P r o j e c t :: F l u k e
[[[M A R T Y G A S K I N S]]]
Layer 01:::
Patient Profile:::
“People these days always love to accentuate the negatives. They’re too focused on the cons, when really they should appreciate the artistry. Those suckers shouldn’t look at it like they were cheated. They were treated to a once in a lifetime opportunity to see a master craftsman at work.”
Name: Martin “Marty” Gaskins
Gender: Male
Age: 54
Classification: He’s a creature of habits and comforts, mostly.
Physical Description:Marty isn’t so much barrel-chested as he is just shaped like a barrel. A short man of five foot and a couple of inches (thanks to some orthopedic shoe lifts), Marty is heavyset with a thick neck and a large, round head. Although he dresses well his arms seem to be too thin for his otherwise stout body, making it appear like he is a bloated boy wearing his dad’s button-up shirt. Any illusion of boyishness ends there. Marty shows every bit of fifty-four on his body. His hands are rough with callouses and the wrinkles make the back of his hand look like a detailed topographic map of a national park. His face is pinkish and resembles a certain cartoon pig if it wore dark, thick glasses and had gray, thinning hair.
Marty’s twitchy and always manages to look guilty, as if he was perpetually possessed by the spirit of a small dog that just got yelled at for pissing all over the freshly mopped linoleum. More than anything, Marty appears harmless—helpless, pathetic even—with a doofy smile, dimly lit brown eyes, and a growing list of minor and imagined medical concerns that makes the ailments of Cavity Sam from Operation pale in comparison. Marty is a paradox given flesh, his existence disproving the theory of evolution while still somehow spitting directly in the face of intelligent design. Despite all of this schlub, his laugh has been theorized as being the most wonderful sound known to man, the one factor that keeps him from being left out on the hillside for the wolves.
Psychological Profile:::
Jovial | Empathetic | Oafish | Lonely | Exploitative | Fraud
Patient Observations:::He’s here because he’s been made. Why else would they keep a mentally stable man here? Marty was at High John’s for the same reason he was at any of the other many psychiatric hospitals he has had brief sojourns at: to exploit the system and scout for easy marks. Often citing major depression as the problem that was plaguing him, the eternally happy Marty never had a problem in his life getting out of a ward once he got committed. The doctors feel like they helped a man down from his well-acted breaking point, the actual patients feel like they met a friend who is kind and cares about whatever whacko bullshit it is they’re going through, and Marty has the names and trust of a couple of people whose identity he can easily steal for a new line of credit. Just about everybody that matters wins.
Only that didn’t happen this time. This time they’re keeping him around, saying he’s actually sick and delusional. They say he has something called Munchausen. Well Marty’s not being fooled. He’s hustled enough people with the old fake disease schtick to know not to name it after a beloved character from the Simpsons. Even after he started to see the other side Marty believed, at least originally, that it’s all part of the con—the work of psychedelics in the salads or acid in the water. Everything has an explanation. It’s High John’s attempt to outwit a natural born swindler, but what they don’t know is that all of this is just now playing into Marty’s next move. He’s smelling a lawsuit, a best-selling autobiography, a talk show circuit, and a movie deal. Perhaps he has been made, but after this he will have it made. He’ll play the part of the stupid, sedated patient until he finds the key to the front door.
Deepest Desire:::Marty has a colorful cast of fictional dead spouses to pull from whenever he needs a good sob story. Unfortunately, having spent so much time carefully crafting companionship has left him without the opportunity to ever go out and find a true companion that’ll one day die and become an actual sob story. Most of his years are behind him now and it’d be nice to have someone with whom he can enjoy the remaining ones. Not a wife, necessarily, unless there is prenup, but a friend—a real friend, not the “friends” he has that can make something go away. While his relationships with patients have helped hold off some of the despair that comes from loneliness, it isn’t quite the same. A tick cannot become friends with the dog from which it feeds. Marty needs a fellow parasite.
