -- at wiping my tracks.
Getting to the end of the street, and not wanting my silhouette to look conspicuous in the streetlamp's glow, I veered to the right, entering the neighbouring complex. At eight storeys it was a bit taller than my own building, but it would give me the perfect vantage point, so I started climbing the stairs, stopping at the first landing after the suitcase gave a resounding clang against the institutional steel handrail. Cringing at the noise and praying that no one in the building -- much less none of the 'visitors' in the one next door -- had heard it, I set both my bags down using a few of their custom-made straps to attach them to each other.

06-Apr-2008 01:19:58 - Last edited on 10-Feb-2013 04:28:37 by Yrolg

Yrolg

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I started climbing again when I noticed a security door a few floors up, and cursing at myself, I thought of all the ways I could break through it without making noise. The door in my building had been so habitually broken that the landlord had simply ended up removing it. Bemoaning my forgetfulness, I quickened my pace up the stairs. Two floors later and I was face to face with the solid-steel, deadbolted door, my mind racing a marathon of innovations for getting past it. Looking down, I saw a blank piece of paper and, reaching down to pick it up, noticed it was missing a corner.I quickly thrust it in my pocket and pried the latch for the security door, nodding with approval as the rhythmic clicking of the internal pins drawing the deadbolt inward.
When at last the bolt had been drawn, I opened the door and slipped through its dark arch, careful to manage the bundled luggage in the easily aggrevated metal framework. The lights flickered as I set the bags down, and as I turned to close the barrier again I heard footsteps clacking along the linoleum tiles of the other side's hallway. I shifted my weight to get my line of sight through the ajar door's crack, but in the flickering light I could make out no figure. Hurriedly twisting the safety mechanism's gears, I started to shut the door. As I gave it a push to close it, a black cane wedged itself in the opening. My heart froze and a cool sweat seemed to immediately appear along my brow: what if the Monteguez had found me? I pushed again, as if I hadn't noticed the cane blocking the doorway.

06-Apr-2008 01:19:58 - Last edited on 10-Feb-2013 04:28:49 by Yrolg

Yrolg

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Rejoindering was a voice calling out from the other side, its American drawl highlighting the safety of the situation. "Woah, there. Hope you don't mind me squeezing through on your key, but I might appreciate it." Pushing open the door was a tall and slender man sporting a nice, if worn, black suit and bowtie. His gray hair was combed neatly, but had obviously frazzled over the course of a humid evening. "Glad I found you here, actually. Not used to wearing these ol' rags," he continued, gesturing to his attire before adding, "Didn't remember to bring my own keys from the loft." His crooked smile evokes unflattering emotions from my heart, his piercing eyes seeming to stare through my sternum to these sentiments. I looked down again at the black cane stopping the door from shutting fully, noticing for the first time the uneven scuffs along his unpolished black shoes that bespoke a limp foot.
Shuffling over to the side, I gestured for the man to pass through the doorway, a coy smile plastered halfheartedly on my face. "Well, it looks like it was your lucky day, then" I return, disguising my accent in a Mexican slur. He tipped his hat and walked gracefully through, making no show of the limp his shoes insinuated. His presence made me very anxious; it was, at that point, my estimation that he had been sent at the behest of the Monteguez. As he walked down the hallway, his head turned slightly to keep my presence in his peripheral, I bent down in the pretense of tying my shoe and fixing my hem.

06-Apr-2008 01:19:59 - Last edited on 10-Feb-2013 04:29:11 by Yrolg

Yrolg

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My mind was racing in a muddled conversation of my options, as surely to run to the first floor was a blind action throwing me into the midst of an organised trap. I looked up from kneeling and noticed that the door in front of me let light through its keyhole. Would it be possible to sneak into the room and down the fire escape? The man had stopped outside an arbitrary door, making a spectacle of looking for his keys to gain access to the room. At that moment my suspicions were realised, and I quickly stood, bid him well with a tip of my head, and entered the room, closing it and moving the deadbolt to its sliding place in a fell swoop. I shuddered and thought over what I had just seen.
The security door of these apartment buildings were installed so that locks were unnecessary on the upper floors. That the man had been looking for keys -- keys which he had already intimated having forgotten as an explanation for his needing to be let in by myself -- betrayed his ignorance to the building's obvious uses, and thus betrayed that he was,in fact, not a resident. To be an agent of Monteguez was the only answer that reconciled these facts. I added a chair behind the doorknob for extra security, and turned around to for the first time look at the apartment behind me. Halfway through my turn I heard a hurried shuffling past the doorway, and again I shuttered at the presence of the singular beragged man.
My eyes passed over off-white walls of an institutional concrete block, past the mass-produced, plastic closet door and on to the main area of the apartment. Realizing the light emanated from a lamp on the near side of the room and reflected back from the open closet door, thus shadowing the contents of the abode, I looked to my left, flicking the light switch on once I had found it. Waiting for the fluorescent lights to flicker on, I thought back to the shuffling man, whom I had heard yell down the corridor in a muffled call.

06-Apr-2008 01:21:32 - Last edited on 10-Feb-2013 04:29:28 by Yrolg

Yrolg

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Except for his shoes, there was no direct evidence tying him to Monteguez, and I thought again of the thought process that had led me to such an assumption as his membership in that execrable cartel. And his American accent betrayed his allegience to what has, for decades, been the avowed enemy of that association. I ruminated on his attire, my mind envisioning the rumpled jacket with curling lapels, and I realised my dire mistake. As the lights flickered on and I saw for the first the contents of the apartment and realized the grave error I had committed in letting pass that shuffling figure, I fell back against the door several feet behind me with a resounding and powerful thud.
The apartment before me was an identical replica of my own, down to the hand-painted drawings my son had created years before and the native-painted flower pot at the base of the breakfast bay's counter. I slid down the door, my legs losing strength to the overwhelming surprise of my newfound stalker's abode. How was it possible that such an identical copy could be made after I had taken such care to preserve and protect my privacy? Esteban's cue had indicated the Monteguez had only been on my trail for a few days, far less than what was needed to create such a detailed replica. I looked to the clock and realised that even it had the same failing pixels in the hours digit. 2:38AM it registered. My mind continued to mull these surprising and disquieting details, not able to focus on the pressing jeopardy the approaching Monteguez agents posed before a shuffling in the hall of the door behind me awoke me from my reverie.
And it hit me again that the conclusions I had drawn of the man in the hall had been so utterly wrong. Drawing again the picture of his curling lapel to my eye, I saw the Monteguez 'M' lapel pin I feared was, in fact, a Washington, D.C. monogram. The FBI still had my back.

06-Apr-2008 01:21:41 - Last edited on 10-Feb-2013 04:29:53 by Yrolg