Quest::: Cybil replaced Marty’s original nurse. She appeared after he emerged, all scattered and disoriented, from the fog of the other side for the first time and helped him through the comedown. Surprisingly, she was more frank about the reality of the situation than any of the other staff at the House of Saints. They chatted after every experiment, and it was during these chats that she began to reveal that she was more than just some other nurse. She knew about Marty, knew about his past, knew about what kind of man he actually was, and knew the name of a woman he’d hooked up with nearly three decades ago—her mother, allegedly.
Naturally, as someone who pretended to be a long-lost kid once or twice, Marty didn’t believe the woman. Despite his unwillingness to believe she insisted that she would help get him (and the rest of the patients) out of the asylum, even though it was in her opinion that his history of conning the mentally unstable was proof alone that he needed to be locked away. He just didn’t deserve to be locked away here. None of them did. And then she didn’t appear for one of their post-experiment chats, and he hasn’t seen her since.
Marty doesn’t believe one bit that the woman is his daughter, but he’s concerned about her wellbeing...and he’s concerned about how much he knew about her. Strangely enough, everyone on staff claims there has never been a woman named Cybil working there. It’s all part of their act to gaslight him, he’s certain, and they’ve threatened the other inpatients to keep them quiet too. Still, before he escapes he is determined to find out the truth about the nurse, to find out how she knows the truth about him, and to make sure that secret stays between the two of them.
Virtue::: Opportunity’s DesignerGood luck doesn’t come from chaos or a random number generator, it’s fathered by patience and birthed by decisiveness. Marty doesn’t jump upon the fruitful opportunities that come by his way, he loads the dice and biases the coin so that everything rolls and flips right into his lap. When he takes this good fortune there’s no feelings of remorse to weigh him down, no fear of punishment, and nothing more than false pity tossed to the losers. Why should he feel an ounce of guilt? After all, he just got lucky, nothing else.
Vice::: The Power of MythomaniaHonestly, honesty is a concept that is practically foreign to Marty. He’s not certain, but he believed it started as a game he’d play with people. He’d start with a lie, and compound upon that lie, and keep going forward with the lie until he had to lie down in the bed of dishonesty he made or get laid out by a violent seeker of truth. There’s a point in life where one tells so many lies that the truth sounds more like a great fib than a record of history. By then, it just feels more right to lie sincerely than tell the truth artificially. Ultimately, his words, his most precious tool, have started to lose their value. The more people realize he’s full of shit, the more worthless they become.
Likes::: - Routines, rituals, relaxation.
- Conversations, with and of any sort, even those about the weather.
- Gambling, particularly on sports, with plenty of sidebets.
- Sitting outside, on a bench, enjoying a Churchill.
- Jazz, even the smooth kind, especially the smooth kind.
- Unconventionally attractive people, unique styles, oddballs.
- Meatloaf Mondays, an extra helping of mashed potatoes, c’mon, fill ‘er up.
- Tricking stupid people, feeling like everyone is stupider than him, feeling like a big man.
Dislikes::: - Short jokes, fat jokes, positive or negative comments on his physical appearance at all.
- Hard work and exercise, all of the body aches, getting up in the morning.
- Hurting feelings, being mean, being disliked.
- Violent films, loud music, abrupt personas.
- Being confused, having no control over a situation, watching everything spiral and burn.
- Getting caught, being exposed, dealing with the repercussions.
- Taco Tuesdays, without soft corn shells, seriously, this is a travesty.
- Being deceived by others, realizing that he might be as dumb as he pretends to be, fearing that he might be dumber than he pretends to be.
Oddities::: Before Cybil disappeared, she gave Marty an antique-looking key to an unknown lock. He has hidden the key inside a hole in his mattress, where upon searching for it again he has discovered that the bed ate it only for it to appear on top of his freshly changed sheets the next day. The key was then kept inside of his pocket, but it fell through a tear and appeared on his lunch tray hours later. Since then he has continued to lose the key, but it keeps returning to him like a well-thrown boomerang with abandonment issues. As far as he is aware, the key opens no doors in High John’s.
Background Information:::
“Yeah, there’s some people who like to say I’m crooked, but look at my record. It’s spotless. Clean. Practically empty, almost as if I never even existed. Which is funny, because that’s how I’m starting to feel too.”
Wisps of Memory:::Marty wasn’t always a fraud. What remains of his early childhood are painful glimpses of a kid playing inside of a dark house that wasn’t a home, a screaming woman that was technically a mom, and a man and a woman in suits coming to take him to meet his new parents. He doesn’t remember much about the new parents, except that either their faces and body changed or he had more than one pair. That was it for the first couple of years. New houses, new schools, and new faces. He was in his early teens when Marty performed his first trick. He realized that his school peers wouldn’t antagonize him if they liked him, and they would like them as long as he entertained them. So he became the clown. Always smiling, always laughing, always happy. It made life more bearable. Marty always found it funny how the first person he had to con was himself.
After school he found that pretending to be something else was always easier than actually becoming something. Marty preferred to have his living be easy. Why spend the money and time becoming a real estate agent when you can just print out some business cards and collect on a down payment for a house that isn’t even for sale? What kind of schmuck would go to school to become a therapist when all you need is a picture frame, a fancy piece of paper, and a decent couch? Marty ran through a number of games in his years, but none of them stuck quite like the institutionalized game.
He’d have his psychiatrist (himself) and his general practitioner (also himself) recommend he be committed to a ward, where insurance and the taxpayers would fund his room and board. In the hospitals he’d make friends with the other patients, patients who he could easily manipulate for capital gain later on. After all, someone had to pay off the insurance companies, plus the lawyers who were keeping his civil suits out of the courts until the other party bled out of money, and also the bookies who were threatening to break his kneecaps with a wooden bat.
That’s the thing Marty remembers most out of his time before the House: no matter how much he was able to swindle out of people, there were always debts. His life was a cycle, con people to pay off debts, go into debt protecting himself from the people he conned, and having to con more people to pay that off, and so on. It was the one major problem Marty had with his lifestyle, really. He had never anticipated that living the easy life by taking advantage of others would end up being so damn hard, but once he was in he couldn’t get out.
In the House of High John::: Fittingly enough, once he was in he couldn’t get out can also be used to describe the problem with his life at the House. Before he committed himself, life had gone bad for Marty yet again. Despite having a few fake credentials and forged certificates he was no doctor, but he could still guess that it’d be detrimental to his health if the certain unfriendly people who were looking for him did actually end up rearranging his organs in the way they said they would. The House was just another psych ward he would lay low in for a couple of weeks, miraculously recover from the major depression he didn’t have, and maybe meet a few suckers to profit off of later so he could get the debtors off of his back.
Not such a good idea, that one.
Marty’s no longer sure how long he’s been at High John’s. Months, at least. Definitely longer than any of his previous stay. They insist that he’ll be released once he is better, but Marty knows he doesn’t need any treatment because he was faking everything in the first place. When he tried to convince them that his depression was gone they slapped him with Munchausen, claiming that he had faked his depression so he could receive attention and care. Fearing that they might actually have been catching on to the fact that he was exploiting them, Marty played along. He was an ideal patient. Docile, friendly to the staff, and caring of the other patients. He figured once he went long enough not claiming he had any diseases they’d eventually drop their suspicions, clear him, and let him go.
Then the experiments started. Or maybe they were always happening. Marty doesn’t remember. He believes the Land of the Dead is just a hallucination, induced through drugs or virtual reality, although it’d be delusional to think that an institution would go this far to teach an individual a lesson about exploiting the health system. It was around this time that he met Cybil, and around this time that he grew more comfortable with the routine lifestyle of the House. Sure, the experiments were awful, but otherwise was it so bad? Three meals a day, plenty of lovely nature to look at, some cute nurses that took care of you, and game shows on repeat. It was almost enough to make him forget about the terrors that awaited him during the experiments.
Almost. It helped having Cybil there. She kept him in touch with reality, even though sometimes the reality she told him about sounded unbelievable. She gave Marty a hope that she’d get him out of the House. He didn’t trust her first when she said she was his daughter, but after a while she started to feel like one. Her companionship made the experiments tolerable, because he knew after the horrors he’d be spending time with her. He once admitted to her, thanks to the cocktail of painkillers they gave him, that she had been his highlight of his life since she started visiting him three weeks ago. It was the only time he’d ever seen her frown as she sat on the edge of his bed and said, “You mean three years, right?”
It was the last thing he remembered her saying. Cybil has been gone since that day. Any questions about her are met with confusion and denial. Marty has stuck with his routine to keep perpetuating the lie that he was just another patient, but what she said has haunted him. They’re never going to let him go. He can’t just keep taking it easy if he wants to get out of this place. He has to do something. Marty has to do something before he forgets. Already he has forgotten her face. If he ends up forgetting her words how long until he forgets that unless he does something they’ll keep him in this place forever?
Fragments and Connections::: Once, Marty thought he had the answer to his deepest desires before him in the form of his first and only partner-in-crime, Sunny Corll. The medication has since erased nearly all memory of Sunny, but certain mundane things like a dropped coffee mug or a patient catcalling a nurse serve as reminders of the man. While Marty can no longer remember why it is exactly, all of these fragments of memories hit him with a wave of negative energy, sucking him into a temporary vacuum of disappointment and hatred. These feelings never last long, but they all point to one thing: Sunny, at some point, had screwed him.
Layer 02:::
Doomsayer Title:::FLUKE, the Bloodletter
Description:::Fluke is an exaggerated mockery of the final husk state of the Dead. Her skin is like the shattered sidewalks that have broken so many mothers’ backs, tinted by a light, mildewy green of spilled toxic radioactive waste. It’s draped and tightly pulled around tattered bones like broken broom handles fastened together by old, decaying hemp rope of her sinewy muscles, effectively making her into a towering scarecrow dressed in a widow’s funeral gown. Her arms have the jerky movements of a marionette operated by an amateur puppeteer with a hand cramp whereas her legs barely animate at all, seemingly gliding over the ground. Her voice is a pained rasp, the sound of a death rattle, the final words that somehow keep coming.
Fluke’s oil black hair is coarse and straw-like, sliced into sharp angles that curtain her eyes. A certain peculiarity makes it impossible for her eyes to be seen, a swathe of hair or a cast shadow always finding a way to block the sightline. It hides the truth that all the Dead already assume: Fluke lacks yellow eyes. The Hunger isn’t there. No matter how much she looks like them, Fluke isn’t one of the Dead. She’s the Halloween costume that ends up being more mean-spirited than fun, the Frankenstein’s monster that the townspeople chase with torches and pitchforks, an insult physically manifested. While all Doomsayers fuel the Dead with some sort of contempt, Fluke is the rare sort that makes them burn with jealousy and remember the long gone feelings of anger they once have. How can something so disgustingly insulting in its familiarity be a Doomsayer?
Doomsayer Paragon::: MountebankFluke follows misfortune. Misfortune heralds Fluke. She is the much needed champion of the Dead, their caretaker, the bloodletter that eases the pain of the toxins brought about by the Hunger, the Devils, and the Demons. She is also the cackling villain hated by the Dead, their torturer, the parasite that feeds upon their pain for her own twisted needs. Fluke’s pandering to the needs of the Dead is believed to be just that—it’s a charade, a game, a crooked setup for some unforeseen end—and no good deeds will be able to convince them otherwise. Those leeches of hers, her so called good luck charms, drain what they are supposed to create until the unlucky husk are one of her husks, gaslighted into believing that they are under Fluke’s care instead of one of her spells. Yet still she says she is trying to help. The Dead aren’t braindead. They know a liar when they see one. Fluke really isn’t a Doomsayer that wants to help the Dead; she’s a Devil in a Doomsayer’s dress.
Doomsayer Prophecy::: It was the kind of grand betrayal the likes that only Fluke could be accused of orchestrating, although it was strangely defeatist to think that she would plot against herself. Although in a way she did. Her words, her warnings, her pleas to the Dead, Fluke had always thought they’d fallen on deaf ears. It was nice to know that they listened—even if they didn’t believe what they heard, even if their ravenous mouths full of jagged, serrated daggers ribboned her paper-thin disguise, and even if they had given her more credit than she was truly worth. Trust her, for once, trust her, as the swarm of leeches that erupted forth from her wounds were instantly devoured in the Dead’s feeding frenzy. She screamed out for them to trust her, her voice already consumed, her nothing words devoured, her good intentions choked upon, as the Land of the Dead turned to cannibalize itself, the Dead’s Hunger finally unchecked.
A Legend:::The myths surrounding Fluke have shifted throughout the eons in an unending downward spiral. She was once considered a rare kind of Dead who denied the impossible, shirked their apathy, and by pure will and a lot of luck became a Doomsayer. Fluke was an inspiration, a bountiful source of good luck, and the last bastion of hope in a land that long forgot the feeling. Whenever misfortune struck—when the Devils revealed their machinations or a Doomsayer’s unrestrained behavior caused collateral—Fluke would be there to reverse the fates into a favorable outcome. Whenever the Hunger became too much, some bloodletting and a few leeches from Fluke would drain the dark desire. She was the undeserved savior of the Dead and she performed her sacred duty without rest.
Regretfully, the Dead viewed themselves as undeserving of a champion. Word began to spread that Fluke’s acts of charity and heroism were all part of some grand charade working to further the agenda of a magnificent scheme. Fluke only arrived after something terrible had happened, and no matter what good she did during her time it always seemed like something worse would be around the corner after her departure. She wasn’t a savior. She was a charlatan. She was a false prophet pitching phony poultices in hopes to win influence and gain control over the Dead. She was a Devil in disguise that mocked the Dead for ever believing that a Doomsayer could even consider them worthy of their aid.
A Sighting::: A twist of good fate ended the madness that had consumed the city for a week. The city free from Devils, the height of Dead achievement, had been reduced to rubble and ash by the very hands that had built it. Finally broken from the spell that had driven them into such a rampage, the remaining crowd of Dead, beaten and covered with the blood of their neighbors, looked around in horror at the destruction they had caused. It was then that a voice from the grave whispered in all of their ears, causing the crowd to turn to see one of their own sliding towards the center of the city square. Behind the incredibly tall figure was the corpse of a thin Demon with a massive cranium that was as tall as its emaciated body, shrivelled tentacles protruding from its perforated skull. The corpse was being carried upon a living pool of shadows that stopped when the tall Dead woman stopped and dispersed, the thousands of leeches seeking shelter inside the Demon’s head. For the first time in a week the city was silent, and then a voice cried out that it was the Bloodletter.
Fluke stood there as the crowd grew angry, their cries echoing off the walls of the collapsed towers that had once been the pennants of their sanctuary, and then she spoke. Even through the yelling her lies could be heard by every Dead present as if she perched over all of their shoulders. She warned them that although the madness Demon, which had vanquished by her own hand, was gone, the corruption it had done to their minds was not yet removed. The only thing keeping them from turning against their neighbors yet again was her presence. She cut a deal with the townsfolk: let her cure them of their malady, and she would leave immediately. If not—she gestured as her counterspell dropped, and the Dead turned.Then, with a wave of her hand, they were letting go of each other’s collars and picking one another up off the ground.
Nobody trusted the Bloodletter, but desperation forced the Dead to take her deal. The Dead lined up before her and she produced a lancet, carving up the Demon’s worm-infested mind and serving each one of the dead a tiny pink morsel that was attached to a black, wiggling leech. After the citizens of the fallen city had consumed their homeopathic remedy and returned to their docile, resigned nature the Doomsayer left them as she said she would. Yet despite the efforts of the Bloodletter, or perhaps as precisely orchestrated by her, the city never returned to its former glory. The Devils arrived the very next day to exploit the Dead, striking predatory deals and shaking hands with crossed fingers behind their backs. After the reconstruction it was just another city controlled by Devils, leaving many to question if their fate hadn’t really gone from bad to worse.
𝒜 𝒞𝑜𝓃𝓉𝓇𝒶𝒸𝓉 𝒲𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝒟𝑒𝒶𝓉𝒽:::
FernStone
NoriWasHere
Antlers
Estylwen
TokyoPewPew
Framing A Moose
Cao the Exiled
Raijinslayer
Mixtape Ghost N
AtomicEmperor
